It’s absolutely vital in this current day and age to have an on-line presence for your art. But, are you making sure people who like your art can get in touch with you? Where’s your contact info?

A few months back, I interviewed Bob Ostrom, and we visited each others’ web sites during the Q&A video. He pointed out to me that I had buried my contact page. Oops. I had listed it under my “About” page. I thought that was good enough.

Apparently, it’s not. Ever since I moved the link up to the top of my header, my inbox has been getting more messages. It’s only been a short while, but maybe this move will help me generate more client interaction and eventually art commissions. Because generating paying gigs is the point in having a working artist website, is it not?

So, I ask you again, where’s your contact info?

Do you make people hunt for a way to contact you?

I’ve visited web sites with deliciously lovely artwork, and wanted to connect with the artist, only to be stymied when there was no contact information at all. Not even an email, a phone number or even a twitter account. Most often I find this happening on a Blogger account. The artist is posting about works they are doing or sharing information or event appearances. In such cases, the only way to connect is to leave a public comment. I don’t know about other people, but I want to keep my private business, I don’t know, private. If you are guilty of this, put up a contact page, throw an email into your Blogger profile. Something. Let your fans connect with you. Some of the nicest things people have ever told me about my work have come via an email. I think everyone can use some warm fuzzies in the their in box.

Do you have a business phone number? Is it on your site?

I was listening to a video blog this afternoon about branding as an artist. The woman, Kim Bruce, suggests having more than one way for people to contact you. Because, she says, email can fail. Plop a phone number up there on that contact page.

Don’t want to post your private home or cell number on the big scary internet? No problem. Google can help. They have this handy-dandy free service called Google Voice. You get to choose a number, post it on your site and still keep your personal information private from prying eyes. Google Voice has the added benefit of recording incoming messages in both text format and voice mail. And on the off-chance, you get those icky robo-callers, you can block their numbers with a mouse click. You can use the service for outgoing calls as well.

Do you tweet, pin or linkin? Are you connected on your site?

Part of the point of having social media is to have a more intimate connection with the people who like your work and want to keep up with what you are doing. It is fairly simple to put a link up to all your social media accounts, at least the ones that are about your artistic business so that people can find out what you’re working on in the moment. If all you do on your Facebook page is post cute cat pictures, it’s probably best to skip it though. My web site has the little icon for my social media places right above the menu area. Check them out below and follow me now. 😉

Do you have a harvester safe form?

I was getting an inordinate number of sales pitches for services that I had no logical need for. I ended up putting up a form that was safe from email robo-harvesters. I still get more SPAM than you can shake a stick at, but I figure my web site has been on-line since the mid 90s, so it’s part of doing business. Still having the form has cut down on a lot of the junk email. But what if someone doesn’t want to use a form or for some reason the form doesn’t work? Can a person still get a hold of me? Why yes, they can. At the very bottom of the page, underneath the form’s submit button, I have a little note letting people what my email is in a way that can’t be harvested. 99.9% of the people contacting me still opt to use the form, though. And I get back to the real people as fast as I can. Sometimes I get the odd email wanting me to sign up for a service to improve my search engine ranking, or pay to showcase art shows and such, but nothing is fool-proof.

Here’s my contact page. Where’s your contact info?

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