Your Art on Pinterest

I've recently started using Pinterest to share my wildlife art, along with other things I'm interested in such as other wildlife art, wildlife photography, nature, space, etc., and I think it can be a useful tool for promoting your art and website. There are already lots of articles on how to increase your following on Pinterest, such follow other Pinners with similar interests, Like and Comment on others' Pins, etc. So I'm not going to go into the basics of Pinterest here. This is not an introduction to Pinterest so I'm going to assume you already have your account set up and have some idea how to navigate Pinterest and are now interested in making the most of it. So in this blog post I want to talk more specifically about how to improve your chances of getting your websites and art seen on Pinterest, and also how to prevent your art from getting lost in the sea of Pins.

One important thing to keep in mind is that, if you post your art on Pinterest and make a mistake, you can go to your Pin and edit it. But if someone else has already re-Pinned your Pin then you can't edit that Pin. Your mistake is out there forever! So you really want to try to get it right the first time you Pin something.

If you have your own website (and you should!) the first thing to do is set up your site to make it easy for you and others to share your art images on Pinterest. Add Buttons to your website with their Widget Builder. Or you can go a step further and add buttons for Pinterest as well as other social media like FaceBook, Google+, Twitter, and more. I use the tool from ShareThis.com and this is what it looks like on my website:

The tool just sits there along the side to the left of the menu. It stays in place even if you scroll way down the page so it's always accessible. Both the Widget Builder tool and ShareThis tool are free, and they're easy to set up of you know basic HTML. You just copy and paste their code into your page.

Now that you have tools set up so anyone can share your images it's important to do a few other things to your site to optimize it for Pinterest. You want all that sharing of your images to lead back to you, your website, and your art. One thing you should do is make sure your name is clearly visible within the image itself, not just as text next to the image. You should do this anyway, not just for social medial sharing. Anyone can download your images at any time and you want to be sure no matter what they do with it, such as post it on their, or email it to a friend, it always points back to you. Don't rely on your signature. It may not be legible, especially if the image has been compressed. It's worth taking the time to open each image in Photoshop (or similar program) and add clear text with your name, and even your website, right into the image, like I've done here:

 

It may not be pretty but it's very important for keeping your images credited to you. You don't want people taking credit for your work. There are some unethical Pinners who will replace your Pin's URL with their own, unfortunately. You always want people to be able to find your site should they see your image and want to know more about it. While it may be safer to plaster the text right across the middle of the image as a big watermark, I'm opposed to that. That ruins the image so much that I, personally, won't Pin and share such images. It's just too ugly. So if you want your images to be shared, don't totally obscure them with ugly text.

The next thing you need to do to your website is add descriptions to your images that Pinterest will use when someone Pins your image. I am amazed at how many Pinners are too lazy to add even one word of description to their Pins! They just put a dot, or a space, or a simple word like "wow" in, just enough to satisfy Pinterest's description requirement. Unfortunately, this will not help your art get seen. Pinterest does not have eyes. It has no idea what your image looks like. So if someone uses the Pinterest Search feature and types in "art" your images will not come up if they lack a description, or have an inappropriate description. Let's face it, we're never going to get all those lazy Pinners to type something, so let's do it for them.

Pinterest will grab some information from your website automatically, if it's there. If you highlight text from a page before you click the Pin button then Pinterest will insert that selcted text into the description for you. So make sure there is text near each image that says something about the artwork so Pinners can use that if they want. 

Many Pinners don't know about this, or won't bother, however. So you can go one step further and add behind-the-scenes descriptions to your HTML that Pinterest will grab by default. If nothing is selected Pinterest will grab whatever is in the "alt" tag for that image, so be sure to include alt tags in all your images! Since no one visiting your website normally sees these alt tags (it only shows up if the image does not display) you don't need to worry about cluttering up your page, so make your alt tag as long and descriptive as you'd like. For the above fox painting my alt tag looks like:

alt="Oil painting of a red fox pup in his den, by wildlife artist Crista Forest, ForestWildlifeArt.com. Fine Art Prints available"

The words within the quotes are what Pinterest will insert into the description automatically when someone Pins your images from your website. Don't use only the title of your artwork. Use descriptions with keywords you think people will use when searching for art like yours. I don't even bother including the titles in mine. The above fox painting's title is "Learning" but I doubt anyone searching Pinterest using the word "learning" is looking for fox paintings. It's more important that I get related keywords like "painting" and "fox" and "art" in my description. Be sure to include your name. As you can see, I even included my website URL, which becomes clickable once Pinned.


Speaking of URLs, here's another tip about those when posting your artwork. If you have an account with Fine Art America, Etsy, Daily Paintworks, or similar site, don't Pin your art from there. Many of these sites make it easy for users to Pin from them. The problem with this is that when you post from these sites their URL becomes linked with your image, as shown in this Daily Paintworks Pin below.

This would be great if clicking that link right there would take viewers to your Daily Paintworks page, but it doesn't. (This is not the same as the URL people are taken to when they click the actual image, btw) If someone clicks that link what they see is a whole page of images Pinned from Daily Paintworks by anyone and everyone, which may or may not show any of your images. It's better to have your own website URL in there so when people click that link they will see all images posted from your website, not Daily Paintworks. You'd much rather have them discover other images from your art website than other artists from DPW! If you already have some of those Pins on your Boards you don't need to delete them and go re-Pin those images from your own site. You can just Edit the image and replace the DPW (or Etsy or whatever) URL with your own.

Well, that's it for now. I'm fiddling around with Boards and think I have some ideas on how to organize things to make Boards more appealing and more likely to be followed. But that's a whole topic in itself so I'll save that for a future post. In the mean time, come over and follow me on Pinterest!

http://www.pinterest.com/csforest/

Artist Associations

Today I'm just going to rant. Yes, I'm in that kind of mood. Today has not been a good day for a number of reasons and this is just one of them.

I had been a member of several local artist associations in the past when I was living in CA. They were in every city, literally, and very active. They had monthly meetings, frequent shows, social gatherings, photo-shoot and exhibit outings, etc. When I moved to WA I was expecting to find something similar. Sadly, artist associations are few and far between here. I finally did find one local one and joined it.

Finally, I thought, some artists to interactive with!

Yeah, so I thought.

Wrong.

This association (I won't be mean enough to mention the name) appears to be less than worthless. They say they have a newsletter. Three months now I've been a member I've not received one. I emailed about this 3 or 4 days ago and have received no response so far.

They say they have weekly plein-air outings. I've never been notified of a single one so far.

I asked if there were monthly meetings. I'm told, "No. There used to be. But no one came so we quit having them."

Huh? Why? What's wrong with your meetings? Do they suck that badly? If no one's coming, how about changing things around a bit then? You'd rather just throw your hands in the air and give up?

I asked if there is an email alias or forum where I can interact with other members. "No, we don't have anything like that set up."

WTF?

I explained I would like to interact with other artists. I'd like to say, "Hey, I'm going to ___ art show next weekend! Anyone want to join me?" But they tell me there's no way to communicate that.

Is that too much to ask?

I'm like, Ok, what do you offer then? What are my membership benefits?

Well, so far all they offer is a weekly life drawing session ... for $10. Uh...what?? I can get that at the local art supply store. Seriously. They have life drawing classes I can pay for that I don't also have to pay a membership fee for. Why am I paying for an art association membership when I have to pay extra each week to attend the one and only activity they seem to have? Shouldn't that be included as a membership benefit?

I am so frustrated with this group I'm seriously considering asking for my membership fee to be refunded.

Is that unreasonable?

In CA I found artist associations fun, inspiring, and educational. Here I feel like I just bought a dead horse.

Are you a member of any local artist associations? What benefits do you get from them? Are they worth it?

Do You Squidoo?

I've recently created a Wildlife Art group for Squidoo members. If you're a Squidoo member and have a Lens related to wildlife art I'd love to have you join my group. Of course it's for wildlife artists, but you don't have to be a wildlife artist yourself. Your Lens can be about a wildlife art gallery, a wildlife art publisher, or just your ramblings as a wildlife art collector or admirer, just as long it's primarily about wildlife and art in some way.

You can join through the group page here: Squidoo Wildlife Art Group

Ok, so ... for those of you who are scratching your heads going, "What's a Squidoo?" and, "Why would I want to be a member anyway?" .... well, I don't have a very clear answer really. I'm new to Squidoo myself and still trying to wrap my head around it. The closest thing I can describe it as is something akin to MySpace. It's basically just a place to show your stuff, share your interests, and network. The big difference between it and MySpace, however, is that it is more ... how shall I say it ... elegant? It's also more customizable and organized.

Another distinct advantage is, you can actually make money from having a Squidoo page (called a Lens). You can keep the money yourself of donate it to your favorite charity through their donation program. Here's what Squidoo has to say about making royalties from their site.

"It's simple. You make a lens. You recommend great stuff. Sometimes these you'll [sic] recommend a product from Amazon or eBay or CafePress or one of our hundreds of other commerce partners.

"Since Squidoo is free to use, we have to run a few ads on your lens in order to keep our doors open. So you'll see a few Google ads and SquidOffers on your lens.

"Now, since you're the brain behind the lens, you should get a cut! And better than a cut: you get HALF. That's right. Any time someone stops by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google ad, you get 50% of the royalties."

It's not just about showing off what you have to sell. If you have anything at all you like to talk about make a Lens on Squidoo. Do you have a passion for tropical fish? Make a Lens about that. Share your experiences with keeping fish. List your favorite books about fish, and your pet stores for buying fish, etc. Do you love sci-fi? Make a Lens about that and list your favorite books and movies. You might just make some $$ by doing it.

It's definitely worth checking out:

The 12-Step Program to MySpace Obscurity

I've recently created a MySpace page for my wildlife art to help promote my artwork. I've been spending a little time each day networking MySpace. I've come to realize it's a lot harder to find other artists to network with than I had originally thought. Apparently many artists who create MySpace pages don't want to be found, or at least don't want to network with anyone interested in art. So if you're like those artists here are some tips to make sure you, too, won't be found, or made Friends by, anyone interested in art:

1. Don't post any images of your art. Definitely don't put any pictures on your main page. Force visitors to click on your Pics link and when the do show them pictures of all your friends, family, and pets but not your artwork. That will bore them enough to leave your site very quickly. If you do decide to post some art images make sure they're private so no one can see them ... except, of course, your friends and family who have already seen them.

2. Avoid a consistent theme. Have pictures of a wide variety of your interests. Include pictures of Elvis, your dog's obedience class graduation, you and your friends at the last Star Trek Expo, or your favorite Playboy centerfolds (not that you'd ever see those last two together!). That will keep your page from looking at all professional.

3. Avoid anything related to your artistic interests. If you like to sculpt marine animals or paint seascapes be sure not to have any pictures that have anything whatsoever to do with the ocean or water. Show only images of your hamster's first birthday party instead.

4. Post your mug shot rather than art as your avatar. After all, someone interested in art who is browsing profile thumbnails might actually click on your thumbnail if they saw a picture of artwork. Make sure your thumbnail doesn't stand out among the millions. Additionally, make sure it's a poor quality image, the darker and blurrier the better. For extra obscurity make it a picture of you at your last bowling tournament with the whole bowling league in the background. With all that stuff in the picture no one will ever identify you or your artwork in that tiny 40x40 pixel thumbnail listing. Better yet, use the generic clip-art provided by MySpace.

5. Make your MySpace page difficult to read and navigate. Stylize your page to be so busy no one can find their way around. Make sure there are so many background colors that the text won't be visible on some part of the page no matter what color text you use. Or, you can go the other extreme and make your background all one color, then make your text match the background color. Green text on that lovely image of the rainforest works great. Or dark gray text against that stormy sky image is another wonderful way to get people to give up any hope of reading what you wrote.

6. Be sure to leave the About Me and Interests sections blank so no one will have a clue what your page is about. If you must put something there you can use obscure pictures, without descriptions, that leave it unclear as to why those images are there. Is that picture of palm tree on the beach a picture of your work? Or is it a work by an artist you admire? Perhaps it's a postcard from your last Hawaiian vacation? Or is it just a picture you found while surfing the web that you thought would add some nice decoration to your MySpace page? Keep viewers confused so they'll be sure not to relate your artwork to you.

7. Be sure to use poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You want to keep it unappealing and unprofessional. Be sure to include some fowl language, too. One particularly impressive site (for unappealingness) had in its About Me section, "The word 'f__k' is a regular part of my vocabulary..." (No, I didn't make that up) I'm sure that lack of professionalism will keep those big, bad, scary art galleries, dealers, and collectors far, far from her door.

8. Don't use any keywords on your page that might actually have you show up in a search. If you are a portrait artist be sure not to use either the word "portrait" or "artist" anywhere on your page. In fact, to be really safe, don't use any words at all. Search functions can't find you with just obscure images and and broken video links. And be sure not to use your name anywhere. You wouldn't want anyone to actually learn your name, or be able to search your name, or you might become a known artist.

9. Don't network. Don't add Friends, don't join Groups. Keep the existence of your MySpage page known only to you and your immediate friends and family who already know about your art. And, if someone should somehow accidentally stumble across your page they'll be sure to be turned off by the fact that you have exactly 1 Friend on your list, your mother. Additionally, require that people know your last name or email address in order to add you to their Friends list and be sure not to let either your name or address be known.

10. Music! Be sure to add loud annoying music to your page. Everyone loves your favorite song as much as you do, right? Of course not. So adding music, particularly if it's loud and irritating, is a sure way to get anyone clicking their browser's Back button in a hurry and get off them your page as quickly as possible. At the very least you'll get them reaching for the Mute button on their speakers and leave them in an unpleasant mood while they look over your page.

11. Don't blog regularly and don't write about anything interesting, especially anything related to art. You don't want people coming back for more! And you definitely don't want them thinking you have any interest in art despite your claiming to be an artist.

12. Decorate your page with ugly and obscene images. Having background images of gothic horror or artwork by Sorayama Hajime is sure keep your page from being family friendly. You'll eliminate a huge portion of the art market this way.

So there you have it. Do all, or at least most, of those things and you can be sure few people will get to know you and your art, or want to add you to their Friends list. At least you know I won't.