There’s even some services that will allow you to automate your card and note giving. While I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with a service like that, it’s really not for me. The way I see it, it kind of defeats the purpose of sending the card in the first place if you’re simply automating it like it was an email. It’s the fact that you took the time to actually write the note that has the meaning.

Now of course doing this takes time and effort and we’re all busy. But if you want to start getting into the habit of sending out written notes and thank yous, here are a few things that helps me.

• Be prepared- I try to keep a supply of stamps, thank you cards, and blank note cards on hand so if I want to write a quick thank you or a quick note I don’t have run to the store or the post office first. Here’s a preparation thing that my husband does that’s always impressive. Whenever he’s going to meet someone for an interview, a meeting, or a business gathering, he carries thank you cards with him, already stamped and addressed. He writes his thank you out immediately after the meeting and drops it off at the post office on the way home. Talk about being prepared!

• Plan known events like birthdays and anniversaries- Keep important dates like birthdays and anniversaries on your calendar and review it regularly. When you know a birthday is coming up, write the card a couple weeks before and send it when the birth date gets closer. Like the thank you cards, I make sure I get the birthday cards purchased in advance.

• Set aside a time- While I do spontaneously write thank you’s and notes when the occasion calls for it, I try to plan a specific time every few weeks to write out cards for known events and thank you’s.

• Make it fun- It becomes less of a chore if you find ways to make the process fun. One thing I love is sending out unique, well designed cards, especially if they’re handmade. While buying the more artistic cards can run into a bit more money, it’s also a lot more fun to send them, plus it’s a great way to support some of the great letterpress and stationary artists out there.

• Don’t concentrate on being “perfect”- One reason why I’ve hesitated with sending handwritten notes is because I’ve never liked my handwriting and I always worried about how ugly it would look. It seems to be a pretty dumb reason, but sometimes people hesitate sending notes because they’re not sure what to write, they’re afraid what they’ll write will seem silly, or like me they’re afraid that their hand writing is illegible (or perhaps it actually is). Fact is, most people don’t even notice stuff like that. They’re happy enough at the fact of your thoughtfulness. So while you do want to make sure what you write is thoughtful and looks as nicely written as possible, you don’t need to dwell on it to the point that you never send the note at all.

P.S. If your handwriting really is so hopeless that no one can read your writing you can a) work on improving it, there’s two good books that will teach you how to improve your handwriting; Teach Yourself Better Handwriting by Rosemary Sassoon and Write Now: The Complete Program For Better Handwriting by Barbara Getty. Your second option is b) get someone with better handwriting to write your thank you’s out for you. Just type out your messages and hand your list off to a friend, spouse, or assistant to write out the notes.

So what method do you use to keep in touch with your customers? Leave a comment and let me know!

Card image by Inkspot Workshop

• Provide some easily accessible images of your work. If someone wants to blog about you, they’ll naturally want to include a couple of images. If you lock your images down, only provide teeny images of your work, or otherwise make getting an image a big hassle…a blogger is less likely to bother. If you’re worried about copyright, you can include a watermark of your copyright in your image.

• Make sharing easier by providing links to popular social networking sites and tools like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and others so that people can easily click a few buttons to share your information with their networks. If you have a blog you can use Feedburner’s FeedFlare or you can use the AddThis or the Share This service on both your regular websites or your blogs.

• Provide easily accessible information about yourself as well as an image as a couple of images of yourself. Pictures of you, your studio, and you actively working in your studio are always useful to bloggers and journalists.

• Make use of media sharing sites like Flickr and Picassa for photos and YouTube for videos. Upload pictures and videos that you want to share with people and encourage people to pass them around.

• Create press room on your website or blog. Here is were you can put images of your artwork, yourself, your studio, your bio, and information about your company all in one place. Public relations expert Joan Stewart discusses what to put in your online press room and how with Ariane Goodwin in their CD How Artists Can Sell More Artwork from Online & Offline Publicity. If you get the chance, check it out.

• Provide some easily accessible images of your work. If someone wants to blog about you, they’ll naturally want to include a couple of images. If you lock your images down, only provide teeny images of your work, or otherwise make getting an image a big hassle…a blogger is less likely to bother. If you’re worried about copyright, you can include a watermark of your copyright in your image.

• Make sharing easier by providing links to popular social networking sites and tools like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and others so that people can easily click a few buttons to share your information with their networks. If you have a blog you can use Feedburner’s FeedFlare or you can use the AddThis or the Share This service on both your regular websites or your blogs.

• Provide easily accessible information about yourself as well as an image as a couple of images of yourself. Pictures of you, your studio, and you actively working in your studio are always useful to bloggers and journalists.

• Make use of media sharing sites like Flickr and Picassa for photos and YouTube for videos. Upload pictures and videos that you want to share with people and encourage people to pass them around.

• Create press room on your website or blog. Here is were you can put images of your artwork, yourself, your studio, your bio, and information about your company all in one place. Public relations expert Joan Stewart discusses what to put in your online press room and how with Ariane Goodwin in their CD How Artists Can Sell More Artwork from Online & Offline Publicity. If you get the chance, check it out.

You can visit Alyssa’s website at www.mewpaperarts.com. You can also follow her on Twitter.

P.S. If you’re also lucky enough to gain a TV appearance like Alissa did, whether it’s on CBS, Martha, or even your local news, make sure that your website is prepared by following these tips.

Here’s what the widget would look like:

To add your own widget to your website or blog, go to your Facebook Page and click on the “Add Fan Box to your site” link. You’ll be taken to a page with the snippet of code you’ll need to add to your website or blog. That’s all you’ll need to do!

So if you have a Facebook Page, go grab your Fan Box widget and add it to your blog or website. It only takes a few minutes to do, and it will help you get more fans. Also, if you’re not already a Fan of The Crafted Webmaster page…it can always use more! Click my Fan Box up above or here on the side and become my page’s newest fan!

Sigh…I just finished creating a video on how to work with TweetDeck a couple weeks ago and what do you know? Out comes a new version with some really cool features to add to the already impressive list of features. But some of those features are things that I’ve been wanting TweetDeck to do for awhile…so I’m not too upset.

Here’s what’s new in this version of TweetDeck (0.26.2)

• You can now administrate multiple accounts within TweetDeck. I’ve been using HootSuite in order to do this up until now…so it’s really great that I don’t have to leave TweetDeck in order to see what’s going on in my other accounts.
• You can now create a TweetDeck account that will allow you to syncronize and backup your columns between multiple computers. This is really useful if you have TweetDeck on say your laptop and on your desktop and want to make sure that any columns or searches that you created on one machine matches on the other.
• There’s also a handy Twitter spam button that can eliminate spam tweets and reports the miscreant to Twitter.

So, if you’re a Twitter user and you haven’t tried Twitter yet, now’s a great time to do so. You can download Twitter for free by visiting the TweetDeck site.

…and now, I’m going to update my TweetDeck video.

If you haven’t already heard, you’ll be able to get your very own personalized username for both your Facebook profile and your Facebook page if you have one starting on June 13th at 12:01 a.m. (that’s right after midnight on Friday).

If your a regular Facebook user you’ll know how much of a welcome change this will be, because up until now, if you wanted to give someone a link to your Facebook profile, it would look like this:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=735894382

And the link to your Facebook page doesn’t look much better:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=44953043089#/pages/The-Crafted-Webmaster/44953043089

But starting on June 13th, you’ll be able to get a nice clean link to your profile or page that you can easily pass around. Like this one:

http://www.facebook.com/nicolette.tallmadge (hopefully, this will be my new username!)

So if you’re a Facebook user, find out more about this change by visiting the Facebook blog and don’t forgt to stand in the virtual line for your spanking new URL!

If you’re interested in a set of your own, here’s a couple of places you can check out:

• Tradeshow Exhibitor
• The Biz Company

• Updating your social network profiles- if you have a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or any social network site make sure that your profile information is complete and up to date. Plus, if you have the ability to personalize your profile page, now would be a great time to do it. Don’t have a profile on a social network site? Now would be a good time to dip your toe in. If you don’t know much about social networking, check out my two part article series called “How to Use Social Networks to Market Yourself“.

• Planning- The beginning of the year is a great time to pre-plan your website promotions, advertising, and new content for the year. Take the time to schedule when your promotions will take place. Write out a list of things you need to do and your budget. It will save on last minute scrambling around for ideas later on in the year.

• Expansion or Redesign- If you’ve been meaning to expand or redesign your website do it now and use the unveiling as an excuse to run a spring promotion in March or April. I’ve recently finished a redesign of my jewelry website and I’m using the re-launch as a reason to run an online contest.

• New Content Creation- Having a steady stream of something new on your website, blog, or newsletter is a lot harder than it seems. Life and business gets in the way, or sometimes you just can’t get the energy and inspiration and next thing you know you everything is six to nine months old (trust me, I know!). Try writing some articles, blog posts, or other types of content during this slow period so that you’ll have something new to post when you’re stuck for time or inspiration.

• SEO Optimization- A lot of you guys have been using Website Grader’s SEO Tool to see how well your website is optimized for search engines. Once you get that score, you can use this slow time to do keyword research, search engine optimization, and link building.

• Traffic Building- If you’ve listened to my audio download, “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website“, you would have heard me talking about using articles, blog comments, and a number of other things to help build traffic to your website. While none of these things are difficult, they do take some time to do and the benefits might not be seen right away. Why not use this slow time to get started? Just like planting seeds in the spring, the benefits of doing these traffic building tasks now will be realized later on when you don’t have time to concentrate on traffic building. Haven’t listened to “10 Steps to Getting More Traffic on Your Website“? Your first task would be get your own copy and listen to it right now!

If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the audio, you can click here to subscribe my free newsletter. You’ll receive the link to the rest of the audio along with this week’s newsletter article.

The Storque has a great post on how to prepare your Etsy store for the holidays. Some great information even if you don’t have an Etsy store. You can check out the post here.

Newsletter subscribers should also check out the article archive for my article on “Preparing Your Site for the Holidays“. It includes tips on how to create incentives for shoppers who are “early birds” and “last minute procrastinators”. Tips on how to create a great online holiday promotion and tips on how to make your website a great place to do holiday shopping.

If you’re doing a lot of holiday craft shows, you may also want to check out my article on “Using Your Website to Increase Show Sales” while you’re at it. Holiday shows are usually the most profitable time for those on the show circuit, learn how to make your website do double duty and increase your sales.

If you’re not a subscriber yet, just subscribe to the newsletter by filling out the subscription form on the right or by visiting this page.

Colin provided a lot of really good information on search engine optimization and how to use it to draw more traffic to your website. If you didn’t make the call, but still want to hear it, I’ve recorded it and I have it available as an MP3 download. You can get the download here. Lots of good stuff…be sure to check it out!

Photo by Leo Reynolds

I don’t quite remember who said this, but the easiest way to get traffic to your site is to figure out where the traffic is, and then to put your website right in front if it.

Basically this means that you set up your website so that when someone goes on Google and searches for handmade letterpress stationary or birthstone jewelry for Mother’s Day, your website will be the one that’s at the top of the list.

I’ve been wanting to do a series on SEO because building traffic is something that anyone who has a website wants to know about. I’ll freely admit that I’m not as knowledgeable about this as a lot of other people. So what’s the solution? I’ll find someone who knows me than me and have them talk about it. And that’s exactly what I’m doing next week!

So, on July 8th at 8 p.m. (EST), I’ll be holding my first ever tele-seminar called, “How to Build Traffic to Your Art Website…SEO Secrets Revealed“. Since this will be my very first crack at doing one of these things, registering for the call is free.

Now there are a limited amount of spaces available for the call, so if you want to participate, you should register fairly soon. You can click here (again, registration is FREE) to register for the call.

Hope to meet you on the phone next Tuesday evening!

Photo by Leo Reynolds

• be no more than 72 dpi resolution.
• be no more than 500 to 800 pixels wide.
• have file names that makes each photo easy to identify. If your digital camera or scanner names all of your photos 100039039.jpg, rename each image so that gallery owners can identify them quickly, like rakuvase2008.jpg or silvernecklace.jpg.
• be in the right format. A good format for email is .jpg.

Need more information about digital images? Check out my series on digital images and check out the link roundup on photographing your work.

Well, one way to get people to bookmark your website is to tell people to do it. Don’t expect that they will automatically will do it on their own. Remind them to do it by:

1. Including links or buttons to bookmarking websites like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Ma.gnolia on your website and blog posts
2. Including requests to bookmark you at the end of any articles you write on your website
3. Giving instructions on how to bookmark you
4. Placing a “please bookmark me!” note at the top and bottom of each of your web pages
5. Including it in your logo graphic like the one in this post
6. Giving people a reason to bookmark your website

Out of all of these suggestions number 6 is the hardest to do. People aren’t just going to bookmark you just because you want them to. You need to give them a reason to do so. Having work that everyone loves to look at is one reason why people would want to bookmark you. But give them more reasons.

People love to bookmark things like great articles, references, interesting audio and video. People also like to pass along these bookmarks to others especially if the bookmark is funny, useful, or thought-provoking. For more information on how to get more bookmarks to your website, check out this article on getting better bookmarks and links.

So for today, think about it…what kind of things can you add to your website today that will make people want to bookmark it?

P.S. If you’ve found this post useful..please bookmark it. (Hey…just following my own advice )

Well, I’ve been spending most of the week playing around with a website called Squidoo and created a brand new lens called “How Artists Can Market Themselves on the Internet“. There is some advice that artists and crafters can use to promote themselves and their work on the Internet. You can check it out by clicking here.

So what exactly is Squidoo? Basically, Squidoo is a website that allows people to create single web pages focused on a certain topic. Each page is called a “lens”. Let’s say for example that you’re an expert on firing raku pottery, you can create a lens that’s all about firing raku pottery. A Squidoo lens isn’t about creating one page that contains everything you know about a single topic, rather it’s a place that gives you the information and resources where you can find out more.

What exactly does Squidoo means for you as an artist? Isn’t this just one more thing that you have to to that takes up more time? There’s actually some benefits that you can consider.

• Having a Squidoo lens can point people back to your website. If you create a lens on a topic that people are interested in, you can point some of that traffic back to your website.
• A link from your Squidoo lens to your main site will help in your search engine ranking. Search engines give websites a high position in search engine results if they have a lot link links coming to it. They especially favor links from large, popular sites like Squidoo. Creating a Squidoo lens that links to your site will help out with that
• You can make money from your Squidoo lens. Not a ton of it…but even a bit of pocket change is nice
• It’s easy and free. If you can click buttons and type text into boxes, you can build a Squidoo lens. You don’t have to know a lick of HTML in order to create a Squidoo lens within an hour or so (although it’s helpful if you do know).
• It’s another way to get your name out there.

What to know more? Check out my lens (and rate it and email to others if you like it please pretty please and thank you). Plus, you can check out this video tour I made of Squidoo so you can get a better idea of what it’s all about.

P.S. Feel free to pass along this video too… thanks!

1. Know what it is that you want to accomplish- that’s something you need to know before you even start developing your web site. Then everything you do after that will go towards reaching that goal.

2. Know your audience- If your goal is to sell artwork, then you need to attract art buyers. If your goal is to get into galleries, then you need to attract gallery owners. Once you know your audience, then you can put things on your web site that will attract them.

3. Start a blog- You need to make sure that whatever you’re writing in your blog is compelling enough to attract visitors and regular readers. Again, this goes back to items #1 & #2. If your goal is to sell artwork and you want to attract potential buyers, then you need to provide information on your blog that is attractive to potential art buyers. Also, be mindful that if you’re writing a blog, you have another audience that you should keep in mind…other blog owners. That’s the magic of blogs, if your blog is good enough, you’ll attract attention from other blog owners, who will in turn write about *your* blog, which in turn will entice their readers to look at *your* site.

4. Write articles- If you want to show what you know, one of the best things you can do is write articles about what you know. I’m talking about magazine articles, ezine articles, articles that you post on your web site. And in each article, have a small blurb about you and a link to your site.

5. Search engine optimization- It’s always a good idea to make sure that your site is as optimized as possible. If the main way your audience does research on art is through doing search engine searches, you may want to concentrate on that.

6. Start an email newsletter- If you write articles consider putting some exclusively for an email newsletter to be sent monthly or bi-monthly. Your newsletter can also contain special offers for artwork, news, and other things that promotes your web site. You can start gathering email addresses on your web site. Also, if you sell artwork, you can ask your customer if they want to be on your mailing list and gather their email addresses. Yes, you can have both a blog and an email newsletter at the same time. I have both on my web site, and they both have different purposes. The email newsletter as more promotional in nature, with discount offers, news, and information about upcoming events. The blog is more conversational in nature, where I post about how I create my designs, links to other things on the web, discussion about jewelry and design related news. Very few of my posts on my blog is promotional…that’s what my newsletter is for. Some of my customers just read the blog, others read just the newsletter, most read both.

7. Join art directories- There are a number of art directories out on the web for artists, for art galleries, etc. Many are free, some require you to pay a small fee. But compared to advertising, the fee may be worth it.

8. Participate in online communities- Start targeting message boards and forums where your target audience frequents and start participating. When you do so, concentrate on contributing to the conversation, resist the urge to spam the boards with blatant advertising…you’ll just make everyone mad. Show off your expertise, answer questions, and be sure that your profile is fully filled out. Once people start reading your posts, they’ll want to know more about you, which may lead to more traffic on your web site.

9. Public relations- Learn how to write a press release. Use it when you have something newsworthy about your site or yourself, say you won an award, or you sold a painting to someone famous. Send out a press release and target your local media and industry press. Create a press section on your web site and post all of your press releases there. Include an online media kit so reporters doing research can get it all from your web site.

10. Create a plan- Don’t run out and try all of these ideas at once. It’s better to pick one or two methods and concentrate on making them work than doing a whole slew of them badly. Write a plan by outlining your goal and your potential audience and pick a couple of methods to help carry them out. Some of the methods you pick will depend on your audience and your goals. Also remember to choose methods that play to your strengths. If you’re great at writing, then starting a blog and writing articles will play to that strength. If you’re good at researching and following trends, then search engine optimization is a good bet. If you like keeping in touch with the media, then the public relations route may be good for you.

11. Be patient- Building traffic and sales on your web site takes time. Even if you advertise, it takes time. Most web sites that are instant successes took years to get there. Give yourself time and keep at it.

While I’m on the subject of business cards, the Art Biz blog has a couple of posts on business cards that would be worth your while to check out:

• Some Handsome Artist Business Cards
• Get Your Business Cards Printed

Technorati Tags: business cards, design

One service that I’ve been using for a while is Google Alerts. Say you want to keep track of every web site or blog that mentions your name. To set up an alert, you fill specify what you want Google Alerts to search for, where to search for it (Google can search the whole web, blogs, and news sites), and how often you want the results (daily, once a week, or as soon as it finds a match) and the results are emailed to you.

I’ve been using this tool to keep an eye on who’s been linking to my blog and who’s been mentioning my blog posts. And I’ve often been surprised at where I’ve been finding links to my web sites and blogs.

Yesterday, I ran across an even better way to use Google Alerts. A couple days ago I mentioned Chuck Green’s web site and blog Ideabook.com. Yesterday, I received this email:

Nicolette:

Was alerted by Google that you had mentioned ideabook.com–many thanks for the kind words.

His email went on to tell me about some errors that he encountered trying subscribe to my RSS feed and checking out the past newsletter links. He even sent screenshots of the error messages and described what links he clicked on when he got the messages. Well, Chuck just made my day, I’ve been trying to find the source of those errors for awhile and his email pointed straight to the root of the problem. So thanks to Chuck and Google Alerts, the problem is all fixed…thanks Chuck!

After I fixed this problem, it occurred to me, why just use Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your site? Why not also use them as a why to start up a conversation with the people that are kind enough to mention you? Check out the site. Drop them an email to say thanks for mentioning you…make useful suggestions or comments that can help them out. If you run into a problem with their site, do what Chuck did and tell them about it. Invite them to join your newsletter or RSS feed. If you find their site interesting and useful as well, keep it as a resource…blog about it. Remember that marketing yourself on the web is really no different than marketing yourself off the web…it’s all about making connections and forging relationships!

“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.