DISQUS

I think the deal is that the majority of the public have access to a physical store and browsing is more fun in real life than with little gifs that may or may not show the actual product.

I go into Best Buy when I either need something specific or if I have extra cash and want to browse but if I want something that my local store doesn't have I'd search Ebay first before even thinking about Bestbuy.com, why pay retail and then have to wait for it to ship?

In some ways, a slow site is a sign that the real world shopping is meeting the needs, not everything needs to be web based!!

Yeah, there are tiers of quality in your personal brand when it comes to web presence. The key is to keep the little 'strip malls' (and 'billboards') as updated and current as the showcase site so that they redirect traffic, to where the brand is represented best.

Blogger may be old and less functional than a modern Wordpress site, for example, but it sure indexes the information fast on Google!

My blog is a showcase for my artwork and graphic design so most people pop in for a quick peek at something visually tasty, sometimes they end up being friends on Flickr etc.

I have also used my blog as an experiment in social networking especially with my local artists who may not know me yet, and it works, people now find my blog because they search for their name (and the images that google has indexed with their name) and my art and url also show up (because I have added their blog to my site or simply added their name to a list of my local artists.)

People want to increase their visibility and when you have a 'what's in it for me' factor (such as piggybacking your graphics with other people of a similar ilk) it's a win/win thing!

that sounds logical to me....

I hope he appreciates you hehe! yeah, without your explanation I'd never listen to Christopher's podcast in a million years, I've paid all my loans off! Cool, I'll check it out.

:) nice talk! I think adult language is helpful in this context, as we generally use that language when around friends, and friends generally hear more of what is said.

I noticed that there was no link back to your own site option in the comments, so I guess they don't really get it yet!

yeah, in some ways Yahoo is like the old decaying city center, not quite the ancient "walled city" of AOL, but low rent for sure.

yeah, A.viary looks great.

this post is probably the most useful tool I've seen yet for a person beginning to understand how social networking is such an effective tool to promote a brand.

yes, I am definitely making a difference. Giving encouragement to artists, many of which have very little blog traffic or Flickr comments etc makes a difference.

I spend a lot of time online because I can right now but when things change and I have a whole lot less free time I won't stop being me, in fact civilization can collapse and I'll still be able to draw and paint and grow in what is really the core of Me!

I think there's a third type of person, the creator of the content who would be a discoverer too I suppose. i like having my content in my feed mixed with my choices.

I hope artists aren't given the second class citizen treatment here too!

one thing that I don't quite understand is why google only indexes a certain amount of images from my blog and not others. Most of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching for things that my images contain (fine art), happening upon my images in their search and ending up at my site but it's the same four pages every time, pages from last year!

Every single word in my blog links to those same images, even if I have images that are closer to the search term. it appears that google has branded me with the images it chose to index (and the 90% it didn't!).

Does anyone know why Google chooses certain images on your blog/website to include in it's image search and not others?
All of my pages index just about immediately but I can't get a new image to index no matter what I do. help Chris!

how about putting your money where your mouth is and give us something more than your sales pitch for 'better marketing practices' here? I like the premise of the article and because of social networking I arrived here but it's still you trying to sell me on something without giving much for "free".

What will make me come back? after all it's the relationship that matters these days right?

hmmmm but it's Microsoft, i'll have to wait until braver souls can check it for bugs that might infect/destroy my PC. remember Vista? is that fixed yet? The idea of allowing MS more access to my stuff than they already do just makes me warey.

5 gigs of free space for your files sounds good, BUT it just seems like a 'trap' hehe!

I think convenience is the key in the grocery store salad bars. As long as the items, food and containers to put them in are easily accessible people will fill up there. having more exotic items isn't necessary in my opinion as long as what is there covers the basic salad-groups and the whole set up is clean!

I'm sure you can buy or trade favors for a higher ranking, there's no law against 'cheating' on an arbitrary scale is there?

nice list here, I'll bookmark for sure!

I know exactly what you mean, the future of social networking is many, easy to use, specialized groups where (ultimately) each facet of our online selves can have real time and on demand social network perks.

Yesterday I made a Ning social network for my local arts scene, and surprised myself by even getting a Facebook application to work that shows the pictures uploaded to the Ning site.

I uploaded a dozen Mp3's a video, made a forum, events, etc all the things a social network needs, now it just needs people! The important thing is that it is specialized which works within the free parameters of a site like Ning. For example I am allowed 100 pictures (in the slide show) and 100 Mp3's, which would be fine for a site with (possibly) a few dozen or so people.

Anyone (who visits Chris's blog anyway) can have a Ning social network up and running in an hour or less, it's not MySpace easy but it's not coding either. (I'm just an artist btw not affiliated with any company or group).

I started with a livejournal about 6 years ago and art sites and took a stab at dozens of participatory sites that popped up and finally settled on a WP blog as the main hub of my personal 'empire' on the web!

I don't believe in the 'blog everyday' idea, I prefer the "blog when you are inspired and don't publish until it has a completed thought" style, but I don't blog about current events I only blog to inspire and motivate myself (and share those thoughts).

Here's an example of how blogging and social media can create more than the sum of the parts. I had a dream, a crazy sci-fi dream and figured I'd write about it, perhaps to decipher a meaning, something I do on spirituality sites.

The post turned into a tiny sci-fi story that ended up referencing a painting that I posted and linked to my Flickr account where the 'moral' of the story (perhaps) was already there, something I had written several years ago and suddenly realized was the point of the dream.

Linking thoughts up, thoughts that you have scattered across the web from different times in your life can be a fruitful exercise! try it!

What made the punk scene special, in addition to the DIY culture, was the fact that it wasn't made with tomorrow in mind, it was made for the present and that immediacy, like twittering/blogging tools today allows trends to evolve at their own pace (instead of being planned out in intervals as with disco - anyone remember Dance Fever? haha!).

Nice job Chris!

I love it when you can prove the power of social networking with examples from your own experience.

Flickr is also a good networking site for artists!

The key to blogging is to write something from YOUR perspective no matter how inexperienced or un-informed you might be, it's your blog which means your opinion.

If your blog post simply defers to someone else as having a 'better' opinion than you then you are missing the point in my opinion.

How many blog posts lead off with a link to someone else's blog or site? Yes, some people break a story and have important info, but when you, in your blog, are too afraid to write your opinion and just redirect people to the other site you are missing the point of blogging in my opinion.

Your blog is your place to say what you think, not to say that someone else is saying what you think.

You might get some google rank, maybe, by being a middleman or blog-caddy or brownnose-blogger but if you can't write your opinion, whether it be popular or not, then you are missing the point of having your own blog. You would be better suited to just commenting on existing blogs!