American Craft Council Baltimore ShowWell, I’m back home after my trip to Baltimore to talk about Web Marketing and Blogging for Artists at the American Craft Council Show in Baltimore. I had a fairly big, yet energetic group to talk to (especially so early in the morning!). Thanks to everyone who came to my table and participated in the discussion!

Website marketing and blogging is a pretty big topic and it’s hard to get to everything in an hour and a half, but we did manage to talk about a wide range of topics. Here are some of the main points of what we discussed yesterday:

Main Points

  • Think of your website as your your “home base” and other things such as blogs, social networking, guest blogging are “outposts” on the Internet that lead people to your website. Not everyone is going to find you by landing on your home page. These other places on the web are where you can find like-minded people and lead them to your website.

  • Video is big online. Use short 1 to 5 minute videos on your website, on your blog, and on YouTube to give people a glimpse into your studio, your artwork, and as a way to connect with you.

  • Use your blog to help build your mailing list. Use a mailing list service to help gather the names and email addresses of the people that visit your website and blog.

  • Encourage people to sign up by providing something of value in exchange for their name and email address. Things like a coupon, exclusive content, tickets to a show, a free gift or other things that your customers that will find valuable will encourage people to sign up.

  • Twitter has become a popular “micro-blogging” tool and one of those “outposts” that can help your drive traffic to your website and blog. Provide Twitter updates (“tweets”) that are a combination of useful information and tips and glimpses into your life as an artist.

  • Consistency is the key to good blogging. Decide when and how often you’re going to blog and try to stick to that schedule as much as possible. Search engines (and your visitors too) learn when to expect new content from you if you’re consistent. As a result, your search engine rankings and blog readership will grow.

  • Optimizing your blog for search engines is a great way to get more traffic to your blog and by extension to your website. You can do this by doing some keyword research to see what keywords people are using.

  • Remember that people buy from your website only after they’ve developed some kind of relationship with you…especially in the case of artwork that’s in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. This means that you need to gather their email information so that you can start making regular contact with your potential customers, through an email newsletter, periodic updates, etc.

  • You don’t need to spend more than $10 to $15 per year on a domain name. I use My Namespot Domains ($8.99 per year) and GoDaddy on occasion ($9.99 per year).

  • Don’t think that you have to implement all of these techniques at once. Start slowly on one thing at a time and work continuously and consistently.

I’ve prepared some expanded notes along with links to some of the resources we discussed to send to my group, if you’re interested in a copy please email me or use the “Ask a Question” feature to send me a message and I’ll send them on to you.