Lucky 13 Tips on Getting Noticed

An artist looking for higher visibility wrote:

l have a myspace site and l went for about two hours the other night dropping comments to people to visit my etsy store.  l realized later that l dont like when people do that but if the etsy stores are only being seen by artists l need to get my store to be seen by other type of people.
Unfortunately there is a bunch of nasty crap on myspace that l really dont want those creatures to even know anything about me.

For the writer, or anyone wanting to get noticed, I would suggest the following:

1.) Remember that these are all long-term strategies.

2.) Make a point of reading blogs that are written by - and read by - people who are interested in what you do, might want to hire people like you, attend a class you teach, are able to afford to purchase your work, etc.

3.) Comment on those blog posts  I'd set aside about 30 minutes to an hour every other day to do this - or more right now while you are building a reputation  Most importantly: be sure that the comment is on topic with the post.

4.) Use cocomment to track what you do. With two clicks you can record what you've said and where. It's a great way to be answerable to yourself about your time and efforts.

For example I was concerned that I wasn't practicing what I preach so I installed a cocomment box on my main blog so that it displays my comments. This way I can also be accountable to the readers who, after all, take my advice and need to know that I'm not just shooting from the hip.

5.)  Create a link and short tagline about your own blog to use in your signature and use it everywhere.

6.) Wean yourself from spending your time on email, yahoo groups, newsgroups etc. You’ll reach far more people if you take lots of those “limited participant” conversation to the blogosphere where all kinds of people that you don’t even know can benefit from what you can share - and where a widest variety of readers can talk back to you.

7.) Be hard on yourself about where you focus your energies. Put a priority on getting out there and being seen, not among other people who do what you do (writers or teachers or shoe salesmen or artists etc) but among people who may hire you, or enroll in your class or purchase your work or tell others about you, or whatever.

There is something to be said about a community of your peers, but commiserating about problems isn’t getting you in front of anyone who might be seriously interested in what you do.

8.) Find a place or two where you can be a 'Guest Blogger' on some topic you know about. Don't think of it in a selfish way of how can you sell something, but think of how you can offer something interesting and informative to another blog and their readers.

This will help ensure that people will want to read more of what you have to say, and you can develop a following. You will have a link to your blog or your website or whatever as part of your byline, so put your best foot forward and you will indeed get traffic pass-through to you.

9.) Unless you’re doing something that is applicable to people under 19, run don't walk away from myspace. It has a connotation that's not helpful to your business and you're not attracting the right audience.

You should understand that some people will never read a blog that has a myspace.com URL. In fact, more refuse to potentially waste their time reading at myspace than refuse to bother with blogger / blogspot URLs which are felt by many to be home to the blogosphere's largest percentage of splogs. Myspace on the other hand is just, for the most part, distaseful.

10.) For the most professional look for your blog, plus all the perks that make the blogosphere truly interactive and easy to create lasting and interactive conections on, either:

• begin a free wordress blog that you can upgrade later if you want, They offer a relatively simple set-up and some lovely and clean options for your blog format and many plug-ins are available  - particularly for the upgraded version
  

- or -

• for the easiest professional blog platform with the most bang for your buck, robust service, wonderful EASY to add widgets, etc. invest five bucks a month in a typepad blog. You can try it free for a month and use those 30 days to learn & experiment.

11.) Pick a clean look for your blog, where your words and message are what get noticed. And please, avoid light text on a black background at all cost, no matter how creative you think it looks.

12.) To share ideas about what you do, your approach to your work, etc without making commercial announcements (beyond saying you’re struggling with whatever or have finished such and so project and include a link) publish at least a few times each month on Gather.com.

They share their advertising revenue with contributors, including if you simply contribute photos and a few lines about what you’re posting.

My $75 worth of gift certificates for Barnes and Noble, Omaha Steaks or Brookstone isn’t much but done right it takes little time to produce and creates just a tad more buzz.

13.) Go into your effort to "get known" expecting to give as much as you get. Then give more than is expected. Link generously and don't expect something in return.

And if someone helps you out along the way, be more than appreciative.

Tell other people about it. How? Aha – in your blog.
.

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Comments

[Susan]

Heather, thanks for the comments and the question. It's a good opportunity to clarify my position at least somewhat after getting a lot of negative flap from artists for many months after writing this piece.

So, that said, when reading blogs I look for people that I have something in common with and whose posts I'm actually interested in. At this point I'm mainly reading blogs about social media and web technology - plus a fair amount of blogs about blogging :^). Fine, I'm a social media junkie.

If the kids were still at home I'd probably read and comment on more mommyblogs. If I had more time for hobbies I'd participate on various blogs relevant to those. You see what I'm saying?

In essence, we need to know who our target market is and keep it in mind - but at the same time we have to be authentic and true to ourselves and what we have to say.

Hanging out with artists _all the time_ gets other artists very little in the way of attention unless we're going to be doing a project with them, selling them classes, supplies, consulting or something like that. But no more hate mail from artists, OK? :^)

[Heather]

Great p[ost with information that I have not sen in a billion other place so that totally rocks. I do have a question...how do you determine what blogs or whatever to comment on, to make myself more visable to those who might actually look at my blog and be inspired to purchase my works? I am an artist, and I have many artist blog buddies, but they don't buy art they make it...how do I find a way to branch out? Any suggestions?

[Command, Court and Conquer]

Nice post. Re: Darker Color and Bloggger, different things work for different people. (as I note here http://commandblog.scieron.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1165357870&archive=&start_from=&ucat=4&)

Sometimes being 'just like' your target audience is important.

[Sandy Alisan]

Thank you so much for saying what you did about dark backgrounds. I know people think they look so sophisticated. I mean no offense and there are lots of them out there but I can't figure out why. They just look amateurish to me, kind of like the many colored type face thing and I wind up thinking why doesn't one of their friends tell them?

[Joanne Barnes]

Susan you're spot on with these points.

I just have to add that I hear people ask why not use blogger because some of the big names do after all. But the problem with that is
- 1. if a big name blogger had their blog evaporate in one of bloger's fits there would be hell to pay and
- 2. heck they have alredy made a name for themselves before blogger developed this reputation so they don't have to worry but on the other hand we DO