Document/file sharing sites are a quick and easy way for an artist to upload articles, announcements, press releases and images to the internet. As a result of these uploads and the interest that they generate, they help the artist to create and attract new visitors to their art website. Just what is a document/file sharing site and how do they work?

A document/file sharing site allows a registered user to upload documents, portfolios and presentations that then become available to and can be seen by regular internet traffic. The most common file types that a user is allowed to upload are: Word.doc, PDF, Xls and PowerPoint and then shared.

Document/file sharing sites allow the user to optimize their documents for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). What does this mean? It means that when a document is uploaded, as part of the process, the user can create keyword rich headlines and descriptions. In addition, part of the upload process allows for tags and keywords to be placed within the document file. This feature helps to generate interest in and to get the document discovered on the internet.

Uploading to a document/file sharing site is as if the user were creating and producing a webpage on a specific subject, for the whole world to see, immediately. The document /file sharing sites are rated very high by the major search engines and they are indexed almost on a daily basis. This means that besides the content being indexed quickly, all links back to the artist’s site receive a high grade which increases search page rank. In addition, your documents/files can contain as many backlinks to your website as possible (PR sites usually have a limit as to how many links are allowed).

Up until recently, article sites provided a great opportunity to get your work out on the internet. At one time, article sites were indexed and rated highly for the search engines. Right now, search engines rank document sites much higher and because of this, it helps your website to get ranked higher, due to the quality of the links between their site and yours.

As part of your free document/file sharing account, they will allow you to create a professional profile, for your free account. The best known and more popular document/file sharing sites are:

http://issuu.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/ 
http://www.calameo.com/
http://www.docstoc.com/ 
http://www.scribd.com/
https://docs.google.com/  
http://www.gazhoo.com/ 

If you need an almost immediate boost in traffic to your art website, begin to upload your documents, files and images to these document/file sharing sites. If the documents/files are submitted properly, it is a great way to be discovered on the internet and as a bonus, producing additional qualified traffic to the artist’s website.

Are you marketing and branding your art through social media and getting the results that you desire? Have your efforts in social media so far been worthwhile? Do you feel comfortable in establishing your presence in this new medium? Are you up-to-date on the effectiveness of this media? If you said “no” to any of the above questions then it may be time for you to brush-up on your social media “netiquette” as your effectiveness may be improved by adhering to the unofficial rules social networking.

In social media try to develop connections and relationships with people rather than advertising, promoting, selling something and by spamming people. People want to be educated, engaged and informed by you, rather than being “sold” by you.

When reading an interesting post about your art share it with your followers, friends and in your networks. By doing this, your followers will remember you, follow you more closely because of your attention and begin to connect with you.

Always be upbeat, positive and helpful with your followers, friends and networks. Remember that “social networking” is a tool that is used to develop relationships and contacts that are related to you in the art business. Do not just send posts and announcements about selling your artwork to your followers as this may be considered as spam and it will cause people to drop you, unfollow or eventually block you. Send interesting posts related to the art world and people will look forward to your posts, Tweets and updates.

Do not send negative or offensive posts, Tweets and updates. You are trying to meet people and build a following. Remember, this is called social media and people want to follow an upbeat and positive person. In addition, whatever you say, write or post will follow you forever, so think twice before you post!

If you are using Twitter, do not forget to give the original person credit for a Retweet. Remember, it is social media and by giving credit you are being helpful in promoting the other person’s business too. Turnabout is fair play and others who are social media savvy will do the same for you.

Do not ignore direct messages or emails from followers or from others in your network. Try to answer them promptly, otherwise it is similar to not acknowledging that person. Also, do not use the direct message feature to spam, sell or solicit business.

Do not send out and post personal information about yourself or about other people. Social media is a tool for trying to develop relationships, not to spread gossip. Do not ruin your reputation by revealing personal information and or details about yourself.

Do not post that you have just stopped following or unfriended someone. Or post something that indicates that you will not do business with “so and so”, because of. People do not care about this information and social media should not be for that purpose.

Try to fit in and be a part of a crowd. Someone once wrote that to be effective in social media that you need to think of it and approach it as if it were a cocktail party. When you attend that party you need to introduce yourself, get to know that person and then mingle with the other guests. In other words, be sociable and get to know everyone at the party as much as possible.

I have always thought of social media as an incredible tool that provides you an opportunity to meet, interact and get to know people who you would otherwise not be able to meet in any other situation. Think of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social media as a regular networking event where you will be meeting new people and you will need to be on your best behavior in order to make a good impression on someone, who can further your art business. Just remember that whatever you do in person at a networking event, you also should do online too.

Press releases can help anyone, especially an artist to not only bring attention to their art, but to generate traffic to their website and also to assist with the branding of the artist and their art.

Just exactly is a press release? A press release is defined as “a prepared statement, of something that is deemed to be newsworthy, that will be distributed the news media in order to gain attention to said newsworthy event.”

The following are the elements of a good press release and should be followed when an artist write their press release.

Headline

Headlines are a line of text at the top of the press release that in a single line will describe and bring attention to the event or the news that is contained in the press release. In the past (prior to the digital age) headlines were created to not only draw the attention of the reader, but especially to draw the attention of newspaper editors, in the hope that they would use the release in their publication. Today, this is still true, but now the headline is also written and used for keywords and SEO (search engine optimization) as it relates to generating page views and traffic back to the source of the press release. (Keywords are used by search engines to locate information that viewers have requested).

The headline should be descriptive and concise. If at all possible, try to limit the headline to no more than 120 characters. Each word should be formatted with the first letter being capitalized (not all caps).

Summary

Besides the headline being very important for SEO purposes, the summary section also allows the artist to expand the use of secondary and additional keywords. The summary should also be very descriptive of the event and why someone should want to read the rest of the press release. It is a selling opportunity for the artist to sell themselves, their art or their art event.The summary is a single short paragraph and if it is too long the artist may lose the reader. Therefore, it is extremely important to write and rewrite this section in order to insure that it gets the important points across why someone would want to read the full press release. Any sentences in this summary should be in sentence case, with only first letter of a sentence being capitalized. The rest of the press release is considered the body of the release and it will contain the following components:

Dateline

The dateline contains the date of the press release and this is a very important component to the reader to see if the news is old, new, even newsworthy or still valid. This section also contains the city of origin of the release for location purposes.

Introduction

The introduction of the press release is the paragraph that should answer the following questions for the reader; of who, what, when, where and why?

Details

The details of the press release are contained in the following paragraphs and will explain, provide background and detail the thoughts contained in the introduction section.The body (details) should be made up of at least two paragraphs. The paragraphs should contain 5 to 10 lines of copy.

About

The about section is a short paragraph which provides background information on the company or organization who is issuing the press release. Contact Information

The contact information section contains the name of the issuing individual, their telephone number, their email address, the company postal mailing address and the company website URL. The contact information section is also an invitation from the writer to the reader that they can provide additional information, if requested.

Helpful Hints

A press release should be written in the third person, as if someone else is writing about this event or news, other than the writer.  Always send any supporting images or graphics that will be used or was a part of this event or news. An editor is more likely to not only look at the press release but will tend to use the press release if it contains interesting pictures.

Study press releases of major companies or other artists who you would like to emulate (all of their websites usually have a press section) and see how they have structured and written their press releases. There is nothing wrong with this and by following the best, it will increase your chances of having more and better publicity, if the press release is in an acceptable form for the industry.

Finally, there are hundreds of free press release distribution companies on the internet, locate them and use them to your benefit the next time you have an art event, art exhibition or something that is newsworthy about your art. Your press releases will help you draw attention to your art and will also bring additional traffic to your website.

In order to gain an edge over your art competitors and to keep your name and your art exposed to your target audience, I suggest that all artists apply to and get on as many artist registries’ as you can. 

Just what is an artist registry and what can it do for an artist?  An artist registry is an effective, low cost (in most cases “no cost”) tool that helps an artist to expose their art work to art collectors, gallery owners/directors, art buyers and general art lovers. 

Many large cities, states, and other art organizations offer and run artist registries.    Think of an artist registry as a way for an art organization to expose and promote it’s registered artists to the world.  In a way, the creators and administrators of the registry are acting as an advocate for their registered artists.

Besides listing the artist by name, in most cases, the artist is able to upload some of their art to their profile, provide a small biography and other pertinent information about the artist, their education and their experience in the art field. 

One of the best features of being listed in an artist registry is that you will be able to create a back link to your art website.  Besides the exposure, this will help in your page ranking with Google.  Google and the other large search engines base a certain percentage of their page ranking of your website on the amount and the quality of the back links that your website contains.  Artist registries are a quality link and if you can get on as many of these as possible it will eventually help your page ranking when it comes to searching about your art.

How can you find artist registries?  It is fairly simple.  Go Google, Bing or Yahoo and type in the search feature “artist registry” or “art registry”.  In order to locate registries for a certain location, use the above terms with a + sign and the location.  For example use the search term “artist registry + Chicago”  or “art registry + Texas” and see what comes up, then research each site, as to whether or not it fits your needs.

In addition, try the search term “slide registry” too.  It is an old fashion term for the same thing.  Artists should take advantage of being registered and placed on artist registries, not only for their marketing exposure but for the back links that they create as well. 

If an artist is unhappy with their website’s page rank, traffic or the quality of their inquiries, then Google Insights can help an artist to fine tune their art website. Google Insights will provide an art website owner with a better understanding of internet search behavior which can then be used to improve a websites’ performance. Finally, Google Insights can help an artist to improve the standing of their search results and overall effectiveness of their art website.

Google Insights provides the user with data that is compiled from all the searches for certain search terms and search phrases, relative to the total number of active domains that exist. Besides providing information about “all searches”, this data and information can be broken down further into sub-categories such as web searches, news searches, image searches and product searches. Depending on the product or service that someone wants to promote, the ability to refine the search data is extremely important as I will point out later in the article.

Google Insights can provide information to the art website owner on how many times a search term has been used, in what region of the world and by what language. Why is this important? It is important as it allows an art website owner with the ability to fine tune their website with specific meta tags and meta descriptions which helps the artist to reach their target market more effectively. Online marketing and promotional messages can reach their target audience more efficiently, in greater volume and with better results when an artist uses the search data provided by Google Insights.

As an example, a West Palm Beach, Florida artist who specializes in abstract art and has been using the keyword term “abstract art” for his website title tags and with the tags for his local online advertising. If the artist was to input that term in the Google Insights tool and wanted to know where that search term is the most popular throughout the state, then this information would be provided. It would show that Tampa, Orlando and Miami were the top 3 cities or regions where this term was searched. West Palm Beach comes in a very distant 5th. This would indicate that the artist’s advertising and promotional dollars would be better spent if he were to target those 3 regions in the state, rather than in West Palm Beach when using that search term.

The same type of analysis could be done for the entire United States, which would show which states or regions of the country which would have the highest search term popularity for “abstract art”. In this instance, it is Arkansas, South Dakota and Idaho. Florida does not even show up in the top 10 of regional interest. Again, the artist could target those regions with this information in online advertising and promotions. Facebook advertising and Google Adwords allows the artist to target those areas precisely by towns, by zip codes and by times of the day. Why waste valuable advertising dollars by promoting their art work in any areas of little interest, when those dollars could be spent elsewhere, be more effective and provide better results?

As part of the Google Insights data it also provides a user with 10 related and alternative search terms that can be used or added to the artist’s website, tags and online advertising. In the instance of “abstract art” Google insights also suggests for the first 3 keyword terms; 1. Abstract art paintings. 2. Abstract paintings. 3. Abstract painting. Another feature that Google Insights provides to the user is what they call “Rising Searches”. Rising searches will provide the user with data on search words/phrases that have shown a significant increase in use since the preceding period of time. Again, in the case of “abstract art” they are showing; 1. Abstract art ideas. 2. Abstract definition. 3. Abstract art definition. Whether they make any sense to be included and used as keywords and tags is up to the art website owner.

There are a couple of other features of Google Insights that I would like to point out as well. This tool also has the ability to collect and compare data based on specific locations and by exact time periods. This data allows the user to pin point search data by cities/towns, by certain days, months or years. This can be important information which will show the highest use during times of week or days/months of high demand. Finally this data can be filtered by categories. For our example the search term “abstract art” could be filtered by all search categories or specifically by arts and humanities. This means that if abstract art were to be searched just by the art and humanities category, the results for “abstract art” in the arts and humanities search would not be skewed by the additional results of the other categories of entertainment, business and recreation. In other words, the results are just for that term in any of the searches that would be for arts and humanities.

As you can see by the above, this type of information can be very valuable to a website owner if they are unhappy with their present search results and website performance. Google Insights may be the tool that can help an artist to not only get more searches for their art website but also provide the artist with better quality traffic and more art sales.

Artists should try Google Insights to improve their online art business. This information can be reached here at http://www.google.com/insights/search/#