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One thing that attracts people to your art blog or your craft website is to have something…maybe a feature, a photo, or style that makes people stop and say wow! It doesn’t have to be big, just something different, memorable, and makes you stand out from everyone else.

One example of this is a tutorial series on stranded knitting done by knitter Jen Nashville on her blog 144 Inches of I-Cord. I’ve seen tons of tutorials on websites and blogs, but hers was on the few that made be stop and say “Wow! That’s really cool!”

Comictutorial

Instead of the usual series of pictures, she turned her tutorial into an eyecatching comic book image that compelled me to visit her site and see more. How cool would an entire comic book of knitting techniques would be? It would certainly stand out from all the other books on knitting out there.

Superstar marketer Seth Godin calls this something that makes you stand out a “purple cow”. You see tons of black and white or white and brown cows in a field and don’t think to stop…but a purple cow will stop you in your tracks and make you go wow. He even demonstrated this when marketing his book “The Purple Cow” by distributing his first book run in limited edition customized milk cartoons. Seth and his book made the phrase “purple cow” part of the marketing dictionary.

So our job when it comes to promoting our website, our work, and ourselves to find our “purple cow”. As artists we’re already “purple cows” in the eyes of the public, so how to we portray that so people stop and say wow? What is it about your art that makes you different from other artists in the same medium? How does your craft make you different from other artists in general? What can people get from your website that they can’t get from the billions of other pages on the Internet? How will your booth stand out from the sea of white canopies at the big art fair?

How to Find Your Purple Cow:

  1. Take a look around and see what’s out there. Don’t be confined to looking for the latest design or hottest style. Look at how people are doing the most ordinary things. A tutorial on a knitting technique isn’t remarkable…but one written like a comic book is.
  2. Figure out how you can be different from everyone else. Everyone is different in some way…what’s your one thing that makes you different from everyone else?
  3. Don’t be afraid to take a good idea and make it your own. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you need to create something totally original…if you see a great idea that would apply to you, take the parts that would work and make it your own.
  4. Don’t confine yourself to the art and craft world. Some of the best ideas come from combining two totally different disciplines.
  5. Read Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. As a bonus, you should also subscribe to his blog for a daily stream of stand-out goodness.
  6. Read more in general. Some of the most creative people are insatiable readers…and the read on a wide variety of topics.

Thanks to Craftzine for the link to Jen’s blog!