There has been a fairly lively conversation on the American Craft Forum about MySpace and if it’s a good idea for artists and crafters for attracting business. The thread was started by artist Luann Udell who was trying to find some examples of artists using MySpace for the purpose of promoting their businesses. The thread morphed into a conversation about the merits of MySpace, myths, misconceptions, and the merits of it being a legitimate channel for business. Yesterday, Luann weighed in again and pointed out that the real question is not just “Is MySpace good for my business?”, but…

“How is internet-based social software changing the way we connect, interact, and influece each other? And how will that impact the way I choose to do business?”

I agree…that is the real question. For the past couple of months, I’ve been researching and experimenting with what is being called by insiders and the press “Social Media”. What is social media? It can be defined as a group of online media, software, and technology that encourages participation, conversation, community, and connectedness. Social media includes things like blogs, social networks like MySpace, podcasts, and content communities like Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube that allows people to share photos, web site links, and video, and places like Second Life where you can build your own virtual world and interact with others in that world. The web is quickly transforming from a place made of static content, to an interconnected series of networks that want to be active participants, not passive readers. And after experimenting and researching “social media”, I’ll have to say that it’s not a matter of if and how social media can effect your business, but how you use social media to effect your business. Because social media is here to stay, you’ll be affected by it whether you want to or not, and the current and future art and craft buyers will be using it.

For those of use are just getting the hang of using forums and reading blogs, this whole avalanche of technologies and web sites may be a bit overwhelming. But just like we learned how to use the web, how to send email, and how to use instant messaging, we’ll master this too.

If you want to check out the thread on MySpace at the American Craft Forum, the link to the whole thread is below. You need to have a profile set up to read it, but if you don’t, it’s a fairly painless process to get set up, and you’ll meet some great artists there too.
http://www.americancraftforum.com/cgi-bin/iB/ikonboard.cgi?s=
1d10be3f97b1a3553cbf5bff491a5e51;act=ST;f=1;t=2170

The Crafts Report recently published an article on how artists can use MySpace to promote themselves. The author of the article, Jim Calder, graciously provided a link to it:
http://www.craftsreport.com/august06/rp_myspace.html

The search engine marketing company, Spannerworks has released an ebook that provides an overview of what social media is all about. You can get a copy for free here. It’s in PDF format, so you’ll need Adobe Acrobat to download the ebook. The link to this resource came by way of Steve Rubel’s blog, Micro Persuasion.

An artist statement is one of the most important things an artist or craftsman needs to write, and can unfortunately be one of the hardest things to write. Artist Deanna Wood posted an entry with tips for writing an artist statement in her blog Artist, Emerging. Very informative and easy to understand, be sure to check it out!

I just stumbled across a business blog for crafters by way of a new artist’s blog I that I stumbled on at the Art Biz Blog.

Egads! That was confusing, but that’s just an example of the blogosphere in action.

Anyhoo… Make It is a business blog for crafters that has articles on self promotion, marketing, and interviews with other craft entrepreneurs. The latest post is about branding your business cards. Give it a read at the Make It blog.

Thanks to artist Deanna Wood for posting this link in her blog Artist, Emerging. Deanna’s blog is a chronicle of her journey as an emerging artist.

And thanks to Alyson Stanfield for posting the link to Deanna’s blog on the Art Biz blog.

One of the design blogs I subscribe to is Drawn!, an illustration and cartooning blog. No, I don’t do any illustration or cartooning, but I like keeping up with different types of artwork. A recent blog post links to the blog of freelance illustrator Megan Jeffery. To celebrate 17 years of being a freelance illustrator, she posted a list of the 17 most valuable lessons she learned throughout the years. While Megan is an illustrator, these lessons are universal for anyone who works for themselves. Check them out here

Okay, I attempted to explain a little about what RSS feeds do in the previous book excerpt, but sometimes someone else can explain it just a little better, or at least differently. Scoot over to Stephanie Quilao’s blog Back in Skinny Jeans for the “Oprah Version” of how RSS works.

Thanks to Steve Rubel for posting about Stephanie’s article on his blog.