Making A Mark is a Top 10 Art Blog in the UK 2017

Making A Mark has been identified (yet again) as a TOP 10 ART BLOG IN THE UK.

This time the company giving my blog this award are called Vuelio and they are marketing/PR/communications company who realise the importance of blogs to connecting with specific target audiences.

This company's Social Media Index has Making A Mark ranked at 6 in the UK.

6. Making a MarkAuthored by artist and writer Katherine Tyrrell, Making a Mark is one of the top art blogs with 10 million page views. Described as a go-to for punters and artists alike, this blog includes annual itineraries of major UK art exhibitions as welll as in-depth news, analysis and spotlights on new talent.

How Vuelio ranks blogs 

This page explains How does Vuelio decide its Top 10 Blog Ranking - for very many different categories of topics.

Basically:

• they've been doing this since 2008
• it's calculated according to an ever-evolving algorithm
• The methodology takes into consideration a number of factors including social sharing, topic-related content, post frequency, social media influence, traffic, design and interactivity.
• "Our database is constantly updating, as it draws on real-time information about media properties and the influencers responsible for them"

I'd love to know what they're using as factors. The two other indices which rate Making A Mark both publish their factors - and one of them identified relative rankings (even if it gets it wrong for MAM because it uses the Alexa ranking for the blogspot.com site as opposed to the blogspot.co.uk site - because it assumes all sites are American!  VERY annoying!). Some time I may consider switching the domain URL to a .com - it would make a huge difference to rankings!

However to be honest while the awards are nice to have, it's always nicer to get the personal words of appreciation - and to see the traffic numbers and know how many people think my blog is worth visiting.

The Top 10 Art Blogs in the UK

Do take a look at the other art blogs which also made it to the top ten.  The ones I rate as art blogs are:

• Jackson's Art Blog - they really make an effort and are an excellent example of how a retailer can do so much more than punt their wares
• Art History News - this is the blog by Bendor Grosvenor who's the chap who turns up on the BBC and does techie things with paintings which they are trying to identify and verify. he also knows a lot about art history and what's new in that area of interest.
• We make money not art - This blog has been around slightly longer than Making A Mark! It's had a very snazzy makeover since I last looked. It's an occasional read for me but it's more interesting than most although I have to pick and choose the things I want to read. It's written by Régine Debatty who is a writer, curator and critic and an an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in London.

My criticism of the Vuelio listing generally (which I've already told them) is that:

• it is far too London-centric and urban/street art oriented 
• there are lots of other blogs around which reflect a more diverse perspective on art in the UK. 

It may be that the street/urban art blogs get massive followings from young oiks with a spray can - but art fundamentally is defined by more than the number of Facebook or Twitter followers you have!

Indie vs Corporates: What's interesting is how many blogs are written by individuals and how many are written by corporate bodies and/or teams.  My personal thought on that topic is that blogs written by individuals should ALWAYS be judged separately from those written by teams.

Let's hear it for the indie effort!

So which blogs do you read which are based in the UK?