Member Check List

In preparing the information for their TAFA posts, many of our members have expanded their presence on the web.  They have started Facebook business pages (fan pages), joined Flickr, and learned how to use the various widgets that hosting sites provide.  How do you know if what you have is enough?  How do you balance the time it takes to manage these things?  Once things are set up, many of these sites offer streamlining possibilities which help build each other up.  On the social media page of this website, I offer a look at how I arrived at what worked best for my business, Rayela Art.  There is a list there that you can look at of the many hundreds of social media sites that are available.  Of those, I will share here which I think are the best places to spend your time and energy and how they can link together.  Read the Resources page first and then come back here for specifics.

• Website/Blog

A blog used to be a place where one could post about one's interests, kind of like a journal.  Now they are replacing websites as they offer both that feature and pages that accommodate information that would normally be found on a website (about, gallery, store, links, etc).  They are also user friendly and offer the owner more control than previous websites where html codes were often too complex for the average user.  Thousands of available templates allow users to personalize blogs into professional places where a fiber artist or textile business can showcase their work. 

Tips:

• Consider integrating your website with your blog, so that they are available in one place.  Add a link to both. 

• If you only have a blog, add pages to showcase your work.  Make it image rich and welcoming.  Do not use small thumbnails to show your work. 

• Make sure your photos are of good quality.  If you have a hard time with photos, hire or barter with someone who can put a portfolio together for you.

• Use the widgets provided on other sites to drive people to those places.  Etsy, facebook, twitter, flickr and almost all social media sites have codes that can generate links on websites and blogs.  Learn how to resize this widgets so that they can be placed in sidebars or in the body of a design.  Widgets are also called gadgets.

• Brand your business.  Are you using your personal name in one place and your business name in another?  Make it consistent so that people will recognize it.  Use the same name for your website/blog everywhere else.  Get a professional logo.  Have both a square size and rectangular size that can be used in different settings.

• Facebook

Create a fan page for your business.  Click here to get started.  Why?  There are more tools for integration with facebook pages than with personal ones.  Keeping "real" friends separate from your business supporters is also a good idea if you don't want to wade through a gazillion posts by people you don't know.  A fan page is a good, non-invasive way of developing a following.  Make sure that your settings allow anyone to see the page.  We have had a couple of international fan pages where the settings were only set for that country, so the rest of us could not see the fan page.

Tips:

• Register your blog on Networked Blogs. Networked Blogs is an application, not related to facebook, that allows you to streamline your blog to your personal page and fan page.  Every time you do a post, that post will show up automatically to the sites that link to your networked blog.  All of the members who have done this are networked on to the TAFA fan page. 

• When you register your blog on Networked Blogs, they create a page, much like a fan page, for your blog.  People can choose to follow it there.  Anybody who follows it can also have it streamlined to their personal or fan pages.  It will also give you the choice to add a tab to your page for your blog.  This is an easy way to create content on your fan page without having to add new posts all the time.  To streamline a blog to your page, first, find it and follow it.  Then, go to your page, click on "edit page", scroll down to "Networked Blogs", click on "edit" and a list of the blogs you are following will show up.  Check off the boxes of the blogs you want streamlined to your page.

• Streamline your fan page to Twitter.  Go to Twitter and I think it is done from there.  You have to approve that Twitter can access your info.  Make sure it is from your fan page and not your personal one.  Same thing with LinkedIn.  This means then, that a blog post zips over to facebook and from there goes on to Twitter and LinkedIn.  I have TAFA set up to do this.  Do you see the potential of getting your information out there with little effort?

• Use the facebook widget on your blog and website to get more followers.  This is something that has been confusing everyone.  Facebook has a sample which shows a milk product.  You have to erase the id number in the sample and replace it with your own.  How do you find your id?  If you go to your fan page, it is the long number at the end of your web address in address bar of your web page.  If you can't find it there, go to another tab on your fan page or to a photo that you have posted and it should show up there. 

To get your widget:  Click on "edit page" under your photo (top left corner).  On the right sidebar, scroll down to "promote your page".  Click on "Promote with a Like Box".  This is what you will see:

If you do it correctly, you will see a sample that shows your fan page in the dimensions that you want.  TAFA's column is 400 pixels wide, so you change it to that.  Add more fans so there aren't any holes.  Here is what TAFA's looks like:

• Make your fan page interesting.  Load it with photos, tell people in the info tab exactly what you do (what's for sale, commissions, how to find you, etc.)  Facebook can be fun.  It can also be a big waste of time for your business if you don't give people the information they need to follow through with you.  Help promote other fan pages that you like by adding them in as your favorites. 

• Flickr

Flickr is pretty easy to use.  The biggest downside is having to set up another email address and password with yahoo.  Bleah!  After that, you can load your photos, create albums with different themes, and make slide shows either from your larger pool of photos or from your albums.  Once those slide shows are up and around, anybody can copy the code and add them on to their blog or site.  This is very convenient, especially if someone is writing an article about you and your business.  Keep your photos organized and don't mix business albums with family, garden, pets and personal travel.  See the Resources page on how to join the TAFA Flickr Group.

Several members have their photo albums set up on Picasa or other photo sites.  I have not been able to figure out how to grab code from these sites to do slide shows, so please open another account on Flickr.  That way, you can also join our TAFA group.

• Etsy

If you do not have a shopping cart set up on your website, consider using Etsy as your selling platform.  Etsy mini is a wonderful widget that can be used all over the place to promote your product.  TAFA's membership has a strong Etsy representation and we are currently in the process of setting up a TAFA Etsy Team with the goal of marketing our Etsy stores.  Here is an example of an Etsy mini using the gallery size images:

Here we have a thumbnail version:

These can be organized into a variety of rows or columns.  Excellent to post around in blogs, websites or social media sites that accept code.

So, these are the places that I recommend for your business: Website/Blog, Facebook, Flickr and Etsy.  There are many others.  If you can get a movie or slide show about you posted on YouTube, that is another great tool that can be used in many places.  All of these things take time to set up, but once they are up, they are quite easy to manage.