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FineArtViews Newsletter
Straight Talk about Art, Marketing,
Inspiration and Fine Living
For Artists, Collectors and Galleries
(and anyone else who loves art)
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Web Traffic Driver #9
Build RSS Subscribers
by Clint Watson
IF YOU WISH TO UNSUBSCRIBE, CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK:
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007
San Antonio, Texas
IN THIS ISSUE
* Build RSS Subscribers
* SEO Not the Most Important Thing, Revisited
* COLLECTOR'S DISCOVERY SALON
See the latest works by our artist members!
* The Bookshelf
* From the FineArtViews Blogs
The Latest Ruminations from our artist members.
* Focal Point: banal
== Highly Recommended ==
Find Out About Tomorrow's Masters Today
Announcing:
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A
new service from the writers of FineArtViews, Informed Collector will
provide art collectors with what they need - information: a daily focus
on artists they need to know about and other art collecting
information. . . all in an quick to read format.
Free Sign Up For Informed Collector:
http://informedcollector.com
Art by Adan Lerma
Today's Selected Commenter
http://www.adanlerma.com/
YOUR artwork could be pictured here tomorrow
just comment on today's article before midnight,
and your artwork could be in front of thousands of people
tomorrow.
Web Traffic Driver #9:
Build RSS Subscribers
by Clint Watson
Dear {{FirstName}},
We all know that web sites and blogs live and die because of traffic.
This puts Google, as the Internet's de facto start page, front and
center in most artists minds as a traffic-driving strategy. However,
Google should not be the only.....nor even the main focus of your
online marketing efforts. We've written about this subject before in
our articles "What if Google Went Away?" and "Google Alone is Not
Marketing." This series is exploring specific ideas to drive traffic to
your web site....some will work synergistically with search engines
like Google....while others will not be dependent upon search engines
at all. All of these strategies will work with or without search
engines.
Today's strategy is to build Your RSS Subscribers.
If you don't know what RSS is, you need to. For an overview of What
RSS is and why you need it on your website, you can read our post, "Feed Your Artwork to Your Fans with RSS."
Implementing today's strategy is pretty simple, although if you have a
custom web site you may need to hire a programmer to help you with the
technical stuff.
1. Add RSS feed(s) to your website
Add a feed that lets subscribers be alerted to new artworks that you have posted on your website. As an art collector, we seriously wish
that every artist had this feature....so much so, that it's putting
artists who don't have it at a disadvantage because by the time we find
an available artwork by a non-RSS artist, we often have already spent
our collecting budget on artists who do have RSS feeds (because we knew
about their artworks sooner).
2. Have something on your website to indicate that you have the feed.
Just like you have to encourage people to sign up for your email
newsletter, you also need to encourage people to sign up for your
feed. The most common way to alert people to the presence of an RSS
feed is an orange feed icon like the one at the top of this post (but
smaller than that one).
3. Keep promoting it
When you send email newsletters, let people know that you also offer an
RSS feed. Tell people about your feed. When collectors ask about
staying informed about new works, encourage them to subscribe to the
feed.
Sincerely,
Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic
PS - If you're a FineArtStudioOnline client, all you have to do is step #3 - tell people about your feed. We've already added RSS feeds to your website. There is nothing you
have to do to "activate" them - they're already up and running on your
works portfolio page. If you look at your portfolio page, that's what
the orange "feed" icon is for. Don't worry if you don't understand it,
anyone who uses RSS will know what to do with it.
PPS - If you're not a FineArtStudioOnline client and want an RSS feed, why don't you take advantage of our 60 day free trial and see if our service will work for you?
---------
This article is reproduced with permission.
Copyright 2007 - Clint Watson.
To get more of Clint Watson's insights into art, marketing, inspiration
and fine living, check out his blog at:
FineArtViews Blog by Clint Watson:
http://www.clintwatson.net/blog
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Editor's Note: Each day we republish selected comments and artwork by artists who comment about the previous day's article. If you would like to share your thoughts, artwork and views with thousands of artists and collectors, (not to mention getting a valuable inbound link to your website) be sure to post a comment on today's article at the following link. To be considered, be sure to provide your comment through the link NOT by simply replying to this email. Make sure to comment before the end of the day to be considered for inclusion in tomorrow's newsletter:
A chance to get your views and web site featured in tomorrow's letter:
http://fineartviews.com/490
SEO Not the Most Important Thing, Revisited
Adan Lerma Wrote:
I'd like to add a few things to those Clint has mentioned re generating
web traffic to one's website; some I'm realizing recently, some I've
know for awhile but only made active "very" slowly through some kind of
invisible internal resistance.
First, many, maybe most of us, are already doing so many things we
could just “tweak” and suddenly add on to our
non-search-engine-optimizing behavior.
Like…actually carry our business cards, and, believe it or not, have
our website address on them! You wouldn’t believe how many times in so
many places my wife had to roll her eyes and pull out one of my
business cards from her purse because I “forgot” to have some on me.
Art openings, grocery store meetings with seldom seen friends, family
you forgot you had, you name it, all kinds of people we meet in all
kinds of ways. This is word of mouth from the horse’s mouth, me. :-)
Another is donating. Donate an original, a limited edition, or an
inexpensive print (sign it!) and stack a pile of your attractive
website imprinted cards next to your donation gift. Tell your local
paper you donated, tell your newsletter list, tell yourself your gift
gives both ways, outwardly and inwardly, and smile.
Give other people credit for things involved in your art, your printer,
your art club, your web master, your muse :-) and let them know you’ve
given them credit; if in an email, have your web url as part of your
sig; if in a note, have your web url on a neat looking return address
label (I have a graphic designer, Edye Giordano, at LMNOPeople.net put
mine on huge colorful dots!)
If you respond or post to anything online, maybe especially non-art
sites (housing blogs, tv show chat spots, pet peeve sites, etc), post
your website url there too, no other commentary needed. People look or
not. If you’re involved in something socially, and can inobtrusively
post your website address, you’re talking word of mouth.
Pick one or two times for the year, in your local newspaper, in a
section that appeals to you and see if they have a special rate for
“artists.” Print your ad, post your website, and spread the word you
have an ad in the newspaper. Austin’s a mecca in the spring and fall
for outdoor festivals, and I do a lot of Austin area landscapes, so I
like the travel/show-full-color 2 or 4 page insert in the Austin
American Statesman (my ad of course is a small part of the insert :-)
You almost always can get tear sheets (or full sheets) you can hand out
to favorite or promising people, plus keep some as a record of where
and how you’ve spread the word.
Best of all, most of us are doing most of this already. I don’t need to
skip my favorite food, or lift heavy weights, or run a mile before
breakfast (unless I feel like it :-) to get my website attention in
better shape.
Now granted, if you are reading this and are a fairly, or hugely,
successful artist already, all this may bring a smile of remembrance,
or a sad shake of your head; but if you’re like me, then it’s still a
sharing game, a process game. A game of self invention.
Like I like to say, best of luck to all of us!
adan lerma
www.adanlerma.com
More Comments:
http://fineartviews.com/489
All Past Issues:
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COLLECTOR'S DISCOVERY SALON:
See the latest artwork by artist members of our sister site, FineArtStudioOnline:
The Bookshelf:
Convenient links to books recently discussed in FineArtViews:
-- Highly Recommended --
"You Don't Have to Be a Webmaster
to Have a First Class Website"
"Thank you for the excellent service you have created for artists. I have received scores of compliments on my website.
More
importantly, my work is now reaching people around the globe; I have
been contacted by galleries in England and France as well as artists
and collectors from as far away as Australia and South Africa.
Your
templates have allowed me to have a first class website with very
little work. It is easy to upload images and to maintain the
website...and I didn't have to become a webmaster to learn how to do
it.I couldn't be more pleased!"
- William A. Schneider, OPA PSA
YOU can have an easy and professional web site too
Get more details and your Free 90-day trial:
Visit our website:
www.FineArtStudioOnline.com
Click "Sign Up", Use Promo Code FAV79C
FineArtStudioOnline
Easy Artist Websites (and Blogs) with Marketing Help
FOCAL POINT: banal
banal - (pr. bə-NAL, BAY-nəl) Boringly commonplace and predictable.
Trite and obvious.
A ban once meant a widely proclaimed order, originating in the Indo-European
bha, "speak." Marriage banns, proclaiming a couple's engagement,
are still publicly posted by some Christian churches. A French boulin à
ban or four à ban was a mill or an oven which the lord of the manor
provided for his tenants to use in common in return for a share of the output.
To the French, and then the English, banal came from this idea of the common or
usual.
Want More FineArtViews Right Now?
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http://www.clintwatson.net
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Essays by guest authors reflect the opinions of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Clinton B. Watson or FineArtViews.
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