Web Site Content Frequently Asked Questions:

Below is a list of common questions we are asked by our clients as they are developing the content to be used on their web site.

How do I write an Artist Statement?
Do you have any advice on selecting images for my galleries?
Should I have a blog on my web site?
What other information should I consider including on my web site?

How do I write an Artist Statement?

Before providing some tips on how to write an artist statement, let me briefly state why it's important to have one. An artist statement affords you the opportunity to enrich the viewer's experience of your work by communicating the ideas and inspiration behind what you do.

It is relatively short as an artist statement ranges from a single paragraph to a page and unlike your bio, is written in the first person (i.e. "I", "me", "my") and normally does not contain information about exhibitions, education, collections, and awards as that information is normally disclosed in your resume.

To get in the proper mindset for writing an Artist Statement, I'd recommend that you first go to galleries or the websites of galleries that sell work you admire, and read the artist's statements. The more that you see the way other artists tackle the task of writing the artist's statement, the better. In museums, the curator's statements might also give you some ideas about how to write about your work. Unfortunately both of these examples can sometimes be convoluted and overblown. No matter. Seeing something done wrong can be as effective as seeing something done right.

As you begin to draft your artist statement, consider the following questions when discussing what you do:

What media do you use and if relevant why you use the media that you do.
Is technique important to the work that you make? If so, you might want to talk about process or technique.
Is the work in series? How does it connect to your past work?
Why you do what you do. This is the place for discussing the vision, ideas and inspiration behind the work.
What is the concept underlying your work?
Is there a dominant metaphor you are exploring through your work?
Is your work thematic?
Are you influenced by any particular artists or arts movement? If so, you might state that the work is in the vein of, or inspired by that artist or movement, or twists it in a new way.

The result of this effort, whether it ends up being a paragraph or an entire page, should clearly answer the question what do you make and why.

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Do you have any advice on selecting images for my galleries?

One of the challenges you will ultimately faces is how to organize the imagery for your website. We’ve seen them done by season, location, subject matter, eco-system, and even by date. Simply put, there is no right answer – it depends on what is in your portfolio and what imagery that you want to share.

A recommendation that we normally make to our clients is to pick a sampling of various aspects of your work. It will present a more rounded overall collection that will interest a broader range of visitors than if you focus your entire gallery deeply on one thing. This approach also lends itself well into rotating in and out new imagery without throwing off the balance of your work and rewards repeat visitors of your website by being able to see your latest work. It also reinforces the fact that your site is active and continuing to evolve.

What really is paramount is to choose quality over quantity. From our experience almost no one looks at all of the images on an artist’s website. Thus what you really want to do is put together a collection of you’re “A” quality images to showcase to visitors. Don’t confuse this with “all” of your quality images. You want to hold some back to swap out imagery without dipping into your “A-“ pool if you for whatever reason are unable to get out to take some new images.

In addition, if a publisher or collector should visit your website asking for your library of images on a particular topic – you’d like to be able to offer then additional options other then just what is currently viewable on your web site.

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Should I have a blog on my web site?

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether to have a blog on your web site. Much has been written on the topic of why blogs are a medium to consider for your website but here’s some that I’m particularly attracted to:

1. Blogs give Individuals, Companies and Brands "Voice" - 5 years ago a person with a ‘voice’ that reached a few hundred people on any given week - today what is written and said can make it out to hundreds of thousands of people on any given week. Blogs are the vehicle for this.

2. Blogs are Conversational - both in the style of writing, the way they interact with one another and the way that they are designed with comments at their heart blogs are all about the conversation.

3. Blogs build Trust - as a result of being a relational/conversational medium a blogger can build trust with their audience (something that most businesses would kill for).

4. Blogs build Profile - looking to become an ‘expert’ (or at least be perceived as an expert) in your field. Blogs have the ability to showcase your expertise and help you become the ‘go to’ person in your field.

5. Blogs are Immediate - blogs are a great way to communicate with people because they are so quick to use. Have a thought, write it down, hit publish and within minutes it can be being read and commented upon by your readers.

6. Blogs are a doorway to Search Engines and Social Media - one of the great things about blogs is that they are indexed so well by search engines which love sites that are focused upon a topic, updated regularly etc. Social media sites (particularly bookmarking ones) also love blogs.

The list of reasons to blog goes on and on. Of course everything I’ve mentioned above can also be achieved with other types of websites and just because you have a blog doesn’t mean the above all falls in your lap (it takes work - see below) - however these are some of the attractive aspects of having a blog.

5 reasons why a blog may not be for you:

Some bloggers tend to build blogging up to be the answer to every problem you might have online without giving a full picture. Let me shed a little light on the flip-side of blogging and why it might not be the right medium for you.

1. Blogs Take Time to Mature - one of the misconceptions that many new or ‘PreBloggers’ come to blogging with is that they just need to set one up and people will come reading it in their thousands. This is rarely the case. Unless you get extremely lucky or have some existing profile or traffic source to leverage a new blog takes considerable time to build up when it comes to readership. When I surveyed Technorati’s Top 100 blogs I found that on average they’d been running for over 3 years to achieve their prominence.

2. Blogs Take Daily Work - the key to successful blogging is to post quality content on a regular basis. Most bloggers post on a daily basis, many of the top blogs post numerous times per day. Combine this fact with the last point (ie that it takes years for a blog to mature) and you have this question to ask yourself:

"Can you write something of high quality on a daily basis on your chosen topic for the next 3 years?”

That’s 780 posts if you post each weekday for the next 3 years - 1560 if you post twice each weekday…..

3. Blogs Take More than Writing - I’m not trying to depress you but there’s more to successful blogs than writing posts. Bloggers face a lot of other practical challenges on their way to success. These include moderating comments (blogs are the targets of spammers and occasionally ‘trolls’ (trouble makers), design (making your blog look unique can be an important element in it’s success), marketing (new readers don’t just appear - it takes networking, self promotion etc) and more. The list of jobs that a blogger needs to do can be overwhelming to a new blogger. Of course a lot of these skills develop over time and become a natural part of your working rhythm - but it’s worth counting the cost of this before you get into blogging.

4. Bloggers Can be Anti-Trust/Profile Building - I mentioned above that a blog can be a wonderful tool for building your voice, profile and trust. However the flip-side is that you can actually hurt your reputation in your niche if you don’t use your blog well. Everything that you do on your blog has the potential to either build or destroy your reputation in some way. Remember that what you ‘publish’ online is permanent. While you might delete it from your actual blog there will be a record of it somewhere online. So publishing untruths, writing while angry, being manipulative or not being transparent on your blog can actually come back to bite you and hurt your reputation. The vast majority of bloggers have positive experiences from blogging but do enter into it with a little caution and care - the blogosphere can be a very unforgiving place if you give it reason to turn on you.

5. Blogs Rely Upon YOU as a Conversation Starter - I was chatting with a new blogger recently about their experience of starting a blog and they reflected back to me that they didn’t realize how draining it could be to be the instigator of conversation. They’d come from a background of using online forums previously - a medium where the community kicks off conversation. Blogs are similar to forums in that they are conversational, but where anyone can start a conversation on a forum a blog relies upon you to do it. This takes time, energy, creativity and a certain skill.

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What other information should I consider including on my web site?

This really gets back to what the overall purpose of the web site. If you are planning to sell products or services through your web site you will want to make sure that you have content that covers topics like, the buying procedure, shipping information, return policy, testimonials, and perhaps an FAQ to cover specific questions related to what you are selling.

If the purpose of the web site is to act more like a brochure, you want to make sure that your visitors have all of the information that they need to take the next step with your web site. A key thing to remember is that your web site is a virtual salesman for your business.

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