June 12th, 2016

A blog about blogs
 
All art movements descend into self-referentialism eventually so I don’t see why I shouldn’t as well.  In this post I am looking at what makes a good blog, specifically a good art blog.  What the examples are out there and how I can improve mine.

Why do I write a blog? Well there a number of reasons.  I enjoy doing it.  It acts a reference for me as to my thought process, experiences and art projects at any particular time, it drives traffic to my website, it makes me feel engage and perhaps most importantly it provides a key motivation to go out and try and do new things so I have something to write about.

There are many art blogs out there.  There are many blogs out there.  In the course of the past year or so I have come across many.  No doubt there are many I have missed and if you know of a good one that is not mentioned here I would be interested to hear about it. For me there are a number of elements that make a good blog:

1. It must be updated regularly;
2. It should be well written in an engaging style;
3. The content must be interesting;
4. It should have (for an art blog anyway) interesting pictures;
5. It must tell me things I don’t already know (not all the time but frequently); and
6. It should give a sense that the author is generally interested in what they are writing about

Many blogs that have potential or where interesting fail number 1) in that they updated sporadically or the author has lost interest and has ceased to post.  This is no doubt inevitable as people’s lives move on and there may come a time when this blog to is a casualty.  The point is though, no matter how good your blog is, if you don’t update it on a regular basis I’m not going to read it.

There have been various weeks where for whatever reason I haven’t posted and I notice a marked drop in traffic in the following weeks that take a while to pick up again.
Below is my hall of merit for good blogs:

http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/
 
http://arthistorynews.com/

http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/
 
http://jennykealart.blogspot.co.uk/
 
 
http://www.creativetourist.com/top-art-blogs/
 
https://www.ica.org.uk/blog/
 
http://callumjames.blogspot.co.uk/
 
https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs
 
https://akickupthearts.wordpress.com/