Following are some cool tools to help get some traffic to your blog. They are for WordPress users. The first tip can make a huge difference in getting organic search engine traffic. In marketing your art more eyeballs viewing portrait art, abstract piece or latest oil painting will translate to more sales. So here we go.

1) XML Sitemap Generator

What is a sitemap and how does it help me with art marketing? Sitemaps are one of the best ways for webmasters to let a search engines know there are pages on their sites available for crawling. Basically, a Sitemap is an XML file. That file will list the URLs  and some metadata about each URL. The metadata may include when the site it was last updated, the URL’s relevancy to the rest of the site and how often the site changes. This information helps the crawl the site more efficiently and intelligently.

The way pages are located by the web crawlers is by referral. New pages are discovered from links within the site and from links in other sites.

The XML site plugin generates a dynamic site from each blog post which facilitates a faster crawl rate from the major search engines

Features: These are copied from the XML Generator Site

• Available in many languages
• Generates automatically a sitemap for all types of WordPress pages
• Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments
• Notifies Ask.com, Google, Bing and YAHOO about changes via ping
• Includes a WordPress filter for other plugins which can add their pages to the sitemap
• Generates a static XML file as well as a zipped version

Download Here

Alright back to the issue a hand….Salesmanship gives me a stomach ache. I just want to create. I don wanna sale, wah. Well I hope you like lentils and rice then because somebody somewhere has to sell. Perhaps you have made it to the level that you never have to sell because your rep or galleries do it all for you. Ok, well you still have to sell them. Maybe you are the less than 1% who are accomplished enough that galleries are beating down your doors, you have an unlisted number and taken down your website. Cool. But if that is so you wouldn’t be reading this, and even if that is so if you are taking commissions, check this out.

Creating the perfect buying environment. Where is the best environment? It is in the environment best suited for the selling activity. That is vague. Well look at this example from copywriting genius and teacher Joe Silverman.

The Honolulu Experience
i was in Honolulu after a trip to the Far East. I usually stop at Honolulu to recover after traveling so long and so far and over so many time zones. As I was walking down one of the main streets in Waikiki, I stopped to look into and art gallery and saw a painting of scenes from outer space. Since JS&A was known for selling space age products, I thought the painting would fit very nicely in my office. I walked into the gallery noticing how very elegant it looked and saw the paintings neatly displayed on the wall. The gallery look like it sold expensive paintings. (he expected it to be expensive. emphasis Tim) In short, I expected it to be expensive.
It didn’t take to long before a well-dressed saleswoman noticed me, walked over and asked if I needed assistance. “Beautiful Painting, isn’t it?” she asked. (a better question so its not yes or no would have been…what do you like best about the painting?) “Very nice,” I nodded. “It really looks great.” At that point the lady said, “Please follow me,” as she lifted the painting off the wall and walked towards the back of the large gallery. I followed.

We entered a large room, carpeted from floor to ceiling. In the middle of the room were three very comfortable easy chairs all facing the front of the room where the saleslady mounted the painting on the wall. She then went back to the entrance of the room, turned up the classical music being piped in through load speakers and dimmed the lights leaving two spotlights focused on the painting. The Painting Looked Incredible.
I must admit the painting looked incredible. the vibrant colors, the quality of the art, and the nice feeling I experienced from hearing the classical music put me in such a buying mood that I was ready to reach into my pocket and pull out my credit card and buy the painting.———-

Joe Silverman did end up buying the painting and over time 49 others from this artist. He also eventually sponsored the artist and sold his paintings and prints through JS&A. What we should take away from this is that we want to set up a buying environment and we need to do it from the beginning with branding, advertising and sales copy all the way through to the packaging our clients receive the canvas, print or whatever in.

You have total control over the appearance. If we were selling a nice upper end and expensive piece we would present ourselves in an environment that showed class and refinement-one that exuded confidence and trust. If we have a niche that is more “bargain” orientated we would have a much different environment to piece together.

In the next piece I will walk you through one way that we attempt to control the buying environment for a commissioned piece. Until then, Live, Love, Laugh.

tim