9/16/06 Checking Out Blogs
I spent some time today checking out the Internet blogs of some other artists. I wanted to glean more insight into how others have created their blogs.
I liked the clean look of Christine Marie Art (at www.christinemarieartblogspot.com) as well as an old favorite www.claudinehellmuth.blog.com
WHAT I FIND EFFECTIVE:
1) Claudine's blog has LOTS of artwork, photographs and newspaper articles - just like a traditional website (which she also has). Claudine is a "Gen X'er" and works in the computerized design industry so she really has a leg up about constructing a blog. (And that is why I particularly chose hers.)Her blog also has a lot of color, design and pizazz....
2) Christine Maries Art blog is lean, simple and restful to the eye. After my layered, highly complicated and hard to navigate previous website - simple is my vision now.
3) Knowing marketing like I do, I can read between the lines in Claudines Helmuth's blog to see that her blog really does a lot of low-key sales and marketing for her and the majority of links go back to her website where she offers workshops, comissioned work as so on. (SMART girl!!) Her blog and her site work hand-in-hand......
WHAT SURPRISES ME:
1) Claudine spends quite a lot of time talking about her dogs and cats, trips and her favorite tv shows!
2) She references a LOT of links to websites, magazines, tv shows and so on.
3) She linked to a HUGE number of other blogs. (I am still not sure why except to get her blog read.)
4) Why would a prospect read both a blog and a website? (Perhaps the website remains 'static' and the blog is "ever changing.")
This is quite an interesting learning process for me and the time today spent reviewing blogs and individual blog styles has been revealing and informative to me.
