As an artist these days it is not enough to be creative with your art form, and to be up on all the latest mediums and products out there. You also have to be a great marketer.
Even if you are lucky enough to be in a gallery t hat is still afloat chances are they have cut their advertising budget to the bone. And they expect the artists they represent to market themselves to an increasing degree. It is all about interfacing your marketing with their marketing. Websites are seen as less flexible and less friendly so more an more customers are looking for the friendly interaction available on social media. You have to Tweet, Blog, Facebook and Google +. Note that I did not say OR but AND.
And then there are the rack cards, QR codes, hot links, business cards, etc that all have to key into your net of social media.
As a former free lance writer I jumped on the blog bandwagon in a big way. I have three blogs and was considering two others when someone mentioned putting Static pages on my main blog - Creative Journey. What, pray tell, are static pages? They are pages that are not dated like your main blog page. They remain static at the date you created and/or edited them. They are great for contact information, catalogs of your work, bios and artist statements. They are really website pages linked to your blog. And if you blog weekly or more like I do the readers are invited to your main page with the list of pages right there in front of them.
Today, while avoiding the broken washing machine I watched a YouTube video on how to set up static pages. Really simple. And then dove in. Remember you can easily go back and edit any page at any time. Way more friendly than my website. So I set up four pages: Binford-Bell Studio and Gallery, Paintings, Creative Photography, and Back Country Photography. I can have 10 pages so I can also set a page up for my sister's photography since my gallery represents her work.
And Google allows you to immediately link every page update to Google +, FaceBook, and Twitter as well as e-mail customers to come and check it out. So much easier and less risky than e-mailing images to customers. So I am considering a page that is frequently updated with requests or special exhibits. Need to come up with a catchy name for that. Though even the name of the page is easy to edit.
And viewers that want to contact you about any items featured on a page can leave a comment, and you can comment back. Start a conversation.
I am very pleased. Thank you Google.
Very cool idea.
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