Haha. All right. I just wanted to give myself a little kick on the butt.

The fact is, I’ve been quite a fearless dreamer and I’ve always wanted to create meaningful artwork – which is not only lovely to see but also something that could help people to better their lives.

Well, I might have finally found that ‘something’ – one fine day when I was under stress and “all of sudden” my hand moved with a pen over scrap paper and created my first coloring designs. I then colored. And when finished, I felt better.

I took a snap of the drawing and posted on Facebook. 77 likes {which was HUGE at that time}, and started to question myself whether people liked my creation. Oh, it was a great feeling!

And since then, I religiously use half of my lunch break to draw and color, and my weekends to re-create the drawings on Illustrator.

It was 3 October 2014. And long story short, a few months later, I felt that it was time to make my coloring pages public.

Now almost a year later, I have created many drawings and published several coloring pages on this website. I feel so happy whenever people told me they loved my artwork and that the coloring pages had helped them have a good time, alone or with family. I thought that it was my mission, to help people practice artful mindfulness by playing with colors on my designs. I’m hooked.

So now, ladies and gentlemen,

I’ve got my products ready. I’ve stated my mission.

What should I do to make the world know about this?

Yep, right. MARKETING. I have to do the marketing. No excuse. When you don’t tell people about the great thing you have that could help make their life better, you’re stingy. Noooo I don’t want to be stingy. No no no. My next mission: finding a marketing program or course that is right for my kind-a stuff.

And you know what? When the student is ready, the teacher appears! The Universe does answer my request! Just I was thinking about that, I got an email from CreativeLive announcing the upcoming course by one of my favorite instructors, Blacksburgbelle’s April Bowles-Olin. The title says: “Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing”. Whaaaat! This is EXACTLY what I need! :D

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not 100% newbie in marketing, but after studying the course page on CreativeLive, I saw that the particular curriculum resonates so much with what I’m seeking to learn.

WHY YOUR BUSINESS SUCCESS DEPENDS ON MARKETING

My goodness, yes I “knew” this, but to be very honest, I didn’t pay so much attention to this. I thought it was because I normally read about marketing from the “big names” books and the word “creative” was mostly omitted. I need explanation from creative people who made it in the creative business. April is one.

WHY YOUR CUSTOMERS SHOULD CHOOSE YOU AND YOUR BRAND

Yay! This might be the most important thing I’d love to learn from this course. I’ve been “craving” about this knowledge about what makes people “clicked” on my stuff, and about what I should do to make people ‘choose’ me and my artwork …(hmmm singing the corrs’ *what should I do to make you love me..*) …I believe April will spill all the secrets and I really really really want to know! :D

YOUR TARGET MARKET AND A DAY AS YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER

Wait, did I start to smell “strategy” here? Oh, putting myself on the customer’s shoes! Why didn’t I think of that before! {I’ve learned about surveying customers, but making myself my own customer is quite tricky to me!}. But hey, I believe April will give all the best tricks in the world to do this ;-)

MAKE MARKETING FUN SO YOU ACTUALLY DO THIS STUFF

Touché! This is why I really wanted to take this bootcamp. Maybe this was why I never got advance in my previous marketing efforts… I have to admit. Marketing was ‘a hard work’, and I cringed every time I realised it was time to do the marketing part of anything. Though I realised this before, I think that I really need the guidance from the best expert on “fun marketing” to make this work in my case :D

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MARKETING {A.K.A. WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T}

YES I need to learn about this YES I need to learn about this!! I need more than theories, I need to hear from those creatives who have been there done that! What better examples than those from real life experiences, from like minded people? Plus the “psychological part” sounds…intriguing!

COMPILE BRAND INSPIRATION AND MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION

Another thing to admit: I learned about swipe files and compiling inspiration, in order for me to create impressive presentation… Did I succeed? Yes and no. Oh dear, mostly no. I see now that I didn’t have a good system to do it. And it’s in this bootcamp’s curriculum! Yay! I will learn how to do this correctly this time! *oh so optimistic!*

PRICING YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Oooh that tricky subject I (again, have to admit) felt like having no control over. Who doesn’t want to be valued so high? But will people buy your products? Come on, those questions gave me a lot of headache. I mean, A LOT. Especially, like now, when I started new line of products. This made me hopeless, so YES, I certainly need help in this area. Another BIG stuff I want to learn from this course, definitely!

BRANDING WITH VISUALS (PHOTOS/SOCIAL MEDIA/BLOGGING)

Ah…maybe my favorite topic in this course! I’m in the creative business, in need of doing marketing creatively and most of my audience are into visual presentation, right? You see my website? Yes I’m presenting my artwork, and without visual branding, it’s nothing. I’ve learned a little bit about this as well before, did a lot of trial and error, but somehow I still feel that something isn’t quite ‘right’ in the way I did it. And I LOVE this topic, and so I really want to learn more about this. Yes!

THE POWER OF VIDEO: GETTING STARTED AND BEYOND

Wow! Honestly I was just thinking about making a video on how I created my artwork! This really comes at the right time! I’ve given myself a few tries before. I don’t want you to laugh at the results, though! :D But this topic is certainly in my mind and I will give it a try again and again. Especially after learning a few more tricks from the marketing expert herself (thanks April!) :D

WRITE HEADLINES THAT GET YOUR FOLLOWERS TO CLICK AND SHARE

Double WOWs! I’ve been blogging and making websites for a few years now and -oh my sadness- despite my great passion, I still found that my the headlines I wrote were not ‘catchy’ enough. Sure I didn’t give up. I keep reading magazines and noted down headlines I liked. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t practice enough? Or because English is not my first language? No no no I don’t want to blame it on the language. I simply haven’t learned enough or practiced enough, I suppose. I want to GET IT how. And dreaming of the day when all those ‘failures’ become a story from the past! So YES this is what I really need to learn this from this course! :D :D

TRANSFORM HO-HUM WRITING TO CONTENT WORTH READING

APRIL I LOVE YOU!!! Yes I want to polish my writing and create content people would read! :D Give me all your best tips and tricks! :D

THE TRANSCRIPTION AND ONE PERSON METHOD

Hmmm…this subject is intriguing! I’d love to know more about this! You surely are going to give me a nice surprise, right, April? ;-)

PERSUADE, CONNECT AND SELL WITH STORY

Oh my I LOVE this subject, too! From my previous “trial-and-errors” I learned by doing that by telling stories I could persuade and connect with my audience – so I don’t know why I didn’t constantly do that in my so called creative-business. Just like in the other subjects above, I also want to GET IT so I can always use story creatively to persuade, connect and sell. I believe that in the course I will learn about how to make this kind of “automatic” or a habit, right?

WRITE SALES PAGES THAT ACTUALLY SELL

YES April teach me teach me teach me on this subject!!! This is probably one of my ‘weakness’ that I noticed and need to overcome. Again, I won’t blame on my “English is not my first language” because all I have to do is practice, practice and practice. But of course, I need to practice the right things!! :D

BASICS OF EMAIL MARKETING

Did I smell another fine “strategy” here? ;-) I so love this. Gosh should I admit also that a lot of my newsletters failed? {ough, I try to be brave here :D} I had those days I got heartache because people in my mailing list unsubscribed after receiving my newsletter. Dear, what did I do wrooong? I tried out several strategies and sometimes it worked, sometimes not, but maybe maybe maybe I haven’t learned enough about the basics. Which is REALLY important, I believe!

DESIGN YOUR EMAIL FREEBIE AND WRITE YOUR INTRO EMAIL

Hurray! With this subject I will get the chance to see where in my freebie and intro email I did incorrectly. What happened: there were several people who opted-in but then unsubscribed after receiving the freebie. Hmmm..there’s certainly something that is not quite right, yes? Help me help me because I can’t stand anymore this heartache… really!

TRACK YOUR SUBSCRIBERS AND READER’S BEHAVIOR

Yeay! This is probably what I missed! I noticed a little bit here and there {well, and why especially when the subscriber unsubscribed!} but maybe this is something I need to master to avoid further unwanted damages in my creative queendom! Yep, teach me about this stuff, dear April! :D

EMAIL SEGMENTATION AND THE PRACTICE OF USING AUTORESPONDERS

Ok I’m not yet familiar with this subject but I believe and believe that this is something important that I need to master too! The Master herself has put this in the curriculum! And now I’m curious about how this would help my marketing effort in the future. So curious!

DOUBLE YOUR BLOG READERSHIP

Oh yes, spill all the beans, April!!! I loooove this topic and I want to learn that first hand from you! I 1000% believe you understand 1000% that this is the dream of all bloggers on earth, including me! :D

CHOOSE THE RIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

Hurray again! I LOVE social media and it has been uneasy for me to catch up with all {trendy} platforms! Speaking from my own experience, I sometimes ‘wanted’ that specific platform when I felt that another platform would work better or be more suitable for me. In this topic I’d love to learn about “What I want / more interested in” versus “What I really need for my business”.

GROW YOUR INSTAGRAM FOLLOWING

OH MY GOD THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO LEARN SO MUCH MUCH MUCH! I love Instagram and I use it quite a lot but oh why my following progressed so slowly? I mean, really slowly? And then I’ve heard stories of people who just ‘accidentally’ did ‘something” they didn’t even realized what it was and they suddenly grew their Instagram following, like, a thousand of new followers within the span of a few months, or even weeks! I’m so jealous and there must be a thing they did that I didn’t do :D and I want to learn and find out what it is! {oh dear I really want this!} :D

GROW YOUR PINTEREST AND TWITTER FOLLOWING

I love Pinterest but not so Twitter…but since it’s part of the curriculum I became curious again now :D Though I love Pinterest I became a bit overwhelmed – mainly because once logged-in I couldn’t stop! There’s just so much wonderful inspiration over there. On the other hand, I felt kind of intimidated by Twitter’s 140 characters – though posting a picture in the tweet is possible. But hey, I want to learn some golden tricks here, maybe I just don’t know them well yet :D

GROW YOUR FACEBOOK FOLLOWING

This is golden!!! I’d love love love to master this! :D Facebook marketing has been my main interest when it comes to social media and I variably succeeded and failed in my past efforts and of course growing my Facebook followers is still my BIG dream! I found that Facebook is a very powerful tool, but I also got frustrated sometimes because of the changes that occurred quite often. I wish there were I could get some tips on how to handle the changes easily, what to look and anticipate, etc. :D

YOUR MARKETING PLAN PUT TOGETHER

Oh yeay after learning all mentioned above, I’d love to have my own personalized marketing and action plan, of course! This made me realize that in the past I might have learned and learned and learned but forgot {or didn’t know how} to put together what I learned into action plan…{ough, tough!} And I guess that’s what we are going to learn here! I’m really looking forward to this. Really! :D

“This post is a part of the Double Your Followers blog tour to spread the word about April Bowles-Olin’s upcoming CreativeLive course. Does hearing the word ‘marketing’ make your armpits start to drip with anxiety? Are you terrified of sounding salesy or like you have the personality of a dead blowfish? If so, come join me and 2,500+ entrepreneurs who’re taking April’s latest CreativeLive course, Double Your Followers with Creative Marketing. You can RSVP and watch for FREE. Yep, free. High fives, wildflowers, wine samples. Who doesn’t love free?”