Time for a load of links again, as usual I’ve been keeping a stack of these.

Art Opportunities And Events

S1 Artspace in Sheffield is hosting its third annual residency. The residency takes place over ten weeks from 19th July - 28th September, to be followed by a solo exhibition in October - November 2008 and the deadline is May 8th, so if you’re interested you’d better apply soon. I can’t apply but it looks like a good opportunity (it’s paid!) and it’s open to both British and international artists.

criticalnetwork is a new resource for UK and Ireland-based artists, activists, art organisations, cultural critics and the public, launched Feb 2007. Their focus is on “critical and contextual art, events and discussion” and you can sign up for a weekly newsletter of opportunities and events.

The Spike Island Open is coming up next weekend. If you’re close to Bristol, the launch party is on Friday 2 May from 6- 9pm with an After Party from 9-11pm. It continues from Saturday 3 – Monday 5 May 11am-6pm. It’s a popular and busy event that’s usually worth a visit and I’ll be there on the Friday evening if anyone wants to meet up. If I have the energy, I may also be hanging out in the Associate Space on the Sunday afternoon but it’s doubtful.

My friend Sarah B is doing some great curating work up in Cheltenham with the meantime project and I believe they’re always looking for interesting proposals.

The Here Shop is looking for amazing original crafters or anyone else who makes fantastic things, to use one of their shop windows on a monthly basis to showcase your works for sale. Email them at shopATthingsfromhere.co.uk or drop in some samples of your work and a plan of what you’d like to do. Click here for pics and a plan of the window.

Other Art Links

A lovely article entitled Art Is Medicine For The Soul

Harry White Design make excellent measuring jugs and I love his million dots print.

Do You Buy Art - an excellent article by artist, Lisa Call (her blog is great btw, you should read it).

Photographer Daniel Sroka, whose beautiful macro work I very much enjoy, has an interesting offer where you can buy a print of a work in progress and later upgrade so you wind up with two prints for the price of one. Cunning.

A celebration of the professional artist by Barney Davey.

Art Found Out is a blog dedicated to “artists who are informed by the world around them or driven by a highly personal artistic vision.” I like this blog but I’d like it even more if it had more entries on a page, having to click back after every entry is a bit annoying. I spotted this amazing looking book called Grandfather’s Envelopes on it - I want a copy of this Japanese book so badly but unfortunately haven’t been able to find any websites in English that sell it.

Advice from Alyson Stanfield on how to get out of an art slump. I need to follow some of this!

A couple from Empty Easel blog - a cheap and easy way to make a paintbrush cleaning jar and 8 Sensible Projects for Artists (I should be doing some of these too!)

Random Stuff

The Anti-Pragmatic Manifesto from the always interesting Cabinet Of Wonders

One for the Firefly fans - a couple of speeches from the film Serenity done in Shakespearean verse. I salute my fellow Browncoats…

An epic failure in packaging from the delightfully silly Fail Blog.

Beckett For Babies made me laugh.

It’s about time I got back to some of my more serious articles, so I’m starting a new series about how the internet is changing the economic aspects of the arts.

THE NEW CREATIVE ECONOMY: PART 1
Don’t Sue Your Customers!

The internet has undoubtedly changed how we engage with the arts, particularly in relation to music but also in other forms of creative expression. There’s no question that many sectors of the arts need a new funding model - but suing your customers isn’t it!

Ongoing battles between the entertainment industry and illegal downloaders are contributing to a damaging fall in consumer trust, according to new research from the PR agency Edelman. The number of UK consumers who said they trusted the industry fell from 47% in 2007 to 31% this year, with confidence disturbed by moves by the music industry to track down and punish illegal music copying, and high-profile scandals in broadcasting.
All quotes are from this article in The Guardian by Jemima Kiss.

Ah, the sweet sound of chickens coming home to roost!

The internet can be a disaster or a boon to the arts, it depends on how willing you are to embrace change. If you can see the potential and are willing to engage with your audience online, you can do well. If you resist the online changes and particularly if you treat your customers badly - as the mainstream music companies have been doing for several years now - your customers will return the favour.

Surveying younger consumers aged 18-34, Edelman found that 55% would take “direct action” against a company if they objected to its practices, 53% would share negative opinions with friends and 46% would ignore a firm’s marketing and advertising. Even more damning, a further 39% said they would not invest in those companies.

I’ve been predicting this for years - anyone with half a brain can see what’s happening, except the entrenched and outdated big music companies apparently. If they don’t change, they will die. The only reason they’ve survived as long as they have is that musicians and music consumers didn’t have a choice before but conditions have changed. Musicians are no longer so reliant on record companies to fund, distribute and promote their music; computers and the internet make it cheap and easy to produce and then promote your own music online. In addition, there are now there are new online music companies who use different financial models and who treat both customers and musicians much better:

Magnatune is an ethical record label based on downloading MP3’s. You choose the amount you want to pay and the artists get 50% of the price. You can then legally share your download with three of your friends. This article by John Buckman about why he started Magnatune is well worth reading because it exposes the problems with the traditional record companies.

The Podsafe Music Network is a promotion network that allows podcasters to download music that they can play on their shows for free without restrictive licensing agreements. Links back to the musicians from the podcasts allow listeners to buy music that they hear on podcasts; I’ve done this several times when I’ve heard something that I love.

Independent online record store, CD Baby only sell CD’s that come directly from the artists, who receive a large percentage of the cover price. I recently bought two Amy Steinberg CD’s from them after hearing one of her tracks on a podcast. My CD’s cost about £7, allowing me to return to joy of buying albums on spec, something I used to do a lot as a teenager when music was a more reasonable price than it was in the 90’s. In addition, the emails I got from the company were charming and funny and the CD’s arrived quickly from the States. I’m hugely resistant to buying music from the mainstream record companies because of the way they behave but I’d definitely buy from CD Baby again because they’re cute, well organised and they treat musicians well.

Although prices of CD’s have dropped recently for several reasons, musicians signed to major labels still only get a tiny fraction of the profits and may even lose money on record deals. The mainstream record companies still rip off both customers and musicians and then have the nerve to constantly bitch in the media and sue people. As is now becoming ever more apparent, this is a bad long term strategy.

The question I’ve been asking myself lately is “if I’m willing to buy Fairtrade to ensure producers in the third world are treated fairly, why am I supporting unethical music companies who mistreat musicians by underpaying them and trapping them into restrictive contracts where they often lose the rights to their own music?”

My solution has been to boycott the major record labels whenever possible and buy the music they produce secondhand but this means that the musicians don’t get anything at all, which I’m not happy about. There has to be a better way and hopefully some of these new online music businesses will provide a way forward where everyone is treated fairly, especially the people who make the music in the first place.

Let’s end on a positive note:

…the survey showed 56% of young UK consumers would rather buy legal content, if it was at a reduced price, than download illegally. That compared well with the 27% who refused to pay for content, and the 17% who said they might pay, but could continue to download illegal content as well. Much piracy, this would suggest, is fed by the lack of a legal online alternative.

If the mainstream music companies start treating their artists fairly, stop suing schoolkids, adapt to the changing conditions of their industry and do a lot of grovelling, then they may have a chance to survive. If they don’t, they’re history…

Maybe you’re asking yourself what this has to do with the visual arts, but as my dad says, “everyone’s useful, if nothing else they can always serve as a bad example!”

1: Keep Something Back

You don’t have to share your whole process and every piece of art you make. It can be nourishing to keep a private sketchbook or make little test pieces that you don’t intend to share. I have a couple of sketchbooks that I don’t usually show to anyone. Apart from anything else, we all need a place where we feel emotionally free to make bad art without worrying about an audience!

2: Let Yourself Play

Remember what got you into art in the first place and take some time to reconnect with that joy. This can easily get forgotten when you’re a professional artist and bogged down in promotional activities and exhibition schedules, so make sure you also schedule some playing time. Taking classes in a different technique or trying out an exciting new art material can be a good way to access what Buddhists calls ‘beginner’s mind’, that wonderful state where everything is exciting and fresh.

3: Find A Balance

Balance your practice by finding forms that complement each other. For example, if your work takes a long time and involves long and complicated projects, then regularly doing little pieces that can be finished quickly is a good counterbalance. It helps you feel as though you really are getting stuff done. Artists have traditionally done this by using drawing as a complement to painting or sculpture but it’s not the only option, performance, photography, writing, music or another form can also fill that need for immediacy.

Conversely, if you tend to complete works quickly, taking on a longer, more involved project can be an interesting challenge. Working in series is often a way of doing this but maybe you can think of other more unusual ways.

4: Love Your Process

I’ve seen far too many people, particularly at art school, endlessly struggling with a medium or form that they just don’t enjoy. Why? Art is hard enough without handicapping yourself with a process that doesn’t excite you. You need a certain amount of joy to get through all the bits that you don’t like, so don’t lumber yourself with a form that just doesn’t do it for you - it’s not noble, it’s just masochistic!

5: Accept The Lows

Anyone who tells you that art is a wonderful, creative thing that always makes you happy is an idiot!

Annoyance, small bursts of depression and large doses of frustration are a normal part of the artistic process. It doesn’t mean that you’re no good, that you’re not cut out to be an artist or that you’re doing the wrong thing, it just means that you’re engaged with your work. Just make sure that you do have a deep core of love for your process - if you’re annoyed all the time then you probably need to reconsider your medium (see number 4).

In my experience, anger and frustration usually happen right before a breakthrough and it’s a sign that I need to stick with a piece - although if I’m throwing things around the studio and yelling, I tend to take a day off! Feeling low usually happens when I’ve just completed something big - I call it The Exhibition Blues - and it’s always a sign that I need to step away from art for a while to recharge my batteries, assess what I’ve just finished and get ready for the next piece.

6: Fill Up The Well

Art doesn’t form in a vacuum and it’s important to replenish your inspiration on a regular basis. Julia Cameron suggests regular Artist’s Dates, where you schedule inspirational treats for yourself and I’d totally agree. This could involve reading art books; going to the theatre or cinema; visiting art galleries or museums; taking photograph’s at a farmer’s market; going for a walk; taking a day trip or indulging in some new materials at the art shop - the key is that it should be something that nourishes and inspires you. If you’re starting to feel a bit stale or low, then try this.

7: Write It Down

Give your brain a helping hand and write down all your ideas, not just the ones that seem immediately good and relevant. You can always edit them later and you never know when a seemingly unimportant thought will develop into a larger project. I often think that I’ve come up with a brand new idea but invariably I’ll find a single sentence in an old notebook that was clearly the original spark. New art takes time to grow, at least several years in my experience. Writing things down is a way of planting your ideas and then letting them develop while you’re busy getting on with something else - I call this process ‘composting’.

The notebook that I keep by my bed is the most important of the 5 or 6 journals and sketchbooks that I use. I wouldn’t want to be without the other notebooks because they all serve different purposes but the majority of my ideas start out in that little bedside book.

Bed is apparently where I think best but it varies from person to person. I know someone who keeps a waterproof board and pencil in her bathroom because she gets her best ideas in the bath. Someone else I know writes ideas on the steamy doors of her shower cubicle and then dashes out to grab some paper before they evaporate! Work out where you think best and make absolutely sure that you keep a way of recording ideas there.

8: Make Art A Priority

You need to make a space for art in your life. If art isn’t a priority then it simply won’t get done and you’ll get to the end of another year wondering why you haven’t made any work.

I do know that it’s difficult: if you’re working another job to pay your bills or raising children, then finding time and energy to make art can be especially tough but you need to keep hold of the idea that you’re an artist, that it’s central to who you are and that you’re going to keep making work somehow.

You may need to work in the margins of the day - on your lunch break, on public transport, as you’re waiting for a meeting to start, while the kids are napping or when the rest of the household is asleep. When I worked in a hospital, I used to sketch the visitors to the canteen on my lunchbreak. I didn’t do it every day but I did it enough that it noticeably improved my drawing at a time when I had no access to life drawing classes. I know several writers who’ve written zines and even novels in spare minutes at work. Other artists find ways to incorporate their paid work into their art, perhaps by using it as the subject of their work.

It’s easy to think that you need vast swathes of time in order to be an artist but that’s not always the case: what you need is a steady and regular commitment. Yes, having lots of time can be great but it can also make you freeze. When I was at college I used to spend most of the day talking to people, pottering around the studio and drinking endless cups of tea and then in the last hour I’d finally get myself in gear and do some work. I’ve learnt that I tend to do much better with a limited amount of time and a deadline.

If you’ve got serious limitations to contend with, then another option is to temporarily alter your practice. If you can’t make sculpture because you don’t have the space, then maybe you can draw, if you can’t get access to printmaking equipment, then maybe you can do monoprints instead, if your oil paints are toxic to your toddler then switch to gouache. Don’t be afraid to explore the options - you’re an artist, you can surely come up with a creative solution.

When my son was small, I couldn’t even draw because if he woke up and threw me out of that creative zone, then I wanted to throw him out of the window! I decided this wasn’t an ideal frame of mind for parenting, so I switched to photography and writing - both forms I was able to pick up and put down much more easily - until he was older and I had more mental space. And let me tell you, I came out of that restricted period like a bat out of hell, I had so much stored up creative energy that it powered me for years.

9: Create A Supportive Space

It’s vital for artists to have support, particularly from the people that they live with. The importance of having people in your life who understand your need to make art can’t be overstated. They don’t need to like or understand your work, although it helps, but they do need to understand what it means to you.

Again, I know it isn’t always possible to have this support - you may be in an existing relationship with a partner who doesn’t quite get it or have a birth family who are firmly opposed to you being an artist. You can still make art in these circumstances but you’ll have to be prepared to fight your corner and that’s draining and takes energy away from your work. Sadly, I have noticed that people who end up quitting art often have families who undermine their choice to be an artist, either directly or more subtly.

I’m incredibly lucky, my family of choice are totally supportive - bemused sometimes, but always supportive. Of course, I say luck but really it was a choice - I put art at the centre of my life and deliberately picked people who support me. When I was single, the two fundamental things that anyone getting involved with me had to accept were:
1) I was a parent and my kid came first
2) I was an artist and I had no intention of giving that up for anyone.

It was always an absolute deal-breaker for me - I can be quite hard-nosed and selfish about my art when I have to be and I just wasn’t prepared to trade art for ‘love’.

10: Don’t Quit!

Ah, the most important tip of all!

David Bayles and Ted Orland talk extensively in Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking about the importance of not quitting and give a host of reasons why people do, plus ways to avoid it. It’s an excellent book and one that I reread most years - every artist should own a copy.

If you want to be an artist then quite simply you have to find ways to keep making art and not stop, no matter what life throws at you. Good luck! And don’t forgot to have a bit of fun along the way…

Michelle wrote in the comments on the Alt Images post:

Very informative post, Kirsty. One question: is there a place to learn how to create alt tags? The article is clear about what they are, but not how to make them. For those of us who are coding-challenged (or coding-averse, more accurately!), this would be vitally valuable information! Thanks.

No problem, Michelle, I’ll have a go at explaining it.

I’ll use this image as an example:

Kirsty Hall - art, photograph of Broken Cup Handle With Shadows

It’s actually pretty simple and you don’t need to be scared of it. OK, if you look at the code on your linked image, you’ll see something like this:

initial code here=”tt-flickr” href=”big long string of code”> img class=”tt-flickr” src=”a different bit long string of code”
width=”500″ height=”305″ alt=”Broken Handle 01″ /> closing code here

Please note, I’ve replaced the actual code with the helpful words ‘big long string of code’ and ‘initial code’ and ‘closing code’, so that we can see the code instead of just getting the picture again (working out which bits to change took me quite a while, since I’m pretty code impaired myself!) The code may also be in a slightly different order depending on how you’ve linked the photo. However, the only bit you’re interested in is the bit that says, alt=”whatever” /> and that will always appear somewhere towards the end.

In this case it originally said alt=”Broken Handle 01″ />, which was just the title of the image in Flickr. Now Broken Handle 01 isn’t very informative, it doesn’t give you my name or much about the image, so I changed it to: alt=”Kirsty Hall - Photograph of Broken Cup Handle With Shadows” />

Basically, whatever you put inside the two sets of quote marks between the = sign and the /> code will be what Google and the other search engines read as the alternative text for the photo.

If any of you are more technically minded than me and are smacking yourself on the forehead and yelling ‘dammit, that’s completely wrong’, then please do get in touch and I’ll change it but I’m 99% sure that this is right.

Making that text searchable and relevant is how your work winds up in Google Images so, you should be adding your name and keywords that are appropriate to that particular work, i.e. ‘oil painting’, ‘landscape’, ’sculpture made from pins’, etc. Apparently using keywords in alt tags can boost your general Google results too, although I’m not too sure how (magic Google dust sprinkled by the Google fairies maybe?)

Don’t restrict yourself to using alt text just as a promotional technique though. You should also make sure that your text is clear and descriptive to make your site or blog more accessible to disabled internet users. Text browsers can’t detect images but can detect alt tags and will translate them into spoken text for visually impaired web users. People in countries with poor web access may also have their browsers set to text only and they’ll see little written blocks of text instead of your images. Bear this in mind when you’re writing your tags. This article has more details on the level of helpful descriptiveness you should be aiming at.

It’s a shame that Flickr seems to turn the photo title into the alt text since I can’t quite bring myself to label all my Flickr photos with my name (I think it would look way too pushy, weird and tacky). Manually changing the alt text when I post images over here seems to be the only solution right now but I will do a bit of research over on Flickr to see if there’s some wonderful way to add hidden alt text to the images without putting it in the titles.

However, if you’re uploading images directly into your Wordpress site, rather than linking from Flickr, then you can set your alt text very easily. Simply go to the section where you upload images and type the description you want in the box that says ‘Title’. I imagine that other blogging software probably has similar options but fortunately changing the code isn’t too complicated - just make sure you don’t accidentally erase those all important little quote marks.

I hope this makes things a little clearer, Michelle. Oh, and if it makes you feel any better about the subject, I’ve just this minute realised that I have 235 envelope images to change over at The Diary Project. Someone shoot me now!

EDIT: on the advise of Gyrus, I’ve changed the term ‘alt tag’ to ‘alt text’ as the later is apparently less confusing and more accurate.

Gyrus also points out the following:

Sometimes you might not get the alt text come up when you hover the mouse over an image (it doesn’t come up on Firefox, for instance). Properly, the alt attribute value is “alternative” text, i.e. to use if you can’t see the image (either it’s a text browser, images are turned off, or it’s a speech browser reading the text out). That little “tooltip” that pops up, if it’s there at all, is technically supposed to come from a “title” attribute on the img tag. The title is optional, though. Just thought I’d mention this in case anyone gets confused on Firefox with the alt text not popping up when you mouse over it.

Sue Favinger Smith kindly pointed me in the direction of this article by Clint Watson about the importance of not relying too much on your Google ranking. He makes some good points and the idea of diversifying is something I’ll be following up in later articles.

Sue’s blog, the excellently named Ancient Artist, is also worth reading; she writes deeply and honestly about the emotional challenges of trying to develop an art career when you’re over the age of 50.

Sue Favinger Smith: Detail of another Elements Triptych

The next section of my Artists Online Series will look at blogging.

Blogging can be a very useful promotional tool for artists. It’s not a substitute for having a good online portfolio or for doing lots of offline work on your career but it can be a useful addition. Not convinced? Here are my reasons:

Blogging Raises Your Google Profile

Since Google prefers fresh content, regular blogging tends to push your Google results higher. Other people linking to your blog posts also increases your Google profile. Make sure you’re blogging under your professional name to get the full benefit of this.

It’s not just Google that likes new information: people are also far more likely to come and visit your website if you’ve got constantly changing content. How often is someone likely to blog about your really cool art? Once or twice tops. However, if you’re regularly writing good blog posts then you don’t just get repeat visits, you may also get repeatedly linked, which means… yes, better Google results! Rinse and repeat…

Blogging Reminds People You Exist

Promotion isn’t something that you do once and then it’s done forever: it’s more like exercising - you need to do it little and often!

Blogging helps with that; if people are constantly coming back to read your blog, then they’re naturally more aware of you. You don’t even need to constantly talk about your own art; just by visiting regularly they’re getting a gentle little nudge that you and your work exist.

Blogging Improves Your Website Numbers

Being able to say to a gallery or a funding body, “well, last month I had X number of visitors to my website” puts you in a better negotiating position because it proves that your work is already popular.

Of course, online popularity won’t substitute for offline experience like exhibitions, publications and residencies but it can add to it. Last year I was told by someone in the know that if you’re filling out a funding form and it asks about prospective audience audience numbers, you should definitely include your web hits. This had never even occurred to me but apparently Arts Council England counts online viewers as bums on seats!

Blogging Connects You With People

This is one of the most important reasons to blog: I’ve met some completely amazing people through blogging and some of them have turned into offline friends.

Blogging can help you find a group of people who support your art. This can include other artists, gallery owners and curators but equally importantly it can include lots of non-artists who are willing to be advocates for your work.

Cultivating a group of people who like your work is vital for any artist. Supporters will turn up at your shows, cheer you on, blog about you, tell their friends and even sometimes buy your work. Supporters are great!

Of course, you should also be cultivating a group of supporters offline through using things like mailing lists, but finding sympathetic people who genuinely want you to succeed can often be easier online.

Blogging Gets You Out Of The Garret

Many artists work in isolation and blogging can help reduce that all pervading sense of invisibility. My own studio is in my home: this is definitely the best option for my art practice but it does mean that I don’t always get as many opportunities to connect with other artists as I’d like. When I graduated, I did feel very isolated, lonely and out on a limb. I lessened that by starting a artists’ group with my college friends but it was a lot of work - I was the chairperson, general organiser and one of the main curators for our group shows. Now I get that all important sense of connection through blogging and online social networking spaces with a lot less effort. For real world connections, I have the Spike Island Associates Programme, local private views and my part time jewellery course.

Even if you are in a studio, there aren’t always as many opportunities to connect deeply with the other artists as you might expect - they’re busy, you’re busy and you might not have that much in common anyway. But online you’re not limited to your geographical surroundings - with a little effort, you can find a peer group with whom you truly click on an artistic and intellectual level.

Blogging Breaks Down Barriers

Sure, there’s a hierarchy in the blogging world but there’s also a surprisingly level playing field. You can leave comments in the blogs of ‘far more important’ bloggers and they’ll generally reply to you on an equal basis. I’ve spoken in blog comments to published authors and more established artists in a way that I would never have dared to do in other mediums. Blogging opens the channels of communication in a way that feels comfortable to me: I feel much more equal online, I’m less intimidated by what someone’s done and just respond to what they write and how they come across. Blogging makes me braver and that has translated into my offline promotion efforts.

In the same way, blogging can make you seem more approachable and human to people who are interested in your art. Why not do the next generation of artists a big favour and help to break down the myth that artists are all crazy, ear chopping introverts or outrageously drunken drama queens! Of course, if you do happen have that kind of personality then you might as well play to the gallery because I’ve been told several times that collectors just love that sort of thing…

You Can Reach A Wider Audience

People who might not be comfortable visiting a gallery are often happy to look at your work online, especially if you initially engage them with a blog post that’s relevant to them. Through blogging you can often reach people who wouldn’t otherwise consider looking at your art and those people can sometimes end up being incredibly supportive.

Through blogging, you can also reach a global audience who might not otherwise be able to see your work. To date, The Diary Project has had visitors from 39 countries, including places like Guam, Brunei and Malaysia, while this site has had visits from 29 countries.

I’m not saying this to boast - just the opposite, in fact. My point is that I’m not important yet. I’m very much an emerging artist rather than a well-known one: I’m only five years out of college and although I’ve had a steady stream of group shows, I’ve only had one solo show. I’m certainly getting established, through lots of hard work both on and offline but I’ve not exhibited my work abroad yet and I’m probably still be a couple of years away from doing so. [Although, do feel free to offer me an international show - I'm totally OK with moving it up my agenda!]

So it’s quite incredible that people from all over the world have already had the opportunity to see what I do. This would never have happened without the internet - it simply isn’t possible from my current position in the offline art world.

Blogging Empowers you

By being active online you take a little bit of the power away from the artistic ‘gatekeepers’ and put it back in your own hands. You’re not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting to be discovered - you’re out there building an audience and creating your own opportunities.

Of course, the gatekeepers aren’t ever going to be redundant - artists still need gallery owners, exhibitions, audiences, collectors and funders in the offline world. I’m not trying to denigrate the artworld or its gatekeepers but particularly in the early days it can feel as though you’re banging your head against a brick wall and getting nowhere. I’m not complaining about that either; there’s absolutely no substitute for paying your dues and we all have to knuckle down and do it. However, a little bit of encouragement online can keep you going when it feels as though no one else knows you exist. You’re still going to have to engage with the artworld offline but blogging can help to increase your confidence to deal with those interactions.

Blogging can also build confidence to take bigger and bolder steps online. I was blogging over on Livejournal for 3 1/2 years before I got my website up. Setting up a website felt huge and intimidating and quite beyond me at the time, whereas setting up a blog was quick and easy. Blogging was undoubtedly a helpful first step towards finally getting my website sorted.

Blogging Strengthens Your Voice

When you’re blogging about your own work, you have to think about your work. You have to put into words what you’re trying to do and that’s damn good experience when you need to write artists’ statements and press releases. A lot of artists hate writing about their own work and find it excruciating - blogging can help you get over that.

Blogging Can Generate New Opportunities

I know people who’ve been published or been offered exhibitions because of their blogging. It hasn’t directly happened to me yet but I have approached people I know in the online world and scored opportunities that way.

Blogging Is Cheap

Blogging costs virtually nothing compared to other forms of promotion like postcards, poster and ads but it can be very effective. Writing a good blog post won’t cost you anything except time, energy and a few pence for internet access and the electricity to run your computer but it can get distributed all around the world. Not only that but when people link to you, the information is usually replicated on their blogs plus they also usually link back to you. It’s like you sent out a single postcard and someone photocopied it and gave it to all their friends. As we all know, word of mouth can be a powerful thing. Who knows how connected some of those people might be? Who knows how large the audience on their blog is?

Blogging is Fun!

OK, obviously I’m biased on this one but I think blogging is a blast. It’s an effective promotional tool for me but it never feels like work because I enjoy it. Believe me, that’s a world of difference to how I feel about writing press releases or designing posters!

A variety of views from other artists discussing whether blogging works:
The Painter’s Keys

The Empty Easel

Art News Blog

OK, so how do you improve your Google ranking?

The SiteWizard has an excellent article called How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google. It might be a bit technical for some artists (it certainly lost me in places!) but it’ll give you a bit of background about how Google works. Searching for ‘improving Google ranking’ will give you lots of information along these lines but the SiteWizard article was one of the clearest I found.

My own tips are a lot less technical!

Use your name

You absolutely must link your professional name with your professional online identity. No one is going to be able to find you if you hide behind a pseudonym!

If you start a new blog, use your name in both the blog title and the username. Google seems to pay a lot more attention to the title and the username than it does to your profile, which is one reason why having your own dedicated domain name is such a good idea.

Even if you host your blog or domain on a free site, which tend to rank somewhat lower than dedicated domains, changing the title to include your name can make a big difference. I was mystified when I searched for myself by name last month and discovered that The Diary Project didn’t appear on Google until about page 15. It was outranked by far less important sites, where I was mentioned only in passing, and far newer sites, like this one. I just couldn’t understand it. Eventually I worked out that although I had my name in the profile, Google wasn’t giving it much weighting. I changed the title of the blog from “The Diary Project” to “Kirsty Hall: The Diary Project” and the page ranking shot right up. It’s now on the second page if I search just for my name and the first page if I search for my name + art.

Of course, you might not want to use your professional name in all your online interactions – you don’t necessarily want a curator or potential collector to find iffy drunken photos or blog posts where you’re talking about your sex life! Remember that your reputation is all you have online and you need to protect it. Have a personal online identify by all means, but if you don’t want it to intersect with your professional identity then make sure you avoid ever linking the two. Google is remarkably smart at joining dots. I linked to my Livejournal in a professional capacity twice and it now comes up in searches of me. This isn’t disastrous since I don’t write about anything incredibly revealing over there but now I always have to bear in mind that someone searching for me in a professional capacity could find and read that more personal blog. Since I don’t want to strengthen that Google association, I deliberately don’t link to my Livejournal from here (you’re welcome to go and read it though).

Switch Things On

OK, this is an area where I’m not strong but you need to make sure that you’ve got the right things switched on in your blog or website. If you work with a web designer, make sure they’ve optimised your site for search engines through using keywords. Check your website or blog software documentation and make sure that you’re being indexed by search engines. I used this article by Biz Stone to make sure that I had the right settings activated on The Diary Project, which is hosted by Blogger. Even if you’re not on Blogger, it’s worth a read because there are some good general blogging and promotion tips.

If you are on somewhere like Blogger, definitely make sure you’ve added your site to their own listings. It really is worth it: I get a steady stream of visitors to the Diary Project because it’s in the Blogger listings. I got 55 visits from there in the last month: it’s currently my fourth largest source of visitors to the Diary Project and provides more visitors to The Diary Project than this site does.

Use Your Natural Advantages

If you’re working with an unusual technique or imagery or have a less common name, then you’re always going to be easier to find on Google simply because there’s less competition.

Unfortunately if you’re called Joe Blow and you’re an oil painter, then you’re going to have to work a lot harder to stand out. So pick out the things that are unique in your work and use them in your profile and your keywords. To find those things, imagine you’ve only seen your own work once in a group exhibition. What would stand out? If you’re not sure, ask a couple of friends what stands out for them.

Write a snappy profile

Mention the important things in your profile - your name, where you’re from (in case someone is looking for artists just in your area), the materials you use, the imagery you use and any relevant keywords that describe your work. Keep it fairly concise, don’t use too much art jargon and and try to employ the sort of terms that would be used by someone searching for work that’s similar to yours.

Be In More Than One Place

As Andrea pointed out in comments.
“It’s easier to have a strong web presence of course if you’re something of an internet whore.”

Why yes Andrea, yes it is!

One reason that I’m all over the front two pages of Google like a cheap rash, is that I’m in more than one place online. I’ve used my own name in at least five sites of my own, plus other people have written about me or linked to my sites.

Now, getting yourself in multiple places online is something that definitely takes time and effort and since it’s complex, I’ll be discussing the most effective ways to do this in later posts. In the meantime, consider upgrading your profile on any sites you’re already on if it’s appropriate to do so (see earlier point about professionalism). You could also ask any galleries that show your work if they would link to your website. However, I have been told that some commercial galleries frown on artists being online, so you might want to test the waters fairly gently on that one.

Personally, I haven’t always done this well, I used to be positively shy and retiring. For instance, I’d been curating for several years before I twigged that I ought to put my name on the posters of the shows! I genuinely felt that I was much less important than the artists and it was ‘putting myself forward too much’. So at the moment, I have very little online documentation of the five years of curating that I did, although I’m planning to put together a curating page on this website in the near future. That said, at least one or two of the shows that I curated turn up in Google when you search for me.

Considering that I didn’t get paid for any of the curating I’ve done, I should at least have been getting some major props for it! It’s safe to say that I wasn’t doing myself any favours when I was hiding behind that bushel and I regret it now. But at the time, I just wasn’t emotionally ready to be more forward. Later in the series, I’ll be talking about how to promote yourself when you’d much rather hide under the bed clothes - believe me, it’s an area where I have plenty of personal experience!

Link to yourself

If you are in more than one place (see above) then make sure that you link back to yourself in your profiles. Don’t make visitors go searching for your blog, website or Flickr account but instead make it easy for them (there’s that mantra again!) by pointing them directly towards the places you’d like them to go.

Google also looks in the text of sites, so using your name, the name of an art project or your other sites in your own blog posts can also make you pop up on Google more often. You could try doing things like labelling your photographs when you blog them (something I’ve only just started doing). I don’t know for sure that it helps but it certainly won’t hurt. Plus it also makes it clear when an image is yours rather than another artist’s - important on a blog like mine where I blog both kinds of images, sometimes in the same post.

Linking to yourself in this way also ups your Technorati numbers. Technorati works by giving you a popularity ranking; you start out low and the more sites that link to you, the higher your ranking rises. Now, obviously you shouldn’t try to artificially boost your Technorati rank by linking to yourself more often than is necessary. However, there’s nothing wrong with pointing people at your other sites if it’s relevant to what you’re talking about or when there’s new content over there. It’s not manipulative or ‘too in your face’ unless you’re either sneaky or make a big song and dance about it: instead just think of it as being helpful, both for them and, admittedly, for you. Regular visitors will just ignore the hot link but new visitors won’t be left wondering ‘hey, what’s this other thing they’re talking about?’

Start A Blog

If you don’t already have one then start a blog.

Blogging improves your Google ranking in several ways.

Firstly, it means that your site has fresh content. Google and the other search engines prefer newly updated sites: a site that’s been updated recently will tend to place higher than a static site that hasn’t been touched in a couple of months or even years.

Secondly, if you’re blogging then you’re usually linking to other people and they’re hopefully linking back to you. I’ll cover this more in more depth in the articles on blogging but suffice it to say that links are very good. The Google spiders love links - it is called the web after all - so the more little threads you have going in and out of your site, the more visible you are to those spiders.

Be Patient

You won’t appear in Google instantly so don’t be disheartened if you don’t see changes overnight. You can help yourself by doing the things I’ve mentioned but the web is a big place and those little spiders, although surprisingly fast, can sometimes take a bit of time to find you.

If you haven’t seen any change in a couple of weeks then reconsider your options. Look at your Google Analytics and Technorati results again, see if you can spot where you’re missing out. Keep testing, do more research, do more reading and try new things. Go back and search for yourself in Google again and note any changes. However, be aware that something like building up a blog takes time; you won’t instantly get hundreds of visitors unless you’re already famous - in which case, you should probably be writing this series instead of me!

The next few articles in the Artists Online series are going to be about improving your search engine visibility. I should point out that I’m not an expert on this, so I’d recommend that you do additional research.

Set a baseline

This should be your first step because simply put, if you don’t know where you currently are, you can’t know whether you’re improving or not. It can also help you spot any obvious mistakes that you’re making - I just spotted one of mine!

So, indulge your ego and go type your name into Google.

Try the following versions:
“Your name”
“Your name” + art
artist + your medium + your geographical area
artist + something unique about your work

What do you find? Are you on the first or second page? That’s good, you’re pretty visible but if there’s a lot of variation between the different search terms you might still have room for improvement. If you doesn’t appear until 20 or 30 pages into Google, then unfortunately you’re effectively invisible because only the most determined person is still hunting for you. Even 10 or 15 pages down is bad because people can be pretty lazy when searching online.

Take a note of the most and least effective ways in which you appear. Try to think of other ways someone might search for your work and test those too.

If I type “Kirsty Hall” into Google then I come up as 5 results on the first page and 10 out of the first 20 results. That’s 50%, which isn’t bad but if I type “Kirsty Hall” + art, then 19 out of the first 20 results currently refer to me. When I’m searching for an artist, I will generally add the word ‘art’ to help rule out the non-artists who share their name so clearly a curator who already knows my name has an excellent chance of finding me online.

If they don’t know your name it’s always going to be harder but it can be done if they’ve seen your work and remember something distinctive about it.

The search terms, ‘artist + pins + sculpture’ will bring this site up on the first page. However, if someone has only seen my work with string, then I’m in trouble because I don’t appear in the first ten pages of Google at all if you use the search terms, ‘artist + knots + string’. I’d just better hope they add the magic word ’sculpture’ because that shunts me right back up to the front page!

The search terms ‘artists + drawing + envelope’ bring me up as the very top result on the first page - how lovely. Unfortunately, only I would know it was me because my name isn’t mentioned in the little blurb - instead the words, “Each day in 2007 I am doing a drawing on the back of an envelope, …” appear. Now that might be enough for someone to identify the Diary Project if they’ve heard of it before, but to me it instantly says, “oops, I need to change that profile”.

Remember my ‘Make It Easy For People’ mantra from the Flickr posts? Well that applies here too. You need to make it easy for people to find you but you also need to make it easy for them to recognise you when they do find you. While someone might not remember your name well enough to type it into Google, it’s quite likely to ring bells if they see it written down.

Being found when someone knows absolutely nothing about you is always going to be the hardest thing to achieve. Despite the fact that I list where I’m from and what I do in most of my online profiles, typing ‘artist + Bristol + sculpture’ doesn’t bring me up until the 19th page of Google. Now, obviously, there’s a lot more competition when you’re using more general search terms so it’s always going to be more difficult to get top results but I clearly need to do some work in that area.

Chart Your Progress

If you already have a website or blog then sign up with Google Analytics and Technorati right now. You can see how many visitors you’re getting, which sites are referring them and which other blogs or sites are linking to you. Monitoring your numbers from the beginning means that you can see when things start to improve, which is always encouraging.

Plus being signed up to Technorati can provide a small but steady stream of visitors, in addition to highlighting who has linked to you and in which post. The incredible detail in Google Analytics can help you to work out why things have improved, as well as being endlessly fascinating in its own right. For example, I’ve just spotted that this site has suddenly had 12 visits from Etsy, which is somewhat mystifying since I’m not even on Etsy. I can only assume that someone from there has linked to me (if you’re from Etsy, please do tell me how you got here, I’d love to know).*

Every so often, type yourself into Google to see if your rankings have changed. Don’t just look at where you place, look at how often you place. What you’re aiming for is to appear in the front two or three pages, over and over again.

Right, now that you’ve worked out how things stand at the moment, it’s time to work on making things better. Don’t be disheartened if you’re pretty invisible right now, you can make improvements fairly quickly.

* EDIT: Aha, mystery solved. Thanks to Tina Mammoser for pimping me on the Etsy forums.

EDIT: Leonardo Bjork points out that putting your name in quotes can make a big difference to your Google results. Since most searchers know to do that, you should make sure you try it when you run your Google tests.

Short Answer

Yes!

Long Answer

Flickr can definitely reap big rewards in promotional terms with only fairly small investments of time on your part.

I know that posting to groups works because whenever I post an envelope drawing to even a single Flickr group, I always get a spike in my Diary Project numbers. I’ve had Google Analytics running over on The Diary Project for exactly one month now (I was using a less accurate site meter before then) and in that month I’ve had 89 direct referrals from Flickr. Posting an image to a group or taking part in a group discussion also often results in someone adding me as a contact, commenting on my photos or finding their way over here.

But that’s not the end of the story…

Just this week I had a timely example of how effective Flickr can be when Jeffrey Yamaguchi from 52 Projects promoted my work without any direct contact from me. He had seen an envelope image that I’d posted to his What’s Your Project Flickr group, investigated it and then very kindly blogged about The Diary Project.

Now, I’ve been meaning to write a press release about The Diary Project and send it to various sites but I hadn’t quite got round to it yet - er, you know how it is!

52 Projects was on my list of places to send a press release to because I’d read Jeffrey’s book and thought The Diary Project might appeal to him. Now, thanks to Flickr, I don’t need to send a press release to that particular site.

It was the work of about 30 seconds to post one of my envelope images to the What’s Your Project group, it was certainly much easier than writing a press release, looking up Jeffrey’s contact info and sending an email. And frankly, it was also less intimidating: posting images to Flickr groups is brilliant for an artist who hates doing promotion because it doesn’t feel like marketing. I don’t know about anyone else but I always feel a bit embarrassed writing and sending out press releases about my own work (come to think of it, that’s probably why I’ve been procrastinating on the damn thing for so long).

The Diary Project has already had 91 visits from 52 Projects and who knows, maybe some of those visitors will choose to link to the project in their own blogs. So, if we add those two sets of numbers together, you can see that Flickr has provided 180 visits to The Diary Project in the last month with very minimal effort on my behalf. All I did was upload my Diary Project images (something I had to do anyway) and then send a couple out to groups. I don’t know how many images I posted to groups but it’s unlikely to have been many since I only do it when I remember so it’s a little erratic! My promotional investment was probably about five minutes, tops.

However, it is important to note that all the images had the relevant info on them; a concise bit of blurb about the project and a link to the project blog. Without that information, the envelopes are just more drawings amid a mass of art images: knowing the context of the project is what makes them stand out and having the link right there on the image is what encourages people to find out more.

I’ve had more unusual Flickr contacts too: Garrison over at Holiday Pad Magazine found this site earlier in the week when one of my non-art photos tagged with the word ‘holiday’ popped up on the rolling feed at the bottom of his site. He tells me it was my recent taxidermy photos that piqued his interest because he couldn’t work out why on earth they were tagged as holiday pictures.

Click on the images if you want to find out why I have taxidermy pictures in my holiday photos!

I guess you just never know what’s going to attract someone to your site…

You know, I’d been on Flickr for about 6 months before I even started using groups. The first group I joined was a knitting group and it was another couple of months before I suddenly thought, ‘hey wait, maybe there are some art groups…’

Up until that point, it had honestly never occurred to me that Flickr could be a promotional tool (I’m slow sometimes…) but using Flickr groups has revolutionised the amount of interest people take in my work, as well as massively increasing my own enjoyment of the site.

Well then, that’s a fairly thorough round-up of Flickr and why you should use it. I hope it’s been helpful and that you all come to grips with it a bit quicker than I did! I’ll probably come back to it at some point but now the series is going to be moving onto other ways for artists to use the web. I haven’t quite decided what’s up next but I’ve got several pages of notes at this point and about 20 different topics to cover, including some thoughts that have come up in the comments. My notes keep expanding too, I thought the Flickr topic would be just one post but it seems to have stretched into five.

People on Flickr tend to be an easy audience for an artist to engage with because, by definition, they’re already interested in photography and that often spills over to an interest in other visual areas. People on Flickr usually LIKE looking at other people’s photos and they’re used to doing it.

Ah, a sympathetic audience - the battle is already half won!

You can engage people even further by posting strong shots of your work - use unusual angles, take macro picks, shoot your work in interesting lighting conditions and post research photos that show what inspires your art. Flickr people have a tendency towards visual literacy and they’ll respond well to good photography. We all know that it can be hard to take good descriptive photos of your work - the sort of photos that you need for applying for exhibitions. However, I’ve found that taking more atmospheric shots, especially close-ups, is a lot easier and it tends to be those sort of shots that people on Flickr respond to because they’re more photographically interesting.

Flickr is a powerful social network and this is why I recommend it over other photo hosting services. Flickr currently has 4,000,000 users and almost a billion photos hosted on the site. That might sound daunting - with those numbers, who on earth is ever going to see your work? Well, thankfully, Flickr is set up in such a way that it’s easy to share your work and make connections with sympathetic people.

There are lots of ways to be more visible on Flickr but basically you need to reach out and participate in the community. You can do this by:

• Adding people as contacts
• Joining Flickr groups
• Commenting on individual photos
• Marking other people’s photos as favourites

If you do some or all of these things, then other people will usually start looking at your photos.

Make Contacts

Making contacts is an excellent way to start creating a little network of like-minded people on Flickr. It’s a very informal process; you don’t need to already know someone beforehand, it’s fine to add someone simply because you like their photos. Very often people will add you back but it’s not obligatory, so don’t be offended if they don’t. If someone is listed as a contact then you’ll see their photos on your front page. If they add you back, then any new work you put up will automatically appear on their page, either on their front page or their contacts page. If you’re regularly posting photos then all your contacts are getting regular little updates on your art and being reminded about your work in a very gentle and non-invasive way.

So where can you find some people that you like?

Well, it’s likely that some of your existing friends are already on Flickr, if they are, then add them as contacts. You can also send invites to friends and family who aren’t already there. That should give you a bit of a start in creating a network but if you want to find a wider range of people with similar interests to yourself, then the best way is to join some Flickr groups.

Flickr Groups

Groups are one of the fundamental building blocks of the community side of Flickr. Most groups are a combination of discussion and photos: you can post your images to a place where they’ll be seen by hundreds of other people but you can also take part in the discussions, which are a good way to meet individuals.

There are groups on just every subject under the sun and most of them are open membership so you join with the click of a button, very occasionally you’ll have to ask a moderator to join.

Consider joining some of the art groups: Artists And Their Art is my favourite because I like their discussions but there are masses of others. You might not like a lot of the work that gets posted to the general art groups, I certainly don’t, but there are interesting artists active in some of the discussions. Also, posting photos to a group isn’t like being in an exhibition, where you’re often judged by the company you keep, it’s far more like putting a promotional postcard up in a huge display. Of course, you should still use your discretion - if you hate everything that’s posted to a group and the discussions don’t appeal, then it might be better to walk on by.

Does your work use a particular technique, image, theme, style or colour? Then there’s probably already a group on Flickr that covers it and if there isn’t, you can always start one. I’m on a wide range of Flickr groups (61 to date - it’s easy to get a little bit carried away!), from the more obviously arty ones to more unusual ones like wabi sabi suki, Coiled Knotted Twisted and Keys Keyholes Locks. Obviously it’s impossible to keep up with a huge range of groups: I have a couple that I’m more involved with and just randomly dip in and out of the rest.

When posting images to groups, obey the rules; many groups limit the number of images you can post in a day and off-topic images are likely to be deleted by the mods. Even if a group has unlimited posting, don’t post huge clumps of your work to a single group all at once because it drowns out everyone else’s work. However, picking an image that you like and posting it to more than one group is completely fine. Personally I try to pick a wide variety of applicable groups for individual images so that I’m reaching a wider potential audience. I also do this so that I don’t bore people. The same people often belong to all the groups about a single subject, therefore, to make things a bit more interesting for those people, I post different images from the same series to each of the related groups.

You can find groups by using the search tool on your Flickr page, you can search for groups, people, locations or through your own or everyone else’s photos. The Flickr search engines works by searching for tags, which is why you should be using them on your own photos, otherwise you’re effectively invisible to the search tool and consequently to other users.

Comments

It’s perfectly acceptable to comment on someone’s photo even when you don’t know them. There’s no need to feel shy, just dive in. The person will see that you’ve added a comment and the comment will usually be publicly available on that photo for others to read. Adding comments usually encourages people to come over and have a look at your work.

Obviously nasty comments are very unprofessional and aren’t going to make you any friends: as my father likes to say; “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!” Just ignore the stuff you don’t like, there’s no requirement to comment on every single thing you see (you couldn’t anyway, it would be a full time job!)

Constructive criticism might be fine, especially if you’ve already connected with the person and know that they’re open to it but the culture of commenting on Flickr is generally positive and you should bear this in mind. If you want brutally honest responses on your own work, then you’ll probably need to explicitly ask for it in the text of the photo. If you happen to get a troll who hates your work and is just being abusive in comments, you can block them. It’s never happened to me but if you’re making more controversial work then it could be an issue.

When someone has left a comment on my work, I try to drop them a quick ‘thank you’ via FlickrMail, especially if they’re a new commenter. I like the FlickrMail tool because it means that as well as taking part in the big group discussions, you can have personal side conversations with people. It helps to break up the vastness of Flickr and make it a lot less overwhelming.

Favourites

This is the Flickr tool that I use least but it can be useful. It’s basically an extension of commenting: you mark other people’s individual photos as favourites and they’re then stored on a favourites page on your own page.

Where I have found favourites to be helpful is in finding new people: I’ve often found interesting new artists by going to the page of someone whose work I like and browsing through their favourites and contacts pages.

The Culture Of Flickr

I hope it’s clear by now that Flickr doesn’t need to be a dauntingly huge place where you’re destined to be invisible but can be a place where, with a little effort, you and your work can be seen and respected.

You shouldn’t go into it cynically though - regarding the other members of Flickr as just another marketing opportunity won’t go over well. It’s rude, disrespectful and contrary to the ethos of the place. Flickr isn’t just a huge potential audience for your work; it’s a community and you’ll be a member of that community. Respect the other members and respond to them with openness and generosity.

Flickr is about sharing and being generous with your time, energy and creative thoughts can reap big rewards there. Every time you make someone into a contact, comment on or favourite one of their photos or write something interesting in a discussion, people are likely to come and see who you are - they’ll read your profile and have a quick look at your work. If you’re lucky (and you’ve made it easy for them), they might also go on to visit your other websites or act as an advocate for your work by blogging about you.

Sorry about the length of this one, there didn’t seem to be a good place to cut it in half and there was a lot to say. We’re nearly done with Flickr posts now though.

I always describe Flickr as ’simple but deep’ and that’s a good way to think about it. I’ve already explained that I like the intuitive interface, however, there’s a lot more to Flickr than ease of use. I’m still coming to grips with what you can do over there but in my experience, the more you delve into Flickr, the more there is to find.

If you just use Flickr as somewhere to store your images so that you can blog them elsewhere then you’re definitely not realising its full potential. Today I’m going to run through a few ways for artists to make the most of Flickr, all of which relate to the powerful communal aspects of the site.

OK, first let’s quickly check what you should ideally have on your own Flickr before you start engaging with the Flickr community.

The first thing, as usual, is to make sure your actual work is up to scratch. Post good, strong interesting images of your art. Work in progress shots, clearly marked as such, are also perfectly acceptable - indeed, people usually enjoy seeing those. However, if Flickr is your only online visual portfolio, you may want to keep it a bit more formal and only post finished works.

Now sort your images into collections and sets: you can sort by date, by medium, by series or by any other criteria that makes sense to you. Once you’ve got the sets and collections you want, set up your front page so that your art collections and/or sets are visible alongside your photostream. This means that anyone clicking on your profile or one of your photos will instantly be able to see that you’re an artist and exactly where your art images are. Always make it easy for people!

You also need to have explanatory text under each photo. Obviously it’s best to do this when you upload images but if you didn’t have time then it’s easy enough to do it afterwards either by clicking on individual photos or, if you’ve got a lot to do, by using the batch organize button in the Organizer feature. When writing the text don’t use too much art jargon and be reasonably concise. However, people often like to know a bit about the reality behind the art so it’s fine to tell stories or to explain why this is a favourite piece of work.

If you have an art website or blog, then make sure that you include a link in the text of every single photo as well as in your profile. Having a direct html link from individual Flickr photos makes a big difference to the numbers of visitors you’ll get to your website: Flickr is my largest source of visitors to The Diary Project blog because there’s a direct link on every single envelope image. I’m currently running a small comparative experiment on this. Last night I checked my numbers in Google Analytics, took a note of them, then added a direct link to this site on all the art images that aren’t Diary Project images. I’ll let you know in a week or two how much difference it makes.

As I mentioned yesterday, your profile should contain an artists statement and/or a mini CV; a link to any other art websites; plus a way to get in touch with you, although you don’t have to give out your full address if you’re uncomfortable with that. Do think long and hard before putting your home address or phone number online because once it’s out there, it will stay out there. I’d recommend putting a rough geographical location though, it helps to orientate people and would be helpful if someone was looking for artists in your particular area.

OK, your Flickr account should now look presentable, although if you haven’t done absolutely everything on every single photograph, don’t worry over much. My own Flickr follows most of these principles but it isn’t absolutely perfect and I don’t let it stop me taking part in the wider Flickr community. At some point I need to go through and make sure that I’m following my own advice and everything has the correct tags and explanations!

Right, on to Part 2, where I’ll explain how to get started in the community side of Flickr.

OK, so I’m assuming that I’ve sold you on the benefits of using Flickr. So, how do you go about it?

I’m not going to spell out how to set up an account because that’s already well covered in the Flickr FAQ and help pages. What I am going to do is give you tips for using Flickr effectively as a professional artist. Again, I’m chopping this up into manageable chunks: this post will discuss ways to optimise your own Flickr space, while the next post will look at interacting with the wider Flickr community.

Use Your Professional Name

When you’re signing up, choose an account name that’s as closely related to your professional name as possible. Of course, if you have a common name this might not be possible. The reason for this is that it makes it easier for Google to find you. It also links your Flickr account to your professional online persona.

The observant amongst you will note that my own Flickr name doesn’t follow this rule, I’m kmhlamia on Flickr rather than kirstyhall. This is because I set up my Flickr account before I was thinking about using it as a professional space and it simply never occurred to me. Since I’m already known on Flickr by that name, I don’t really want to change it, although I am considering it.

You should also use your professional name in your Flickr profile. I have done this and it means that my Flickr page comes up on the third page of Google. Since this website is my primary website, that isn’t a problem for me but if Flickr was my main online presence then I’d definitely change my username to get better Google results.

Use Your Profile

Your profile is your friend: you can use it to host a mini CV and a statement about your work. Make sure that you include contact information and if you’ve got other professional websites, link to them. Don’t make it too long - people simply won’t bother to read it - and don’t link to anything you don’t want Google to find!

Think carefully about what you say in your profile since it’s part of the professional face you’re presenting to the world and it could be read by curators, collectors and fans of your work. However, Flickr is a fairly informal space so it’s OK to be a bit more relaxed than you might be elsewhere. Go with what you’re comfortable with.

Set Things To Public

You can set individual photos to different privacy levels in Flickr but if you want people to be able to see your work then you need to set your photos to public. You should also set your photos to bloggable to encourage other people to promote your work for you. Setting your images to ‘artwork/illustration’ instead of ‘photograph’, can help people to find your work since it’s possible to search just for ‘artwork/illustration’ on Flickr. If your artwork contains imagery that could be considered ‘unsafe’, then you should read the relevant section of the Flickr FAQ carefully and set your safety level accordingly but be aware that this may limit who can see your art.

Protect But Share

While I approve of Creative Commons in general, I don’t usually recommend it to other artists. However, if it’s appropriate for your work, then Flickr offers the full range of Creative Commons options. Personally I have kept traditional copyright on all my Flickr images because it’s important for me to retain full control over my work. However, I also put a note in my profile saying that it was fine to blog my images without asking but any commercial use needed my explicit permission.

Putting any image of original artwork up on the web is always a risk. Posting lower resolution photos limits the risk of people printing out copies but you do have to keep an eye out for people nabbing your images and claiming them as their own. If you’re really worried you can put watermarks in your images before you upload them to Flickr. However, I believe the best defence against this is to become well known online and I’ll be discussing ways to build up your internet art profile in later posts.

Tag Your Photos

Tags are one of the most useful tools on Flickr and can help you in lots of ways. Firstly, they make your own life much easier. For example, perhaps you have a series of artworks about the same subject but you uploaded the photos at different times. Instead of searching for each photo individually within your photostream and maybe missing some, you can do a search using your tags. You can also search for images which don’t have any tags, just in case you forgot to tag some of those particular photos.

Tags can also make it easier for other people to find your work because they can search for tags within the whole of Flickr or just in your account. Of course, this works better if you’ve got fairly specific tags; ‘painting’ will bring up thousands of images but since you can add more than one tag, you can label things in more than one way.

I usually use a combination of title, medium, themes, colours and materials for my tags.
For example, this image of Pin Ritual is tagged with the words, pin ritual; pins; art; performance; sculpture; white; repetition; domesticity; labour and textile art.

Decide How Pure You’re Going to Be

If you’re conceiving of your Flickr space as largely a portfolio for your work then you need to decide how pure you’re going to be. Are you going to show work in progress, related visual research or are you just going to show finished pieces of art?

You also need to decide if your personal photos belong on your artistic Flickr account. It is possible to completely separate out the personal and professional by having more than one Flickr account but there does seem to be a fairly large acceptance of mixing photos on Flickr. Including a few more personal photos can make you seem more human rather than less professional, although obviously if photos are really personal then it might not be appropriate to have them within a professional space! However, you can also set privacy levels on individual photos so that only people you’ve marked as family and/or friends can see them (apparently you can send personal invites to non-Flickr members, something I only learnt today).

If you do want to maintain two completely separate accounts on Flickr then make sure the personal one doesn’t link to your professional one and doesn’t use your real name in any way or Google will probably join up the dots.

Organise Your Photos

Organising your photos into collections and sets can help your Flickr be both more professional and more accessible. You can set your Flickr page to show both your photostream and your collections or sets and I’d strongly recommend doing so because it allows people to instantly find your art without having to trail through lots of possibly unrelated images (this is particularly important if you do decide to mix personal and professional photos).

Use Descriptive Text

Every image that you upload to Flickr has a space underneath where you can write a description - use it! It’s also a good idea to write more general explanations in the descriptive text box of your collections and sets because that provides people with more background to your art, all nicely presented in easily digested little bites.

If you want people to visit your other web spaces, then put a link in the image text. This is what I do with The Diary Project images on Flickr: they all have the same standard explanatory text, with just the date altered and a html link to the Diary Project blog where people can find out more about specific images. My other art images don’t have a direct weblink within the text box and I’ve just worked out that this is why the Diary Project gets considerably more visits from Flickr than this site does.

Right, that’s all for this part, next we’re moving on to the importance of taking part in the community aspects of Flickr.

So what is Flickr?

At its most basic level, Flickr is a photo hosting service. Photo hosting services are sites on the web where you can upload your own photos, either free or for a small charge. These photos can then be shared with other users of the internet without the need for your own website space. You can read this Wikipedia article if you want to find out more about the concept of photo sharing.

Flickr is not the only photo hosting service, there are plenty of others including Photobucket, Kodak, Fotoblog and Zoomr. I have used a couple of other photohosting services in the past but then switched completely to Flickr because it was so much better. I haven’t used every single photo hosting site so I don’t know how all the others compare. That said, I do think that Flickr has a lot of features that make it ideal for artists and we’ll get to these shortly.

Why do I need a photo hosting service?

Unless you are already in a position to put up a dedicated website where you can host your own photos then in order to make a simple visual portfolio online, you’ll need somewhere to host images.

Even if you do have a dedicated website on your own domain name, you’ll probably still need a photo hosting site. I find I use Flickr just as much now as I did before this site launched.

Later in this series, I’m also going to be strongly encouraging artists to blog and if you’re an artist blogger then being able to quickly and easily share your photos is vital: nothing is more dull than a visual blog with no visuals - I know, I’ve done it!

However, right now we’re going to concentrate on how to use Flickr to make a simple online visual portfolio.

The Advantages of Flickr

It’s probably obvious by now that I’m a fan of Flickr. There are lots of reasons for this:

Flickr Is Easy To Use

If you have a computer, an internet connection and a way to get your images onto your computer then you can use Flickr - it really is that simple. Even as a beginner you should be able to upload images, label them, sort them into galleries, tag them and very quickly end up with a presentable display of your art.

Flickr looks good

This is a personal opinion and you might disagree but I think that Flickr has a clean, pleasant interface that looks reasonably professional. In addition, unlike somewhere like Facebook, you can also do a certain amount of restructuring: it’ll never be as adaptive and individual as a personal website but you can have a decent amount of control over how your images are displayed.

Flickr is community based

This is hugely important because in effect, Flickr already contains a massive captive audience. What’s more, it’s a captive audience who are unusually sympathetic to visual culture and already used to looking at each other’s images and giving feedback. Naturally a lot depends on how you approach people but I’ve honestly found the majority of people on Flickr to be very approachable and sympathetic towards artists. You can never overestimate the importance of an interested captive audience, it’s like gold dust to any artist and remarkably hard to find. That audience already exists on Flickr; even if you already have your own website, do you really want to ignore that audience?

Flickr Makes Networking Easy

This is related to the community based aspect of Flickr. There are lots of tools on Flickr that break the massive user base down into smaller, move navigable chunks. I’ll be talking about these tools in detail in a later post.

Flickr Is Cheap

Flickr is either free with ads and limitations or $25 a year for a more extensive ad-free service. As a way of making a simple yet presentable visual portfolio that already comes with an in-built sympathetic audience, this is a complete bargain!

Of course, Flickr isn’t perfect, many Flickr users have been unhappy about some of the changes which have occurred since Yahoo bought the site in 2005. In particular it may not be the best choice if you make art which is very sexually explicit or graphically violent because Flickr does have restrictions on adult content. In addition, you can’t actively use Flickr for selling. However, there are lots of artists on Flickr and I’ve not heard of people being kicked off for promoting their art on there. While it would be wise to avoid things like having prices on your images, I’m pretty sure that you could link to a selling site like Etsy in your profile without any trouble since I’ve seen plenty of people doing just that. This article from Wikipedia and the Flickr guidelines give more background detail and should give you a better idea if Flickr is a place you’d feel comfortable.

The next article in this series will concentrate on the nuts and bolts of setting up an account on Flickr and some handy tips for making the most of it.

There are two basic things that artists need to be visible online:

A visual portfolio
A way of attracting people to that portfolio

Since this is a large subject, I’m going to be breaking it down into little chunks. Today I’ll be examining the first of those things.

Visual Portfolios

Basically put, an online portfolio should contain images of your work, some explanatory text and a way for interested people to contact you.

The best way to host an online portfolio is to have your own dedicated website with your own domain name. There are several reasons for this - Lisa Mikulski has a very helpful post on the subject and I absolutely agree with her assessment.

However, putting together a professional website takes both time and money, two things many artists lack. Making your own website is definitely something I recommend and I’m going to look at it more deeply in the future but right now, I want to encourage you to take that first small step towards an online art presence. If you’re new to the idea of having an online visual portfolio, then taking a simpler step can be a lot less intimidating and far more achievable.

Even if you’re already experienced with the internet, designing a website can be very overwhelming. I’d been ‘meaning to get round to it’ for at least ten years and had made several abortive attempts to design a site myself. Eventually I had to admit to myself that I was never going to design and code my own site and the only way it was ever going to happen would be if I paid someone else to do it for me so I hired my friend Steve Taylor, who’s a professional web designer and he did a fantastic job. It was a very smart decision and I’m happy with the result, but I’d be lying if I said that getting the site up was a quick and easy process: it was a lot of work and took several months.

If you’re anything like me, the idea of spending months looking through your old images and writing blurb won’t fill you with delight and you’ll probably put it to the bottom of your to-do list. Sure, you know you ought to do it but hey, it’s so much work and you have that show coming up and you need to be in the studio and, and, and…

Well, I think we all know how that one goes, right! Yep, another year goes by without anything happening and that’s another year when you’re invisible online to curators, collectors and other people who might be interested in your work if they could only see it.

And that’s why I recommend to artists who want an online presence but are limited by time, money or perfectionism issues (that would be all of us then!), that they make a start RIGHT NOW - don’t wait until all your ducks are in a row before you begin.

So what is this first simple step, I hear you ask? Well, there are several options but the one that I always recommend is to get a Flickr account.

Certainly you can start making arrangements to get your own website - budget some time and money to do so and if you think you’ll procrastinate about it, do what I did and register and pay for your domain name now (type ‘domain names’ into Google and you’ll get dozens of sites who are desperate to sell you a domain name). This stops someone else nabbing your desired domain name but it also pushes you in the right direction. Even though it’s very cheap to register a domain name, the fact that you’ve paid for it for a year acts as both a mental place marker and a little encouraging push: it tells your subconscious that you’ve made a definite commitment to get your website done and you’ll probably find it niggling away at you until you do it. But in the meantime, get some images up on Flickr.

In the next article we’ll be looking at why I recommend Flickr.

Yesterday I mentioned the importance of having your work available online. Today I’m going to expand on that and give two reasons why I think this is important.

MAKE LIFE EASY FOR CURATORS - THEY LIKE THAT!

Things have changed in the art world: I believe that curators increasingly expect to be able to find information about artists online. Of course, it could just be me, I am very immersed in the net, having been online for about 12 years at this point. However, I personally know several other curators who take a similar approach to me.

That’s not to say that curators primarily look for artists online yet (although I know at least one who does) but I believe curators are using the web to expand their knowledge of an artist who has come to their attention.

When I’m curating an exhibition, I still advertise for artists through print media and expect artists to send me postal applications. However, if I get a postal application and I’m interested in the work, my next step is always to Google the artist’s name to see if I can find more images of their work. I won’t discriminate against an artist if they’re not online but it does make it harder for me to accurately judge their work.

In an exhibition application it’s usual for the curator to set limits on the number of images that an artist should send. Briefs typically say something like “10 images max” and it can often be less than ten. This is to prevent curators being absolutely inundated in stuff: if you get 50-70 applications for an exhibition you simply don’t want to look at every single piece of work each individual artist has ever done!

However, it’s quite difficult to judge an artist from 10 imges or less, a CV and an artists’ statement. So I Google. Googling artists puts an artist in context for me and expands on the information that they’ve already sent me, allowing me to make a fairer and more informed judgement about their work. It also allows me to make my own judgement on which piece to include. Sometimes an artist will send me images of what they think is their best piece but if I can see more of their work online, I might find a piece that is actually much more appropriate for the show I’m trying to curate. That can make the difference between being included in a show and being turned down.

So can you see how having a visible online presence can widen the odds for you?

LET OTHER PEOPLE DO YOUR PROMOTION FOR YOU

By being visible online (under your professional name, of course), you allow other people to do your promotion for you. This works largely through the medium of blogging, although occasionally artists are picked up by the larger mainstream media because a story about them has appeared online.

British artist Lauren Porter got global media attention when she made a lifesize knitted Ferrari for her degree show at Bath Spa University.

Now I don’t know whether she first got attention in the mainstream media and it then spread online or if it was the other way round but either way, the fact that photos of her work were available online meant that it was very easy for bloggers and online communities to distribute the story. It went through the enormous online knitting community like wildfire but a quick look on Google shows that it was also linked in geek blogs, car enthusiast blogs (including the Ferrari Owners Club), craft blogs, art blogs, popular news blogs like Digg and even YouTube: the coverage was truly vast.

Visitors to her Bath Spa University degree show would probably have been in the hundreds, maybe as high as a thousand or so but I’m absolutely certain that millions of people saw her work in newspapers, magazines and online. What a way to start your art career!

Of course, Lauren’s piece was an incredibly appealing story and wouldn’t have been a hard sell in any media but I believe that any artist can find themselves being promoted by other people through the medium of blogs if they’re doing interesting work. Even if you don’t break out into the mainstream media, there are a large network of artist bloggers, some more influential than others, who will happily link to your art if you make it easy for them to do so.

Of course, being easily found online won’t mean that you never have to do any promotion but it does mean that once you’ve started the ball rolling, other people might pick it up and run with it for you.

Neither of these things will help you if your work isn’t any good: making good work must always be every artist’s first priority. But if you’ve reached the stage where your work deserves a wider audience then building an online presence can help to give you a leg-up in the art world and may bring opportunities your way.

Building a visible online presence should never be all the promotion that you do but it should definitely be some of what you do. If you’re not on Google then you’re basically invisible in the modern world and artists who want to succeed just can’t afford that.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to follow up this article with more detailed ones about how to create a visible online presence.

Life Dev has a good article about avoiding entrepreneur burnout that has a lot of relevance for artists and other creative folk. Interestingly, it picks up on the point from my last post about the importance of delegating the things you don’t like or aren’t good at.