What an amazing weekend at my art-marketing workshop in Jackson, Michigan! The workshop was 5 hours yesterday. Today I did six individual consultations with area artists and that is so much fun. In-person meetings where we really get to dive into their personal needs. I love doing them!
One of the big lessons I always learn at these workshops is that artists who use technology have a distinct advantage over artists who don't. If you're reading this blog, you already know that. Don't take it for granted. Stay on top of technology and use the tools that are available to you.
Only 3 out of 66 artists in the room yesterday had a blog! I'm fairly sure that at least ten more will have them by week's end. But, think of that. Three of 66! That's a lot of artists who aren't taking advantage of these cool new tools. And we didn't even get into YouTube.
11 thoughts on “The technology advantage”
That really is a staggering statistic!
as one of a member operated gallery of 22 women, I have managed to finally convince the membership that having a yahoo group would help things run more smoothly, still only about half the women use it. I think about five of the members have websites and I am the only one who blogs. Many members still don’t know how to use a camera to document their work. I think a lot of the women have a mental block about the computer especially those over forty years old. For the younger generation its like second nature. For myself it has been an incredible tool for networking, selling, opportunities, friendships, resources and even lessons. As someone new to Art Biz Blog, I hope to learn more and stay on track…
I’m in a cooperative gallery of 18 artists. I started a blog for the gallery because with news about the gallery happenings and our individual members news, we have a lot to say: http://artistsgallery.blogspot.com I set it up as a group blog, but no one else is interested in blogging, so I do the posting for everyone. Gallery members range from young to old, men and women. So my 1 out of 18 statistic is pretty close to your 3 out of 66.
I did some figuring, Alyson, and realized that it was just a short five months ago that I attended your seminar in Wilmington Delaware. That was the day the mystery of “the blog” was solved for me thanks to you! Now, not only have I started a blog, I’ve actually gotten pretty good at making regular posts to my blog, and I try to take full advantage of it to use it as another tool to get the word out. There was certainly some learning curve time involved here and there, but when you get past the frustrating little problems that sometimes happen (that’s life!) it becomes easier and fun too! And when one needs to keep an eye on the expenses, ya can’t beat “FREE” for a great price! Again, due to finances, for now, the best I can do to have a web site is a (free) template site. It’s not an individually designed one-of-a-kind site that I hope to have someday, but for now at least it’s a place where I can send folks to see samples of my work. I alert folks on my mailing list when there is a new entry on the blog. I often get remarks from folks that they enjoy reading the latest on the blog! From the blog, they can find links to the other places on the web where they might find my work. I also can use the blog to give notice of events, display directions,… The way I figure it, if you’re already paying for the Internet capability, it’s a way to make full use of that expense! You just need to invest a little time and work. Thanks, Alyson! Your desire to share your knowledge has helped my business to develop! (Now, if only I could figure out how to turn the URLs below into hyperlinks! I guess I’m still on that learning curve item! Sorry, you’ll have to copy and paste.) My site: http://www.hellophiladelphia.com/art/Jeanne.cfm My blog: http://www.JeanneGuerin-Daley.blogspot.com Other links: http://www.ARTsisters.org Check out “Bahama Llama” at the bottom of this page: http://www.Abzoolutelychestnuthill.org/llama.asp By the way, if any of you readers, like me, aren’t able to have a site yet, you can go to http://www.hellometro.com, then find your nearest city and start one up!
Joe: use this code to make your hyperlinks work: <a href=”www.ARTsisters.org”>http://www.ARTsisters.org</a> Just replace the URL inbetween the quote marks and in between the “>” “<" brakets. Good Luck. Alyson: I couldn't agree more - I've started bringing artists and other creatives together in a small business community with hopes of given them more visibilty on the web, but there really is a steep learning curve that few attempt to totally overcome. What many artists don't thinka about is by getting online they are reaching out to (literally) the entire world. Blogging is by far the easiest way to do so because the information you provide in a blog by nature is so much deeper then a static HTML web page. Blogs manage the code for the blogger so no HTML learning is needed. And blogs can increase the artist's SEO which is probably the greatest mystery of all to any un-tech savy artist or small business.
Oops I guess my HTML example didn’t agree with the comment code restrictions, well you can go to this webpage: http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_links Which details how a hyperlink is made and gives you a way to play around and see how to change it in real time on the page without upload ftp or any of that stuff 🙂
Wow – that is quite a statistic! Well, I wouldn’t be blogging if it weren’t for your newsletter … I never really knew what a blog was until a month and a half ago. I have now been posting every day http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog and am pretty excited. I am still trying to get my friends to go and read it … they don’t know what a blog is either. I know understand the difference from a site … and I am excited. http://www.dianeclancy.com – I have had for at least 6 years … but this is so different! I love that I am connecting with people from around the world (I have been using the tools to find out which region people come from) ~ Diane Clancy
There seems to be a huge divide out there between artists who embrace technology and the internet and those that refuse to even have a website. As to the writer above who mentioned she couldn’t afford a fancy website–I do my own through Register.com and it costs about $120 a year! Architects, designers, art directors (ie. my clients!) tell me all the time how easy it is to navigate and how much they like it. It’s not fancy but it works! And I can do it all myself. You might check out Register.com or GoDaddy.com or one of the other companies out there. I change the photos and info on mine all the time so can’t imagine having a static website. As for blogging, I’ve said it here before but I can’t imagine my art business today without blogging and I don’t even just blog about my art. Thanks for keeping us on our toes, Alyson!
I am grateful to have some technical savviness, even though technology and ways of networking keeps changing all the time. ~Sue O’Kieffe http://sacred-circle-mandalas.blogspot.com
I’m proud to say that there are now 4 of the 66 artists from the Michigan workshop with blogs. It took me 12 hours to make one, and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking it for a while. Next marketing project will be the newsletter! Patrice Erickson Fine Art Portraits and Landscapes http://blog.patriceerickson.com/
Conundrum III
When I started my blog less than a month ago, I studied Alyson’s posts on blogging to make decisions about how I wanted to proceed.