This book was impossible to just plow through because they kept giving so many interesting examples and websites that I was constantly setting it down to go check things out (damn Baitcar.com!). My first “oh, yeah” moment was when I read the section “Get Linkable”. I have been designing websites for artists for a couple of years, now, and almost everyone wants one of those pretty Flash-based gallery sites. The problem is that you cannot send someone a link to just one of those pictures and say, “hey, I really like this one.” The best you can do is say, “go to this page and then click on the 12th thumbnail over and that is the picture that I really like.” In this new age where more is happening online rather than offline it is vital that you make everything on your website linkable. How does a blogger send someone to their favorite painting of yours if they have to explain it in terms of navigating a Flash site. They don’t. They will end up not even bothering because you’ve made it so difficult. So in addition to my motto of “make it easy to buy from you”, I add a new one: “make it easy to link to you!”
Along these same lines, they suggest that you make it easy for people to embed your images into their website. A great way to do this is to upload your images to Flickr. (I am already picturing a remake of one of my websites where all of the art images are only in Flicker and I simply use their code to embed them into my website.) Another great benefit of this method is that you can tag your images in Flicker which makes it even easier for people to find YOUR picture! (For those unfamiliar with the term, a “tag” is simply a “keyword”.)
My next post will wrap up the review and give you my final recommendations.
The website for this book by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo is www.socialmediaready.com. They are also run the company Capulet Communications where they offer web marketing services and truly walk the walk. From Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, they now live in an old farmhouse on the island state of Malta (south of Sicily).
Chris O’Byrne
OnlineArtsMarketing.com
3 comments ↓
Thanks for the review Chris. Indeed, Flash galleries may look pretty, but they aren’t always in an artist’s best interest. Thanks for checking out our ebook!
Hi Chris,
Sounds very interesting. Great timing …I am going to add a new gallery soon and I was going to do one of those flash things maybe .. or maybe they are flash … I am not sure … Perhaps we can talk.
But another item I might add, it is a blog that stays stable!! I can’t link from my feed reader any more and I can’t find the post I missed!
Thank you for this info!
~ Diane Clancy
http://www.dianeclancy.com/blog
Diane,
My feed should be working, now. I just checked it again to be sure. The feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnlineArtsMarketing
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