THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello. This is your host, artist Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode number 41 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about emails that convert. And with me is expert copywriter and freelance writer. So, in this episode, you’re going to discover why content marketing is not separate from the rest of your marketing, what content artists should be putting out there, and why nurturing your customers through email will become more important than ever even in 2019.
But before we get there, I wanted to tell you about today’s freebie, because our guest is a prolific blogger and writer. She has a treasure chest of blogs to read. But I don’t want you to get lost in the rabbit hole. So, what I’ve done is my guest and I actually put together a curated list of the best ones for you to check out for creatives and small business owners like us. This is a one-page PDF for your reading list with links to all those best blogs. You’ll find a list in the show notes schulmanart.com/41.
Okay, today’s guest is a content strategist, author of the bestselling Kindle eBook, Make a Killing with Content, and director of The Content Direction Agency. She helps personality-driven brands create and implement content marketing strategies tailor-made to support their customers and reach their goals.
Her agency is the secret weapon ghostwriting content for some of the most popular art and marketing gurus out there. But we can’t tell you which ones. Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Lacy Boggs. Hello, Lacy, and welcome to the show.
Lacy Boggs:
Hi, thank you for having me. That was fun to listen to.
Miriam Schulman:
I pretty much just take whatever my guests give me. But the way I embellished it.
Lacy Boggs:
I liked it. Yeah, it was great.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, yes. All right. So, you know the reason I invited you, because artists really struggle with writing about their art, and what words to put out there. So, this is a huge topic. I know this is going to be a popular episode. And I’m really grateful that you took the time to chat with us today.
Lacy Boggs:
Of course, I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
I like your bird prints back there.
Lacy Boggs:
Thank you. My dad did that.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, it’s very sweet.
Lacy Boggs:
I’m lucky I have quite a few of his pen and ink drawings.
Miriam Schulman:
Is he’s still with us?
Lacy Boggs:
No, we lost him in 2014.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m sorry.
Lacy Boggs:
So, it’s even more special to have some of his art around. So, he’s always sitting here with me.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that’s nice. Yeah. A lot of people share that the art becomes like the legacy if there’s an artist in the family.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. It’s especially meaningful for me because I had written a book. And he illustrated each of the chapters. So, I have about 45 original illustrations that went along with the book. That’s one of them. It was a cool project to do with him.
Miriam Schulman:
So, he was a professional artist?
Lacy Boggs:
No, he worked for the phone company. This was all in his spare time.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s like a lot of my students. They paint in their spare time, too. But the art becomes so important to their family.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. I don’t know if I really believe that things happen for a reason. But I do believe we’re supposed to learn something from it. When he got sick, he had just retired. He had retired and got sick about six months later. He had leukemia. And he was so mad, because he had waited his whole life to have time to do his art, and plays guitars, and go fishing, and do all the things he wanted to do.
And then, he died two years later. So, he never got to do all the things he had been waiting to do. So, I really took away from that that you cannot wait, right? You cannot wait. You have to live for now and do the things that light you up now.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that’s so true of a lot of my students because they come to me either after milestone birthday, 50 or 60. It’s very typical for my audience, even 70. Or, they just retired or they’re about to retire, or they just became an empty nester. And they’re suddenly asking themselves, when is it my time? All those excuses I had, I don’t have anymore. And those are the lucky ones, who do finally ask themselves that question.
Lacy Boggs:
They get the opportunity to grab it, which is good. I think people your age and my age should do it more, too, because-
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Lacy Boggs:
You never know. We’re not guaranteed anything, so.
Miriam Schulman:
No. By the way, I think I’m a lot older than you. But-
Lacy Boggs:
It’s okay. You don’t look you’re 10 older.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m 50. I’m 50.
Lacy Boggs:
Well, you don’t look 50. I would never-
Miriam Schulman:
It’s called the hair dye and good lighting.
Lacy Boggs:
There you go. There you go. It has that smooth feature.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. And lots of avocados. First of all, I use the word content marketing a lot. So, I just want to make sure that all my listeners understand what that is we’re talking about. So, what is content marketing?
Lacy Boggs:
Sure. My definition is that content marketing is anytime you are having a conversation with your potential customers with the idea that it might eventually turn into a sale. So, for that definition, that’s pretty broad. But that includes blog posts, podcasts like this one. It could be a tweet. It could be an Instagram post. It could be an actual physical conversation you’re having at an art show. But anytime you’re having a conversation that you intend to eventually turn into a sale, I would consider that content marketing.
Miriam Schulman:
I know a lot of people wonder, is it just blogging? So, let’s also break down for them some of the other types of things that is might be a blog, or might be what the term used now as microblogging.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. So, blogging is my favorite. But obviously, that’s just because I’m a writer, right? Words are how I express myself. Since you guys are artists, it might be images. That’s content marketing. When you put in an image on Instagram or anywhere else, to me, that’s so content marketing, because you’re engaging in a dialogue with your audience that way. But that could be any other form of content that you’re putting out there. So, that includes emails, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, as I said, podcasts, if you do videos, any of that stuff, is content that you’re putting out to engage with your audience to try to drive more sales.
And so, that’s content marketing. And a lot of times people think it’s just blogging, because that’s where people have talked about it. But really, I do believe it’s more holistic than that. It’s all the conversations we’re having. And it’s pretty much all the marketing you’re doing is content marketing, because, I don’t even care if you put up a billboard that there has to be content and image, some words that have to go on a billboard. So, to me, that’s content marketing.
So, basically, the difference between maybe content marketing and any other marketing is simply that the underlying assumption is that with content marketing, we’re telling some story, we’re sharing something through images or through words in order to develop that relationship with the audience. Whereas, an ad isn’t always concerned with developing a relationship. I think content marketing and all its forms is more concerned with developing a relationship or a conversation that would then end in a sale.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, so, let’s say that we are posting on Instagram, and we want to start a conversation, what are some ideas that we can share with people of how to approach that without them getting writer’s block or getting stuck.
Lacy Boggs:
So, for artists, I think you have a couple of different angles you can take. So, sometimes artists will share behind the scenes type information where they show the progress of a piece being created, or they’ll show behind the scenes of their studio or setting up a show or things like that. So, that would be one option. Another one would be talking about the inspiration or the meaning behind a piece of work. So, if your work has any deep meaning or inspiration that comes from elsewhere, outside of the picture that we might not be able to see just from the piece of art itself, that’s a great thing to talk about.
And sometimes, artists can be personality brands as well. So, sometimes it’s just talking about what’s on your mind, literally what you had for lunch, where you went for a walk, what you’re doing with your kids. Because all things being equal, we buy from people we know like and trust. And all things being unequal, we buy from people we know like and trust. So, the more you can share your personality, the more your audience will learn to like you and trust you, and your art becomes that much more significant to them when they feel like they’re friends with you. And they have a window into your personality.
Miriam Schulman:
One thing I noticed some very successful artists do which I struggle with a lot is they will share, and it’s not just artists, but people who are big personalities online who are successful. They are really willing to get vulnerable. They’ll share their infertility struggles or their breakups, or their heartaches, almost to the point where I feel a little bit uncomfortable yet it really seems to work for them. Do we have to be that vulnerable with our audiences? What’s your opinion on that?
Lacy Boggs:
As you say, not everybody is going to be comfortable with being that vulnerable. I think also, there’s a lot of people who worry about crazy people out there, like the more popular you become, the more crazies come out of the woodwork. And you don’t want to share every detail of your life necessarily.
Miriam Schulman:
No, I don’t even like sharing when I go on vacation. I’m afraid people are going to rob my house.
Lacy Boggs:
Right. Totally. I talk sometimes about brand stories, which is where you come up with a set of stories or a set of topics that you’re willing to share, and interested in sharing, and being vulnerable that. And so, whereas I might not ever talk about like my marriage or issues in my family like that. For me, I’ve drawn the line where I’m happy to talk about things that happen in my business.
My business is pretty much an open book. So, I do get vulnerable about like, “Hey, I tried this thing, and it didn’t work. And it really stink. “I’ll get very vulnerable about that. But I’m not going to tell you if I’m having whatever issues in my marriage, or with my child or anything like that, because that’s not part of my brand.
Miriam Schulman:
So, my kids are 21 and 18. Their stories are their story. So, even if it’s causing me personal pain, if one of them is sick, or something happens, or something with my husband, it’s their stories, too. I’m very mindful of not sharing other people’s stories.
Lacy Boggs:
Absolutely. But just as an example, you could be vulnerable as an artist in different ways. So, if you were to go through a period of artist block where you just didn’t have any creativity, or you’re struggling with a piece and you couldn’t make it work, those are the things you might choose to be vulnerable about.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
Whereas, you might not share your kids’ stories or your husband’s story or anything like that about your personal life. There are still ways you can be vulnerable within your brand. And I’m not going to lie. Being vulnerable, those are the blog posts that will get the most comments, the most likes, the most retweets, because we, as humans, we like it when other humans open up and are real with us, right.
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Lacy Boggs:
So, I would absolutely never try to manufacture that thing. But if you run into those problems or even just hiccups in your professional life or wherever you’ve drawn that line for your brand, it is valuable in some sense to share it, even if it’s sharing it after the fact.
So, you can say like, “This happened, and here’s how I overcame it.” That can be good, too, because sometimes things are too immediate, and we don’t have enough distance from them to share them with the world.
Miriam Schulman:
You’re throwing a term out that I just want to make sure everybody knows what it is. Can you define what a brand voice is?
Lacy Boggs:
Sure, sure. Whether you’re an artist or a personality, or a service provide like me, or some other business, our brand has a voice, as well as… that’s similar too but separate from your actual personal personality voice, right. So, I always talk about my brand is me dialed up to 11. If you visit my website with the freebie, if you look at some of the blogs, you’ll see pictures of me and I don’t look like that on a daily basis. Right? It’s me dialed up to an 11 because that’s my brand persona.
Miriam Schulman:
And let me interrupt you for a minute because I have to share with my audience what your website looks like, because it’s very visual. Lacy is just up like, what would you say, like a 1940s movie star with black and white. And then, everything about her website is cohesive that way, and it looks like it’s done on a typewriter. And then, all her images also look like movies stills from the same era. So, it’s very visually arresting. Actually, it’s beautifully done.
Lacy Boggs:
Thank you.
Miriam Schulman:
That was Sarah.
Lacy Boggs:
Yes, Sara Ancalmo Ashman of Public Persona.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. That’s really beautifully done. Anyway, go ahead with the brand.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah, thank you. So, yes, there’s ’40s noir detective agency vibe around my brand. And my voice, my brand voice is very personal. It’s very conversational. It’s very straightforward. I do try to be a little witty, a little self-deprecating sometimes. And those are all things that I’ve done just because that’s how I present myself when I put on my hat, my fedora, if you will, for my brands. And for artists, I think it’s similar, right? You have an aesthetic for your art.
You probably have a persona that comes up in your bio or in how you would describe yourself for a catalog or for a gallery show. It’s not all of you, right? But it’s a slice of who you are. It’s a slice of your personality. And that’s what I would consider to be your brand voice. It’s an extension of your aesthetic as an artist into how you write, how you speak, how you present yourself in other ways.
Miriam Schulman:
I like the way you talked about dialing your personality up to 11. Because I think what some people do, and this is myself included when I first started out, is you don’t think you’re supposed to dial it up. You feel you need to dial it down.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I have a very strong New York accent. I’m like this Jewish girl from New York, and I interrupt people, and I make jokes. And I used to dial that back a lot. And now, I’m just like, “Now, I’m going to just lean into it because people are going to love me or they’re not going to love me.”
Lacy Boggs:
It helps them self-select.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
There’s certainly a case to be made that somebody could enjoy your art if they didn’t enjoy you personally. But at the same time, I think there’s an even stronger case that when people connect with you on a personality level like that, they’re probably even more likely to like your art.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s so interesting. By the way, if you’re enjoying the strategies that I’m talking about on today’s show, my specialty is actually coaching other artists to take their talent and create a thriving business out of it. There are a lot of things you have to know. And I don’t want you spinning, because you don’t know what to do next. If you want to profit from your passion or want a clear strategy to ramp up your existing creative business, I would love to help you.
To schedule a free discovery call, all you have to do is tell me a little bit about your business when you sign up at schulmanart.com/biz. Can’t wait to hear from you. You talk about developing a brand voice. So, if somebody is not sure what their voice is or their exercises, they do to figure that out, like how do you, when you work with a client, if I were to come to you. And I’m not like this New Yorker girl, but I don’t really know. I’ve been with a lot of clients. I don’t know what my brand voice is.
Lacy Boggs:
And especially, we get a lot of people, if they’ve come from a corporate background or things like that, where they’re like it was beaten out of me. It was bred out of me in corporate. When I write, I have no personality. It’s very plain. It’s very corporate, or they come from a legal or an education background where they’ve had to write very technical things. I do have a workbook on my website. If you’re interested, you can search for the voice identification workbook.
But basically, I asked people to go through a set of questions and analyze their own writing. So, if you have a blog, if you have journals, if you have Facebook posts that are just your personal Facebook posts, go through and analyze and say, “What makes these distinct? What do I do that’s different from other people?” I always ask them questions about, okay, literary, nerdery here, but like syntax and grammar. How do you use certain words? Are there phrases you use all the time? Are there phrases you would never ever used?
Do you refer to yourself in the third person when you’re speaking about yourself as an artist? Or, is it more a first-person conversation? I mentioned that my brand is very conversational. So, if you go read my blogs, it’s always going to sound like I’m speaking directly to one person. And that’s intentional. If I wanted to speak to the royal you, the room, that would be a different feel. But it’s more intentional. I want to feel like we’re having a conversation.
So, it’s always directed. I talk about you and directed directly to one person. So, those are some places to start. And it doesn’t have to be over the top either. But just lean in, as you said to being yourself and letting your own personality shine. Talk about things you’re interested in. Use the words you would normally use when you talk with friends.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I like what you just said, Lacy, because it’s not about being somebody else’s 11 or 12.
Lacy Boggs:
No.
Miriam Schulman:
That also the mistake that you’ll see people do that they think, “Okay, I have to drop the F-bomb to be cool and have a personality.” And that’s not what it is. It’s being you at 11 or 12, not somebody else.
Lacy Boggs:
Absolutely. And your personality, when you really relax and let it come through, it’ll be there and it’ll be unique because you’re unique.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. One thing I do with my emails, I always write down dear and I put the placeholder. And I do sometimes, I’ll think about either a specific person when I’m writing the email, either my ideal customer or somebody I know. And I pretend I’m writing to just one person. And when I have my artwork, I try to do the same thing. I don’t always succeed. I freeze up a lot when I’m writing just about the art on my website. I think that’s probably for me, the hardest thing that I do. Have you heard that from other artists do writings?
Lacy Boggs:
Yes. They don’t like writing the description of the piece or whatever the bio is for the catalog or whatever the gallery needs, like they don’t like writing-
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t like writing the bio maybe because they already have it written. And I just copy and paste it. But every time I do a new artwork, it’s like, “Oh, God, now what do I say?”
Lacy Boggs:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
I made a giraffe because they’re pretty.
Lacy Boggs:
Sure, yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
I like giraffes.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah, I don’t know.
Miriam Schulman:
I have to search for the deeper meaning. So, I usually end up making something up there.
Lacy Boggs:
That’ll be different for everybody. Because some artists I know work from a deep place of meaning or they have a thing in mind when they make a piece, whereas others don’t particularly. They’re like, “Yeah, giraffe made me happy.” Also, PS, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “This made me happy to paint. And so, I did.”
Miriam Schulman:
Right. I also have a suspicion that all of us come from a place of meaning. We’re just not always able to tap into what that was that drove us, like why did the draft make you happy.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. Right. Being able to articulate that is I’m sure a very specific skill.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes. And that’s why there’s a whole school of therapy and life coaching and all that, because these are very difficult things to do and articulate for everybody.
Lacy Boggs:
Absolutely.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. So, we also promised that we were going to talk about email. So, email is not dead, right?
Lacy Boggs:
Absolutely not. In fact, in the studies I’ve seen recently as 2018, people say they still want to hear from brands and marketers via email. And marketers still say that that’s one of their best place to make sales. When you’re an artist, your business is slightly different. Because a lot of times either you’re A, selling very limited number of very expensive high-end pieces, or B, you have a limited number of prints. You may or may not have an online store.
It may be like you have to say, “Come to this gallery, or see me at this show.” It’s a different form of marketing than say, if I’m selling whatever, widgets. But I think it’s still extremely valuable, because it’s going to keep you top of mind for people who are interested in your work. So, especially if you cultivate collectors, if you find you have people that are interested in owning multiple pieces, then that’s really the best way to keep in touch with them is through email.
I’ve also worked with several artists who had a separate email list for industry professionals. So, gallery owners, curators, things like that. People who they would have separate things to say to like, “Hey, I’ve completed this very large piece that would be museum appropriate. Does anybody want it?” That thing. I don’t really know how those negotiations work.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. No, I could imagine that actually, because, well, right now, I do have two lists. One is for my art students and my podcast. I regularly send out to that. And my other list is for my art collectors. And because of those highly personal reasons that I don’t feel like sharing on my podcast-
Lacy Boggs:
Right.
Miriam Schulman:
Things that happened in my life the last few months. I’ll share I had a close family member who was in the hospital and sick, who is going to be fine. So, anyway, I hadn’t sent out an email to my collector list since December, since before that event happened. And I said, “All right, well, I got to send something out.” So, I sent out an email. And within an hour, I sold the painting that I talked about. And I have to tell you, Lacy, that this painting it’s not like no one had seen it before on Instagram. It had been on Instagram.
I had done the speed video, and Instagram. It was on my Facebook page, because everything cross-promote. It was everywhere. But I didn’t sell it until I sent an email out that said, “Buy it. And here’s how.” And it was an hour. And believe me, I felt very stupid having waited three months to send that email out, because maybe I would have not only sold that painting sooner, but other ones. But then, I think I wanted to loop back. You’re talking about the separate lists.
So, I have those two lists. And then, I’m going to a trade show for industry professionals. I’m actually considering creating a third list just for those industry professionals. Because the type of sales that are made, there are different. They’re not going to buy the original art. They’re going to buy the royalties to a piece or something like that. So, yeah, absolutely different email lists. You don’t want to be asking anthropology to take your watercolor painting class.
Lacy Boggs:
Well, and that was very easy to do in modern email software to create multiple lists. And it’s actually like a very smart thing to do marketing-wise. We call it segmentation. So, you’re segmenting your list by interest level. So, for someone like you, Miriam, who has classes, those people are going to be different from the people who buy your paintings, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
There might be some crossover.
Miriam Schulman:
Yes.
Lacy Boggs:
But not necessarily everybody is going to be interested in both.
Miriam Schulman:
Correct.
Lacy Boggs:
Being able to send the right message to the right person at the right time is incredibly valuable. And I liked that you had to send an email about that painting to get it sold. As humans, we need very specific instructions.
Miriam Schulman:
And people aren’t chasing us down. People think, “Oh, if I just post it on Instagram, well, if nobody DMed to me asking to buy it, that means they don’t want it. It’s not true.
Lacy Boggs:
No. And if that painting had not sold, you could offer it again in three months. You could offer it again in six months. Do you see what I’m saying? There’s no time limit. Just because it didn’t sell the first time, it just may be that the person who was meant to have it hasn’t been on your list yet. So, it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or it’s not going to sell or that it’ll never sell through email. It’s just it’s a matter of hitting the right person at the right time with the right message.
Miriam Schulman:
Which is by the way is why self-representing artists like me should not put dates on your paintings where people can see them. Because, God forbid, it’s 2020. And it says 2016 at the bottom of that giraffe. Oh, no.
Lacy Boggs:
That’s so funny, because I actually tell people not to put dates on their blog posts for the exact same reason. So, take the date stamp off your blog post.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, interesting.
Lacy Boggs:
We have a bias against the old things.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah.
Lacy Boggs:
And for example, if you wrote a blog post, and it comes up in a search result, and then somebody sees. “Well, that’s from 2016. I’m not going to read that. That’s old news.” Well, it might not be. It might be evergreen content that’s still completely relevant. But they’ve made a judgment based on that date stamp. So, I always tell people, if you look at mine, there’s no dates on my blog.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s really good advice. Actually, when I search for things, like if I think there’s a problem, I actually do search, like how to blah, blah, blah, and Facebook 2019.
Lacy Boggs:
Right. Because you want the most recent information. And in that case, it makes perfect sense. But like, if somebody is looking up, I don’t even know like how to do brand voice. And my blog post comes up from like, I’ve been doing this a long time, so, from 2012. It might still be relevant, but they’re not going to click on it if it says 2012.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Okay. So, we learned two things here, no date on your blog posts, which would also give away when you painted it by the way.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah, for sure.
Miriam Schulman:
Even if you didn’t put it on the art. Okay. And no dates on your painting. And just because I know there are people listening to my podcast, who are curators and art history nerds, you can always date the back.
Lacy Boggs:
That’s true. You could cover that.
Miriam Schulman:
Or keep it in your records. Okay. And you know who you are? And also, that the height supposed to be listed before the width. And we got it. All right. And you know who you are. Okay.
Lacy Boggs:
She’s pre-empting the comments, yeah, I can tell.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s right. I’m speaking to one person right now. Okay. So, we’re covering a lot in a record amount of time. Okay. So, what stories to get the creative juices flowing? Can artists be talking about if they don’t want to be sharing this person? I know you’ve already mentioned behind the scenes. And I know you also work with people who help artists, and we are not in that allowed to say who those people are. So, I know you know this information. What would be some list of topic ideas that they could be writing about?
Lacy Boggs:
You’re really not limited by anything except your personal comfort level
Miriam Schulman:
It’s so true.
Lacy Boggs:
And your creativity. So, you could blog about anything. If you find inspiration when you go and walk your dog every day, like, tell me about that. If you are out listening to a piece of music and that has some relevance to your artwork, tell me about that. But I think the thing to remember is that we want to keep in mind why we’re blogging in the first place or why we’re sharing this content, whether it’s an… I always default to blog, but wherever you’re sharing content, Instagram, on a podcast, whatever.
Ask yourself why, what am I trying to gain by sharing this content? Is it just that I want to create an audience that is interested in me and what I do? Am I actually trying to use this content to promote sales down the line? If I’m putting together a book someday, right?
Miriam Schulman:
Right.
Lacy Boggs:
Whatever the big why is, you want to keep that in mind. Because artists, there’s so many options for what you could talk about. It can A, feel overwhelming. And B, you can meander, and it never really leads to anything. So, I would say that if you’re creating content with the hope of selling work, selling artwork, then you need to be talking about why people would want to buy the work. So, to me, that would mean like talking about your inspiration behind it, maybe sharing behind the scenes, maybe sharing how it would look in a room.
I have a photographer friend who does these incredible sessions with kids where she puts a little kid on a white background with paint and they just make all these crazy finger body paint really. And then, she photographs the result and you can buy it to hang on your wall. Your kid made this art. And so, she often shows examples of how this abstract art looks in a living room or in a bedroom or whatever, to show how beautiful this crazy abstract painting that your kid did can look in a very sophisticated setting.
So, I think that works well for her because people then go, “Wow, I really want something like that for my wall, right? There’s different things you can think about, but what does your collector? What does your ideal customer need to know or need to think about in order to say, “Yes, I want to buy that painting?” And that’s going to be different for everybody. But it might be the story behind it. It might be the technique behind it.
It might be how it fits into your larger body of work. It might just be showing it on a wall with some pretty furniture and say, “Look how nice it looks in this room.” So, it’s just a matter of figuring out how can I help encourage that sale through the content I’m sharing.
Miriam Schulman:
By the way, so the painting I sold within an hour sending out the email was a bunny. So, of course I said, “Get it in time for Easter.”
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Because that was a duh. Yeah. One thing I want to circle back to also, Lacy, is that I know that you put out a lot of blog content because you are more of a service-based business. And a lot of us artists get confused. Do we have to write a blog and then write an email that drives people to the blog? And what I found is what we are really trying to do is drive people to our website to make a purchase.
So, the email really is the main thing that is the storyteller, and you don’t have to create a brand new story every time you have Instagram, Facebook, and email, that can be the same story. Do you want to add to that?
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah, I think this is such a funny thing about our egos as human beings, because we assume that like, “Oh, well, I can’t tell the same story on Facebook and Instagram, because people are going to be like, “Ugh, I saw that already.” But the truth of the matter is A, nobody’s paying that close attention.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. No one’s taking onto your every word.
Lacy Boggs:
And B, you’re reaching different people with the same message. So, like, there’s different sets of people that are going to follow you on Instagram, follow you on Facebook, read your emails. They’re all slightly different. Again, there’s going to be some overlap, but not entirely. So, you’re perfectly welcome to what we do in my company. I write the blog post, and then my assistant goes through it and chunks it up for social media. So, she grabs chunks of it to share on social with the images. And then, I will sometimes share chunks of it in my email.
So, we repurpose. I’m a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. If you’ve taken the time to write something for your blog or for your email, whichever, whatever is like the main piece of content for you, then chunk that up and use it man, many times again.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, and I’ve done the reverse, too. I’ve put out the Instagram posts because they’re easiest.
Lacy Boggs:
Sure.
Miriam Schulman:
And then, I’ve taken the images and whatever I wrote underneath it and smoosh them together. Okay, now that’s my email. And just link it to the buy buttons.
Lacy Boggs:
Exactly. And if emails the way that that works for you the best and that’s awesome. Blog posts, for some people may be where they get the email signup. So, that may be why they do a blog post is because that’s where they get the people to sign up for email. But you’re almost always going to be more successful making the sale from an email than anywhere else.
Miriam Schulman:
I agree with that.
Lacy Boggs:
I would always put the focus if you need to narrow your focus and say like, “I can’t create all this content and paints.” Then probably email is the best and then use your other places to promote your email list. If you want to stay in touch with me, if you want to know what’s going on, you need to be on my email list, be promoting that through Instagram, or wherever else you happen to be, so that the selling can happen through email.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s great. Okay, so we’re going to be putting together a list of some of these blog posts we talked about definitely. And that PDF I told you about, the freebie, we’re going to have the voice identification workbook. I think that’s an important one to include in there. I’m pretty sure you have a freebie about developing a brand voice.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah, there’s a free ebook, though, that you can download.
Miriam Schulman:
And how often should artists be emailing their list?
Lacy Boggs:
My rule of thumb is no less than once a month, because otherwise people will forget about you.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, yeah.
Lacy Boggs:
And probably no more than once a week. Remember, there’s all things you can share in an email. You can tell people where they can see your work, where you’re going to have a show, if you’re going to be in a gallery, if you’re going to be at a show, if you’re going to be participating in something online. There’s lots and lots of things, opportunities to have little stuff you can put in your email. It doesn’t solely have to be like, “Here’s my deep philosophical inspiration for this piece.”
Miriam Schulman:
Yes, it can be.
Lacy Boggs:
It absolutely can be, but don’t overwhelm yourself thinking.
Miriam Schulman:
Like she said, don’t overthink it. Hey, it was a beautiful day here in New York, so I didn’t get to my studio today. But here’s what I did get to last week. Or, yes, it was raining. So, therefore I got to my studio. Here’s what I did today.
Lacy Boggs:
Yeah. And one other little thing about email is I always suggest to people that you have no more than one topic per email.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, I like that.
Lacy Boggs:
And for a while, it was very common to have emails that had lots of sections, where it had lots of different stuff. And I think that our attention spans just do not hold up for that, unless you’re like the New York Times.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m so glad you said that. Because I think what holds a lot of people back is they think it has to be a newsletter, like a newspaper. And really, it is one thing in the email, not this is my show. This is where I was featured. Here’s something for sale. Those are three emails.
Lacy Boggs:
Right. Those are three emails. And I usually tell people to think about one call-to-action per email. So, if you want them to click on a link or buy something, or come to a show, those are three different call-to-action. So, they should be three different emails.
Miriam Schulman:
Completely agree. I’m so glad I had you on, Lacy. Do you have any last words of wisdom before we call this podcast complete?
Lacy Boggs:
Probably my best words of wisdom are simply that keep trying, keep writing. You don’t have to have everything perfect in order to post a blog or send out an email. The wonderful thing about the fact that these are a serial channel is that you get to try again next week. So, don’t let your perfectionism around words hold you back. Just post that blog post. Go ahead and send that email. If it doesn’t work, that’s okay. That’s data to help you improve for the next time. So, rather than waiting for everything to be perfect, go ahead and just hit the button and send it.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, that’s great. Now, I do know that you work with small business owners who could be similar to a lot of people in my audience, like I know you have a textile designer, for example. If somebody needs help creating a content strategy or wants to have a ghostwriter work with them, how does that work when they come to you?
Lacy Boggs:
We have a small boutique agency of writers and other support people. And what usually happens is a person come in and work with me on the strategy. That’s my zone of genius is figuring out what we’re going to write and when and why. And we will put together an editorial calendar around that. If they choose, they can have one of my writers actually produce the material for you. And our big differentiator as writers is that we want to write in your voice.
So, your best friend, your mother, your most rabid fans should never know that you have decided to outsource this task in your business. And a lot of people feel like they say to me, “You can do that?” And the answer is yes, you can do that. Writing content is a task just like any other task in your business, like accounting or anything else. It does take a particular skill set. But we can help people who don’t choose to do their own blog posts or write their own emails, but it would still be in your voice coming from you and with your ideas.
And we make that happen.
Miriam Schulman:
And Lacy and her team are very good about coming up with a strategy that will actually either generate leads for your email, or if you have perhaps a more service-based business that really drives them to convert into understanding what your brand can do for them. So, thank you so much, Lacy.
Lacy Boggs:
Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. I had a good time.
Miriam Schulman:
We’re going to have a link to Lacy’s beautiful website in the show notes, which will be schulmanart.com/41. But I also will put together that PDF that will have a link to the editorial calendar freebie, her brand voice freebie, and a few more Easter eggs for you to find there. And like I said, we also included links to her website, so that you can find all that at schulmanart.com/41. And before we wrap this all up, I just want to remind everyone to subscribe to my podcast.
Next week, we’re talking all about managing creative anxiety. And with me is author, therapist, and creativity coach Eric Maisel. I know you’re not going to want to miss that one. And if you’re feeling extra loving, I’d be really grateful if you left me a review over on iTunes as well. Those reviews help other people find my podcast. They’re also fun for me to read. If you don’t know how to leave a review, I did put a YouTube video up about that but all you do is select ratings and reviews. Click write a review. Let me know what your favorite part is.
And if you put your Instagram handle in there, I will give you a shout-out over on my Instagram stories because I love promoting other artists. Okay, guys, thanks so much for being with me here today. I will see you dame time, same place next week. Make it a great one. Bye for now.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook @facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course, on schulmanart.com.
Miriam Schulman:
Once again this episode was sponsored by the Six-Figure Artists. If you’re interested in hearing how you can earn more for your passion with concrete marketing and business strategies that work, head on over to schulmanart.com/biz. That’s schulmanart.com/B-I-Z.
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