What I Thought Would Happen and What Actually Did – Social Media

If you’ve been following along with my blog posts, you know that I’ve been working on making changes here there to improve my (very) small business – my Etsy shop, One In The Hand, where I sell sewn and knitted cup cozies. Since late 2010, I’ve gotten very involved in a certain corner of the handmade community on Twitter, I’ve gotten very involved in my local Etsy team and I’ve put together a plan for making my shop one that has sales year-round, not just in the busy shopping season before Christmas.

I’ve gone into this period of transformation thinking that certain things would produce certain results, and it didn’t happen. Other things happened. So today, I’m going to tell you about some of the things I thought would happen and what happened instead. And then I’m going to tell you about recalibrating my compass and the somewhat different direction I plan to travel.

Today’s post is going to focus on social media.

What I Thought Would Happen

Especially once I stumbled upon the handmade Twitter community, I thought that my connections and friendships would increase traffic to my shop, and thus increase sales. I thought that by posting more often on my Facebook shop page, and offering a variety of post-types, I would get a lot more interaction with the people who are “fans” of the page. With my blog, I thought that writing regular posts related to the handmade community, and partnering with other bloggers, I would gain blog followers and get a lot of exposure, which would lead to more sales.

What Actually Happened

Instead of all my tweeting relationships leading to more sales in my shop, it has led to relationships with other handmade business owners. I have gone through a few stages of feeling like I don’t fit in with these ladies . . . trying to gain their aproval . . . resigning myself to the fact that I am just not enough of a glittery unicorn for them to notice . . . and finally seeing the dust of my flurrious (yes, I said flurrious) tweeting settle to reveal a small number of meaningful relationships, both within and without the handmade community.

With Facebook, it took a while to kick in, but I am beginning to see a liiiiiiiiitle more intraction with my Facebook fans. Mostly, though, it’s still just my longtime real-life friends who are responding to my posts. Still – improvement is improvement! At the same time, Facebook finally made it much easier for me as a shop owner to interact with other handmade fan pages. I have definitely spent a lot more time commenting on other pages *as my shop* (rather than usng my personal profile) than I ever expected to do. Sometimes I’m able to interact on a daily basis, but I’ve at least maintained weekly interactions with other fan pages.

Bloggity, bloggity blog. Well, I’m kind of all over the place with this blog. And for now, that’s ok. My intention with my blogging was to provide another look at who I am as a person, not just as a person involved in handmade stuff. I think I have been pretty successful at that. I’ve shown my thoughts regarding what I want to do with my shop. I’ve talked about racism a little bit. I’ve highlighted some handmade artists I think are doing great things. I’ve shared things that make me laugh and that I hope will make my readers laugh. I’ve shared music, which I love (even more than I love anything handmade, shh, don’t tell). I’ve steadily gained some blog followers and recently, have received an increase in interaction with my readers – i.e. comments from them. I’ve been surprised to notice that readers are most responsive (by leaving comments) to my posts that show a lot of humor.

One thing I never, never expected, was to tap into the area of philanthropy as it relates to the handmade world. It has been really invigorating and inspiring to see so many people interested in philanthropy! It’s also been so exciting (and a little overwhelming) to brainstorm with my fellow handmade peeps, the ways we can collaborate with each other to make philanthropy accessible to others.

Changes I’ll Be Making

First – Twitter. I gotta tell you, Twitter has kind of taken over my life. You get such instant gratification from Twitter and you get in the habit of sharing every little thought . . . you get to the point that things begin to seem more and less interesting based on how tweetable they are. Or how drastically they will impact your ability to tweet. For example, I have taken a cab from the train station to my office, just so I could tweet for a few more minutes. Normally I walk, it takes me around 10 minutes to get from the station to my office. 10 minutes, folks. I spent $8-10 on a cab ride, more than once, because I wanted to tweet a little longer, and I knew I had a full work day which would keep me from sharing some super important thing, like . . . a link to my blog. Or a photo of someone rudely taking up too many spaces at the bike rack. Really, Ashley? Was it that important? No, it wasn’t. It was a waste of money and it was lazy and it shows a dependence on something that should not be that important to me.

Also? I tweet way too much while I’m at work. It’s one thing to take a 30-second break here and there, but there have been days when I review the day’s tweets, and realize that I didn’t just spend 30 seconds here and there. This is not only a waste of my employer’s resources, it’s also not worth it. What if I lost my job because of it? Or what if I was looking for another job and the potential employer found my Twitter profile (which I want to keep public) and decided I wouldn’t b responsible with my time with them? Could I really blame them? And you know what? All this tweeting hasn’t led to any sales!! The only sales I’ve gotten from tweeting – that I can tell – are from when I was giving all my proceeds to the Red Cross after the Japanese earthquake. Tweeting may be turning into income for some people, and more power to them. But it isn’t doing that for me and I have to cut way, way back. So. I am going to work on cutting back not only during my work day but overall . . . because for me, at least, one feeds the other. I already had to deal with my family thinking I was online too much, but if it were to impact my ability to provide for my family? OH HAIL NAW. I cannot let that happen.

I have to say that before I really admitted that the tweeting wasn’t leading to sales, I was so fearful of cutting back. But now I am pretty sure that excessive tweeting isn’t going to make my sales skyrocket. I would rather be more strategic and focus on keeping the small number of real friendships alive.

Facebook changes? Really not much right now. I still haven’t implemented all the things that I put on my goal list, so I’m just going to keep at the list. Facebook is a territory I still need to explore.

Blogging is also an area that I’m not going to change much, except that I’m still working toward the major changes I intend to make. I’m still working with my friend the graphic designer to come up with a cohesive brand for my shop/blog/Twitter/biz cards. I’m still working on coming up with regular, varied content that is (hopefully) interesting to different types of people. I suppose what I will be changing . . . is what blogsI follow. I am still working on culling who I follow on Twitter and in blogs. I am done following out of guilt and I am done following to win contests. I am done following without really inspecting someone’s content to see if it’s the sort of stuff I want to read regularly. And I am done leaving blogs I never read on my Google Reader list because I’m scared I’ll hurt feelings or miss a potential collaboration. If I don’t read your content EVER, I’m going to “unfollow” and hope you will still be nice to me when we “run into each other” online. I plan to be nice to you!

Tell me, friends – what are some of the things you thought would happen one way in regard to social media, that didn’t happen that way? Are you making any changes? Do you think your original hopes might still be realized?

Levity

 

Some of my favorites from The Best Obnoxious Responses to Misspellings on Facebook. Enjoy!

 

And, the one that actually made me cry, I laughed so hard:

I love you, Daniel. Wherever you are.

Etsy Gameface Update: Facebook, Twitter and Blogging

I’ve been evaluating my Etsy shop (and all things related) for a while now, and have a list of improvements to make, pretty much all the time. Some I find time to work on, others I don’t. Some I decide I don’t want to implement after all and some I would like to put into action but just can’t figure out how or don’t have the money yet.

I wrote a short series of blog posts a couple months about overhauling my shop, and much of that I haven’t yet had the chance to do. Like every other aspect of life, sometimes things get in the way. Today I’m going to tell you about some of the things I’ve been able to work on.

I’ve begun posting a lot more on my Facebook fan page. I post something almost every day, Monday-Friday. I’ve also begun to comment on other fan pages with my fan page account rather than my personal account. When I first began posting more on Facebook, I felt discouraged because still, I got very little response from anyone on the things I’d post. I stuck with it, though, and people have been commenting more! I credit this to my thinking more about the sort of things my “fans” would like to read, and because I’ve been interacting more with other fan page owners on their pages.

I still would like to see more activity on my Facebook page, so I will continue to monitor what people respond to most often. I would like to do some more behind-the-scenes posts, including photos, as I’ve both seen a good response when I do things like this, and have also heard from social media afficionados that fans really enjoy this. My downfall? Poor preparation. To do behind-the-scenes, I need to do at least a *little bit* of planning, and honestly, most of my Facebook posting has been spur-of-the-moment stuff.

I’ve expanded who I interact with online, mainly via blogs and Twitter. The truth is that crafting and handmade is NOT my life and has never been my main interest, it is only ONE interest of mine. I’m also very interested in music, social justice issues (especially race and class stuff), history, faith/religion, and back-to-basics/natural lifestyles (especially the domestic arts and pregnancy/childbirth). The thing is, this little corner of my online world didn’t reflect those interests very much. If you knew the “rest” of my online world – my locked LiveJournal and Facebook, you’d have seen all this stuff in abundance. But this blog and my Twitter account had been underutilized until recent months, and then I decided to get more involved online for Etsy stuff, so I suppose it’s natural that I started off by surrounding myself with nothing but craft/handmade blogs and Twitter accounts. Anyway, the purpose of this blog and my Twitter account is not just to highlight what I’m doing in the handmade world, but to also invite customers, handmade peers and friends into the rest of my interests. I want people to know the whole me, or at least a little bit of every part of me.

Having said that, I didn’t write up a list and say, “Ok, Ashley, today you’re going to go find a blog or Twitter account that writes a lot about interracial marriage". Rather, when I’d come across something like that, I’d follow the trail it took me on, and maybe that trail would lead me to a collective blog, and from that collective blog, I’d end up following 3 blogs that write a lot about interracial families. The next week, my friend who’s studying to become a doula might point me toward a natural childbirth article, which caused me to follow the author in Twitter.

It’s said a lot in the handmade community (and most others, I’m sure) that you should really enjoy what you’re doing, or there isn’t a point. Well, I both want to share the stuff I’m doing in the handmade world with my friends and peers in my other interest areas, and I want to bring new topics of thought and discussion to my handmade peers and friends. Already I’ve been able to get involved in handmade philanthropy and have been exposed to so many great causes, and have been able to spread the word to others.

Ok, I think that’s enough for today! I’ve got more to write about – both what I’ve worked on so far and what I still want to do soon (hopefully). Stay tuned!

Have you thought about why and how you want to use an online presence for your shop? Do you mix personal with business online? Have you found it easy or a struggle to maintain or find the right balance?

Etsy Gameface Update: Facebook, Twitter and Blogging

I’ve been evaluating my Etsy shop (and all things related) for a while now, and have a list of improvements to make, pretty much all the time. Some I find time to work on, others I don’t. Some I decide I don’t want to implement after all and some I would like to put into action but just can’t figure out how or don’t have the money yet.

I wrote a short series of blog posts a couple months about overhauling my shop, and much of that I haven’t yet had the chance to do. Like every other aspect of life, sometimes things get in the way. Today I’m going to tell you about some of the things I’ve been able to work on.

I’ve begun posting a lot more on my Facebook fan page. I post something almost every day, Monday-Friday. I’ve also begun to comment on other fan pages with my fan page account rather than my personal account. When I first began posting more on Facebook, I felt discouraged because still, I got very little response from anyone on the things I’d post. I stuck with it, though, and people have been commenting more! I credit this to my thinking more about the sort of things my “fans” would like to read, and because I’ve been interacting more with other fan page owners on their pages.

I still would like to see more activity on my Facebook page, so I will continue to monitor what people respond to most often. I would like to do some more behind-the-scenes posts, including photos, as I’ve both seen a good response when I do things like this, and have also heard from social media afficionados that fans really enjoy this. My downfall? Poor preparation. To do behind-the-scenes, I need to do at least a *little bit* of planning, and honestly, most of my Facebook posting has been spur-of-the-moment stuff.

I’ve expanded who I interact with online, mainly via blogs and Twitter. The truth is that crafting and handmade is NOT my life and has never been my main interest, it is only ONE interest of mine. I’m also very interested in music, social justice issues (especially race and class stuff), history, faith/religion, and back-to-basics/natural lifestyles (especially the domestic arts and pregnancy/childbirth). The thing is, this little corner of my online world didn’t reflect those interests very much. If you knew the “rest” of my online world – my locked LiveJournal and Facebook, you’d have seen all this stuff in abundance. But this blog and my Twitter account had been underutilized until recent months, and then I decided to get more involved online for Etsy stuff, so I suppose it’s natural that I started off by surrounding myself with nothing but craft/handmade blogs and Twitter accounts. Anyway, the purpose of this blog and my Twitter account is not just to highlight what I’m doing in the handmade world, but to also invite customers, handmade peers and friends into the rest of my interests. I want people to know the whole me, or at least a little bit of every part of me.

Having said that, I didn’t write up a list and say, “Ok, Ashley, today you’re going to go find a blog or Twitter account that writes a lot about interracial marriage". Rather, when I’d come across something like that, I’d follow the trail it took me on, and maybe that trail would lead me to a collective blog, and from that collective blog, I’d end up following 3 blogs that write a lot about interracial families. The next week, my friend who’s studying to become a doula might point me toward a natural childbirth article, which caused me to follow the author in Twitter.

It’s said a lot in the handmade community (and most others, I’m sure) that you should really enjoy what you’re doing, or there isn’t a point. Well, I both want to share the stuff I’m doing in the handmade world with my friends and peers in my other interest areas, and I want to bring new topics of thought and discussion to my handmade peers and friends. Already I’ve been able to get involved in handmade philanthropy and have been exposed to so many great causes, and have been able to spread the word to others.

Ok, I think that’s enough for today! I’ve got more to write about – both what I’ve worked on so far and what I still want to do soon (hopefully). Stay tuned!

Have you thought about why and how you want to use an online presence for your shop? Do you mix personal with business online? Have you found it easy or a struggle to maintain or find the right balance?

Handmade Overhaul: Facebook!

Since opening my Etsy shop in 2009, I’ve seen a pattern of lots of sales in November and early December, and trickling sales the rest of the year. Most people associate my cup cozies with cold weather, but they can be very useful on cold drinks as well. They soak up condensation, keep your hands warm, and come on – CUTENESS lasts 365 days a year. Still – they just don’t sell that well during the rest of the year.

I would like for my shop to be more of a year-round business, so I’ve put together a plan of things I want to do to make this happen. Time will only tell if it’s successful! Fortunately, I am open to changing my mind in the middle of my plan and trying new approaches.

I’ve already written about introducing new products, improving my photography, expanding shop promotions and discounts and updating my shop banner. I’ve also written about updating the look and use of my blog, Twitter account and business cards. AND, I’ve written about joining the communities offered through blogging, Twitter, my local area and my local Etsy team.

Today, I’m going to write about using my Facebook more effectively t promote my shop and other handmade artists/crafters, and to bring deals to my “fans”.

First, a word from the wise, to anyone who hasn’t yet created their Facebook fan page!

EDITED TO ADD: Though I still advise to not set up your fan page on your personal account, I've just been pointed to steps you can take, if you've already done so. These steps will allow you to "like" things in Facebook - as your SHOP FAN PAGE - comment on other pages - AS YOUR SHOP FAN PAGE - and who knows what else. Here is how you do it: When in Facebook, go up to Account, then select Use Facebook As Page, and select what page you want to use. It will then switch your settings so you're doing everything AS YOUR SHOP FAN PAGE. You can switch back and forth as much as you want! I am so excited about this feature!!!!

· Log out of your personal account before creating your fan page! If you’re logged into your personal page when creating your fan page, the world won’t end, but you will lose certain functionality. For example, because my fan page is linked to my personal page, I can’t “like” things and have those “likes” show up on my fan page. Instead, those “likes” are applied to my personal page. I am also unable to ever comment on my fan page as my personal self – i.e. there can never be a comment from Ashley, there can only ever be a comment from One In The Hand. Seems minor but there are occasionally times when you might want that option.

· If you are creating a fan page for something that could EVER be maintained by someone other than yourself, and you don’t want to to give them your personal account’s password, you’ll want to create your fan page while you’re logged OUT of your personal account.

· There are certain Facebook apps that don’t allow you to go to your fan page, if it was created when logged in to your personal account.

· Use a separate email account or your fan page, don’t use the same email you used for your personal account. Facebook will either not let you create a separate account with the same email, or it will try to link them. Which I have hopefully been clear about: BAD, BAD IDEA.

· There are probably other things you’ll want to consider or avoid when creating your Facebook fan page, but this is all I’ve run into so far. I suggest you do a bit of Googling and find out.

· Think about the way you want your fan page to be named, because you can’t change your name after creating it! I also learned this the hard way. My fanpage is called “One In The Hand – Handmade Items” and oh, how I wish I had instead named it “One In The Hand”. It would make it easier for linking and is just cleaner. I don’t want my shop or brand to be known as OITH – Handmade Items, I want it to be known as OITH. Period.

· Now that my Facebook fan page has been around a while, has a number of fans – I would so love to be able to have a big DO-OVER. I wish I could start a new fan page and have everything magically transferred over. But I can’t. I can create a new one, possibly lose many of my current fans and definitely lose ALL the posts I’ve created over the last couple of years . . . or I can continue with my imperfect, less-functional current page.

Using Facebook to promote your shop

· First, I’m going to link you to a great article by ModPodgeRocks, featured on the Crafterminds website. It includes awesome ideas for using your Facebook page more effectively. Some of what I note below is how I’m going to use the ideas from the article.

· The main point of my Facebook fan page is to have another way to get people interested in my shop. Not everyone has a Facebook/blog/Twitter/Tumblr/Flickr and so on. Some people just have a Facebook. If you aren’t a big Facebook fan and hesitate to open up a fan page there, that’s cool, I understand. Just know that you’re missing an opportunity to reach a lot of people. I listed my first item in November, 2009, and created a fan page soon after. A good friend of mine “suggested” my fan page to “500 of her closest friends” and to this day, there are probably more fans of my page that reside in Memphis, TN, than anywhere else! :) Thanks, Robin!

· So far, I’ve used Facebook to tell my fans about new items in my shop (though I don’t update EVERY time I list an item), to alert them to sales, promotions and discounts in my shop. I’ve updated about plans for new items, I’ve asked questions about what they prefer and what they’d like to see more of. I occasionally share a story about something interesting that happened in relation to my shop. I’ve promoted other people’s shops and deals, and I’ve alerted fans to when a giveaway for my item or someone else’s item is going on.

Room for improvement

· Not everything I’ve tried has been successful. I would love to have more fans, and to have more interaction with the fans I do have. Right now, I tend to get a “like” or maybe a comment or two from the same people, over and over again.

· I’ve advertised on the Facebook page and on my Etsy shop info section (the one right under the banner) that I’d love for people to post photos of their cozy in use. A few people did that way back in the beginning, but not much since then. I thought that would be a cute way for people to get involved, so why didn’t it take off? Here are some ideas I have that might promote this more:

~~~ Right now, my desire for this to happen isn’t out there, front and center. It’s WAY down at the very bottom of my Etsy info section, and it’s not very visible on my Facebook page.

~~~ In my packaging, I include information about the charity 10% will go to. Maybe on the other side of that could be information about the fan page, and an appeal for them to post a photo? I could also include that request on my blog, on my Etsy profile, and maybe I could include it further up in the Etsy info. I could also include it in the individual item info on the listing.

~~~ I could ask friends (the really supportive ones) to take a photo and post it, and I could take a photo of people I’ve given cozies to as gifts.

~~~ I could ask past giveaway winners to become a fan and to post a photo and maybe a comment about whether they enjoy their cozy.

~~~ I could offer a discount to people who post a photo of them using their cozy.

· In general, I’d love for more people to comment all on their own about my cozies, what they received in their order. I get great feedback in my Etsy ratings, but most of the time, I’m the only one ever posting anything on my fan page. Maybe a discount offer to anyone who comments would work?

· I would like to do a lot more promotion not just of other shops, but other deals, promotions and giveaways. The article on the Crafterminds blog had one point that really opened my eyes. I’ve done a fair amount of promotion for other shops on my fan page, but my intent was ALWAYS to bring more exposure to those shops, or because my joint venture with that shop would bring me more exposure. The Crafterminds/Modpodrocks article suggested promoting other shops, but with the purpose of bringing great content and deals to your fans! What a difference – considering what my fans might want instead of just trying to hype up my friend’s shops. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t completely ignore my fans when selecting shops to promote – but they were honestly not my main focus. In the future, that will change. I’m very excited to keep an eye out for things to share with my fans that they will enjoy and get something out of – and not just deals and giveaways. Articles, photos, videos and more will begin showing up on my fan page very soon. I can’t wait!

Do you have a Facebook fan page? What’s working for you? What are your areas for improvement?

Thank you, friends for going through this shop improvement series with me! I hope you got something useful out of it, even if only knowing that someone else out there is also trying to figure it all out. :)

Don't forget to enter Annie's giveaway, you could win 4 cozies from my shop! Head to the Wattlebird blog and read about it!

Occasionally, I am funny

But just occasionally.