Carol+Rock+Designs

=Carol Rock Designs:= [|Facebook] [|Wordpress] [|Linkedin]

Liza M. Friedman

 * Wrapping up**

This week was all about wrapping up all of the things that Carol and I have been doing together. Aside from bringing more attention to her amazing artwork, I wanted her to be able to continue with what we have been doing to promote her business. The main goal is to keep her Facebook page, Wordpress blog, Flickr, Picassa, and Website updated. Once I stopped helping her what I would hope is that Carol would have the knowledge and skills to keep up with everything that we have been doing and to be able to feel confident with using all of her various social media tools.

Today we took the time to go onto Carol’s professional website and make sure that everything looked beautiful. We also spent time linking her blog to her website so that all of her followers could keep up with her latest projects and what she has to say about them. We both agreed that this would give her website a more personal touch and that people would get to know a little bit about her and what she was all about. I would have liked to be able to create a link to her Facebook page and Flickr or Picassa but it presented a challenge because we could not figure out how to have a button on her homepage, which would have looked more professional then just putting in the link. We decided that her Facebook page would serve as the hub and we got all of her links attached to that so that her followers could easily find her social media sites.

Overall, I think that both Carol and I learned a lot from this process. We were able to set up useful ways for her to promote //Carol Rock Designs// through the use of social media. I was happy to be able to give her ways to be able to grow and learn and through this, I myself learned as well.

This week Carol and I basically went over a few of the things that we have been doing. There have been a lot of little details that we have wanted to work on for a while. She desperately needed to figure out how to get onto her website. It took a while, but we got onto her website and updated a few things. Carol finally figured out how to log in and we were finally able to learn how to use it. What took a while was getting the hang of the website and then re-teaching what I have just figured out to her.

We also spent a lot of time photographing some of her work. It was nice to be able to help her take more pictures and make everything look amazing in the photos. This involved me working with Carol on my computer to edit some of her existing photos and then uploading them together onto her website. The only flaw is that she can’t edit the photos with Photoshop after I leave.The solution for her to edit her pictures on her own is Picasa a great photo sharing website. The great thing about Picasa is that you can edit your photos on the site so that you can present a little better quality of a photo. It is a slow process to edit photos but it is definitely worth the time.

All in all it was a good meeting. It always feels good to get some things done. Taking more pictures was good. Now, all Carol needs to do is go through and take the pictures that we edited and start to get engaged in some of the things that I have been teaching her. Now that she knows how to use a lot of new social media tools I feel confident that Carol will be able to use them to boost her business.

**Hi Liza,**

 * Good going introducing her to Wordpress! I would meet with her once a week and help her blog. They don't have to be long, or always about her. She might share a link to art that inspires her. Maybe Tumblr would be easier for her? It's more of a split between Twitter and Wordpress. People can follow her and she can follow others and share what they post, as can those who follow her. the entries are expected to be brief: just a photo, a quote, an idea. She could also create art boards in Pinterest that show her beautiful work and also have a board that shows art that she likes. It might be fun for her.**


 * Can you add all of her links under your name, as well as your LinkedIn page?**

Meeting 4:
Today Carol and I met to discuss her social media plans. We talked about what we had started on her [|Flickr] account and she told me that she loved being able to show some of her latest work as she made the pieces. She told me that she gave her Flickr link to someone. They called her and told her they loved what she did and ended up ordering a custom necklace!
 * Flickr success**


 * Website worries**

We still haven’t been able to figure out how to get onto her website which was not very helpful. I have asked her if she could retrieve her password from the person who created the site so that we could get in and start updating it with links to the various social media that we have been working on…That is still waiting to be solved. This is one of the main things that I have wanted to tackle and hopefully she can talk to the person who made her website. I would love to be able to meet with the web designer with Carol.


 * Wordpress**

We decided together that it would be best if we created an art blog to help her assemble a place where she can post her thoughts and ideas about her art. We talked about how to create a website on Wordpress.com. It was a bit of a process but I got her set up with her own blog and we went through everything that it takes to give it some personality. I gave her the run-down on how to work with the dashboard and set up widgets so that people can more easily navigate around her page. I showed her how to add tags and categories to her posts to make them easier to find. I am not sure how good that the blog is looking now, but once she adds more posts it will be easier to gain a following. I can tell Carol is really trying to learn how to work with Wordpress although, I am not sure she is very enthusiastic about the idea of blogging.

===Hi Liza. You're doing great with Carol. I just read somewhere on Twitter that 'content is the capital of social media' and this is so true. Without content, why would anyone visit. So Carol doing the photos is important. You might also consider other fun things the two of you could do. Maybe she could do a weekly broadcast on Ustream.com to show how to make a piece of jewelry and she could put flyers up around town to advertise it, as well as social media. Put the Facebook page, Twitter and website on the flyer. She might also consider selling her work on Etsy.com http://www.etsy.com/category/jewelry (I sold a painting there last week. Woo hoo!) Her photos are a bit brown, like she needs better lighting, and she might also show some pieces of jewelry actually on someone, just to break up the photos. Great job, though!! I 'liked' her facebook page!===

**Flickr**
Overall, today my meeting with Carol went well. I showed her Flickr as another way for her to get her work out there. She loved the idea of being able share her photos in as many different ways as possible. The good thing about Flickr is that there are different groups of people who also post things similar to you so that you can become a member and everyone else in that group can see what you have done.

**Slow process**
It was a little bit frustrating to see that not much work had been done on her part in terms of posting her work to her Facebook page. She seemed to be very excited about what we were doing last week but I didn’t see much of a change from what we had accomplished when I left our last meeting. I think that it is a little hard for her to get up the motivation to post everything.

**Picture mania**
The reason that I believe it was so hard for Carol to post her pictures was because there were SO many of them. They also weren’t organized in any sort of logical manner. I even tried to help her get all of the pictures organized into different albums on her computer but she said, “That would take a million, billion years”! I also let carol know that I could help her post all of these pictures for her. Being an artist, I understood when she told me no, it is hard for people like us to give up control of their work.

**The assignment**
This week carol will have to sort through her pictures and keep updating them to her Facebook and her Flickr. Hopefully it will go a little bit better this week.

**Recap: Where we left off**
Last week involved a lot of briefing about what we could do to improve Carol’s current status and keep up with her social media tools. Carol Rock’s homework was all about taking good quality photos of pretty much everything that she has ever made.

**Mission accomplished**
Carol is a very good student and completed her assignment right on schedule. Thank goodness for the week off! I did not realize how daunting of an assignment that I gave her! She had so many beautiful pieces of artwork that I was truly amazed with (her photography skills were not too shabby either).

**“What's a page?”**
Today was all about how to set up

[|Carol’s Facebook page]. Because she is not of the “computer generation”, it was a little bit hard to teach her how to create a page. “But I already have a page” She says. I told her that there is a crucial distinction between a profile and a page. Pages are for fun businesses. Profiles are just for fun.

We also had another small “language barrier” today- Mac vs. PC.

All of these challenges aside, I am confident that we got a great page up and running. We also talked about organizing different photo albums into categories to make them easier for people to go through and find what they are looking for (necklaces, bracelets, ceramic work etc.). We got her website all hooked up to her page as well.

**The Assignment**
Her homework is now to finish uploading her many, many photos onto her page and to invite as many of her friends as possible to “like” her page. I figure that baby steps are the best approach. We will get Mrs. Rock social media savy in no time!

**All in a day’s work**
Today was a good day in terms of pleasing my client. I walked away from our meeting knowing that she was happy with the work we accomplished. It seemed like Carol was getting a knack for Facebook pages. Stay tuned!

= = =

= =**Meeting #1:**=

**My Very First Social Media Client**
Today was my first meeting with my very first client. Yes! Her name is Carol Rock. She is a very talented multi- media artist looking to get her name out in the world of social media.

**The Tour**
I visited her at her home to get a better idea of what she did and what kind of art that she made. She gladly took me on a tour of her beautiful house. Her place reminded me of a museum.

Her walls were filled with a cornucopia of art ranging from paintings and drawings to sculptures made of wire (and everything in between). What was even more impressive was that most of it was her own work. She is not narcissistic; she is VERY humble to say the least. Her work is undeniably fantastic.

**The Website.**
Then I asked her to show me her website. She had trouble even getting to it because she had not updated it in so long. I let her in on the fact that it was a little bit hard to find her on the web, I had Googled her prior to our meeting J. I let her in on this politely of course. The first people that came up when I searched her name were NOT her that’s for sure. The first Carol Rock was actually a dude!

**Now What?**
Carol was very eager to learn about what she can do to promote herself. I briefly told her a synopsis of what social media was. I explained some of the various things that we have been talking about in class.

I then described to her what it is that we are expected to do for this assignment by letting her know the ways that I could help her improve her social media standing.

**The Assignment.**
I let her know that the most important part of promoting yourself is SHOWING people what you can do. Cake. I gave her her very first assignment. Take photos of her work, ALL of it. Next week we shall work on her Facebook page together!

= =

//**Hi Liza. Nice work! Carol's very lucky to have you. You might suggest to her that she get better lighting on her photos on Facebook or at least brighten them up in a photo program. They're kind of drab. Also, put your latest post at the very top. Also, looking for that mind map of your strategy. Thanks! -Karl**//