Help! Social media is not my friend!

DVOM ↓

Yesterday at 8:38 am

Hi friends!

The backstory:

For my 40th birthday present, I went back to school for fine arts. I've always loved art in all forms, and this past year of learning has been an absolute joy.

This semester is all about selling art. There's information on classic marketing (getting an agent, getting into galleries), but from what I'm learning, most art sales right now are via social media, mainly Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest that point people to individual websites. It seems that this is where branding, marketing, promotion, is really happening. I don't know if my art will sell, but I'd really like to try.

(I also feel regardless of how successful my art becomes, I'm determined to learn. As I get older I feel the potential for a certain... stodginess, a mental stiffness to settle in. My routines, my way of doing things, has the potential to calcify, to get set in stone. It hasn't quite taken over, not yet, but I can see how new challenges, new learning, is more intimidating, a bit scarier than it was when I was younger. I'm trying to reconnect to my adventurous parts. This is a totally new frontier for me, and I'm going to give it my all!)

The problem:

I'm terrible with computers. They scare me. I know how to use WhatsApp and send emails and post on imamother, but trying to learn how to use anything else has been really frustrating. I now have an Instagram account (thanks to my sweet sister in law), which somehow automatically generated a Facebook account. I've tentatively started posting on Instagram this past year, and learned the site a little by watching YouTube videos, but Facebook and Pinterest remain a very confusing mystery. It seems like there are websites (canva) used to produce content for other websites (Instagram)... And at the end of all this, I need to produce a website. Oy.

The proposal:

I need help. I'd like to find someone who's good at this stuff who can help walk me through it. YouTube video have been helpful, but now I want a real live human to sit down next to me and show me how this stuff works. I'm thinking a barter system: maybe someone out there is interested in trading their social media know-how for a beautiful original oil painting?

Other help would also be wonderful: tech-challenged imas, are there tools you've used to learn that you've found helpful? Books? Websites? Instagram accounts? I'd love any and all tips!