Thank you to Gaia Cornwall for creating the illustrations for our monthly themes!
We are celebrating the grand opening of the new OMHG website and community forums with a fun Marketing Madness theme. After months of building the new site, marketing our community campaign and launching first the new blog then marketplace I know I’m needing an injection of enthusiasm and energy to keep up the momentum. I can’t believe we’ve never run a purely marketing focused theme before since self-promotion is the number one thing many creatives struggle with. So we are going to spend a month learning and sharing about marketing our work! We are kicking off this theme at our #OMHG chat today from 1-2PM EST with a marketing madness chat so mark your calendars!
Learning how to market ourselves is like learning a new language-press releases, collateral materials, printing terms, mailing lists, wholesale catalogs, editorial calendars…there is so very much to know! This is a fun theme but it isn’t all light-hearted or only about the facts. For most creatives (including myself) marketing our work raises fears and inner critics. Marketing also brings up ethical questions about how to promote without being sleazy, to use or not use affiliate programs, sponsorship disclosure, what makes good marketing and more. We’ll be sharing lots of great ideas for marketing our businesses along with posts that address these fears, questions, and concerns. Let’s work together to make marketing fun and heartfelt instead of maddening!
I’m also getting creative with some OMHG sponsors to share ways of collaborating with brands that support our community and mission. Come back later today for the first CREATIVEstyle post from sponsors Poppy Barley. We’ve teamed up to create a new type of fashion series that focuses on finding confidence and creativity (let’s not forget comfort!) in our every day style that I am super excited about (handmade shoes and launches, this week is almost too good to be true!).
Your input helps make our monthly themes so fun and diverse! Please share your questions, fears, ideas, guest post pitches or suggestions for #OMHG chat co-hosts in the comments. What parts of marketing make you maddest? Who are your marketing role models? Where do you struggle most with your own marketing? Bring on the madness!
I tend to avoid marketing because it scares me.
Hi Danielle! Marketing can feel really scary-can you pin down what parts of it scare you? I find writing out what pieces are scaring me can help with figuring out ways of looking at it differently. I’d love to see you at our chats this month I’m sure we’ll be talking about our own marketing fears 🙂
What parts? HA The whole marketing event makes me cranky. I need a marketing department! Then, I could just delegate (I am good at that!)
Looking forward to following closely, so I can learn enough to be a little less cranky! 🙂
I’ve found that creating a community of people who support and love what you do means that you really do have your own little marketing department! We’ll be sharing lots of great posts this month so I hope by the end marketing seems more fun then crank inducing 🙂
Marketing just makes me shriek! I can deal well with everything else, I am super organized and I am proud of my product. However, I don’t know how to convey that sense of confidence to others for fear of being intrusive.
You are not alone! That concern of being intrusive is one that I’ve heard from a lot of creatives. I think that you can be very confident without being pushy & that people respond to enthusiasm and passion about what you do. There is a difference between being so excited you just have to tell everyone what you made & pushing a sale-the first one has more impact & as an editor is what I respond to!
Looking forward to it and have dedicated the whole of May to marketing which means less time in my studio ‘making’. That’ll be the hard part.
Yay for May & marketing! As a creative I often have a hard time making myself promote work I’ve already done since in my mind I’ve already moved onto the next thing. But marketing that work is the key to making the money so that we can make more goodness. You can reward yourself for your hard work marketing with some new supplies for your studio!
I have no idea what I’m doing in the marketing department so I tend to snub my nose at it and pretend that it’s beneath me. Truthfully it’s the exact opposite. It is above me. Above my head. I need to spend time and energy learning its ins and outs. I keep putting it off. And spinning my wheels.
Hi Michele! I’m an advocate for learning while doing-when I started I had no clue how or why to use Twitter but little by little I explored, got excited, and then found the confidence to dive in. I learn something new about how to connect on & offline every single day and hope that learning curve never ends because it keeps things fresh and fascinating! Stop spinning those wheels and jump in-the water is fine 🙂