Social Media I opened my Etsy store in May of 2007. The store has been my main source of income and in learning how to promote it, I had to learn about social media. Social media sites are web sites where you can promote yourself or your product within a community context. Blogs, flickr, facebook, and youtube are all examples of social media sites which have enjoyed huge success. Basically, it works like this: You have a product you want to sell. You open an online shop then you give it life through your blog. Your product images can go on flickr. You develop a community on facebook, make videos and network with other people who have the same interests as you. Oh, and you tweet about it. All of these things should point to that product that you want to sell. The hope is that people will like what you have because of what you say and do on the web. Some of this is easy peasy. Some of it takes some work to figure out. Increasingly, these sites are connecting up with each other so that what you do on one is automatically updated on the other. Once the systems are set up, they are pretty easy to monitor and will lead to a strong presence on the web. My blog, Rayela's Fiber Focus, and this website both have quite a few resources that you can use as needed. On the blog, explore the tags in the middle column that have to do with marketing or your topic of interest. Or, do a search using key words and see what pop ups. On this website, go to social media, and explore the content there. Use Rayela Art as an example of what you can do for your business. Mashable.com is a daily social media guide which has excellent articles on the latest news in that field. I have subscribed to it and get it in my email. It has a bullet list of the topics which, when clicked, leads to more info. This video shows how important social media has become in how we get the word out about our work and business:
The key, for me, is that social media is basically a free tool that we can use. Most of us cannot afford to advertise to the audiences we want in print media. However, social media is time consuming and there is so much competition that it is easy to disappear into the black hole of cyberspace. 50,000 new blogs are created every day! Imagine that... This is where TAFA can help all of us. Your member profile should put your best foot forward and bring all of those places where you can be found on the web into one spot.
I have tried many different social networking sites and of all of them, Facebook provides the best tools to market our site. There are many advantages of being there: there's already a huge and vibrant inbuilt fiber art community; we can control our privacy levels; the fan pages allow blogs to be networked to them and are also streamlined to Twitter; and the site is visually attractive. Disadvantages include site quirks (it is so huge that sometimes things don't work like they should), it is NOT intuitive (you have to figure everything out or ask people how to make it work), tools are often hidden under several layers before you can find them, and fan pages do not have as many features as personal pages (which is a shame for those who are there primarily for business). If you need help using facebook, please read this post I wrote: Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!And, this one, from the Social Media Examiner, is excellent: I realized that many of my peers were barely scraping the surface of what facebook could do for them. Again, facebook is NOT intuitive. But, most things can be found using the search box and the rest, you just have to dig a bit. Click on the following to reach our facebook links: Member group: As the group is private, you have to follow the link and then request permission to join. I have to check my personal home page often to make sure nobody is waiting. If you don't get let in within a reasonable time, send me an email to let me know that you are knocking at the door. (This is our speakeasy...) I would like everybody to feel comfortable here. Load your photos, introduce yourself to the other members, join in discussions and start new ones, give suggestions, brainstorm, and be a part of the process. Who knows what doors may open and close as we talk about possibilities? I also want our group to be fun, friendly and supportive. If you know the answer to something, take leadership and help out the other members. TAFA Fan Page: About half of our members seem to be on facebook. For those who are, it is essential to set up fan pages and to get blogs registered on Networked Blogs. Those who are post automatically to the fan page. Our audience on facebook is growing daily and each person who "likes" the page (formerly, becoming a fan), gets the post on their news stream. If they physically visit the page, it's important to have fun stuff that they can look at. So, load your photos and videos there and participate in and start discussions. You can also load any events or festivals that are important to you. The key here is repetition. Visit the fan page and leave some comments or post some photos every now and then and people will start recognizing your name. One unfortunate thing about how things are set up is that we can't use our fan page names, so for some of us, branding opportunities are lost as we are forced to use our personal names. Still, the connection will be made if you repeat it enough. Networked Blogs: Networked blogs is an app that was not developed by facebook but which has a huge following. When you register your blogs, the blog gets a profile page, very similar to our member pages and other people can follow it, meaning that it will pop up in their news stream. You can also see what blogs your friends are subscribing to and they make content suggestions of similar blogs that might interest you. It is an excellent tool and all of you facebook bloggers should do it. Click on the TAFA link for networked blogs and it will take you to the app. Follow TAFA and share new member posts with your friends. Repetition is the key. TAFA Logo App: One of our members wanted to post our logo on her page and link it to the TAFA site. Well, you can't just paste an image, you have to create an app, something I had not done before. I did it, but don't know if it is correct. I was able to send it to my personal profile, but not to my fan page. You have to join the application and walk through the steps and then it will create a box on your page, in the left sidebar, which you can then move up or down to place it where you want it. It is a picture of the logo and is linked to the TAFA site. It is there for any of you who want to use it. If you can figure out how to get it to a fan page, please let me know.
Flickr
Flickr has become the most popular photo database around. I encourage each of you to have a presence there, not only because the slide show gives added depth to your TAFA profile, but also because you will develop fans and followers on Flickr, too. If you have not done it before, you open the account, load a bunch of photos and you can get the embedded code for the slide show by clicking on the share button at the top right corner. The slide show updates automatically as you change your photos over time, so it's a great tool. And, you can embed it in your website or blog, too. Just change the size of the slide show (width and height) to fit your column. Join TAFA's Flickr group and add your BEST photos to the pool. To join the group, click on "join this group" at the top of the page. You need to be let in by Arlee Barr or myself. Arlee has had many years of experience on Flickr and is co-administrator of the group. Here is a screen shot Arlee made of how to join:
You may add 6 photos a week. This will keep the pool diverse and encourage members to only add their best images. Please do not add photos of works in progress, cats sitting on yarn, or blurry images. Be professional! There is a discussion area there that will also be helpful if you have problems figuring Flickr out or if you have questions on how to improve your photos. Good photos are key if you hope to market yourself on the web. A bad photo is equivalent to walking into a dark and dirty storefront. Tagging your images on Flickr is extremely important. Tags are words that people might use in order to search Flickr for images. Obvious ones describe the object: Wall hanging, Textile, Hat, Bag, Tablecloth, etc. Others describe the technique: quilting, embroidery, knitting, crochet, shibori. And, then there are materials: silk, hemp, dye, etc. Try to think of what your item is in all of these ways. Also, include your name and business name as a tag, if you want people to find you that way. On the images that you submit to the TAFA pool, try to use the larger categories that are already on the site. Take a look at the labels used in "Themes and Places" and use them. The top 100 tags that members use form a tag cloud in our group. The bigger the word, the more people have been using that tag. I have been using those to compile small vignettes to put in the sidebar of our site. These refresh automatically and pull from the pool based on the keyword that I used to make the code. Feel free to post TAFA's slide show on your blog, website or anywhere else on the web. We have some serious eye candy in our group!
Project Wonderful Project Wonderful is an ad service that uses an auction model to price the ads. There are several ways of advertising, but the basic concept is that blogs and websites set up ad spots using Project Wonderful. Those spots are then valued, either by the owner of the site, or by supply and demand. For example, I can say that my ad spots will cost $2 a day to advertise on, but if I don't have the traffic and popularity to support that price, nobody will use my spots. Instead, most of us allow the market to determine how much a spot will be worth. Project Wonderful has a huge audience in the indie community and I have used it successfully to draw new people to my blog. I have also set up two spots on the TAFA Classified's Page. Right now, it is cheap, cheap, cheap, sometimes even free to advertise there. If you advertise on Project Wonderful, consider TAFA as a site. And, also let me know if you have spots as I have been running campaigns for TAFA on there. Get yourself listed!
This is it for now. Do you have any resources you would like to share with members? Send me an email and I'll add them on!
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