Lessons

Lesson Info

Blogging for Artists

So let's start with blogging otherwise known as why I love blogging for artists. Um The first aspect of promotions we're gonna talk about is blogging. There are many aspects to to to promoting your work and blogging is just one of them. It used to be that blogging in and of itself and this is really before social media took off was the place um that people got their information. How many of you at one point? Some of you still may do this, although this is much less common. How many of you used to or still do follow like an rss feed or or have a list of blogs that you read daily. Any of you like a handful. Okay so you have your favorite blogs, You have the places maybe their news blogs, they might be art and culture blog, there might be political blogs, they might be designed blogs but you've got your blog that you like where you get your information and you used to be that you would check in with those regularly. It was like I don't even remember there was a blog basically blog reader ...

websites that you could go to. But nowadays most people don't use those. Most people link get to other people's blogs by looking at twitter for example um or facebook this is how most um the entry point to most blogs including mine are just people who happen to click on a share link that I put on my facebook fan page or a link that I might post on twitter a couple times a day. And so blogging is really for me it's not alone going to lead to promotion unless you've got some die hard fans. You check your blog every day for the most part, it's just the place this place where you put your content and then you need to use social media to share it because that's how nowadays, how people are going to find you. The thing I love about blogging is that its current it's real time, especially if you do it fairly often and it's not static. So your website again is this place where you have a portfolio, you might have a newsreel that you update. But again, people, unless you're linking to it everyday, people aren't necessarily going to go there. And your blog is this wonderful place where you can on a daily basis, right about what's inspiring. You share a picture of something that you made the day before, show a picture of your sketchbook, write an essay about your perspective on something. Um even post pictures of your home or your life outside your studio. We're also going to talk about instagram is a powerful tool for that. Um The thing I love about blogging and instagram is they're both visual in a way that twitter and facebook are not as much. I feel like twitter and facebook are more sharing tools. We'll talk about that a minute, but blogging is current, it's ever evolving. It's fresh stuff. It's in real time. You can link to it from multiple places and it's much more likely that people will share it and stumble on it than your website. And I'll show you screenshots of my blog in a few minutes and all of the ways that content gets shared. I love this quote by Dostoevsky. Um remember Yesterday in segment four, we talked about figuring out how to tell your story so people can begin to understand who you are and the personal personality of your business. And I believe that your blog is the best tool in your branding tool kit. Sometimes, when I talk to other artists about telling their story and some of you may be feeling this right now, you'll say I have no story or my story is boring, my life is boring, my art is boring. Um and I believe that everyone has a story and everyone's story is interesting, it's just sort of getting in touch with what your story is. Do you think your art is boring? Of course not. You wouldn't be taking this course and if you do, that's a whole other course that you probably need to take? Um Mhm. So what parts of your story you choose to tell and not tell are up to you what parts of yourself and your art and your process you want to share are up to you, a lot of people, I do share a lot, a lot of people think they know everything about me because of my instagram feed and blog, but that is not true. There are lots of things people don't know about me, lots of things I keep personal and but I share enough that people feel like they sort of know a little bit about my life and a lot about how I work and where I work. I post a lot of pictures of my studio both on instagram and my blog and a lot about my approach to what I do or the projects that I'm working on. So this is a screenshot of my blog which is called Today is going to be awesome. I came up with that name like one day I had several other blogs before this one and then I took a break from blogging because I found that blogging was exhausting for me. And I also realized that I wasn't drawing enough people into what I was doing without a blog and I sort of went through this little bit of a of a slump when I didn't have a blog for about a year. So I just started to start once again and there were a few things I decided one was that I was not going to have comments. So comments are a great way for people to engage with your content if you're comfortable with them. But what do we also know about comments? Probably, huh internet trolls? Yes, so or just mean people um for me it was less that I hadn't had a lot of negative experiences, but that is absolutely true. It might be more true for me today because my blog has a much larger readership than it did at the time. Um But another thing we deal with is just that people are asking questions and commenting and what do we often feel like when people ask questions and comments, you have to respond, you know, and what does that do take your time? Um And again, if this is something that you enjoy and this is how you want to engage people in conversation, that's great. I have a lot of friends who are artists and designers and keep blogs and have comments and really love that engagement for me, it felt overwhelming and I also didn't like that. I cared too much about what people thought or what people were saying, even the positive stuff I cared too much about it. And so I just said I'm not going to comment on this blog. If people really want to tell me something, they'll email email me and because I use my facebook fan page and twitter as sharing tools for my blog post on a daily basis. People still get to comment. They comment on my facebook fan page when I post the blog post or they respond to me on twitter and that ends up being fewer people and I kind of like it that way, a link to my portfolio. So what is this? Link back to my my website drives more traffic back to my website. This is actually connected to my website. So lisa condon dot com slash blog. Both my blog and my website are both in Wordpress. I have an about page my about page that it comes from my blog is more comprehensive than the one on my website. Um It talks about you know, other things about me that I'm an athlete. Um and that I'm a home body and I like to stay at home and read and spend time with my family. And there's an F. A. Q. Um which has frequently asked questions. Um and contact information and then below that are categories and other links to. I don't have advertising on my blog either. Um that was another thing that was really important to me. I make 100% of my income From my artwork and then also teaching and speaking and um so I don't I didn't want to have to manage just another income stream. Although I think advertising on your blog is fine. It's much harder to make money from it these days. Any blogger will tell you that than it was 10 years ago because there's more people blogging. Um But I advertise my own things like the classes, the books, all the other things. My Etsy shop, the iphone cases that I design and those are all listed below on this right hand side and then there's a sort of feed of posts. So you get to set the rules for what your blog is and what you share and don't share. These are the categories on my blog. I had to take two screenshots because their drop down menus and couldn't fit them all in 11 box. But there's categories of work that I make. And sometimes in Wordpress you can set it up so that you can tag posts with different categories. So if people are looking to see all the repeat patterns you've ever made or all the drawings that you've done or pictures of um paintings or paintings that you've made. I've got my you know, repeat patterns. And I have this category called Life outside the studio. So if I'm writing about a vacation that I took or just something that I did that was sort of different from my regular working life as an artist, I'll add that category. Kids are occasionally make art for kids that I sell through land of nod in other places, inspiration. Um That includes interviews with other artists, um blog posts where I just write about other artists who I admire. Um like Rachel, I like to do that a lot show who I find whose work I find interesting press that I've gotten um pictures of my studio illustration projects anytime I complete a job and it's okay for me to post it publicly. Um like for the client because sometimes you have to keep things a secret for a while until the product is released or the whatever. Um I'll usually write about it on here and add it to my portfolio. Of course on my website making blogging manageable. It can feel overwhelming to a lot of people. I've just shared all this with you but I guarantee once you get the system down it's great. Um Find a format that works for you. Um So there are these kinds of traditional blogs where you have the post going to feed and you've got some categories over to the right or to the left or however you organize it. You got your header at the top. There's just sort of a general blog format, right? And I think I mentioned wordpress and squarespace but then there are also those where you can it doesn't have you can't necessarily use your own U. R. L. But it's like you know lisa canyon type pad dot com or whatever, you could use thai pad. Um Others and those are great. There's also a tumbler which is also a form of social media but tumbler is like short form blogging. You can do a little bit of writing and post pictures and people um can exponentially share too which is a wonderful thing about tumbler, things similar to Pinterest. Sometimes things end up getting shared so much that they lose their original source. Um And so you don't always necessarily things don't always necessarily link back to you, but tumblers a great site for, you know, for blogging too, if you just want to post pictures in particular. So you also want to decide on a realistic posting frequency and make it a habit. So in our drink, I talk about this a lot. So you know, that's where you need to go to read more if you're interested in blogging, but you wanna figure out how often you think you can write. And I I think in the best case scenario you're blogging every day and the way to make that manageable is on the days when you're working a lot or you don't have a lot of time Just post-1 picture of something you drew and write one sentence or a photograph that you took or a pot that you threw or whatever it is that you make. Um and I'm gonna tell you what you're going to do to get people to look at the stuff that you post on your blog in a second. And so you want to make a reasonable schedule and you want to stick to it so that the people who visit your blog know what to expect. And you also want to think about what you can post on days when you're suddenly in a hurry, you want to always post content that's meaningful to you. People will know the way to keep blogging fun is to just write about stuff or post pictures of stuff that you find interesting yourself and talk about why it's interesting to you or why it's inspiring to you or why making this thing was really fun for you or why taking a class was a great experience. You can really write about anything but important to also use your authentic voice. One more point on this and then we'll talk more about social media, make it easy for people to share your content. Okay, so um if you don't have a facebook fan page already gonna talk about this again in a second, Get one, if you don't have a twitter account, get one because these are the ways that you're gonna share your blog content and it's also the way that other people can share your blog content. So here's another very small screenshot of my blog. Now you can see this blog post. I took a screenshot from my friend Grace Bonnie's blog design sponge, I was on her radio show and um she took this picture of me and put a quote on it, so I took a screenshot of her blog and put it on my blog. Um And Melanie, I want to address your question about humility in a minute, I haven't forgotten about you. Um and you can see down here at the bottom there is a facebook share button and a twitter share button. Some people have share buttons for other social media platforms like Pinterest. Um But those are the ones that I like and that I like to use. Again I get to choose, I don't have to use them all. Um And this is a way for people to share. So This post got shared. Well when I took this screenshot 223 times from my blog and that probably went to other people's facebook pages and then from there who knows how many times it got shared? Right? So you can see how exponential it is. Even if you only got Five and in the beginning that's all I got was five Facebook shares. When I first started my blog, sometimes twitter is much less for me. People don't share as much of my content on twitter. So these are authentic, real time share numbers and then those get shared and retweeted in other places, which drives more traffic back to my site. Oh here's some also you can see the screenshots of the advertisements I have for some of my products and things over on the right