Some people build an audience quickly at LiveJournal, MySpace and other blog-type websites.

Others are there for years and their numbers remain low. There’s no “sure fire formula” for popularity, and I’m not sure that popularity is the same thing as good PR.

Here are a few tips, and they apply to any blog or online journal:

Being interesting is important. But, never overestimate what other people consider “interesting.”

Sometimes a one-liner will generate the most enthusiastic responses. A long, juicy, illustrated explanation of a really amazing day can leave you wondering if anyone read it.

Attention isn’t the same as popularity

When I’ve posted a rant, or someone says unkind things about me, the numbers soar. I find this very troubling, sometimes.  My conclusion is that drama-based attention (or apparent popularity) serves no one well.

Despite that, attention becomes an addiction for many people.   Suddenly, he or she is the Prom Queen.  Or something.

At Live Journal, My Space, and other popular online journaling/blog websites, people get hooked on comments at their posts. To keep in the public eye, they will lie. They will jeopardize and even trash offline friendships, to maintain what they think is popularity.

Here’s an example:

Someone at LiveJournal made up a mean story about me. Because she’d met me offline, people believed her.

Worse, she’d posted “Friends Only,” without telling people that I was on her Friends list. They were fooled into a false sense of privacy.When people made “me too” comments, agreeing with her criticisms, she didn’t tell them that I could read everything that they said.

Generally, these were people I’d never met in real life. Would they have said the same things if they’d known I was reading it? I doubt it. They were pawns in a very unhealthy game.

That experience was surreal, and showed an ugly side of human nature. And, I’m embarrassed by how difficult it was to stop reading those comments, and not respond.

She got tired of taunting me, and soon found someone else who did give her a free-for-all flame war.

Unfortunately, this story isn’t unusual. Attention goes to people’s heads. They do and say unfortunate things, confusing fleeting attention with popularity or admiration.

Never forget this. If your blog is supposed to help you professionally, be sure to keep your entries professional. Avoid responding to criticism in others’ blogs. Generally, they will have the last word anyway.

Writing for popularity..?

I’m not sure that we should be writing personal, online journals to be popular, anyway. I think that has to come from deep inside.

Personally, as I explained when I removed a bunch of my art journal pages from my website, I’m feeling more private with my life now. So, I may phase out my personal online journaling altogether. I’m not sure.

On one hand, a lot of my career success as Aisling has been based on my willingness to live “out loud” as Zola said. But… life changes.

Why is your journal online, anyway…?

Mostly, I think that someone should only start a personal blog, MySpace site or an LJ for the same reason that we create art: Because you can’t NOT do it.

If your personal life is online for any other reason, it can be a significant mistake. Blogging communities can suck you right in–sensational stories, cliques, flame wars, and all. It can provide an adrenaline high, vicariously. It is very dangerous stuff

In my opinion, it’s not necessarily what you do each day that makes your blog “interesting,” but what’s in it: What you write and what you show your readers.

Keeping a daily journal can improve your writing skills. The constant feedback of an online journal can help you understand how others “hear” what you write.

But, if your goal is to use your blog to boost your career, be sure to keep the focus on your career.

A picture is worth a thousand words…

How do you use a blog to build your business? Here are a few blogs that serve as very good examples. Most of them make few references to the their personal lives, except as backstory to what they’re doing professionally. None of them originate at Live Journal or My Space.

By Danny GregoryLayers of Meaning

Bob Baker’s Artist Empowerment Blog

FavIcons… You’ve seen teensy little icons on your browser address bar, and next to some bookmarks. They’re called “FavIcons.”

Do you know how to make them for your website, too? Did you know that you can feature different icons for different webpages within your site?

Here’s my basic “Ais” icon: . It’s at the top of many of my Aisling.net webpages. (If you can’t see it, or it’s a broken image, your browser doesn’t support the .ico graphics format.)

At the top of many of my Arts-Careers.com webpages, you can see another of my FavIcons, . (It’s supposed to be a dollar sign with a paintbrush for the upright line.)

I plan to make more, when I take time to experiment with this idea. You can make your own, using graphics from your files, using this free tool:

Select Image:

using FavIcon from Pics(If the form doesn’t work, click on the FavIcon from Pics link.)

The key to online success is planning. However, for many artists, this is very confusing, and even overwhelming.

Start at the beginning. You should choose your niche first.

With that niche in mind, plan your online goals: How do you plan to financially support your website… and your art career?

If your website is going to get hits (visitors)–and of course, it should–plan how visitors will find you and which pages they’ll visit at your website.

Where will your website visitors arrive, and what pages do you really want them to see? Not every visitor arrives at your index.html; don’t put all your eggs in that basket!

There are three major reasons for an art website, besides sharing art with your friends, of course. Decide this early, and–instead of just “getting hits”–you’ll attract website visitors who support your art.

1. You may be looking for customers. These include art buyers, commissions, shops and galleries to carry what you sell, and/or students and teaching opportunities.
2. You may hope for income from affiliate advertising, such as Amazon.com and others.
3. And, you may earn extra spending money with Google AdSense and similar programs. (See Earn extra money with AdSense for more info.)

Of course, you can earn money from your own sales, affiliate commissions, and AdSense. But, it’s helpful if you decide ahead of time what your income goals are.

If you’re planning on selling your art, your art-related products, or you are teaching, you’ll want to optimize your website so that search engines list you in your respective categories. Frankly, you want to get hits, and lots of them. This field is called “search engine optimization” and “search engine placement.”

Also, is when your website gets hits, do you want them to buy from your site, or is your site PR for your offline career… or both?

If you’re planning to benefit from affiliate income, you’ll want the best programs. Since some program managers visit your website before approving you as their representative, you should know what it takes to be approved.

For success with AdSense-type programs–if you use them–you’ll want to get hits, but you’ll also direct your visitors to the pages that meet their needs.

We’ll discuss career success, marketing strategies, and search engines in more detail at other pages at this website.

As you design your website, plan ahead. Decide which areas to focus on, and which income sources suit your career and financial goals. You’ll not only get hits, but quality visitors who enjoy your website and benefit the most from it while supporting your career as well.

Now and then, someone makes a truly embarrassing mistake online. It happens to everyone. First, you do what you can to correct it, of course. If apologies are appropriate, waste no time making them.And, although the following advice (from my post to a message board) applies to people who are writing articles for online content providers, it applies to everything that we write online, in blogs, at message boards, and on lists.

First of all, this isn’t the Great American Novel, nor are we necessarily working for Pulitzers here. I have re-read some of my own articles, winced at how much better I could have written them, and then… Well, I just let it go.

It’s wise to shrug these things off. We all make mistakes. Try not to expect superhuman standards of yourself or anyone else.

A few errors here and there can be human in a very good way.

While we don’t want to write articles that are filled with GE3K 5PE3K (geek speak) or look illiterate, sometimes people deliberately leave a few errors in their webpages… it’s a subtle reminder to the reader that we are real people on the other side of the keyboard.

It’s easy to lose that sense of personal connection, online. So, think of it as an asset if you can.

While the content of our articles should be adequately researched, reasonably well-written, and informative, form needs to follow function (as they say in design).

The function of these pages is to rank well in search engines, provide people with useful information in a reasonably condensed form, and sell advertising… not necessarily in that order. If the article is also entertaining and well-written, that’s fabulous. However, sometimes functional is “good enough.”

I really do wonder how many mistakes online are left there on purpose.

In offline advertising, especially billboards, one way that you find out how many people are actually reading your copy, is to leave (or put) a mistake in it. Then you see how many people contact you to correct you. You multiply that times 1000 (or so) and it tells you approximately how many people are reading your ad or whatever.

I have no idea if this is in practice online, or if the numbers relate at all, but it’s something that goes through my mind when I see a blatant error.

The bottom line is, nobody should write (or post online) when they’re tired to the point of poor judgment. But, sometimes that “poor judgment” is exactly what keeps us at the keyboard when we should have gone to bed, or out for a walk.

Add pressing deadlines into the mix, and we all work longer than we should… especially me!

There are always be ways that an article could have been better. Five years from now, you may look at articles that are online from this era and wish you could change your name to escape embarrassment! (I’m in that category when I look at things I wrote and said, many years ago.)

But, sometimes articles are like bad high school yearbook pictures. We have to let them go and accept that nobody is perfect.

Researchers, writers, editors and webmasters all make silly mistakes that they wouldn’t when they’re sharp and on top of the game. A few minor goofs in articles is okay, relatively speaking.

Hey, it took Cher years to get past her tarnished reputation after she misguidedly did infomercials.

And I wonder how Madonna will explain her rather, uh, stylized book when her kids grow up and see it.

Most people agree that Clint Eastwood probably shouldn’t have made Paint Your Wagon. (I liked most of it, but I have quirky tastes in movies.) Britney Spears’ serial blunders, Ted Danson’s roast appearance in whiteface, some celebs’ unfortunate home videos, and… well, this list could go on & on.

We all make perfectly awful mistakes now & then, and in contrast with this celeb list, a few articles with grammar errors or typos… It’s embarrassing, but something that we all do. If you’ve made a mistake in an article or a website, you’re in good company.