Organization is a funny thing. We've been doing it forever. We organize our books, our music, our art, our photos.
We do this because we often need easy ways to find them when we need them.
In the early days, as shoppers and buyers, it was important that things were organized for our browsing and shopping experiences. Things were categorized according to titles or uses and we walk into a store looking for our needs hoping to find them where we think they logically belong. Most often we do find the stuff we need.
We look for fabric softener next to the laundry detergent and we are most likely to find a book on digital marketing in the business section at the local book store.
.try & buy. by bass_nroll - CC
Sometimes, however, we don't find what we're looking for where we need it. Hopefully the store has knowledgeable clerks who can help us out. They know, or can look up, what we need to find.
But we now live in a time where less people go to the store to browse. More people are doing their shopping online. More and more purchases are happening online and people are happy to input their credit card information on a website and hit that "buy" button.
Shopping in our pajamas!
It doesn't get any easier than that.
The best part is that we can now make better informed purchasing decisions based on customer reviews and recommendations from friends. We do it all of the time. We do it even when we don't think we do it.
All of the things our friends like on Facebook, through earned media, are tiny little branding beacons that gradually push us to one buying decision over the other.
And the web is better organized because of all of this. It's better organized because company websites are being indexed by Google and Bing. It's better organized because the search engines pull data from social networks that help the search engines know exactly what we're looking for.
Artists and photographers can now be more easily found online because someone wrote about them or bought a print and made a review. Or maybe they shared the purchase with a pic on their Facebook wall and shared it with their friends. Maybe they booked a portrait session with a photographer and enjoyed their pictures so much they tweeted about it. The photographers and artists who capitalize on these little points of engagement get to join the ever growing organization of the web.
They get indexed. They get found for more clients or print sales. They sell more art.
Organization.
More and more stuff gets indexed online every day and we become more organized. When we search for a great piece of art online to match our brand new couch we are going to find tons of options. We're going to find what we wanted.
If you're an artist or a photographer and you aren't participating in the great organization of the web then you miss out on getting found online. You miss sales opportunities. You miss landing your next best client.
Get found. Build your website up. Create content. Push that content out.
The cream will rise to the top. It always does.