The Price of Shame

With each advancement in technology come positive and negative repercussions. Unfortunately with the invention of the internet, and now with social media many people have been sucked onto a whole new level of obsessing with others lives and gossip. What was once private is now open to the entire world. Voyeurism is easy to get sucked into and even worse, now strangers around the world can also make hurtful comments without consequence. We are now faced with a new social problem called cyber bullying.

It first started with the internet, email, chat rooms, and gossip sites, and now has infiltrated into all social media. Virtually everyone has access to quick information, gossip, untruths and can openly make comments and still remain privately protected. In the past when young adults or teens would mess up, as all kids do, that knowledge stayed among a small circle of family and friends in a small community. Now that information can circulate globally overnight and people that don't know or care anything about you can viciously attack you. What would in the past be a few hurtful comments in a small town is now thousands of vicious attacks on young immature youth. It is often more than they can bare, leading to increased suicide rates. The more people shame others, the more desensitized and numb they become. In social media, the more shame a story includes, the more clicks it gets. Every click on social media puts money into advertisers hands. This encourages media to seek after the most embarrassing, shameful “news” that they can find. This viscous cycle is like a sick social disease that needs to be healed.

Compassion can replace shame. In the past hurtful comments that were made had accountability attachment. Comments made to another person, on the radio, tv or newspaper would include the identity of the speaker. If the comments made were out of line, people would correct that person and their hurtful comments. This attached identity would help keep peoples ugly hate comments in check. Now that people can anonymously lash out, there are no repercussions to their wrong behavior. Nothing can squelch out a fire better then love and compassion and empathy. This is how we can cure the disease of cyber bulling. The best way to find your own compassion and empathy, is to dig deep within and find empathy for others. To walk in their shoes. To put yourself in another persons position requires a moment of coming outside of yourself. To come outside yourself, you must abandon your attitudinal responses. One must actual give of their time to hear the other person and learn about their past. We have to imagine ourselves in that position and ask ourselves what we would do and how we would feel. We have to understand that everyone is fighting a battle different than our own. A person is made up of there past and their ancestors past. This history makes us who were are and everyone has a different history. One cannot judged others against how we were made up, and what molded our beliefs. We must conjure up thoughts, knowledge and information to help us feel empathy for those that are different then we are. We must have compassion and understanding for those who we do not understand. This empathy that we assemble from understanding, kills hate. It is easy to hate what we do not know or understand. By understanding others differences we can move past harsh feelings and replace those feelings with love and understanding.

What am I prepared to do to change this? The problem is overwhelming it is hard to imagine that one person can make a difference. A good starting point would be to ask myself that question daily. By simply even being aware, I can open myself up to search for the injustices around us. To ask myself this question often would bring thoughts and ideas into my mind of ways that we can help others. Once we are even more aware of those that are hurt, shamed, or cast out, we can then begin the process of mustering up feelings of compassion within ourselves. If we can even just change the way that we feel within ourselves, that would be a good place to start. I can stand up and speak out for others that feel shamed. A good place to start is with me, I can make a difference.

Social Media (FB) Campaign Part II (Analysis)

4. Executed Tactics
My Facebook campaign goal is to share images and information, to obtain interest, and to locate potential clients to buy and commission art.  Several tactics were used to accomplish these goals, for example: posting every week (up to three posts per week) to generate a following and interest.  Another tactic was using a paid campaign to generate ‘likes’ and to offer a specific product.  One specific item that generates a lot of sales are "vacation paintings", so this is the product and ad that I used for the paid campaign.

In attempting to locate a targeted audience, I sent my ad out to artsy towns in the southwest, in hopes of narrowing my ad reach to a more specific audience.  I narrowed the audience to a middle-aged to mature range of 35-65 years old, and targeted people with art interests. 

 

I also  used cross-promotion with my personal Facebook and Instagram accounts, and I posted single picture teasers to direct flow to my art Facebook account, where people could see more (such as finished paintings, more information about paintings, or the whole completed painting).   In addition, I created a URL and linked it to my Facebook page.  I tried to make my page compelling by showing the painting process in progression. People love to see the steps and makings of a finished painting.

 

I included media events invitations, the Student/Faculty show in the Sears Gallery, and my own Senior Exhibition in the DSU North Plaza Gallery in my feed, including event photos.  

 

 

5. Facebook Analysis 

‘Likes’

 Over the last 13 weeks, the likes have grown from 0 to 150.  The first day I put up the Facebook page, I immediately got 116 likes, but the next day, when I posted the "figure album" (with undraped models), I lost 47 likes!  The likes slowly began increasing again on the third day when I did a paid ad campaign--my likes boosted up by 25.  Since then they have grown to 150. This week had four likes.

 

'Reach'

The reaches fluctuated with these main peaks: 

--the day I opened the account (98)

--the day I started my ad campaign (193)

--the day posted I posted "Pierced"(194)

--the Senior Show advertisement (182)

--the Senior Exhibition (409)

--and lastly, the student faculty show (95)

I am not sure exactly why some posts have a huge reach and others don't.  One show reached a lot of people, and the other didn’t.  In person, at the art show people loved "Sky" (an art piece), but on Facebook, it hardly had any reach.  The video of the modeled ecorche seems to get a lot of attention.  One thing that surprised me the most was that I had reaches in 33 different countries outside the US! 

 

Posts

My fans that are on Facebook spend about the same amount of time there each day.  There doesn't seem to be a day that has more or less activity.  The peaking times of activity are 9am and 9pm.   These are the times that I will aim to post near.  I posted five photo albums with multiple pictures, then later added an additional 20 pictures to these photo albums, then continued with 26 additional posts in the feed.  My goal was to have 3 posts a week, which I stuck to pretty well.

Audience

I have twice as many female followers as male followers which doesn't surprise me.  Art is emotional connection and generally speaking, stirs more of an interest with women.  I would like to try to find a way to connect more with a male audience.  The majority of the followers are in the 34-54 range which makes sense because that is the time when people are more settled in life and are able to purchase original art.  The majority of the followers are from the U.S., but there are 3 other foreign countries with followers in them.

 

6. Summary

Overall I feel like the Facebook art page and ad campaign was successful. I feel like a lot was accomplished in a 13 week period.  It was cool to see that I reached 33 people from foreign countries.  Things that sparked most interest were portraits, art shows, and also the video of a sculpted ecorche. Ways in which it was unsuccessful was that I did not drum up any new business from previously "non-friend" people.  But I understand that that will take time.  I did however get a few more "previous friends" to commission new work, so that was successful.  Overall, I don't know if the Facebook ad campaign worked, other than increasing the number of likes.  The people that liked my page due to the paid campaign appeared to be from a very different socioeconomic class then the three profiles I described.  They seemed very different from the typical client that generally purchases art.  They appeared to be new accounts, with few post and double post.  It made me wonder if Facebook hires people to set up phony accounts and like random pages to keep Facebook users that pay for advertising to continue to use their services.  Traffic and likes increased, so in that regard the campaign was successful. I also saw cross-promotion between my website and the Facebook page. 

7. Self Evaluation

I feel good about where this page has come.  I feel like the goals were executed and met.  I have a lot of ideas of where I would like this to go, and new goals that I would like to achieve.  I would still like to focus on custom vacation paintings. I would like to include paintings that friends have commissioned me to paint of their special vacation areas, telling why they chose to preserve their travel memories with a painting, and include photos of them holding their paintings.  I would like to promote my page to get more shares and tags by advertising a "give away painting, contest/drawing" for those that tag two people and share a page.  Also, even though I wasn't thrilled with the ad campaign results, I am curious about doing a page boost or a paid reach.  I might try this as well.  When I get all of my painting sizes and prices up,  I probably will run another ad campaign.  I learned a lot about social media advertising.  It was a interesting and fun project!