Leanne Wildermuth: Small Business Blog Interview

Here is our best interview yet. Leanne from Artist by Nature wrote back today with answers to our revealing blogging questions and she gave us some very detailed and informative answers. We featured Leanne's site just a couple of days ago. Thanks, Leanne, for taking the time to respond.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has responded to my emails and taken the time to write back. Your answers provide so much insight into the day-to-day life of a business person who is taking the additional time out of their day to promote themselves with a blog.

Here are Leanne's answers:

Pajama Market: How has the blog impacted your company?

Leanne Wildermuth: From a business perspective, my blog has increased traffic flow to my gallery through search engine results. The personal nature of my blog, specific keywords and external links bring me to the top of many pages in Google and other search engines. New clients and even other artists looking for a model to start their websites and businesses find my gallery by using the relevant search terms that I'm consistently adding and revising on my domain.

From a personal standpoint, my blog has brought me visitors, friends and new clientele from all over the world. That my blog is continually updated with visual art (my photography, sketches, illustrations, blog designs, paintings completed or in progress) gives my readers something new and different to look forward to when they visit. I enjoy sparking the imagination of others through visual art, that helps me grow as an artist, which in turn grows my business.

PJ: What has the response been from your customers/clients?

LW: My blog is as much a creative outlet for me as it is a business tool. It allows my clients to get to know me, the artist behind the paintbrush. It creates a bond of friendship and trust, which is especially important when making a personal investment into a custom piece of artwork.

My clients love seeing my work in progress. My readers and friends love seeing my world through my lens and paintbrushes. It's a great thing all around when you can visually impact a person with what you do for a living through the web, and it's the perfect platform to present work as an artist.

When a client orders a custom painting, they get to watch their portrait come alive through my work in progress shots posted on my blog. When I work on a non-commissioned piece (like the Great Blue Heron), viewers feel a part of the process and when it's complete, I get a lot of inquiries about what my intentions are with the piece and whether or not it's for sale. That has a lot to do with my style and quality of work, it also has a lot to do with the viewer becoming attached to the piece as I've painted it.

PJ: What types of things about your work day inspire you to write a post on your blog?

LW: Being an artist means a lot of things. First and foremost, it means that I am a highly sensitive, creative and imaginative person who tends to express things through visual art. I am inspired by nature and people both. I write about my life, and my life revolves around my family and my creativity. I work from my home studio, I design and illustrate in my home office. I try to blog daily, and the entries in my blog depend upon what is going on in my head. I write creatively to help get me through painting or designing blocks, and response and interaction in comments help stimulate my creativity again. When words fail me, I share my photography. On a busy day in the studio, I share a work in progress photo, a photo of my palette. When I am touched emotionally about something I want to share, I write it out. After hours of writing code and designing graphics or one of my illustrations go live on the web or on a shirt, I blog it. When I have a vivid dream, I blog it in my dream blog. I have a lot of creative energy, and just having my blog available inspires me to write it.

PJ: What have been the biggest surprises with your blog so far?

LW: Two major things come to mind when thinking about the element of surprise as it relates to my blog.

When I created the blogosphere meme "Thursday Thirteen", and the response became something so overwhelming that participation levels went through the roof - and with that my comments - I was quite surprised. When I initially wanted to share quips about my life and/or week in a humorous way, I never thought it would become what it has become.

A little over a year ago, I had a little party on my blog when my husband returned from a year in Iraq. That was another time in my blog life where the response was surprising to a point of emotionally touching and moving. Many of my readers ordered paintings to contribute to our "Vacation Donation" fund so that upon his return we could have our first family vacation. That period of time, that time in my studio with those pet portraits, communicating with those clients, will not be forgotten.

PJ: What blogging program do you use for the blog? Did you create this blog yourself? How do you like the program?

LW: I use WordPress. I began blogging a few years ago on LiveJournal, but really wanted to keep things on my domain. It seemed a waste to have a domain, a gallery, and no traffic flow to it because I was over on LiveJournal, which seemed so far away. I moved to Blogger on my domain, and finally made the move to WordPress over a year ago. Initially, I did all of the design work. After a while, I met a designer (Lisa @ EWebscapes.com) and not only did she design my blog and set me up with WordPress, but she inspired me to really learn CSS, and now I'm an Associate Blog Designer with her company as well. I throw a new design up now and again on my own blog and toss around the idea of making another long-term design change, but my current layout, designed by Becca with EWebscapes, is exactly what works for me. I wouldn't even entertian the thought of moving to a different platform, WordPress is exactly what works, and it works well for blogs, galleries and photoblogs.

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Tags: leanne wildermuth | artist by nature | artist | painter

Comments

[Pet Portrait]

Leanne is simply amazing! What more can I say? I’m also into blogging but then creating a ‘photo album’ in any of my blogs does not work well for me. Must be because all I did was to just copy and paste them. In the first place, my choice of pictures weren’t as alive as that of Leanne’s.

Let me just point one very important thing that I have noticed in her works of art: pictures reflect how keen the photographer or the artist is even to minute details. For example, the picture of a bird standing in the middle of short-grown grasses does not only show the bird itself but the luscious leaves of the grasses as well. Now, who other artist can capture such multiple details in just one shot? Nothing is dissolved. Nothing is left uncovered.

Way to go Leanne! I wish you’re my art teacher.

John