What do you do with the fruits of your creativity?
In the beginning, everything is focused on finding the strength and courage to actually sit down and manifest ideas, visions, and inspirations that are occupying the mind. The series of factors involved in allowing our creativity to fly, as per previous posts.
Once we are in that Flow again, we finally see some of those visions manifested onto products, they are alive and real. And we are overflowed with enthusiasm.
Now, the next step is to present them to the world and wish that someone will like them as much as you do to take them home with them.
At this point, you enter into the vast and scary world of marketing, without even realizing. Quite a delicate subject for many. Confusing me for the past weeks, so much that I missed my appointment of writing this post on my scheduled day. Not because I was not there in front of the computer writing, but there were just too many thoughts, too many doubts, and nothing really made sense. The whole purpose of writing is not only to share with you what I am going through but also to give some kind of solution that may help if you are experiencing the same. Adding more confusion is not really great advice.
Simply, this is just another stage of this long process called Achieving our goal/dream. And like everything it needs to be understood, comprehended throughout and then applied. Like drawing or learning how to create this blog, for example. The beginning is scary and confusing. There is a lot of information to take in and IT IS overwhelming, so much that you could decide to give it all up and find a cave in the middle of a mountain and become a hermit. (if only it could be so easy!)
But we have not got that choice, pushing forward is the only way. And everything can be done with patience (LOTS) and a little bit of organization.
What I have done so far.
Sharing through Social Media. If you are an introvert like me and have not bothered about it up to now, well it takes a while to break the ice, but you can find some really nice people out there that really like to help and lots of inspirational quotes to learn how to overcome our usual fears!!
My first experience with any Social Media was Pinterest, at the time I did not even know it was considered as such. I was looking for special recipes for food intolerances, and this kept coming in my Google searches. I decided to give it a try, and from there I realized I could look for everything, started creating boards of my main interests, DIY ideas, Artwork, life hacks and much more. I re-discovered my old comics love for Garfield!!!
It became really easy to find what I needed and slowly also a source of inspiration and a push to start doing something myself too. At the moment Pinterest is also the place where I mostly share my products from Zazzle. There is still a lot to learn and hope one day I will write a full post on it.
When I started at Zazzle, I opened a Facebook personal account, but then soon learned that for advertising my products, a business page was necessary.
At the same time, I signed up with Instagram. Out of the two, I found Instagram easier and really helpful for motivation. I really love Instagram for the fact that I was able to find so many great Artists and admire outstanding work that never in my entire life I was able to do. Obviously going to a Museum or an Art exhibition is a completely different experience. But with this little App, it is accessible all the time and we learn about Artists from all over the world, of different kind of techniques, of different businesses that could help us.
I personally find it really amazing and beautiful that nowadays more people are able to share their work with literally the whole world with a little investment. And this is the other important feature for me about Instagram, the ability to let your creativity be known and appreciated by other people that are not only your family/friends circle. Connect with others that are doing the same or have the same interests, and giving each other courage and motivation to continue. I think it is really important. We all need encouragement and support, because the obstacles are many, and we are all going through them at one stage or another.
Facebook is something I had left on a side for a while, I would share my Instagram posts there, my new products, other artists work or article, but I have been more a spectator up to now. It is only friends and family that have shown interest so far and for obvious reasons. From Pinterest, I have found some groups that I am following which have sparked my interest and I am slowly grasping what needs to be done, you can check Jackie Muscat from Craft My Success or Jessica Abel
I was always a believer that if someone likes what you are selling, they will buy it and that’s it. There was no need to do anything else. For me the creation was the most important part, it had to be made with extreme care and love, for someone to perceive it through that object, recognize an affinity in it, creating thus a desire to have it. But through experience, I have realized that it was not enough. Sometimes it seemed that way but maybe because without realizing I had had a great conversation with someone and because of that they felt more attracted to what I was selling. In other words, I was telling them the story behind my creations and sparked their interest. But I was never aware of it because I was not trying to sell anything, I was just having a normal conversation.
Online marketing, however, is a big world, not a local market, and the way I understand it then is that social media are the tools by which people learn who one is, who is behind the work, their story, how it is done and what is the message they are trying to express, and most of all to form a connection with the person.
As always the most difficult part is the beginning. The learning and application. But I am so grateful for the amount of information we have out there to help us, and for this, We MUST have patience. We MUST keep on until we see some results.
Thank you, Cristian Mihai for your post Why to never give up
SunFreeStar 