As GalleriaLinda, I participate in a variety of indie arts forums online find many comments and questions continually brought up about blogging. The questions I see are about why to blog and the comments are about how to blog from a content perspective.
Over the years, I have created two blogs. IndieCEO is a business blog that is targeted to a specific audience - the Indie Arts business owners online.
My second blog, gallerialindashowcase, is my jewelry blog that is targeted to both my customer and other online sellers. While I consider it somewhat businessy, it contains lighter topics relative to creating jewelry, photography for online stores, some tutorials, and more.
In the next few posts, I will work through some of the basics of blogging for you in this "Blogging is an Art series".
- Should I start a blog?
- Will a blog help sales?
- What should I write about on my blog?
- Who will read it and do I need to promote it?
- Where do I go to create a blog?
In short, the answer is YES!
Early blogs were setup to be fun, personal diaries with daily life antics that allowed friends and family to keep up with what you are doing. Today, blogs are big business.
Think about using a blog to enhance your online Indie arts business. Some advantages to having a good, targeted business blog include:
- Name recognition for you and your business
- Can set you apart as an expert in your field
- Great SEO & search support if you plan your blog with this in mind
- Features your work to your audience and works for you 24/7
- A place for potential customers to be sent by you to learn about you and your products/services
- An extension and enhancement to your web site and online plan
- An important part of your marketing plan if used correctly
- Once seasoned, a potential for utilizing advertising opportunities
WHY do you want to start a blog? Because everyone else has a blog? Because you want to use it to promote your business? Because you want to ramble on about your inner musings in life? Because you want to make it an extension of your creative expression?
All of these are good, but my experience suggests that it is best if you pick one reason why you want to blog. If you don't know where you are going, you will never get there. If you don't know who you are writing for, no one will read it.
Some things to think about before you actually start your blog are below:
- Why do I want to blog? What is my core reason - pick one. Everything else will fall out of this one objective.
- Do I want to blog about business topics, personal topics, a targeted craft topic, a specialty topic, or all the above?
- Who will be my target audience? Fellow indie artists? Friends and family? A targeted group within the arts community? An outside group supporting a cause? Or all the above?
- Where will I find this audience?
- How do I plan to promote my blog?
- Who benefits from the blog? Me? Them? Others? All? (goes back to why you want to blog)
- Do I have time to nurture this blog with rich content that is interesting to my target audience?
Once you have worked through this, you will have a better idea of how to plan your blog. Blog planning can be as simple as understanding what you want to do with your blog from the questions above, or as complex as a written plan to include promoting and marketing methods; advertising; statistics review, measurement and improvement; content editorial schedule, and more.
Check back for the rest of the "Blogging is an Art" series!
No comments:
Post a Comment