Getting Your Work Featured Online

I’m currently in the middle of sending my work to various blogs in preparation of my first solo show next month. I thought it would be good to share the process I use to approach bloggers in hopes of having them feature my work. Getting your work out there is great for many reasons. Your images are seen by many more people then you could ever have access to. Being featured on top level blogs looks good on your CV. It’s also good for your ego, which is (almost) never a bad thing. Here is the method I use to reach out.

Create a List of Blogs

Your first step is to generate a list of blogs that you would want to be on. Make sure the sites you choose show work that is similar to yours in some way. There is no point wasting time sending work to places that have a completely different agenda. Make this list as large as possible. Perhaps make a bookmarks folder in your browser and add sites as you come across them.

Craft Your Email

These people get a lot of email everyday so make sure yours is short and to the point. I would aim for something no longer than four sentences. First introduce yourself, second tell them why you’re emailing them, third describe your work, and finally thank them for their time. Since you will be contacting a lot of people, create a template email with the information you need to get across and then have a sentence that’s personalised to each person and their blog.

Make it Easy

Making the blogger’s job super easy is the best way to get your work featured (other than having great work). Look through their site and figure out what dimensions they use for images. Size the key photos you want shown to those dimensions and attach them in the email. Make sure you tell them about this. Provide links to the full project as well as the statement so they can choose other images if they want and learn more about the work. If there are other things that are consistently included on their site – a photo of the photographer, social links, etc. make sure to include that as well. What you are doing is breaking down the barriers they have to go over to do a post on you.

Set a Schedule

Set a schedule to send out the emails. If you send ten emails a day for a week that’s 70 potential posts. Pick a time to do a bunch at once, perhaps for an hour a day, and keep it consistent. You will get into a groove that will make the whole process much faster than if you did it now and then or tried to do all at once.

Follow Through

Be sure not to get discouraged as it’s likely only a small percentage of blogs will feature your work. If they do decide to feature you, it might also take some time for the actual post to go up. Finally, it isn’t uncommon to be featured and not notified about it. You should set up a Google alert for your name and search yourself occasionally to see if you missed anything.

When you do get featured, write a one sentence thank you to the blogger. Also, make sure to share it through your own networks, this brings more traffic to the blog, makes you look better, and attracts more viewers to your work.

Action Steps: Pick a project you’ve recently completed and try sending it to 20 or 30 blogs. Let us know what you found works best and what doesn’t work for you.

If you run a blog that features work regularly, what factors, other than the work itself, are important in your decision to show someone?

Images Sourced from: Phil Hearing