Posts Tagged ‘Ask Harriete’

This has been a very busy couple of months, and I am into a lot of planning for this coming year. Here are a couple of articles that might be helpful as you look ahead to what you want to accomplish for 2013.

From the artbizblog and Alyson Stanfield comes a 5-step plan for generating income for 2013.  I think a lot of us forget about step one, analyzing your income for the previous year. This should help drive some of your goals for the new year.

From Dumb Little Man comes 88 Simple New Year’s Resolutions. These cover a wide range of categories, and you should find a couple that will work for you. Here are just a couple:

 I like number 29 – I am slowly getting through my unfinished quilt projects, especially since I am using them as practice pieces for all the new free motion quilting I have been learning. And concerning TV – well, there’s not a whole lot on that’s really worthwhile – I’d rather be in a book.

This last is something I am going to focus on this year. Harriete gives LOADS of useful web and design advice, and this one is about correctly tagging our images we have on line. Since I have redone the website, I need to address these. She has four tips for improving searches on your images.

 In other marketing news on this end, I am getting the newsletter ready to go out with announcements about our “Fabric of the Month offerings this year. The Etsy store has been restocked….well, we’re marbling like crazy to get new fabric available. We are planning for Seattle, as well as a magazine article that will come out in March. One of my goals this year is to get a better handle on using social media….at least, I’m thinking I can……

 It’s been a busy month of completing a lot of loose ends, especially in getting ready for the holiday season. But I am always on the outlook for great ideas for and about marketing. Ask Harriete has had an interesting series on displays for windows and booths – lots of great ideas to enjoy – as well as think about what could work for your own purposes. Window Dressing for Booth Display – fascinating ideas for setting up displays.  Made with pencils, and there is a video to go along with the photo as to how the booth was constructed. Who knew hangars could look so cool?

A fascinating TED talk on Collaborative Consumption – lots of food for thought……Would love to open a dialogue with folks about some of these ideas.

In the meantime, getting the Etsy shop loaded with fabrics in preparation for a 50 percent off sale on Cyber Monday. Promotesy (from the folks at Handmadeology) is a great tool for scheduling and marketing posts and items. And you really can’t beat $5 a month. The biggest marketing task has been a total makeover of the website, which has kind of sat idle for a couple of years, as the blog and Facebook page moved to the forefront. Lots of major changes on the site: new pages: Testimonials, Snapshots, Patterns, Digital Marbling, Classes and Workshops. Plus, new work is finally up, and the gallery has been seriously updated. Some pages still need writing and pictures, and the order form is getting a makeover, but the site is so much more comprehensive. And….two new domain names….

The domain name has been an interesting issue. We’ve had “marbledfab” since the late 1990s, since “marbledfabrics” was already taken. Hence a play on the words, but we always have to spell it for people. When we got our domain name, e-commerce was still very much in its infancy. It would be several years before domains became the critical component they are now. So we now have two new domains that point to the website (and I actually learned how to do that…): deanandlindamoran.com and MarbleTDesign.com. It’s all about branding and making it easy for folks to find us. We’ll see how it works…and the new business cards will have the new domains on them.

I decided to also add more examples of fabrics and patterns to our fabric page. These are pieces from our “we’ll never sell anything in this folder because it’s so gorgeous” file. These are just a few…..

Ideas to share? Pas them along!

An interesting web week…watched a lot of humor on YouTube, as well as a lot of math videos for my algebra class. Here’s one on exponential functions in real life – earthquakes.

A tour of the Google Data Center – colorful, just like the logo!

How cool are these! From Alisa Burke – stone sugar skulls!!

This from Letters of Note is heartbreaking. A reminiscence of the Pam Am explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Interested in education issues? Harriete talks about a show opening that deals with standardized testing. If you are at all familiar with the bell curve, you’ll appreciate one of the art works.

This juggling is fabulous!!!! One ball, who knew?

A whale of a tale, from the Great Whale Conservancy – beautiful story.

Put Johnny Carson and Dom DeLouise together, along with some raw eggs, and it’s just hilarious! They don’t make ’em like this any more!!

If you are not familiar with Design Seed, check out the interesting color combinations – some colors I would never have thought to put together.

And finally, if you haven’t visited Craft Gossip, you need to put it on your lists. Posts every day, and then some! Lots of great craft ideas to try, especially for and with kids.

That’s it for this week. Send along great links that you find out there on the web!