And as you can see by the photo below, there's so many ways to put your work out there. It's pick and choose. Overwhelmed by the choices? Lori suggests to just start with one.
Sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN - they want to find you. Keywords are how they find you. Use them wisely. Do a test. Think of something you want to buy and then choose some keywords to describe it. What links do you get? Change the keywords and see what other links you get.
The three main reasons to use social media are:
1. Your audience needs to find you and you need to be in communication with them.
2. They need to find your work, whether your work is branded under your name - or a company name.
3. It provides opportunities to connect to your market. You need to be in contact with your customers - keep them close, keep them informed -- not always selling, sometimes just sharing.
There are other opportunities via social media:
1. Connect to other artists
2. Connect to your suppliers and vendors
3. Shows are using social media to announce ‘call for artists’ (the days of mailing in slides and CDs of images are quickly coming to an end!)
There's something else to think about. The keywords you use - they stay out there. Say for instance you made a bridal necklace and it sold. The keywords you entered for that item on your page will still bring traffic to your site.
And finally, Lori talked a little about Google+. Another social networking site. It opened to the public on September 20th and has attracted 40 million users. It took their rival Facebook three years to reach the 25 million users mark. So people seem to be flocking to Google+. Here's a brief video that talks about circles and sharing.
And one of the nice features of Gmail is the chat. So, it would make sense they would take the chat feature and pump it up. It's called the hangouts . . . what do you think?
Super psyched to have been a part of Metalwerx Vendor Day with the Greater Boston Metal Clay team!
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