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Summit 2015 is over

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Drop in at the Colle Opera House on your way home, give us feedback

on the conference, have a snack, and continue the networking magic

Search marketing, which consists mostly of SEO (search engine optimization) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is essential to any business because it remains the most cost-effective marketing in most cases. The multitude of options and the growing complexity of each option make step one merely prioritizing by cost-effectiveness. This presentation will give you an executive understanding of the search marketing field, prevent pitfalls, and prioritize the top tactics. The second half will entail Q&A and will review audience members’ websites to find immediate improvements.

Rob Laporte and his firm DISC have specialized in search marketing since 1997, and Rob is the most published author in the top print/web magazine in the field, VisibilityMagazine.com.

ThreshHold Cooperative will introduce their plans for the creation of a cooperatively owned cultural center in Turners Falls. This will serve as starting place to facilitate a conversation about the potential of reclaiming the term social sculpture and asking how we can create spaces that support art and artists as a creative actions within a social context.

2D artists will learn about options for putting artwork on merchandise online (Print on Demand – POD). Find out about different POD choices & the variety of items one can print on. Diane will demonstrate the process of preparing for & listing an item at Zazzle. Where from there depends on participants’ needs – demos of other PODs, choosing a POD, opening a shop, marketing, tagging, prepping are possibilities.

A presentation of the idea for a new museum in Franklin County, The New England Museum of Art, Craft, and Design. Area art collectors, artists, and other interested parties from the Pioneer Valley area have already begun the initial organizational work to bring this idea to fruition.  We see this as a collaborative effort by local individuals, businesses, municipalities, non-profits, schools, and the state.

In this workshop, Artisans of WMASS will host a panel to give an overview of who we are and what we do to a blend of artists, businesses and municipal leaders.
AWM is a non-profit organization that serves as a resource and cooperative organization for artists and artisans within Western Massachusetts. We educate and collaborate with our local communities through public art education and highlight the importance of a vibrant creative culture while raising awareness about the community benefits of the creative economy.
We will discuss our focus areas such as our “Buy Local, Buy Handmade” campaign and our public education work. We will also talk about our goals for growth and development. For example, in the future, AWM is interested in creating a mentorship program that pairs high school and college-aged students with established artists. We are also thinking about possibilities for artist scholarships, annual events and demo days, lecture series and skills workshops, visiting artist/school programs and non-

 

Learn to navigate the Recorder to promote your events, businesses and organizations. This workshop will explain the how the use of our local newspaper can benefit artists, businesses and towns with wider exposure, broader participation and more reliable, consistent promotion. George Forcier is managing editor and Adam Orth is features editor of the Greenfield Recorder.

Montague (with its village of Turners Falls) is the only town in Franklin County to incorporate cultural development into its official economic development strategy. Find out why the town government embraced this approach, what departments spearheaded it, its’ success in a small town in a rural county with limited resources and low population, future plans, challenges, and implementation examples.

Why Don’t I Know About This? Ideas to Keep You in the Loop; Dee Boyle-Clapp

The Arts Extension Service is a national arts service organization and has long had its finger on a national pulse. Everywhere we travel, the question from artists is always the same: Why don’t I know about this? This workshop will introduce artists to institutions, thought-leaders to follow, and resources for funding, artist residency, public arts projects, and other educational resources.