The Creative's Guide to An Awesome Web Presence

The Creative’s Guide to Building an Awesome Web Presence

Theory + Practice

Amanda McCormick | Twitter: @amandamccormick | [email protected] | www.jellybeanboom.com

Hi. I’m Amanda McCormickI'm on a mission to change the way the way creative people think about websites.

I've worked in media for over 15 years. I graduated film school and worked in production for a while and then migrated over to writing (the climate was much more hospitable).

About five or six years ago, just after graduating with an MFA in Fiction from Columbia and plying my trade as a web copywriter, I found myself in the middle of a major shift in the way digital media was disrupting the dynamic between audiences and companies, brands and icons.

The "little guy" had suddenly got a lot more power. And this was a very exciting thing indeed.

This booklet is about creating a website, but it’s also about that shift.


Where are you now? A Self-Assessment I have a blog

I have a blog that I update regularly

I have a website that I run myself

I have a website that someone else runs

I use Twitter

I have a Facebook fan page

I send out an email newsletter

I know who the important individuals and blogs in my niche are


What are some reason creatives don’t leverage the

web?

• It seems expensive.

• Not technically minded

• Overwhelmed by options

• Don't want to seem vain

• Don't think it has anything to do with “art.”

“The rule the internet broke is that now, everyone who has a receiver also has a transmitter.” -Seth Godin


About a year ago, the comedian Louis CK had the audacity to self-distribute his latest comedy show ”Live at the Beacon Theater” for $5 over the internet and made a cool million in exactly 12 days.

Cue the lightbulb over numerous creative heads: Ought the artist attempt to retain more control over the distribution of his or her work – which is to say, more of a financial stake?

When it comes to brand-building via low-cost web tools, the answer is most unquestionably “yes.”

And so if you look beyond Louis CK’s million dollar check, the much more seismic shift in the consumption of entertainment equation is the changing role of the audience.

A vocal audience can make an unknown – and readership/participation is making a strong run at pedigree.

How do you thrive in the age of the artist as entrepreneur?

You roll up your sleeves and start engaging your audience.

The Artist as Entrepreneur


Traditional approach to websites is design-driven

and static•tchotchke approach•well designed•one off and static•attempts to speak to the user but doesn't interact


Best website is the one YOU can maintain•Content is dynamic rather than design•Social•Aimed at engaging your audience and getting you surfaced


Where to Start

•Register your name at WordPress.com•Select a Template•Focus on great content•Evaluate and evolve


Getting more advanced


Websites, and how they are “hosted” is something that confuses a lot of people, especially when it comes to WordPress. So in this edition, I want to go over a few things that will hopefully make the process a little simpler.

SO YOU WANT TO BUY A DOMAIN

Buying a domain is the first step to putting up your own website, but it’s definitely not the last step. A domain is just your website’s address, nothing more. You can buy domains from a number of providers, and the task of choosing just the right one deserves a post of its own. .Co, .Org, .Net are just a few of the “top level domains” you can choose from.

I HAVE A DOMAIN, SO I HAVE A WEBSITE…RIGHT?

In order to create your “own” website, you need server space — a little slice of virtual real estate on which the files and folders that make up your website will live. In order to have your very own website, which you control completely, you need to pay for the privilege of server space. You need a hosting plan.

HOW TO CHOOSE A HOST

How I wish when I got started someone could explain this to me succinctly and practically! It’s a needlessly complicated issue.

On the lowest end, there are shared hosting plans which cost less than $10 per month. You can host as many websites as you want on these plans, and you share space with hundreds of other sites. GoDaddy, Bluehost, Dreamhost, Hostgatorare all different options at the same general price point. Despite people’s passionate opinions, they are all kind of six and one half. I use and recommend Bluehost, but be forewarned that with all shared hosting you will encounter some kinks like site outages that may last a few hours, or slowdowns when your site encounters tons of traffic (highly unlikely for most newcomers).

So if your question is: how do I set up my own website, the answer is you set up a hosting plan with one of the vendors above and buy a domain.

How to be Black

•Learn a lot about marketing (Seth Godin)•Ask questions of a tribe of people, they become your advocates. •Hire a campaign manager•Build a “street team” - enthusiastic readers who will help spread the word. •Build a two way channel via social media •Exercise radical transparency: he wrote via screenshare

Building an Audience Baratunde’s Way


Fun with RSS feeds


What is RSS?

RSS stands for "really simple syndication.” It’s a great way to make web text portable, to send it somewhere else.

All blogs and some other types of publishing operations offer an RSS feed.

How to find an RSS feed

Easiest way I've ever found is to load the page in Firefox, navigate to the upper right, and click on "Subscribe to this page" which will give you an address you can copy to your clipboard.

You may not be the biggest blogger in the world. That's OK. You can still cultivate an engaged social media following by "curating" feeds from people and publications you respect and using the feed from your own blog to do more.

Populating your social feeds

Just copy a feed and use a utility like Feedburner or Hootsuite to automatically publish that feed to your Twitter, for instance, every time a new item appears. By taking advantage of certain blogs' tagging and

categorization capabilities, you can drill down even further by topic. For instance, I used the tag "cycling" to drill down on a specific subject in the New York Times' metropolitan-specific City Room blog

Save time with a custom feed

Instapaper is a brilliant utility that allows you to take an web page you're interested in and designate it "read it later." But what many people don't know is that when they hit "read it later" they are adding another item to an RSS feed that they have defined. You can create as many Instapaper files as you would like, so by using this lesser-known feature, you have a custom RSS feed that could be comprised of many different publications. Use it to populate your social feeds as above.

Automatic email newsletters

Finally, perhaps the most powerful use of RSS: to pour in content to your email newsletters. MailChimp offers this powerful feature -- you customize a mail template to look however you would like, and publish a new item to your blog, the text gets put into your template and sent out to your social media audience immediately. As above, you can leverage the power of tags to earmark certain types of content for your newsletter.

Get more help


Visit The One-Hour Website (onehourwebsite.org)

This is a site that I made to help nonprofits and artists figure out how to make their own websites.

Subscribe to my newsletter

Visit www.jellybeanboom.com and enter your name in the right hand column to get a weekly tip in your email inbox.

Contact me

I’d love to chat. Just email me at [email protected]

The Creative's Guide to An Awesome Web Presence

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