Marketing Notes 3

Uploading to FineArtAmerica - What's the Drill?

I am a great believer in systems and structure.  When I upload a new image to FineArtAmerica, I want to make sure that I get the most "bang for my buck" so I have a little routine that I follow.

This may not be comprehensive and I would love to learn more tips and tricks, but this is what I do.

Firstly, I make sure that I have my default uploading preferences set, this includes the right links to my twitter and facebook accounts for my photos - so those two steps are immediately and automatically taken care of.

Then I choose the image - I normally go for a .png format but I would love to hear from the technical experts out there if I would do better with .jpeg?

The size of the image is critical to how large it can be blown up so when you are working with your images you should be aware of this.  Custom crops also have an impact so you should also bear this in mind in post production.

I am a member of several groups and I make sure that if the image is right for one or more groups, this is the time to tick the box and share it.  It is important that you respect the group rules and only upload a few images a day to the group or they will think you are spamming them.  Don't forget to go over to the groups now and again, get involved in the discussions and comment on other artists work.

Once the image is uploaded, I open the new page and the first thing I do is vote for it.  This helps the images SEO within the FineArtAmerica site and should be automatic.

The sharing buttons below enable you to share to Stumbleupon, Google + and Pinterest.  I have accounts at all three.  Don't forget you have dealt with Twitter and Facebook in your global settings so you don't need to share to these sites again.

When you share to pinterest, make sure the image goes on the right board, type in a description, make it clear what type of medium it is - I either specifiy Photograph or Digital Art and then label it "by John Colley"  Then make sure you copy and paste the url for the page directly into the description.  This makes it more likely someone will click on it and also gives you much enhanced "Google juice" for the back link.

When sharing to Stumbleupon, you can use the same description and tags you used when uploading the photograph/artwork. Make sure you specify a theme - if not art related, try tagging it against the subject matter of the image.  Don't forget to specify whether the image is work safe.  It won't let you save your Stumble without doing so.

On Google+ add an extra comment to make the post more interesting.  

Having done all this, I then make a copy of the address, description and FAA gallery in my FAA spreadsheet so that I have a list ready for online marketing when I want to run a campaign (Hootsuite - more on this another time).


Question of the Day: What else do you do when you post your images on FineArtAmerica. 

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