Branding On This Level is Way Overrated Not Likely to Happen

"I thought that since Canon is a brand name, all their gear had to be good, right? Wrong!!! I had a whole bag full of lenses covering every possible situation, but they were very poor quality. '

Yup, branding is way overemphasized here, IMHO. There is really very little in the way of actual branding going on here in the same sense of the term when it applies to Nike or Coke or Ford. What is going on here is more like building a following of loyal buyers and some level of name recognition.

Branding suggests that you have or are going to achieve some kind of top of the mind awareness in the overall marketplace. That is very, very unlikely to happen for the average and even significantly above average seller on FAA.

The other thing that is overemphasized is the idea of having to qualify every FB friend and Twitter follower, often referred to or stated as target marketing. Target marketing is extremely important when you are paying for advertising to reach your market. Especially if you are doing direct mail, traditional or email, and have to pay for each email or mailing piece.

But on SM there is no cost unless you are paying for ads and then you are limited as to what you can choose for your target market.

If you build a list of 2000 or even 5000 qualified buyers, it is my opinion that if you really want to make significant sales and significant money, that is simply too small of a market.

As I have said many times in the past, if I had to choose between 5000 of my hand-picked followers and 2 million people that chose to follow/friend me, I will take the 2 million. I have no doubt that in that 2 million there are going to be a lot more than 5000 qualified art buyers.

But the good news is, you do not have to make that choice. You can and should do both.