Five MySpace Mistakes for Visual Artists
The 2006 blog post Five mistakes you’re probably making with your MySpace page (on Andrew Dubber’s blog New Music Strategies) applies equally to visual artists as it does to musicians.
The five mistakes (expanded on in much better detail in the blog post itself) are:
- Using MySpace as your website
- Using MySpace as your email
- Having an impressive background image
- Embedding lots of media
- Writing lots of text
All of these points are absolutely correct. MySpace’s “My Pics” should not be your gallery. By all means, put loads of examples of your work in there (if they comply with MySpace’s image content rules) but don’t direct people there instead of to your own site.
Andrew Dubber reminds us:
Remember: MySpace is a tool. It’s one of many. It’s not your only shot at engaging with your audience or prospective market. It’s an important one though, and it’s one that it’s very easy to make mistakes with. Use it well.
MySpace, like any social networking site, should just be one of many outposts of your main website. In no way should it be your website (and nor should Flickr, deviantART, Artbreak, or any other social website).
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Chris O'Byrne said,
March 14, 2008 @ 2:14 am
You forgot MySpace Mistake #6: Using MySpace!
Okay, it’s not that bad and they have made some improvements to the design.
How useful have you found MySpace? I would love to hear some stories of people that have either sold their art there or made connections that led to sales or any other success stories.
Paul Watson said,
March 15, 2008 @ 1:06 am
I’d like to write a post soon about some artists who are successful users of social networking sites such as MySpace. My guess is that the successful ones will be the ones who not only avoid those mistakes, but also treat their visitors with respect rather than attempting to “monetise” the social networkers at the first opportunity (see my next blog post)