Types of Online Presence

There are several ways of developing your online strategy. Think about the most appropriate platform to present your work, and the amount of time and energy you want to spend both designing your presence and maintaining it.

Be honest with yourself about this, thinking about how comfortable you feel using technology, and what you might do to keep things fresh and interesting.

Content is king (and queen!), so make sure that images and other media you publish are high quality, and that you keep visitors coming regularly and maintain your profile by making sure your presence is up-to-date.

There are a number of online providers that can be tailored to fit the requirements of artists.

A good approach is to choose a few providers that cover different bases and link them together, so visitors can follow your trail and build you into their network:

Denise Bryan ... and the time is now, 2007

Managed art websites

There are a number of managed websites designed specifically for artists to showcase their work. Often these sites have a subscription fee and rank highly in internet search results. Most also offer other kinds of promotion, publications and opportunities for their members, as well as professional kudos.

Building your own website

Although building and maintaining your own website is undoubtedly very professional, and gives you the freedom to create your own style, it is very difficult to stay visible in search engines unless people are constantly linking to your site. This option will require regular marketing intervention, as well as the initial outlay to build it.

Writing an Artist blog

Writing a blog with regular posts can help keep your profile high, and most providers offer a range of formatting templates. Video, sound and image content can be uploaded easily through a user interface, making this a fast option. As well as a rolling diary-style format, bloggers can create other static pages, such as a gallery.

Content management sites

If you’d like to find a compromise, where you can make your individual mark without having to write code for a website, a content management site could be for you, providing an easy-to-use interface that you can adapt to your requirements.

Using Facebook professionally

Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world, with half a billion users, so should form part of your online strategy if you want to reach a broad audience, although there is the needle in a haystack issue of trying to get your work noticed. amongst billions of other posts and advertisements.

Twitter

Another social networking site, with a vast community of users, who follow each other and communicate in short tweets of up to 140 letters long. Any tweet can then be forwarded or replied to, so hot news can travel around the world in seconds.

Video sharing

Even if you’re not an artist working with new media, it can be useful to post to a video-sharing site, as having a variety of content caters for followers who would rather view than read. This can be of real benefit and gives a more personal flavour to your virtual world.

Types of Online Presence

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There are several ways of developing your online strategy. Think about the most appropriate platform to present your work, and the amount of time and energy you want to spend both designing your presence and maintaining it.

Be honest with yourself about this, thinking about how comfortable you feel using technology, and what you might do to keep things fresh and interesting.