Video Monday 13: Viewer Questions #2!

Motion pictures!

Today I answer these questions:
1) If you’re a designer/visual artist trying to get more eyeballs to your work, and you’ve already got fairly well established Vimeo and Flickr accounts, how much is setting up your own domain worth?

2) Is there a better way to promote your stuff on Twitter than just link spamming?

Transcript:
Sings: Video Monday, video Monday, it’s a Monday so here’s a video!

So today on Video Monday I thought I’d just answer a couple of viewer questions that I received over the last week. So they both come from Catherine Holloway and her first question is: “If you’re a designer/visual artist trying to get more eyeballs to your work, and you’ve already got fairly well established Vimeo and Flickr accounts, how much is setting up your own domain worth?”

I would always suggest, in almost all cases, having an online home. A place that at least aggregates or links to where your stories are throughout other networks or other websites. I mean, it’s a matter of simplicity of being able to easily direct people to where they can find, you know, all your stuff. You know, not necessarily saying business cards are the way to go, but in that kind of instance you’ve got one link that you can give to people.

And as well just from SEO kind of standpoints, with things like that, it’s easier to get people focusing on one place. If someone searches for your name or your work, being able to have it all in one spot or at least linking to it from one spot is helpful. And that’s, it’s a good link to have in your Twitter profile, LinkedIn and things like that.

I’d say there’s some significant worth in it. Even if your domain is redirecting to one of your other places where you are online, if your domain re-directs to your Vimeo account fine, but it’s easier then giving that person you know, vimeo.com/yourusername.

The second question is “Is there a better way to promote your stuff on Twitter than just link spamming?”

Well this kind of answer comes from someone who linked three times on Twitter to a post called Get Over Yourselves, so you know, take this with a grain of salt at least. Basically I don’t have a problem with posting links to your content online. If you’ve done something interesting that you think your followers might like, link to it, I don’t think that counts as spam.

It’s like going to a party where your friends are, your colleagues, other people in your industry and letting them know what a cool project your working on, it’s not spam it’s part of that, the expected conversation if people know you. What it means is when you’re looking for people to connect with on Twitter or other networks like that, you know there are probably people who are going to be interested in you and what you’re doing.

Now, that assumes that you’re on there talking about other things most of the time, not just talking about yourself. That said, I mean Twitter is kind of a place, and this kind of links back to my last post about Get Over Yourselves, where people just talk about themselves, and usually about things that aren’t terribly interesting.

A lot of this makes, make some assumptions that potentially aren’t correct. This assumes that you’re not always just talking about yourself. Like take the cocktail party analogy again, most of your conversations should be about people that you’re with. Ask questions of other people, talk about them. Try to connect people together. Don’t just be talking about yourself all the time. People get annoyed with that, take it from me.

Now if you’re a company and your only presence on Twitter is sending out links of what’s going on, don’t do that, that’s stupid. It’s really annoying to everyone, and it’s not worth doing I don’t think. It’s a glorified, or less dignified RSS feed actually. Don’t be doing that. Actually have a reason to be on there. Even if, I would suggest with customer service, Twitter is a great place for it. Be on there, have a presence, answer people’s questions, be nice and promote your stuff when it comes up. But most of the time be talking about other people, it’s just courteous.

So that’s Video Monday, thanks everybody, goodbye.