Behind The Curtain: How To Improve Your Chances Of Getting A Print
The last BEHIND THE CURTAIN blog post we did caused about 70 comments or so and people seemed to really enjoy my frankness and honesty. Well, I've decided to go into that mode again and get real with all of you about how I release prints. You may be thinking, you release them online, what's the big deal? I'm going to go through the process of how I actually put them up for sale so you can possibly improve your chances of getting your print of choice. I especially wanted to do this, not just for our current fanbase, but for the huge influx of people that just found out about us from the STAR WARS and STAR TREK announcements. Oh yeah, welcome everyone...we've got some great stuff lined up for in the coming year.So, we have several ways of promoting/ announcing that a print is about to drop. As some of you have probably seen, we get covered by a lot of media sites...AICN, Chud, SlashFilm, I09, Twitch, Joblo, etc. Not counting any kind of reporting on our releases, we mainly use TWITTER, FACEBOOK and our NEWSLETTER to let people know that we've got something going on. Here is the order of how I do things. Take notes...this could definitely help you get an advantage over others in getting the print.1. NEWSLETTERI always lead with a blast to our mailing list. I recommend clicking HERE and signing up for it. This will have links to the sale and info. We don't ever do "spam" mailing list things that says like "Here's what we've been doing!" or whatever. If you see an email from Mondo in your inbox, it's most likely something going on sale. So, time wise, if you get an email from our mailing list on a sale, you will have about a 10-15 minute lead time on everyone else. If a print is going on sale at noon, it'll probably hit your inbox at about 11:45 or 11:50. Obviously, the time of when the email hits your individual inbox varies, but it'll be in that time range. So, step 1 to improve your chances of getting that print, sign up to our mailing list. It'll be your new best friend.2. TWITTERI don't know what I'd do without Twitter. I really love it. It's a great way to get instant feedback on releases and it's a great way to answer fan's questions. You can always email us at [email protected] to ask questions, but if there is something you need to know about store hours, edition size, whatever....hit me up on Twitter. I'm officially addicted to checking @replies and my email, so I'll get back to you ASAP. Besides all of that, I tend to drop a lot of hints on the release times and often even show previews of what's coming up. On the day of release, I will post a blog post here and then copy the link, go to Tweetdeck, paste it in there and Tweet it. So, besides watching the blog, following us on Twitter is a really good idea. Most of the info you absolutely need to know will hit Twitter.3. FACEBOOKI'll be honest, I don't use Facebook as much as I should. I'm working on utilizing it more, but if you fan us (or whatever it's called now) on there, you will get the Tweets I make on Twitter about releases. No new content...basically just Twitter again on a different site. This is the third thing I post to when I'm releasing posters.To recap, in order, this is how I do things when a print is about to drop:1. Send out an email blast to our Mailing List about the sale. You have about 10-15 minute lead time.2. Post blog about the sale and post it to Twitter.3. Post the Tweet from Twitter to Facebook.I hope this helps. I know life would be much easier if we could just post times on when stuff was going to drop, but we just can't. With the traffic we get on release days and even with our crazy new servers, it's too big of a risk. If the site crashes, nobody gets posters and it's a bigger mess than just doing it this way. If you have any questions, as always, you can hit us up at [email protected] or just reply in the comments. We've got some great stuff coming this week, so try these tips out on that and see if it goes any smoother on release days.-Justin
