Anne Giles Clelland

The Art of Creating Site Traffic and Business Value from Art

In Blog Iconoclasm and The Business of Blog Art is Traffic, I examined the complexity of "art for art's sake" and the need for art purchased by a business blog to create business results from that art.  I concluded that, rightly or wrongly, site traffic - or "art traffic" - would be one measure of the art's value.

How can an artist help create business value, i.e. art traffic?

Offline, with the decreasing number of print outlets for art, for an artist to create business value for a company is hugely challenging.  Online, the possibilities are huge.

To create value and business results for Handshake 2.0, the content of an illustration, photograph, cartoon, graph, chart or visual of any kind could:
 
a) Bring pleasure and satisfaction to the site's current top source of traffic - people who type in the URL themselves to see what's up on Handshake 2.0 - such that visitors would be pleased in the moment and look forward to the next creation by the same artist.

b) Bring traffic via the site's second top source of traffic, Google, due to the relevance Google might attribute to the post based, in part, on the popularity of the post and the caliber and quantity of sites linking to the post.

c) Bring traffic via one of the site's top five sources of traffic, Twitter, by the artist using his or her own Twitter account to share news of the art's posting and to engage in 140-character conversations with interested Twitter users.  A link to the art posted on the artist's Facebook page would be nice, too.

d) Help with automating and scaling.  If artists create images according to the specified criteria, the images are low-labor to post, and cost-saving compared to text posts.

e) Be in keeping with Handshake 2.0's theme - a place to learn about business and about businesses - and be in keeping with part of its mission - regional economic development via reach to, and acquisition of, national and international clients, customers, and partners for locally-based companies who are clients of Handshake Media, Incorporated.

f) Result in more purchases of content placement on Handshake 2.0.  Art by artists provides "surround value" such that site visitors might think, “I want my company showcased in a place that has cool and beautiful art like that.”
 
In some ways, these are the criteria by which the success of the content of any post on Handshake 2.0 is evaluated, whether it's text or an image.  The business of blog art is really the business of blog content.  On a personal blog, content can just "be."  On a business blog, content needs to create value beyond simply being what it is.

Blog art can both "be" and "do."  It can be art and do business.

Photo credit:  Jennifer Greger

The photograph was purchased from Jennifer Greger as a result of her reply to one of our content creator job postings on craigslist.

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Exploring this issue resulted in a three-part series on the business of using art in business blogs:

Blog Iconoclasm
The Business of Blog Art is Traffic
This post:  The Art of Creating Site Traffic and Business Value from Art

Lessons Learned from The Social Media R.O.I. That Was, Then Wasn’t

When a client of my digital public relations agency, Handshake Media, Incorporated, called and said the video we had created for the company - uploaded to YouTube, posted on our company’s blog, Handshake 2.0, and showcased in our company’s Twitter stream and on our company’s Facebook page - had resulted in a phone call for an appointment, I was ecstatic.  Return on investment - R.O.I. - from a social media campaign!  It worked!  Having been without a salary for a year as the founder of a start-up, I dubbed the effort The $50,000 Video.

I found out a few days ago that the phone call did not ultimately result in an appointment.  No ROI from a social media campaign.  I updated the post:  "In terms of ROI, my $50,000 video is now a $0 video."

Lessons learned:

• When I accept a client on an exchange-of-services basis, I need to serve that client as if it were a full-paying client. I’m not proud to realize that I did not follow up with this barter client as I should have, or would have believed was professional and ethical to do.  I assumed the last news was the latest news.  That’s both illogical and a poor business practice.
• When I accept a barter client, I need to be in a position to offer full service. As my company evolves, the timing may be better than at others for such an exchange. I need to make thoughtful, conscious choices about this.
• I need to manage expectations - both my own and those of my clients.  When I once heard a guy say, “I am a manager of expectations,” I wanted to run, not walk, from such a dour, drab, numbing statement. And, yet… I wrote business plans in exchange for future stock options during the heady days of dot-com.  I could wallpaper a room with plans from never-businesses.  I can fall prey to one-hit madness. Would I want a single YouTube video, one Twitter tweet, one sparkling blog post to “go viral”?  You bet!  And I know my clients would, too!  Do I have a secret wish with each post and show and tweet that this might be the one?  Yep.  But to quote Marshall Sponder, “...sustainable results don’t come from a quirk, they come from sustained effort - and there may be ups and downs. I like to think the same thing is true about Social Media.”

The experience was troubling and, frankly, humiliating, and the lessons hard and well-deserved.

Yet, I'll  finish with this wisdom from Adam Singer:  “Embrace imperfection. Part of social media means, well, being social. And our social interactions are by their very nature imperfect. Some of the best blogs on the planet are hardly perfect, but that’s not what makes them compelling.”

May my sustained effort on behalf of my clients generate sustainable R.O.I.

The Business of Blog Art Is Traffic

In asking for business results from blog art, if we go with the metaphor of the sales funnel, quantity of traffic matters.  If we go with the metaphor of audience, quality of traffic matters.  Either way, traffic is the current standard by which online results are measured, especially as content creation moves to a pay for performance model.

In a former life, I was a poet.  Publishers were kind enough to publish my work.  Some gave me print copies of the publication, some paid me, and a county arts council even gave me an arts grant to support my creative work.

I believe in art for art's sake.  When I was a poet with a salaried day job to support my creative endeavors, I readily urged companies to support the arts.

Now that I am the founder of a start-up company with the ambition of providing not only salaries, but health care and retirement benefits to my future salaried employees - in support of whatever creative endeavors they may have on the side - I'm envisioning a creative way for my company to support the arts:  to pay artists to create content for one of my company's blogs, i.e. business news site Handshake 2.0.

My company would work in collaboration with artists:  support of art and artists in return for business results.

Business results from art?!  Blasphemy!  Iconoclasm!

Maybe.  But...

All companies need these business results in this order:

• Products and services
• Revenue from sales of products and services 
• Clients and customers to whom to sell products and services
• A pool of likely or "qualified" clients and customers
• A lakeful of leads to likely clients and customers
• An oceanful of potential clients and customers

How could one of my poems - or an illustration, photograph, or cartoon by an artist and published on Handshake 2.0 - possibly contribute to achieving those results?

Print media publishers are asking the same question.  A report from Booz & Co's strategy + business, recommends "compensation models that link incentives to metrics based on the audience size and level of engagement that the content attracts.  The Internet offers a way to better align the compensation that journalists receive with the value they create for their readers."

Or that artists receive.  Compensation for value created, i.e. compensation for business results.  Rightly or wrongly, for now, business results are measured in site traffic.

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Photo credit:  Megan McCoy, downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. 

The photograph was purchased from Megan McCoy as a result of her reply to one of our content creator job postings on craigslist.

Blog Iconoclasm

When the professor holds up a jar and asks the students, “How much can this container hold?”, I feel delight when he pours in marbles, then sand, then water.  I have a mind that sees possibilities, even expanse, in limits.

A blog post is a container, one square on a computer screen holding text and links, sometimes an added image or embedded video.

Nice little blog post.

A container made for iconoclasm.

The tradition-breaking kind.

My latest blog iconoclasm for Handshake 2.0 is art. 

Could a business news blog contain posts with stand-alone art - an illustration, a photograph, a cartoon - that conveys business meaning in such a significant way that the traditional explanatory text in a blog post would lessen, rather than increase, its value?  Could the blog post simply contain a title, a link or two to the context, a link or two to the artist’s profile and site? 

And then the creation.  Voilà!  A synthesis of blog, business, and art.

Ah, that would be sublime.

Oh, yeah, one more thing.  Because Handshake 2.0 is an enterprise of a company, the art would need to create business results for the company.

I posted job openings for illustrators, photographers and cartoonists on craigslist.

I’ve had wonderful responses and seen such creativity.

Might the reader be surprised to learn explaining that blog-business-art-biz-results-synthesis thing has been a challenge?

It's new to me, too.

The ultimate issue is the ever-present art conundrum:  Art must be for art’s sake and the art gallery’s rent must be paid and the art must be free to be itself and the art gallery's rent is not free.

Still.

Nice little blog post container…

I can’t stop imagining…

On Publicity

Ten candidates are running for our local town council, many of whom have never before been in the public eye, who now seek publicity for their platforms.  Michael Jackson’s death caused many to ponder the power of publicity to harm a spirit.  In a post-Olympics interview, Michael Phelps was asked how he handled publicity.  I paraphrase what I remember:  “To do what I want to do - to raise the bar on the sport of swimming - it’s just something that has to be gone through.”  I have received kind publicity recently.  And my clients are starting to receive it as well.

Publicity:  1a.  Information that concerns a person, group, event or product that is disseminated through various media to attract public notice. b. Public interest, notice, or notoriety achieved by the spreading of such information.
- The American Heritage Dictionary

That’s how publicity is defined.  What’s it for?

“Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive…”
- John Berger

Ah, yes, return on investment, ROI. 

Ideally, investing in the dissemination of information - publicity - whether through time or treasure or both - results in “I didn’t know that!”, then “I gotta have that!” - or I gotta vote for that candidate, contribute to that cause, buy that ticket, buy that product, or call that company and make a deal.

“Don’t believe your own press release.”
- Old wisdom, first told to me by my mother

Hubris:  Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance...
Arrogant:  2.  Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one’s superiority toward others.
Arrogate:  To take or claim for oneself without right.
- The American Heritage Dictionary

“You can do anything you put your mind to.”
- Taught to all American school children

I have, at times, been subject to hubris, to believing my own press releases, to presuming a superiority that others did not possess, to arrogantly believing my fine mind could move mountains.

Then I wasn’t able to conceive a child.
Then I wasn’t able to keep a marriage together.

I treasure the regard of others.  I appreciate publicity and the success it might bring my clients’ companies and my own company.

And I know who I am and who I am not, and what I can do and what I cannot.

What’s really my point?  I want to protect those whom I care about, and to whom publicity comes, from pain.  Thinking that I can do so is probably hubris.  Wanting to protect them is human.

“All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.”
- Brendan Behan

May the publicity that comes my way and the way of those I cherish and support be good for all of us.

Big Learnings

A former colleague and I have recently reconnected. The colleague asked, "What have been your 'big learnings' from the past ten years?"

Here are my answers, born of experience in education, in community mental health, in business, and in person:

(a) I cannot control the thoughts, feelings, observations, awarenesses, opinions or behaviors of others. My attempts to do so are usually born of fear.  I can invite, I can inform, I can encourage, I can attempt to manipulate, I can even attempt to force, but I cannot "make" anyone think, or do, or feel anything about anything.  Including about me.

Others choose for themselves what they think, what they do, and how they respond to what they feel.

(b) If a newborn looks up into the eyes of its mother and doesn't see love and adoration - for whatever reason, intentional or unintentional on the mother's part - the newborn grows into an adult forever trying to hide its deepest secret:  It's a being not even a mother could love.

(c) Looks matter.

(d) Money matters.

(e) Looks don't matter.

(f) Money doesn't matter.

(g) A good cat is good company for (a) through (f) above.