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

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…