The Art World and the World Wide Web

obust website on a leaner budget, very quickly. With these
template solutions, a non-technical person can build and
manage a great looking website and have it up and running in
days. These websites, while not custom, are totally customizable,
and more importantly, they are tailored for the art world.
You can see samples of exhibit-E’s new gallery template sites
on pages 23, 24 and at www.exhibit-e.com/news/template-sites.
Social Media
To maximize the utility of their websites, galleries must embrace
strategies that take full advantage of social media tools. Unlike
just a few years ago when it was difficult to find gallery staff
comfortable with even the most rudimentary computer tasks,
most galleries today have staff that are completely at ease with
computers and technology—power users who text, tweet,
Instagram and frequent Facebook. The social media phenomenon
has taken the digital world by storm—Facebook now has
over 1 billion members—and represents an important networking
opportunity that galleries cannot afford to overlook.
With few exceptions, a gallery should have a Facebook page
and its website should link to it. The two portals are inextricably
intertwined and should be managed together. With Facebook,
you have an Internet user who has reached out and literally
befriended the gallery, brought it into his own social network,
and publicly announced the relationship to all his friends—
free advertising with the potential to grow gallery website visits
exponentially. The gallery needs to feed and nurture these
friendships by participating in Facebook frequently through
announcements, discussions, postings of images and videos,
and so on. The content of these Facebook postings should be
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