"Blog Art" Article in USA Weekend Inspires Publicity & Blogging

[BarneyDavey]

USA Weekend, Gannett Corporation's Sunday newspaper supplement, ran a two-column article titled Blog Art - It's the latest way to find affordable, original paintings in its August 12 edition. With a circulation of more than 23 million, the lucky artists mentioned surely enjoyed increased traffic to their blogs from the publicity. (As an aside, I contend publicity is the single most powerful element artists can unleash to promote their work. This is a perfect example. If the story was pitched by a publicist or a mentioned artist, kudos are in order.)

The article is also in the online edition. Read it here: http://www.usaweekend.com/07_issues/...12blogart.html The online version doesn't have the graphics in the print edition, but it does have the three artists' blogs hyperlinked.

I admit garnering publicity at this level is a long shot, but it shows what is possible and more likely done on a local or regional level. I would use this story to help pitch a similar story about my blog to editors on my publicity rolodex. If you don't have such a contact list, perhaps this will encourage you to begin one. You'll find most worthy articles bylined, cut them out and save them, put them in a contact file and start getting ready to use them. If you need help, pick up a copy of Susan Abbott's Fine Art Publicity.

Need help writing? Then try Gramlee. For $9.95 you can get up to 2,000 words professionally edited in about two hours. (If you use less words, you have the rest banked for future use.) I tried it in its free beta stage and was very impressed with the quality and speed. I can't praise this affordable editing service enough. Magazine and newspaper editors are always on tight deadlines. As such, they naturally are preferential to PR pieces they don't have to rewrite for their publications. If English is a second language or writing is not your forte, you'll love this service. I guarantee you'll have greater success with professionally written materials.

If you have been on the fence on whether to blog or not to blog, I trust this Art Print Issues blog post will help you decide: Why Every Artist Needs a Blog. You will find it contains useful links to excellent sources and practical advice to get you started right.

I believe notoriety on blogging and art blogs in particular in such mainstream media as USA Weekend enhances artists' ability to touch and find collectors directly. IMHO, blogging is simply the best and most convenient and personal way for artists to seek and influence collectors regardless of their location. This will improve as blogging's explosive growth continues. Producing a well done blog and generating meaninful frequent publicity and will give you the makings of a marketing machine to take you far.

I realize there is more to a successful career than a blog and few nicely placed articles, but when well executed these things simply add jet fuel to a career. I say this because if you are organized and driven to do these things, then other important things are usually tended to as well. The adage, "If you want something done, ask a busy person" is apropos.

It's not too late at all to start, and it's easier than you think. There is so much supportive talent available right here on this board, even the greenest computer neophyte should be able to quickly figure out how to get started. Search the threads here and then post a question if you can't find an answer, aid is only a few clicks away.

[ElizaLeahy]

There are so many blogs out there - I have one on LiveJournal and errrr - others that I never update. Do you think one blog is better then another? I keep up the LJ one because I get the most response, but it's only other LJ users and rarely brings in any customers (has once or twice in small sales).

[mLee]

blogger seems to attract a lot of artists and art buyers. I think it is important to update regularly and to connect with your readers. I got serious about blogging in June and I noticed a huge increase in traffic and sales.

http://mleeprints.blogspot.com/

[onefinepint]

Thanks for posting the links to the article. I saw the article on Sunday and was wishing I had an electronic form of it.

[timelady]

I think with LiveJournal that you have to register to leave a comment? I seem to remember not leaving comments for just that reason. On Blogger you can leave an anonymous comment at least. Eliza, also check out the thread I had on Feeds/RSS - I learned a lot and have more hits now that I did it. I've also noticed a significant increase in hits to my blog, website, and one of my online galleries now that I'm consistently blogging daily. It's kind of a pain some days but I save blogs as drafts when I have a few ideas at once then go in and publish them on different days! (remembering to change the time/date setting from the date of the draft)

I copy my blogs to a Blogger and MySpace blog and my stats show a lot of hits to my other sites from Blogger, but not from MySpace.

Tina.

[BarneyDavey]

Unfortunately, there are no free lunches. A blog infrequently updated with little or no marketing will not draw much traffic. You have to create something of interest. Part of that is finding your voice. Do you want to just talk about your art? Do you want to be professional and formal? Would you be more comfortable being casual and informal? Do you want to discuss topics not related to art? What other interests do you have that synergize with your art and your art career? Do you have an interest in music, spirituality, politics, animal rights, human rights, Web 2.0, and on and on.

An musician whose blog I greatly admire is Christine Kane. She uses her blog to help promote her CDs and concerts. But, because her interests are greater than being a musician, her blog is rich with ideas on living a better life and more. She has taken this interest to the point of doing sold out workshops and retreats to help women. Check it out: www.chrisinekane.com/blog. You can download a free song while you are there.

Want more traffic, get known. Post on other blogs, put your blog address on every correspondence you send. Create a Squidoo Lens. Have it on your business cards. Try to use keywords in your title and body copy that will help people find you. For instance, if you are doing fantasy art, then include those words or similar words as frequently as possible without creeping your copy out in the process.

Here's a link to 25 Tips to Marketing Your Blog. Some of the suggestions are beyond beginning blogging with free software, but are still usefeul and something to consider for the serious blogger. Want to get really serious, check out http://trishjones.com/. The Internet is full of great free advice, do some Googling to find more helpful sources.

[Katherine T]

Barney - we have had a blogging resources sticky thread at the top of this forum for a long time now. It's an excellent place for people to start in relation to the nuts and bolts of blogging. The only thing that people wanting to read this need to bear in mind is to make sure they read through it slowly when they've got a bit of time to spare. A lot of the concepts are very new and strange to people new to blogging and reading about how we all struggled with them at the beginning can also be very comforting.

I've been blogging since January 2006 and virtually every day for very nearly a year and I can highly recommend the impact frequency has on stats. For one thing IMO Google doesn't take you seriously until you've got 50,000 page views (that's the number of pages people look at when they visit). I'm basing this view on my own experience.

• Up to 50,000 it can be a bit of a slog (so make sure you blog about things that interest you).
• After 50,000 growth has been exponential for me. Google starts to adjust your blog's page ranking and that in turn has an impact on the placement of individual blog posts. Mine now has a page rank of 5 and gets lots of hits from people searching on keywords.

Lastly, my own blog stats are going ballistic today because this morning I posted a post called "How do I find things to blog about". As I suspected, for most people it would appear that having a blog is a great deal easier than knowing what to put on it and people are very keen to know how to make life easier for themselves.

[CSForest]

Ok, what exactly is Squidoo? I've seen several people mention it. I looked at their site a bit but don't quite understand what it's about.

[bepos]

I'm very new to blogging and find this information very helpful-thank you.

Katherine-I just looked at your blog and find your ideas very interesting. I was excited to see that I may be on the right track with my blog by choosing to do a project.

[Katherine T]

Squidoo is something that was started by Seth Godin who is one of the movers and shakers in the web 2.0 world

This is the wikipedia explanation of squidoo.

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Squidoo is a website launched in October 2005. It is a platform designed to make it easy for anyone, for free, to set up a single page on a topic he or she knows or cares a lot about. Squidoo came out of beta testing in March 2006.
Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlights one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. Lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Lenses aren't primarily intended to hold content; more emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content on the web. Annotation and organization and personalization delivers context and meaning.

It has really excellent connections with Google. I've been amazed at how quickly a squidoo lens shows up in Google. Plus I note wikipedia finishes with

According to Alexa, Squidoo's traffic has grown more than 40% monthly beginning in the spring of 2007. It is now in the top 500 of all websites tracked worldwide.

Essentially lenses are a way of organising information for specialist topics - a way of cutting through the rubbish you can get on keyword searches. It is also possible to use them as marketing vehicles - so for example a number of people use them to market/sell their art work although I don't do this in any overt way (eg although my artwork is included) so can't comment on this option - . One that does very well is the EBSQ squidoo lens

I've found using squidoo is a really great way of organising my links and also sharing them with other people. Plus when your computer goes through a crash and burn your favourite links are all saved! (Guess why I did it in the first place? )

[Katherine T]

The other thing worth noting is that of the three people mentioned in the article Jamie Grossman is a Moderator on Wet Canvas (JamieG) - you'll find her over in Artwork from Life and various other forums.

Jan Blencowe is also a WC member and has written in this forum before now about art and blogging.

Maybe Barney or Tina would like to invite them to comment on this thread?

[CSForest]

Originally Posted by Katherine T

Squidoo is something that was started by Seth Godin who is one of the movers and shakers in the web 2.0 world

This is the wikipedia explanation of squidoo.

So sort of a "MySpace" type thing but more customizeable ... and better organized?

[Katherine T]

Sort of - take a look around at the lenses which exist is probably the best way of getting acquainted with what they can do and how they can look.

This is the link for the top 100 "Arts & literature" ones - and be prepared for an awful lot of low brow and fluff - except for mine of course!

Christa - there's quite a lot of animal ones - i think a wildlife art one might well get some interest.

[surreal]

Originally Posted by BarneyDavey

Unfortunately, there are no free lunches. A blog infrequently updated with little or no marketing will not draw much traffic. You have to create something of interest. Part of that is finding your voice. Do you want to just talk about your art? Do you want to be professional and formal? Would you be more comfortable being casual and informal? Do you want to discuss topics not related to art? What other interests do you have that synergize with your art and your art career? Do you have an interest in music, spirituality, politics, animal rights, human rights, Web 2.0, and on and on.

An musician whose blog I greatly admire is Christine Kane. She uses her blog to help promote her CDs and concerts. But, because her interests are greater than being a musician, her blog is rich with ideas on living a better life and more. She has taken this interest to the point of doing sold out workshops and retreats to help women. Check it out: www.chrisinekane.com/blog. You can download a free song while you are there.

Want more traffic, get known. Post on other blogs, put your blog address on every correspondence you send. Create a Squidoo Lens. Have it on your business cards. Try to use keywords in your title and body copy that will help people find you. For instance, if you are doing fantasy art, then include those words or similar words as frequently as possible without creeping your copy out in the process.

Here's a link to 25 Tips to Marketing Your Blog. Some of the suggestions are beyond beginning blogging with free software, but are still usefeul and something to consider for the serious blogger. Want to get really serious, check out http://trishjones.com/. The Internet is full of great free advice, do some Googling to find more helpful sources.

Hi Barney,

Thanks so much for posting!
I appreciate the very helpful information that you provided.

I have my reading cut out for me.

[BarneyDavey]

This thread is about publicity and how to get it. I would be remiss if I didn't show you that I walk my talk. I was featured with a cover story in the July/August issue of Great Output magazine. It goes to 20,000 photographers. It came about due to my comments on the LexJet Great Output blog. If I waited for the publication to find me, it would have never happened.

Use what you have to make things happen for yourself. Use the terrific results Katherine T here has garnered for her blog as a model and inspiration for what you can do for yourself. BTW, Kudos and Congratulations to Katherine for recently passing the 100,000 unique visitors number to your blog. That is an awesome achievement. Before the Internet and blogging, the cost to reach and infuence that many highly targeted people was probhibitively expensive. This is a good time to be an artist who is willing to work at the marketing side because the available tools are so readily available and helpful.