Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

In keeping with my plan to actually write about what I did for marketing on Mondays, I made my list yesterday, as I had a lot of loose ends floating around in my head. Beside each heading is what I actually got accomplished today.

* marbling – 12 fat quarters, including some for the new set of Seasons patterns, plus more for the Etsy shop. I’m glad hubby is doing all the Etsy work of listing items. I then go in and promote them through Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Got a really gorgeous new one that I’m trying for a quilted piece of driftwood. I’ll post a pic when the fabric is ironed.

* update Facebook business page, go back through some previous likes, make comments – I had been doing pretty well about a month ago with posting regularly and commenting on other’s art, but the month got away from me. So now I’m back.

* check on SAQA entry -read through the call to artists, and I decided this would not be right for me.

* email Anne about SOCAL Fiber Arts show and getting some appraisals done on recent quilts – done; need to know if I am qualified as legitimately disabled. I qualify, I’m making arrangements for appraisals in January for some of the newest art quilts, and now I can put together the packet for this show.

* Handmadeology blog – done and sent along the way. In researching a couple of blogs to boost holiday sales, I discovered a couple of venues I need to check on, so I’ll be busy with Digg, SumbleUpon, and Kaboodle this week, finding out all about them. I’m not sure about StumbleUpon – I don’t usually do that kind of surfing…..we’ll have to see. Same for Kaboodle – don’t know that it will be productive, and I have enough time-wasters as it is.

* TAFA request for community groups – sent out the request for information about the various communities we network with, as part of a blog post for Handmadeology.

* Craftsy class with Cindy Needham – the reality is that with the holidays coming up, and the number of unfinished projects, I really don’t have time for this class. I do want to wait and take another Elizabeth Barton class in October, since I got so much from the first class – and I’m not done with that one yet…….

* Promotesy – did my month sign-up yesterday, and I’ve started using it. I can schedule ahead of time, and things automatically post to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Looks to be easier to use than Hootsuite – which never did seem to publish my scheduled tweets.

* pin ebay – done…..it usually drives some traffic to the site, but it doesn’t seem to be converting to sales. Maybe when October rolls around….

* AZ SAQA info – emailed two jpgs off to the group. These are the two quilts that have been chosen to be in Linda Seward’s book The Complete Book of Art Quilt Techniques. We’ll see what happens. At least there’s no entry fee….

* Phoenix Public Library call for submissions – deadline October 10, $15.00, CD with 10 images. Images need to be from the last two years, but because of teaching full time, I am only now getting a lot more new work completed. Need to think this through.

* start newsletter for the month, at least outline what will be in it. I know what will be in the newsletter, I just need to get started on it, for it to go out a week from tomorrow.

* email stencil lady – go through website on stencils. I went through two sites that carry stencils, looking at ways of constructing some designs. I think I have a couple of really cool ideas, and I have emailed about pursuing this idea further. Over the next two weeks I want to see about doing actual designs for possible approval. This could be another source of passive income.

Okay, I was very productive getting all this stuff done today. This seems to be the way to go, rather than just writing about it and not necessarily doing it…..go figure……

Wow, what a crazy couple of weeks it’s been – and that’s a good kind of crazy! A bunch of marketing items came together over this last month, and the marbling tray has been busy creating customized fabrics.

First, the tutorial and giveaway for SewCalGal’s Fun Friday Giveaway broke on May 18, and we are still seeing comments, newsletter sign-ups, and orders from the tutorial. In case you missed the post, you can see it here. If you want it direct to your box with all the pictures and links, please leave a comment on the post and I’ll get it emailed to you. One of the participants in the Free Motion Challenge, Jenny Lyon, sent her finished piece of marbled fabric. It is absolutely amazing! Jenny has given this such a lovely rich feel. You can read her blog post about the quilting here.

I am now a weekly correspondent for the blog Handmadeology, and last week’s post was the beginning of a series of marketing for niche markets. You can read it here. This looks like it will be a lot of fun and be of some use to those folks who have very specialized markets. Already a lot of good comments on the post.

I’ve started selling on Tophatter. I know, there are a bunch of places I’m trying to be on line, and it is obvious to me I have to determine which ones work best for me and concentrate efforts on those. So Zazzle is going to be out, and potentially Cafe Press. But I’m selling on Tophatter – just trying to get listed in decent auctions and not having to be on Standby all the time. But if I stay with it, I should be in good position for the holiday buying season. There is SO MUCH jewelry in the auctions. It would seem to make sense to list the fabric in “supplies,” but what is already there is pretty much supplies for jewelry. Well, the site is still relatively new, so we’ll see how it works.

I’ve made my second month of getting a newsletter out. It was a major loose end for all of the first quarter, but now I seem to be on a roll. There was a bit of a learning curve using Mail Chimp, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now. You can sign up to get the newsletter “Out of the Marbling Tray” in the upper right hand corner of the blog.

The Facebook page is having more activity, thanks to the tutorial, and I am making regular comments on it. It is so much fun to connect people with the joy and beauty of marbled fabrics.

And…a couple of deadlines have passed, and now I am looking at my list of projects for the year, determining which one to do next. After 100 dollars in entry fees, and two rejections since March, I’m not sure the entry circuit is going to be for me. I had decided to try again, since my work has really improved, but still no luck. One more show to hear from by mid month. We’ll see……Going to be a busy month, and the lists are working out well. Plus, time for some fun!

Wow. Lots of new visitors to the blog – and WELCOME!!!! I said to hubby about three weeks ago “are we ever going to get past 1400 readers a month?” (according to Google Analytics), and the next thing I know, a mere three weeks later, we just passed 2100 readers this last month. Yay! I promise to make visiting worthwhile. We’re getting ready for our first newsletter this month, so please feel free to sign up (the link on the right), and be entered to win some free marbled fabric.

I have a tab on the top navigation bar that takes you to some resources. I invite you to view those. If you are interested in this marbling journey of ours, click here. Some are great art blogs that I follow regularly. I invite you to send me your URL if you have a blog. Others are resources I actually use, feel great about, and can recommend wholeheartedly. Yes, I am an affiliate of some of them, so I am attempting to make a few pennies off your clicks. But as I said on that page, nothing is there that I don’t trust implicitly. When I get time, I like to take a piece of really cool marbled fabric and work with it in Photoshop. You can see some of the journeys in Digital Marbling (TN), and we plan on adding lots more.

Tuesdays I try to include cool stuff I’ve found on the web the previous week. I go through a lot of blogs and try to include interesting, amazing, unusual – and of course weird – links for you. I try to keep Wednesdays for works-in-progress, but right now the WIP is for an entry and I can’t show details….Mondays I try to give you some marketing advice – sometimes what I’m doing that I find helpful, and sometimes links to how other people are doing it amazingly well.

Lately I’ve started my own “Brain Dump,” as a way of making my list and then checking it off to see how I’m doing with projects. Sometimes there’s just too much floating around, and the mental noise makes us nuts. This is what I’m trying to do, and I invite you on Sundays to add your own Brain Dump for the week and see how you do. Each Sunday I’ll do my own brain dump and ask you to do yours in a comment. Then the following week you can post how you did….I may set up a FB page for this……

And now a SALE…..through Sunday at midnight ONLY. Any Sampler 1 package from our website at 15% off, and 15% off anything on our Etsy site. Now if you need to see what you buy, then the Etsy offerings are for you. If you want to be pleasantly surprised, then the website deals are for you.

Here’s how each works. On Etsy, we have some small art quilts that are mostly marbled fabrics, and a lot of pieces of marbled cotton – and one exceptional piece of red silk – even better in person than in the picture. Decide what you want, and the discount is taken at checkout. This week’s coupon: WK1SPECIAL

On the website we have a page that shows patterns, but what you get is a surprise to you. The swatches are marbled depending on mood, desire for different patterns, and colors. So if you like surprises, this is a deal! Code: SAMP1 Coupon Code.

We hope you’ll take time to browse the website and look at the fiber art we’ve created using marbled fabrics. Some of these pieces have traveled to juried shows. We have a few that need to get into the galleries, and we have a line of ideas just waiting for the time to become new fiber art.

You can follow us on Facebook – I am trying to get better about posting regularly. Sometimes deadlines just govern everything else! You can follow along on Twitter.

You can visit us at the La Conner Quilt Museum in April at Stashfest. We will have marbled fabric available to sell as part of the fundraiser for the museum.

And if you visit, please leave a comment. I always write back – it’s SO COOL to hear form people! So WELCOME again! Ain’t stitchin’ grand?

After nearly three months of work to get Marble-T Design in shape for some serious expansion, I have been thinking about the role of social media, since that has been a big focus. I’ve also been thinking about the market pieces in place now and how they are working.

Biggest help of all so far has been getting up and operating on Linked In. I completed my profile with two basic pieces: the art and my interest in doing private tutoring, with the emphasis on the art business. Even more so has been the group aspect of Linked In. I’ve joined a couple of discussion groups and met some great folks. Art Business, Art Marketing, Manhattan Arts International, and TAFA have been incredibly productive. Advice, people viewing and commenting on the art, increase in “Likes” on the fan page as a result of round robin visiting – lots more people know about our marbling.

Twitter – can’t seem to develop this one to the extent I probably should. I do tweet interesting articles, retweet others’ information, but I am lucky to get a half hour each day to read recent tweets. I do know that taking advantage of the Tweet aspect of listing items on Etsy has led to a lot more views, as well as some sales. That’s a plus, but I can’t seem to devote the time – at this point – to being a major presence in TwitterWorld. I use Tweetdeck to schedule my tweets, but I got really frustrated when it wasn’t posting tweets for the TAFA fund raiser. That’s on my long-term list of things to do, because frankly, it’s not a priority right now.

Facebook has been great – of recent interest has been the 7th grade picture of my class in elementary school – lots of interesting comments there! But in terms of business, the Fan page has been much more active, with an increase in “Likes,” and I am trying to post something every day. With the integrating features, my blog automatically gets posted, as well as Etsy items, and I try to get an Ebay item up at least once a week. I can tell from the stats on Ebay that the traffic increases each time I post. And…sales have been up.

Responding. This is the key. You just can’t read this stuff without letting people know you’re out there, enjoying/responding to what they’ve posted. And that takes time. But it has to be done, and done in a meaningful manner. When I first started blogging (some 528 posts ago), I was thrilled the few times a comment came in, but I never acknowledged it.You must do that, and you must have something sincere to say. I love doing this now – it is so gratifying that someone visits, and I want to respond to that.

Ebay – business is increasing, and we can see that because we are marbling more often.

Etsy – slowly starting to build. The key has been finding the niche market for Etsy, which is some of our more expensive marbled fabrics, not the big art pieces. I do think with the right marketing I can sell some of the small marbled art pieces, if I keep things under fifty dollars.

Blog – back to almost every day, and traffic is increasing significantly. I’m finally taking the advice of some other bloggers and having at least one day a week for what’s on sale from Marble-T Design. I do enjoy writing, and I enjoy visiting other blogs. I’ve expanded additional pages on the blog, from art blogs to visit to resources available. I still have more that I want to add.

These have been the Big Three that are in place and are working. Each week I am nurturing them along.

Website – we need to add more items (we used to have close to 14 items available for sale), and we need to increase the traffic/sales to the site. I need to update some of the art work, and I have done some rewriting of copy within the site.

Cafe Press – well, not so much, but I am advertising something each week. It’s been interesting to see the Cafe Press ads online – every time I see one, one of the items is usually our gecko tote bag.

Marketing materials – new business cards with all the social media information on them, thanks to Vista Print freebies. Plus, new postcards as thank-you’s for customers, encouraging them to sign up for our newsletter and win free fabric.

BUT – absolutely the BEST thing in all of this is that hubby and I are finally able to work together each day with our art, creating and having fun together all the while.

Interesting post today from Social Media Examiner, and I think I need to share this, if only so that I can better understand what’s what with giveaways.

Evidently it’s not as easy to do giveaways and promotions on Facebook, and in general there are a lot of guidelines to follow – which I think most of us small businesses do, just as a matter of ethics. Requiring people to “like” a page or become “fans” or do anything changes the rules and makes this a contest, as opposed to a give-away. If you read the comments in the article on Social Media, you’ll find a lot of confusion, especially as regards to doing this on Facebook.

When you read the “Promotions” guidelines on Facebook, (and we’ve all done that, right???), you’ll notice that what many of us have been doing doesn’t seem to fit those guidelines. I think most of us with some sort of fiber giveaway to celebrate milestones – a certain number of fans, reaching a major number of blogs – do so with pure intent – like this and you could win something. We just need to be aware of what we’re doing and make sure everything that we need to do according to federal guidelines, we are.

It’s similar to the FTC guidelines about bloggers promoting an item where they receive a commission – we need full disclosure that we get paid to do this. If you start looking at your spam, you’ll notice a lot of it doesn’t have actual names and addresses at the end of emails to tell you exactly where all this is coming from. More and more sites (mine included) let you know that there are products we promote for which we may receive a commission. That’s how affiliate marketing works, and that’s a great source of passive income for many of us.

So here’s what I’m going to do. When I hit a milestone that I’ve set, I’ll do a giveaway of goodies.  I’ll mention on Facebook that it’s happening, but you won’t need to do anything except head over to read the blog – which hopefully you’re doing anyway.  Any giveaway will run solely through my blog – after I continue to read up on the in’s and out’s of this. I’m interested in your thoughts on this topic.

Boring, huh?  Here’s some eye candy to make up for it (although ya gotta admit this is important information). Enjoy the marbled papers.

Wow, it has been an amazing week! So much of what I worked on in June and July is coming to fruition. Etsy is beginning to sell, and I have a marketing plan developed for just Etsy that seems like it is going to be easy to implement. The marbling is going very well; we purchased a metal tray just for doing fat quarters, and all we needed to do was waterproof it – which worked well. We’ll use the new tray the end of the week. Along with this good vibe has been the studio remodeling – what a difference with everything in its place, and room for both of us to work at the same time and share ideas.

We’ve begun to brainstorm other products for the company, as ten years ago we had a lot more than we do now. We have started preparing the guidelines for our gift baskets. WE NEED COUPONS: if you have a business related to fiber and textiles and would like to put together a coupon that could lead to some added publicity, all we are asking is for you to make some coupons that we can include in our gift baskets. You can email us for more information. We did this about 10 years ago, and we had great participation from other businesses, so folks got a goodie basket with lots of other opportunities in it.

Ebay business is picking up, and we’ve had to raise our prices, due to the serious increase in the cost of cotton. Ebay will continue to be an outlet for smaller, cheaper pieces of marbled fabric, mostly remnants. We have a good, steady business here. Etsy looks to be the place to sell larger, more expensive pieces of fabric, which is good.

Facebook is also bringing in lots of comments, but the best thing I’ve done has been the Linked In profile and joining a few fiber and art groups: Art Business, Art Marketing, Manhattan Arts (check this one out), and a few other groups – lots of comments and interest, and all this should add to business down the road.

The biggest concern with all the work over the last two months was would I be able to actually continue making new artwork. I pleased to say the answer is a definite yes. I finished two small studies this past week, both of which will end up on Etsy in the next two weeks, and I started a large piece with my Quilt University class. I have two small pieces to do for two art shows coming up, and I should be able to take care of those within the next two weeks.

One of the classes I took from Laura Bray was on Multiple Sources of Income. She spent a lesson on getting organized and goal setting. A great part of this class was seeing how I could distinguish the actual marketing of the business with making art. As a result, yesterday I spent the day getting everything into a notebook, organized by sections, long-term goals and lists, places for business cards as I develop my contacts list – it feels SO good to have it 1) all in one place; 2) a section for everything I need; and 3) a way to see my progress in all aspects of the business.

I think one thing that will help me (and I don’t know it it will work for others) is that I am going to include within my binder other projects I am working on outside of Marble-T Design, so I can easily keep track of deadlines and goals all around.

So it’s taken me a couple of months to figure out a system that will work, and now I just have to “work it.” I start each day with the notebook and make my list for the day, being sure I handle both marketing tasks and art tasks. What have you found that works for you?

It’s Monday again….and it seems like all I did was read, look at emails, and set up buttons and the like. This is the “time-sucker.” So my goal for this blog post is to try and identify what needs to be done each week for marketing and set up a kind of calendar to work with.

This is what I’m dealing with: Ebay, Etsy, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Cafe Press, Zazzle, newsletters, a website, lynda.com, flickr, and a blog. I am trying to avoid doing all of this every day, because nothing else seems to get done. I’m brainstorming as I write, with the hope that by the time this post is done, I will have a plan.

Ebay: hubby handles almost all of this, including postal trips. But…if we are going to increase sales, we need more product, and I would like to help with the actual marbling. So…..marbling weekly. I do need to update the About Me page…..

Etsy: the bulk of the organization is done. But…I need to be adding product on a regular basis, which means I need to keep making things. It would be nice to have one new product up each week, if not more often. One of the goals this week is to add some of the major artwork (even though I don’t expect to sell it on Etsy, it is more exposure) on the site, as the pictures are redone. I want to continue with the circles marketing, which, if I have enough products, could be done every day – 15 minutes for this. Plus, I need to keep working…….

LinkedIn: profile is done, and I have registered for several groups for business. I have found already difficulty in keeping up with reading emails each day from the groups and have already deleted one group. This week I will determine which groups look to be the most advantageous. I also need to complete the setting up of a profile of artwork.

Facebook: I read this several times a day. I have a fan page which needs serious work, as well as Art From The Heart, which is to support healing art after the Tucson shootings in January. I have added FB buttons to my blog and this week to my website. I have read the Terms and looked at all the privacy settings. I also went through the photo stream stuff for FB and fixed photos for both the personal and fan page. I need to really think through what is going to happen with the Fan Page.

Twitter: I am finishing a class from lynda.com on using Facebook and Twitter for business, and I highly recommend the site. For #25 you can choose different trainings all available for a month at your schedule. I picked up all kinds of little tips, most of which have already been implemented. But….and this is a BIG but….the time for tweets and what to tweet. By syncing a lot of the programs, my blog appears on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, my tweets appear in a couple of places. I don’t think I can go further with this – the tweet button is on the blog and soon to be on the website. This is one area that needs some serious scheduling. Since I use TweetDeck (which is free…), I can schedule and keep track of who’s following and what is getting retweeted. So…I’m going to use Sundays for scheduling business tweets for the week, and I will look through the twitter feed once a day to see if there’s some good stuff to retweet.

Cafe Press: I have a site, a free one, so I am limited as to the number of products I can put up. I haven’t looked at this in several months and it needs serious work. To have a store isn’t much money each month, and I could have a lot more products available, but the issue is marketing and driving people to the site. I have some great digital stuff already to go, and I need to start planning around the holidays, reading about marketing through Cafe Press, and so on.

Zazzle: Ditto for Cafe Press……both are not a high priority right now.

Newsletters: oy, it’s been months since a newsletter went out, and I have all these contacts where nothing is happening. I used Constant Contact last year for a few months, until I couldn’t keep up with the demands and school at the same time. I was happy with it, but disappointed that not many people actually read it. I need to go back to a newsletter and offerings at least once every three weeks, and more during the holiday seasons. I need to check out Mail Chimp, which is free, and I have heard people have good luck with it. I’ll try and make this a priority this week.

Website: Most of the changes to the website have been made by my wonderful web lady Suzan. I need to get a couple of buttons set up, and then do something about newsletters and contacts. I also have some pages to add on Digital Marbling (TN), and I need to evaluate “print on demand” for artwork. This is a “need to think about” topic…..

lynda.com: I have until Friday to finish my month of training. I still need to finish Twitter, and I want to get the html newsletter course done. I am not going to continue with Dreamweaver because it isn’t a priority.

Flickr: I have photos up, not all of them with copyrights, and there is a class on lynda.com if I have time. I’m not really sure what I want to do here….

And finally, my blog, Marbled Musings. I went a bunch of months with no new writing, and I’m at maybe three times a week. I need to get back to at least four times a week, and eventually every day. I have plenty to write about…and I need to stay up with my Google reader – as well as comment more on some of the posts. This is probably the biggest area for marketing that I have to schedule.

Weekly:

* Marbling fabric

* Work on Etsy products

* Sewing and other design

Mondays:

* Add Etsy product

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog post Monday Marketing

* Google reader and at least three comments

Tuesdays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog post Top Ten Tuesday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Wednesdays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog Work in progress Wednesday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Thursday:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog – Thursday Thoughts

* Google reader and at least three comments

Fridays:

* Add Etsy circle information

* Read newsletters from LinkedIn groups

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog Photoshop Friday

* Google reader and at least three comments

Saturdays:

* Read Twitter feed

* Blog posting on Specials

* Google reader and at least three comments

Sundays:

* Read Twitter feed

* Schedule Tweets for the week (i.e. Etsy, Ebay…)

* Blog Sunday Stories

* Google reader and at least three comments

Goals for next week:

* FINISH LYNDA.COM

*Update “About Me” page on Ebay

* Update Etsy products, especially note cards

* Evaluate how calendar is working

* See if buttons are added to the website

* Decisions on what will happen with the Facebook Fan page

* Long-term thoughts – what to do with CafePress and Zazzle

* Read and decide about Mail Chimp for a newsletter

* Spend some time thinking about what the website still needs….

Okay, I think I have a handle on this…we’ll see next week as I evaluate how the week goes. And…I’m taking some online classes!

Thoughts??

I had my goals all laid out for last week, so first an update on how I did…..

* worked on getting more items up each week on Ebay, which will mean going back to marbling once a week, whch won’t be a problem since we now have the time during the week.

* Etsy store is up and operating again, with more items this time, and plans to add two or three each week.

* along with this is a lot of work looking at what’s going on with Etsy, including circles and favorites. I am seeing some great artwork, but I am realizing that “hearting” other textile artists probably isn’t going to get me anything more than additional traffic.

* I got caught up on all the basic website changes I needed to make, and this is where I made a very interesting discovery…..

I signed up for lynda.com, a training company online, particularly for their Dreamweaver class. As I started in with the first of the videos, I realized I probably should work through the course on web basics, and I gotta tell ya, my respect and admiration for my friend the web designer when up a thousand fold. She knows so much! As I got into the Dreamweaver class, I realized I was in WAAAYYYY over my head…..

Hence the headline….this is the place for an expert. I am working through these videos and trying to figure out how to get the web pages even on to my computer to work on them. I realized I am way past wanting to learn and understand a new web program for web design, when I have a fabulous person available to do the changes for me in a minimum amount of time. I realized I didn’t want to spend the time it would take to learn all this. That’s not where my interest is.

Which is a major change for me, since I had been doing all this in the late 90s because I couldn’t afford to pay to have the site done. Not the case now. I realized just how valuable my time is to create the art. I’ll spend the time figuring out Ebay and Etsy, but beyond that, I am not interested in more skills.

So value your time and know when you need to go outside for help. It relieves your frustration and moves you along a lot faster.

Timely for me was this blog post by Alyson Stanfield on marketing. Your strategies are more than just setting up your social media; it’s making them connect to give you a wider audience, but you have to have a plan for all that. I did discover this week that I was spending a huge amount of time on Facebook, Twitter, and reading past blogs. I need to be much more selective as to how I spend that computer time and make sure it all works together.

That’s what is leading me to my goals for this coming week:

* Twitter and Linked In courses through lynda.com

* get LinkedIn set up, updated, and useful

* update Facebook Fan Page

* change out some of the older pictures on the website as well as add new work up on line

* define my marketing goals and draft a mind-map of my goals

* if time, HTML class on lynda.com about newsletters

* and…order a free VistaPrint t-shirt advertising Marble-T Design!

Save up to 80% on custom printed products at Vistaprint. Order today!