ArtsCareer February 2012 eNews: Setting up a website
In our last eNews we asked you to tell us the marketing topic you wanted to know more about and overwhelmingly, you voted for more information on setting up a website. So keep scrolling for a bumper packed enews on all things websites. Here's what you can find:
We catch up with the CEO of Sydney based web hoster and online marketing service provider, Netregistry, who gives us his top tips on what makes a great website.
Plus, website or blog? Three artists give us their perspectives.
Also don't miss your chance to win free tickets to the gripping film, A Separation.
All the best for the year ahead and here’s to a fresh (online) start!
From, The ArtsCareer Team
Check here for the results of how you voted in our last poll, which asked which marketing topics you wanted to know about.
New Career Poll: What would you do if you weren’t an artist?
In our next eNews we’ll be talking to arts practitioners who’ve changed their careers so we’d like to know what area you'd work in if you weren't doing what you do!
A different art form
Healthcare
Law
Rock star (we had to include it)
Education
Café / Shop / Restaurant owner
Non arts Charity
Politics
Science
Other - email us at artscareer@visualarts.net.au or tweet us @artscareer
The CEO of web hoster and online marketing service provider Netregistry, Larry Bloch, gives ArtsCareer his tips on what makes a great website and what you should think about before starting a website. Plus keep scrolling for links to some great online resources to help you get started.
ArtsCareer: What does Netregistry do?
Larry Bloch: We specialise in domain names and web hosting, as well as provide a range of other services specifically catered to entrepreneurs and small businesses including web design, e-commerce and online marketing services such as search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click and email marketing.
At Netregistry our aim is to be a complete business partner, so not only do we provide the services and infrastructure, but also a range of educational resources such as free seminars, a small business magazine, weekly newsletters and online business advice.
AC: What makes a good website?
LB: The main features of any good website include:
Content – Keep your website compelling by providing credible and original content. All content should be well-written and updated on a regular basis. Writing content that is useful to the user will stand out more and be favoured by both search engines and visitors – resulting in an increase in online conversions.
Design – The look and feel of a website can either attract or deter potential customers. Keep the design simple and consistent. Make sure there is good use of colour, make sure text can be read easily and that only meaningful graphics and quality photos are used.
Architecture – The technical name for this is “information architecture” (IA). It’s all about how you arrange all the content on your site, ensuring that it is easy for a user to navigate and find the information that they are looking for. Just remember, every page should have consistent, easy to understand links back to other pages.
AC: Is it possible to produce a good website on the cheap?
LB: This is always a common question. When it comes down to it, the cost of a website is always dependant on the complexity of the design and functions required as well as the knowledge and expertise of the person/business building the site. Yes, you can produce a good website on the cheap, but keep in mind that if you want all the bells and whistles the price will increase.
There are many off the shelf content management solutions (cms) that can help reduce costs, such as Wordpress. Wordpress is a powerful tool with a lot of add-ons available at a small cost and suitable for people with small budgets.
AC: What services could you provide for arts practitioners?
LB: We have a range of online solutions that can help arts practitioners no matter what stage of the business lifecycle they are at. We offer many other products and services and a solution can be tailored for each practitioner dependant on their needs.
For practitioners with no online presence, we can offer a simple website with contact details and some information or even a portfolio website to showcase their work. All can be simply managed through a content management system (CMS) for easy updating. For practitioners who already have a website, we offer a range of online marketing services that can help improve their search engine ranking and increase traffic to their website.
AC: What should our readers do or think about before they start to develop a website?
LB: Before starting any website it’s important to write down a plan of action, set yourself a budget and ask yourself what are the objectives of your site? Do research - find out what people are doing in your industry, what do your customers want and talk to people for advice and opinions. Also, don’t forget to compare suppliers and find out the different costs involved in building your site.
Don’t do what everyone else is doing, research and see what works for you and find out what your customers want, identify what you want to achieve with your website and this will help you create a focused cohesive website.
AC: Could you give us a few tips on what every website should include?
LB:
- Contact information - including a phone and email address
- Have relevant information about yourself and / or your business and what you do
- Add Google Analytics to your website so you can watch and track the traffic coming to your site
- Newsletter signup - start building a database and keep in touch with your visitors
- A sitemap - to guide visitors to find information they are looking for
- Clear call to actions [These are what you want visitors to do. For example sign up to your newsletter, enter a competition etc.]
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) friendly content with the use of keywords, placement of links and correct naming of your page titles and URLs. [This will help your website to rank higher on search engines such as Google].
Just keep it simple.
KEY WORDS
Domain name - Website address
E-commerce - The process of developing, marketing, selling, delivering, servicing and paying for products and services online
Google Analytics - A free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.
Search Engine Optimisation - The process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. For example this can involve editing the content of a site in order to increase its relevance to the specific “key words” a target user of the website might type into a search engine.
USEFUL RESOURCES
Netregistry's 10 common website mistakes to avoid like the plague
To help you decide which one’s for you, we talk to musician Sam Price (aka Naik), writer Bethanie Blanchard and interdisciplinary artist Paul Thomas about their experiences of each.
SAM PRICE - MUSICIAN
ArtsCareer: How would you describe your music?
Sam Price: Experiments in electronic music.
AC: How did you get started?
SP: When I was 14 I started playing in a band called Elixir, who just before I joined, had won triple j Unearthed. Those guys started to incorporate electronics into the band, introducing me to DJ Shadow and other sample based music and I just went off on my own tangent from there, messing around with drum machines, synths and computers. I started taking it pretty seriously once I’d finished my Film & TV degree about six years ago.
AC: What do you look to explore in your work? Do you have any influences?
SP: For me music is a very organic and natural process. My approach to it is very visceral. It is about how it feels and how it makes people feel. Having said that, I’m a very visual person and I want to stimulate imagery and thoughts. For me the music generates a framework within which, I hope, the audience will create their own stories and narratives.
AC: You’ve mentioned that your background as a filmmaker informs your music. What is it about filmmaking that you’ve taken into your music?
SP: I think my filmmaking background helps me develop drama in my music and approach each song as its own story with its own narrative arc. As I said, I don’t try to push a specific story onto the audience, but the journey of each piece of music that I create has its peaks and troughs and develops in a natural way.
AC: What did you do first and then what steps did you take when you decided to set up your website naik.com.au?
SP: I had a Myspace at first, which I thought was great but eventually there was a mass exodus from Myspace for various reasons, some of which I don’t fully understand, as I thought overall it was a pretty good and clear platform for musicians to get your music out there.
Then after establishing a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a SoundCloud etc I started to feel the whole process for promoting music became a huge mess. With so many social media platforms, spread out across different networks, I think there is less and less focus on the music.
I still play the social media game because it is a way to connect with people - I’m on instagram, bandcamp, reverbnation etc - but I wanted to just put my music and information forward in a way that worked for me. So I put together my own website where I don’t have to present my information in a predefined way.
AC: Did you already have an idea of what you wanted the site to look like, the features you wanted it to have and what you wanted it to include? Why were these important to you?
SP: Yeah I wanted it to be pretty simple, visual, striking and present the necessary information, as well as links to sites where people can connect with me. Kind of like a little hub for all of my information.
AC: Do you think it’s important to have both a blog and a website? Was it important to you to have the blog built into the website rather than having a separate blog on a site such as Blogger or Wordpress?
SP: Well, my site is a Wordpress blog! But it is integrated into the website. Personally I think I’m going to turn my website into more of a blog focused site as repeat visitors want new information all the time and I think this is the best way to give that to them.
Having said that I think it’s also important to have all of your basic information and links laid out in an easily accessible way. So I’m trying to find the balance between those two things.
AC: What’s your advice for other musicians or artists looking to establish their own website?
SP: Learn some super basic website skills, get a wordpress blog template, skin it and do it yourself for about $80 per year hosted.
AC: Can you give us your top three websites?
SP:
www.thecommunity.com.au
www.paperchainpeople.com
www.naik.com.au (yay for self promotion.)
AC: What have you got planned for the year ahead?
SP: I’ve pretty much completed a new album, which I’m going to spend some time shopping around to labels. Hopefully that will emerge around the middle of the year and I’ll be developing an audio /visual show to go alongside it.
I’ll be working hard on my collaboration with Pat from Sugar Army. We’re starting to play live shows next month and hoping to have a release completed by the end of the year.
I’m in talks with a local dancer about doing an audio/visual/dance collaboration later in the year.
I’m also working on another, slightly more upbeat, solo project, featuring a few local vocalists, which is a good fun break from the other stuff as well.
BETHANIE BLANCHARD - WRITER
AC: Can you tell us about your writing, what you do and what you write about?
Bethanie Blanchard: I’ve just begun as the new literary blogger for crikey.com.au, and I’m also a literature PhD student at the University of Melbourne.
I began as an Arts writer and subeditor for my University student magazine, and went from there to writing for Kill Your Darlings journal and now to my current position at Crikey.
I’ve always loved writing. Oddly, I was born a week early and my mum maintains it was because she lifted our antique Underwood typewriter – so apparently my eventual career was destined!
AC: How would you describe your Liticism blog on Crikey?
BB: Liticism is bookish commentary and criticism. I’ve always been a booklover so I take inspiration for my blog posts wherever I find them, but essentially Liticism is book reviews, essays, retrospectives – I’ve begun a ‘returns to’ series in which writers return to their favourite childhood books – as well as thoughts on issues that affect writers and lit lovers such as developments in publishing, literary journals etc.
I’m also very excited to be able to showcase new and emerging writers with guest posts on the site.
AC: How did that get started?
BB: I was very fortunate that Crikey approached me. I had been writing blog posts as the online intern for Kill Your Darlings journal and when Angela Meyer stepped down as Crikey’s literary blogger, Sophie Black asked if I would be interested in being the new blogger – I was!
AC: What made you decide to set up a Twitter profile?
BB: I actually decided to create a Twitter account as part of my PhD research. American novelist Bret Easton Ellis is one of the key writers in my thesis and he’s very active on Twitter. So I initially started my account for work, but I found it to be far more beneficial, and engaging (not to mention distracting!) than I had imagined.
AC: Do you find Twitter useful in terms of promoting yourself as a writer?
BB: I think it can be very useful, although, it’s probably not good to go into Twitter with only that in mind – your followers will tire of you quickly if your account is solely for that purpose.
It is wonderful, however, to be able to link to something you’ve written and know that it will be in the newsfeeds of, and potentially read by, writers and editors that you admire. That’s what’s exciting and useful as a writer on Twitter.
AC: Do you have any plans to set up a website?
BB: Perhaps in the future, at the moment I’m just trying to balance my PhD research and Liticism.
AC: Is it important for writers or even any artist to have an online presence of some sort? If so should that be a mix of having a blog, a Twitter feed and a website or just one of those?
BB: I think it is important for writers to have an online presence. It’s increasingly important for everyone and everything to be ‘Googleable’. I don’t think it matters which you have – whether it’s a blog or a website.
If you’re trying to pitch articles it’s great to be able to include links to your own writing samples, and a blog is a great way to do that. A website can be useful as a sort of online resume in which you collate the pieces you’ve written for different publications, and your contact details for editors who might like to contact you.
AC: Do you have any advice for other artists looking to establish their own blog or Twitter profile?
BB: Cold pitching is one of the most difficult things as a writer, it used to terrify me, but the better you are known – whether through chatting with an editor at a writers festival or on Twitter, or by having a strong online portfolio of published work – the easier it is, because suddenly, it’s not cold pitching anymore.
With Twitter, I would just encourage artists to get involved – follow lots of people you admire or are interested in, start conversations, use hashtags. If you liked a writer’s work, tweet to them and tell them.
Establishing a blog can be a great way for writers to hone their writing skills and get into the habit of writing and publishing frequently, if you have the time to dedicate to it, then it can be a very valuable and rewarding thing.
AC: Top three blogs/Twitterers?
BB: It’s difficult to cut it down to three! I think our Australian literary journals all have very vibrant blogs: particularly
www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com
meanjin.com.au/blog
overland.org.au
Three of my favourite twitterers are @beneltham, @annabelcrabb and @Jeff_Sparrow.
AC: Have you got anything new coming up this year?
BB: Well Liticism is really my new project this year, so I just want to make it as engaging and interesting as possible! I’ll be attending lots of writers festivals which I’m really excited about too, and who knows what other opportunities will come my way.
@beth_blanchard
blogs.crikey.com.au/liticism
PAUL THOMAS – INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
ArtsCareer: How would you describe your arts practice?
Paul Thomas: Experimental art, researching in art and science with a current focus on Nanotechnology and materiality.
A lot of my work is based around research and the documentation of that research.
AC: Have you always been interested in the relationship between art and science?
PT: I have always been interested in experimental art and this has grown naturally to include science. I was interested in the ‘space between’ and ended up exploring the space between atoms.
The learning curves happen along the way as you realise more about what are the significant drivers in you life.
AC: How did you get started or involved in working between the two?
PT: It was a natural progression of practice led research that prompted me to ask more questions. The space of the verandah (poetics of thresholds) led to the space between buildings (spatial emergence) and onto the space between skin and clothes (residual space). This research then extended to how much of our body becomes part of the material world when we touch (midas).
AC: What was the impetus behind your blog visiblespace.com?
PT: Visiblespace works as a current, easily updateable website and archive with its ability to do back dated posts. I have now put most of my early work on site.
AC: Why did you choose to go for a blog over a website?
PT: Ease of operation when you are running a number of blogs. I am currently running 5 blogs:
mass.nomad.net.au
blogs.unsw.edu.au/tiic
blogs.unsw.edu.au/artsci
blogs.curtin.edu.au/crash
visiblespace.com/blog
AC: What’s your advice for other artists looking to establish their own blog?
PT: Start straight away - download Wordpress and get your own domain and server.
I think it is important to own your server space and with your own domain you have the opportunity to easily maintain a back up.
AC: What are you working on at the moment?
PT: Atomism is an ongoing collaborative work, between myself and Kevin Raxworthy that investigates, from the position of an artist, the wave and quantum theories of light.
Richard Feynman has said that light hits a mirror at all points, not just at the point of reflection. All points of the mirror receive and reflect this light, however most of the light is lost, out of phase with its neighbours, only the light in phase with its neighbours is visible, or makes sense to our eye. Atomism explores what happens to the light that is not reflected.
Image: Bethanie Blanchard
ArtsCareer, in collaboration with Hopscotch Films, are offering ArtsCareer enews subscribers the chance to win one of 10 double passes to A Separation.
Not exactly out-of-love, Nader and Simin are attempting to divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. Simin is anxious to ensure a better future for their daughter Termeh and emigrate from Iran, but Nader refuses to leave his elderly father who suffers from Alzheimer's. When the judge refuses to formalise their separation, Simin departs the family home, leaving the obstinate Nader to hire a housekeeper; the devout, impoverished Razieh. When Nader returns one day to find his father alone, it leads to an altercation with unexpected consequences.
Propelled by an acute attention to class, religious and gender differences, director Asghar Farhadi's meticulous script questions the very basis of truth and ethics. At its heart A Separation is a gripping, humane drama that recalls classic Hitchcock in its twists and turns.
IN CINEMAS MARCH 1ST
Winner – Best Film – Golden Globe Awards 2012
Winner - Best Film - Berlin International Film Festival 2011
Winner - Best Film - Sydney Film Festival 2011
Check out the trailer here: http://www.hopscotchfilms.com.au/home/
Click on this link http://rsvp.hopscotchfilms.com.au/RSVP/NAVA/ for your chance to win one of the 10 double passes. First in best dressed!
