Tips to Promote Your Art & Design Business Online FREE! – Part 4: Online Community

Three weeks ago we gave you a brief overview on how to promote your Art & Design business online for FREE!

We talked about blog postings, guest posting on complimentary blogs, and last week we talked about creating your own eBook and how you can leverage and promote your business online for FREE.

This week the topic is about online communities and how you can participate and promote your Art and Design business.

Online forums or online communities are becoming very common these days and they can be found everywhere…online and offline! The key to this is to find the right online group that resonates with you and is in line with your expertise so that can share your experience and business with your fellow members. These powerful online communication tools provide many great benefits. However, you need to be mindful and allocate a fair amount of time as it can be addictive and distract you from your day to day business. Planning your social media wisely will definitely help in your business growth.

So ask yourself these questions:

What is the real purpose for me to join an online forum or community?

Am I prepared to share my experience and knowledge with others?

Below are some potential benefits if you are regularly involved with your online group:

• Intellectual exchanges will stimulate your mind.
• Learning and embracing new ideas and refining old ones.
• Enjoy networking with fellow members
• Influencing the forums evolution.
• Sharing is caring! By offering your expertise and receiving advice from others.
• Drive traffic back to your website. People love to learn what you do and want to learn from you because you are the leader in your creative field.
• Build a new network of friends.
• Generate new business leads and opportunities for joint ventures with other business owners.
• Keeping you in the loop and up to date with current events.
• Learning about new opportunities.

There are plenty of forums or community groups on the internet. You just have to find the one that resonates with you and once you’ve found the right one you will see great benefits and will find them extremely rewarding. Plus knowing you are helping other people grow and succeed in their own business is truly rewarding.

Below are some suggested online forums that you can try out:

• LinkedIn Questions & Answers
• Yahoo Questions & Answers
• Artists On line Australia- Art forum
• http://photo.stackexchange.com/

Next week we will talk about Article submissions and how it can promote your Art & Design business online for FREE.