VanCAF and anthologies!

If you guys didn't get a chance to go to VANCAF this year, you are missing out! It is by far our favorite Vancouver area convention, the vibe is spot on and it's full of original creators! We spend so much of the day talking with other enthusiastic creators and would-be creators and they all seem to have a good attitude and community spirit! Also because it is free to attend, you get to see new faces each time and the flow of customers for exhibitors is constantly refreshing.

If you didn't check it out this year, be sure to come next year, you wont regret it!

In other news, submissions have begun coming in for the Science Fiction Anthology. If you haven't already started, I suggest you get on with it, because the deadline is still July 31, 13.
This anthology still doesn't have a name, but we will see what the majority of the submissions are before we name it because if we name it something spacey and we get mostly biological experiment type stories, then that wouldn't make sense.

Twitter and facebook

Vacaf is now over! This has turned out to be a pretty fantastic convention! We are so impressed with the organization and location of this convention. So fantastic. I won an auction for 2 framed comic pages by Jeff Ellis, from the exploded view anthology. Through the kindness of someone else who out bid us on 2 Jonathan Dalton Lords of death and life comic pages i have one of those pages as well. Both of these artists are friends from cloudscapecomics !  Good times!
Often times at conventions we get people asking us about how we do what we do.
We are really lucky because we have the 2 of us and we both have a different set of skills, that probably evolved from working together for so long.
So i thougt i'd give a few bits of information on how we've used twitter and facebook to our advantage. I'm not saying that what we do is the way to success, its just some things that have worked for us

TWITTER
- when you start a twitter account name it well. Simple text. That makes it easier to remember and verbally promote.
- to gain followers, follow others. We went to other comic artists that were prominant in the comic industry, and local people and followed all the people thst follow them, and that they follow. Many of them will follow ou back or at least check out your stuff.
- make sure you have a simple, descriptive bio on your account. That way when you do follow you them, they will see instantly what you do. Also that you aren't a porn bot.
- interact with people. If someone @'s you, respond to them.
- promote other peoples work. Retweet them often, and be supportive. Don't make all your social media into a ad for yourself. You'll be boring pretty quickly, and you dont really inspire people to promote you in turn.
- keep a seperate twitter for personal vs comic work.

FACEBOOK
- Set up your custom url for your facebook page. You can do that once you have 25 followers (I think). It's in the account settings.
- Make a page, rather than a group. A page is the one people can "like". People will like more freely than join.
- Be active! Post photos, works in progress, events, convention appearances, promote other artists. But dont be spammy.
- Don't beg or whine. Earn or followers, and appreciate what ones you have.
- If you have nothing going on to promote, use that time to learn about your followers. Post polls and invite them to post art or information on your page.

- for both twitter and facebook make sure you put the links on your website and business cards.

This stuff has worked for us. We're far from super famous right now but we have a few excited and eager fans and we love them. It takes a while to increase your followers and it takes work but it will work if you work at it.

Later on we will show you the awesome artwork we got at Vancaf!
Im on a train right now though haha!
Thank you so much to everyone who visited us at Vancaf!