Week 9 Part A: Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts & Webinars

     Adding a more personal touch to a post, especially through blog posts, can be a very important aspect for a business to connect with their potential and current customers/audience. These kinds of posts can allow for a business to prove themselves to be more authentic and that they are personally invested in their customers by not blatantly advertising to them to buy x product or service but rather by displaying the interest and stories of the community and individuals that are a part of their market.  These kinds of posts can also allow for more in-depth displays of the product or service by showcasing these things through demos and customer reviews but they may not benefit every business.

    Personal touches can be a double-edged sword that can be beneficial and detrimental if done the right or wrong way and if the business' tone and theme match these kinds of posts. A posh and luxury brand of bags may not benefit from having a warm or friendly tone in their blog posts because their clientele are not looking for this kind of product and rather one that is high quality and reliable so they may want to see a more serious and technical tone that informs more about the production and materials. A brand of children's dolls may benefit from a friendly tone with more emotional aspects to their posts because they are appealing to parents so having a more upbeat tone and posting stories of the impact of their products on children could help parents become more invested in this brand to buy their products for their own children; on the other hand, using a more serious tone could drive customers away because they are not interested in a strictly business aspect of a toy. A mix of these two, serious and friendly, can also be helpful for a great deal of businesses as well. A skin care business may want to use both of these tactics to show research of ingredients and new developments in the business that would support their own products by sharing this with their audience and writing about their own products and posting a call to action for products that can be bought with the supportive research; they could also use more personalized posts to show the skin-care journey of an individual to further support and authenticity of their products and skin-care in general. Sassy and tongue-in-cheek humor may not always be the best approach because it can come off as haughty or stand-off-ish so most businesses will avoid these kinds of personal touches but it can make a brand more memorable if executed correctly; the business that comes to mind is Wendy's which has a twitter account that posts humorous posts and interacts with their followers with sassy replies and this has made the brand become more memorable and fun to interact with.

    For my business, I think that is very important to keep a more personal touch to my own posts but I could also include some more serious content as well. Successful artists are those that are both supportive and interactive with the community (artists or for the content they make) or are those that are incredibly skilled; it is much easier to build a community and grow this way rather than try to produce the most technically and skillfully made art which usually takes years to achieve said skills. There is no harm either way if you are thanking people for complimenting your work as well as actively commenting, complimenting, and collaborating with others in your community as well. Sharing your own process, tips, and tricks through tutorials is a great way to have a more serious tone but it can also be more casual or friendly while getting the point across.

    I think that my business would benefit from using both kinds of tones in blogs and vlogs and other social media posts. Writing blog posts or sharing vlogs that walk through a tutorial or uses new materials (digital brushes, software, etc.)  can be helpful and and make using these tools more approachable while creating new content for myself; I could also include a call to action to purchase a print/sticker of this print at the end of the post as well! Collaborations and showcasing of other artists can be a great way to build a stronger following as well with my own and the other individuals base while also creating work that the two of us could benefit from through selling merch and prints. One revenue that could benefit from a more serious approach could be to make posts that focus on art studies/dissections of other artist's work and critiques of willing artist participants to show how another artist can benefit from studying the art work and getting constructive criticism to improve one's own work; this would definitely have to keep from having a personal touch to it so that relationships are not dampened through miscommunications.