I've had the real pleasure to meet a lot of artists in the past few years. They are all full of talent and creativity that you can't help to be motivated yourself after talking to one of them. Very often, they are struggling to make ends meet but they still get up in the morning and work the paint. It's all about passion!

Having all the passion in the world will not necessarily bring in sales. As I have a strong background in marketing, I very often try to help out follow artists. One thing that always strikes me is how little they know about selling themselves.

A brand is something special. A brand is hard to acquire. It depends on a lot of elements and doesn't come overnight. It requires a lot of work to build and can be lost in second

A brand is essentially a sum of all the activities, messages and elements projected by a company or a person that defines who they are and what they do. It's essentially the image that comes to mind when they hear your name.

I've been working in Marketing for close to ten years now. The biggest shift in the industry has no doubt been the change in focus from traditional media to online media. Only a few years ago companies needed to invest heavy dollars in building brand awareness tactics like television and radio to maintain their brand image in the market. These days, companies can have the same affect if they are street smarts online. It's more about spending the time & effort and being smart about it then on spending a ton of money and hoping for great results. Don't get me wrong, I still believe in traditional media and I still recommend it to clients but it's definitely not the same as it used to be.

A good friend of mine surprised me the other day with his comment. Let's call him John shall we? John said that he always checks his Facebook but never, ever does any status updates and rarely sends & receive messages. He went on to started mocking people who always update their status. I would agree that some people abuse their status update but I think that John doesn't have a clue how social sites work (no offense to you my dear friend).