Lessons

Lesson Info

Marketing Off Etsy and Best Practices

People always there say are asking me, you know, how do I get more people to see my stuff on etsy? And really we can do everything we can do on etc, but as he is very limited, you know, there's it's only so many people that actually are on etc and do their searches on etsy itself, so to go and pull people from outside of etc and bring them into your shop. When I was at the cia headquarters in brooklyn, you know, I asked him specifically like, how does this how does this key word thing work? You know, how do you, how do people get teo, etc and they actually said that most of the inbound links are from outside of etc to specific pages on shops hey, so can't really rely on etsy alone, we really have to go outside of etc to bring the marketing and bring people into us there's a lot of different social media platforms out there and this is just a few of them, but they're they're pretty. A lot of them are pretty relevant on as far as how we can use them to to market stuff on, etc so twitter,...

twitter, the pros ok, so has a lot of regular users people who love twitter love twitter like they're on there all the time and if you can develop a good following there then you can you can have people retweet your your information about your shop and the things that you're doing with your business all of the tweets go directly out their super easy right and you can easily connect with other people through we read tweets and communications between so some of things that are a little more difficulty about twitter is that it's it's super fast paced you know if you're not on all the time you might get a little lost it's limited to one hundred forty characters they had to be very concise and very you know kind of focused on the things that you're talking about not all customer bases are on twitter so you know if you're if you're selling things that are really more geared towards your grandmother or something you know they might not be a really big customer base on twitter I might be wrong on that but you know you have to know where your customer base is and it is pretty difficult to track effectiveness I actually couldn't find any tools that track twitter effect miss I mean it goes so quickly that I think it's really, really hard to track does anybody use twitter in social media way yeah senators were being on twitter there's a very big knitting community on twitter really joined like way back like um in early days of twitter but like before the knitters but e before but it was better twitter but you used to be able to post them through google chat that was fun yeah you're the knitting community is super big on twitter so I'm a lot of like mating designers and just people who have knitting blog's like are on twitter and they have big group conversations with each other really yeah it really is there any any like hashtags that somebody would search for that would help them kind of connect with that community because I think people don't they don't tend to use that many hashtag like it's more like you know people and then you kind of get into the I like people who know each other but yeah it's it's definitely like the letters are all over twitter that really but I mean there are like knitting hashtags and stuff but I don't I mean I don't know that that would get you into like the core community of rank twitter you you like to share your twitter handle yeah story l'm it's scary l'm it's ok my other persona is that I was originally in it where designer before I started selling cowell's so oh awesome yeah yeah and you have a pretty big following on rap hillary too right? Yeah so yeah it's really know where the market is for sure okay make those connections like you said replying and retweeting making making sure that you know you're sharing sharing the love on twitter follow people who fit your ideal customer profile if you can find people within that category than you can kind of see what they talk about every day what kind of things you know what what's trending in that category for them twitter chats tweet alongs have take post I mean what are they are they have a name for those twitter chat things that they changed name isn't just twitter chat um you mean like the direct messages or like like they like you gathered together at a certain time like it yeah I don't know what yeah there's a specific name yeah where they have a bunch people tweeting about stuff yeah so like a community will agree to be online at the same time and talk about us certain topic I see that online law and it's kind of really cool to follow along with some of those you can post things about your work of course about your etc shop it's he does have a share button on on each shop and you can share the shop or the individual listing but you don't want to do too often you know you want to be one of those accounts that oh ha all they do is talk about their shop okay, I'm going unfollowed because that's really boring you know, be a person, be conversational about it you know, because the more really you are, the more somebody might be interested in something that you have to offer facebook so facebook hey get some really great personal connections you know you have no character limit new character live it I particularly like that you can separate your personal page from your business pace you can have two very different conversations he can also divide your the people that used to talk to you in two separate lists so you can put people in a business category or personal category s o u can be actively aware of who you're posting to what group you're posting to from your personal page. Um, there are insights that you can check on your business page that will kind of help tio show you where people are coming from and how they're interacting with your page. It takes a lot of time to set up a facebook page for your business you have to really share it and get it out there and you know it's it's work like any other thie they're having a harder time now business pages being seen on its on sorry on facebook and that's something again we can't really do much about we kind of have to roll with it, but that doesn't mean that it's not important to have the business page it's good to have it is good to have a presence and again it's another page on the internet that is related to your brand that has your key words within it ok and then uh you have to be you know just like twitter like you have to be on top of it all the time if you let it go that people get bored and they'll leave and they'll start on following your unlike ing you whatever does anybody have any um success having things on a facebook page like a business paid anything like that yeah, you know it's kind of like a funny because I find that the stuff on I don't have a facebook page for my cows but I have one for my network design oh yeah and I find that the stuff that gets the most views because people like it the most is stuff that doesn't have to do with him that were designed a lot of the time it isn't like all occasionally post you know, some kind of personal thing yeah like all I like post some cookies that I made one time and they're like that's like my most popular post I think this's pages when I'm a cookie is everyone was into that like this is also I think it's really kind of this acknowledgment of you know you're a real person like you're not just trying to sell me things all the time like I really love that that personal connection that you can get on facebook so if you d'oh if you doing major followers kind of do mohr interactions with them and in many different ways, you know, ask them questions encourage that kind of back and forth communication you could do polls you khun dio you could do some giveaways maybe have you ever tried to give away? Is anybody ever done that or participated in one there is what is it raffle copter I think is one of them I think that I forget what the other one is, but you can google facebook giveaways and there's some acts that you can include into your facebook page to help you do some giveaways. Um like with any social media, you want to make sure that you're not just constantly by this thing look at this new thing I put together if you want to talk about your business, maybe you know, talk about your process talk about your experience with the business um, you just want to make sure that you have a link directly to your etc shop in your there's a little about section that you can fill out. You can also get an app on facebook that is for it imports your etc shop on to your facebook page you can have like a little mini shop on your page so that's a really good thing to check out to pinterest is ok who likes pinterest yes finches is pretty awesome for the visual folks in the room which includes me the thing that I find about pinterest is like I know I've noticed lately they have a lot more like recommended posts and they think I'm like a terrible midair or something because they keep showing me always like terrible and really like especially they show like a cute picture and then it's like I wish I knew how to make this like they're like this is about getting you should look like money well it is interesting how this whole social media is changing right like the the ad the way the ads were coming up the suggested posts and the suggested this and that it kind of feels like okay what you're spying on me but you know when you think of it the more relevant you're at sea pages are you know the more likely that's probably going to show up on somebody else's feed right so it's all interconnected even though sometimes we don't like it s okay so pinterest that encourages link traffic and that's all about that inbound link system and it's very very easy to share things and get starred confidences I don't know who does that that's me on and it's a great platform to connect with women shoppers I mean many studies have been done on this and it's like majority women so you know definitely in gear your europe your pins toward that market and of course visual people are all over it and pinterest has the e commerce part of it where you can put in a price if you will occasionally post your piece onto pinterest directly you can put a price in there and peace so people will know exactly how much that is they can click right on it go to the right here at the shop and buy it so very e commerce friendly um attribution on pinterest super important via did pinner and make sure that every pin that you are either posting or re pinning is going directly to the proper link that matches that photo that you're looking at there there lots of pins out there that aren't that way or they're going to spam pages so before you share linger before you pin a link on to one of your boards you want to make sure that that is going to the right place um I find it very difficult to actually connect with people on pinterest like I can follow them I can see what their tastes are like occasionally I'll see a comment but I don't see very many comments on pinterest it's more of just kind of a visual record of what people are doing um and not all customer bases on pinterest you know they're not blood meant on pinterest so you know just be aware of where the people are that are looking for your stuff and yeah rabbit hole that is yes, me two hours later going oh, right, I was going to get worked on today, but I pinned a lot of really great stuff. Okay? Does anybody use pinterest specifically to promote their work? Because there are some ways that you can do that? Um, well, I have a gallery collection of work that I've done over the past twelve years that I use and I actually want tio put out to the universe of pro tip about work that you post in the early days of my business, I didn't credit myself to my work, I would take amazing photos, but I wouldn't put my water mark or tag my actual name in the title of the photo, and so I see it a lot of my older work coming up and contrast because it's all linked to my flicker oh, but there's no, nobody knows that I'm the one who made it, so I that's I tell everybody who uses interest if you're going up in somebody's older work and then they might not have the attributes. Speaking of attributes, make sure that you do them the courtesy and, you know, out of your south of courtesy to two yeah, attribute yourself yeah maker too, because it gets things you know, like it's the proverbial rabbit well, like you said, it goes wait, look at that like that, you know, and you just kind of add a collection and it gets spread so quickly. And I have a photo that's been sharing, you know, eight thousand times from my name's out it's really hard to kind of like, do the attribution backward back, right? Right, right through the living learn things, right? Right? Definitely. So the esso watermarks for anybody who doesn't know what they are saying. Explain what a watermark, it's, just the little symbol of your logo. Or even it could be the little photo shop or a non line like a photo monkey dot com or something that you could just type in your company. Name in the corner. We're tight like a little subtle things like subtle things e yeah. That's really good. Wow. I wouldn't have thought about that. This holy true. Yeah. And you know, like you said, we get on there hours later and oh, yeah? Where did I see that? You have no idea. So and it's it's for everybody. The maker and the buyer. Exactly. Interested. And this is somebody who just appreciate stuff because really, that's, what we used in arrests were definitely e ok, so we're gonna have a business pinterest account ok? Can you tell me a little about that experience because I'm actually I need to do it but I've been kind of waiting to weigh it was super easy to set up it wasn't I don't I mean you just like put in your name and your website and stuff it was very easy I have it for my knitting account and then so like it's interesting what you're saying because I do I have like a specific board that's for like my designs but then I also have, you know, a bunch of other boards where I pin other people stuff like inspiration or like techniques or things like that that are not necessarily from me but yeah, I mean, it just I can't remember exactly they just ask you for, you know, like your business name and web site it's I think probably about the same as setting of a personal account except that you're saying like, this is a business it's not just a person yeah, and they kind of verify that you're linked to your euro is actually a business kind of thing on the other end because there's like a the check mark or something that shows that they checked it out or something, right? Yeah, so that's really good it's nice to have sort of that that business separation on there and then you feel ok about having a board on there of your stuff because it is a business board so people will expect that from you as well. S oh yeah business accounts are really a really good thing to have um so especially when you have a business account but even your personal accounts you can make sure that your boards are attracting the people that will buy things from you so if you know who your customer is, you kind of you know what they shot for where they shot what they look for, you can actually cure a board specifically for that person and they'll just start following you because they like what you're pinning and you know, every now and then your stuff will pop up a cz well, so they're going to it's going to be in front of them you can arrange your boards by color by subject you can, you know, whatever whatever you think will appeal to that ideal customer he can put you aboard together in a way that will work for them. You can use keyword hashtags tio defund you to do a lot of hash tags on pinterest actually don't know you could I didn't know that either I know it was a little surprising to me that it was like oh that's actually something that you can use so could give that a try um and make sure that your shot photos of things, especially that first photo, is pitiable. We always call them pitiable images because those are the ones that get shared on dh. If you're unsure if your photos work or don't work, then ask your community, ask your friends to give the honest feedback about it and continually work to improve those photos. Instagram ok, super easy to use it's generally to a younger market and my right, you can definitely use instagram to kind of create this imagery about your shop and about you, the artist and it's, a really easy way to introduce products, and you can do instagram sales and things like that. So, again, not all customer groups, the your girls or not, you can't do your girls clickable girls. It's, like the bane of every instagram, is their business instagram, these air um, so people have gotten really creative about how to get people tio get to their websites, it is focused on mobile users, so you know, if your county, er customer ideal customer isn't necessarily online, or using a lot of, uh, elektronik products than it might not be the best platform on dh, it does take a good amount of time to not only build your following, but build your brand on pinterest as well, I'm going call out happy because you use instagram in a really smart way and I love the what he called them insta sales right? There seems to be yeah, can you tell us a little bit on how you set those up? And, well, I create a new piece each week and on thursdays, I put it up for sale, I just post one photo and then I have a description of it and the way you buy the item is to list is did right in the comment shook your email address on, then I will send a papal invoice. Oh, wow, so it's like a direct sale, how cool is that? And it's also there's I think it's it's cool because there's like a, uh, urgency to it like, if you don't, if you're not the first one, then you don't get it, but I think I found that it also has made me more creative because I have to do make one every every week and I did more than one pass. It doesn't always sell each week, but I think I'm building a following through it because you've been doing it for a little while now, a month or so that's enough to kind of notice that people are actually following, you know I used to use a hashtag just freer. For your listings and stuff like that yeah that's really cool I think it's a great way to do to get your brand out there you know um sees it people will use you can have one length in your profile right on a lot of people use that as their shop and then they have there are several tags for like I just listed this in my fc shop like I can't remember off the top of my head but like they have like I think one is like for sale on etsy or something and then so people will tag it that they that it's something that's listed in their shop and then say like you confine my shop there might profile right? Yeah that's right? I have seen that yeah, that put the link on the profile you could really use that as a tool to get people to where you want them to go smarts peep okay um one good way to build your following on instagram I've seen other people do this really well as they'd show works in progress kind of showing the human side of me maybe st charles from their studio aa lot of times you know there may be a little bit stage, you know but that's ok because I just want to see I want to see the human side of this of the maker and thie instant events definitely it's a it's a great way to just reach out to a whole other segment. A whole other community of people it's definitely worth a try, but, like half he was saying it does take a little bit of time to kind of see results. So it's really good to have that weekly commitment, tio create something every week or regularly, at least so that people who will follow you will expect it every week. And then you have a deadline to ok, and you can. There are ups out there that you can re graham things you can repost things that kind of encourages community, you can tag these, you can like them so that, you know, you are showing up on their list. And yeah, just look for people who are again, your ideal customer who are speaking to your ideal customer and follow those people and see what they're doing other social media platforms. Oh, I just kind of chose, like the the other big ones, you know, the ones that are below the big for, um, four square, I would have normally said four square was for the storefronts and people who have physical locations, but it's, he has done this interesting thing local event it's and if you go to the etc home page you came scroll kind of to the bottom and on the right side there's a link that says local events and it'll pull up a whole list of user generator member generated events that you can put in to your area and no post little pins on the locations information and you can if you're showing at that craft show that pops up on the list, you can add yourself to that list and say, I'm going to be there four square you can use four square to actually tell the people on foursquare that I'm out this craft show or I'm going to I'm in this crash on me this is the physical location, so yeah, it's kind of an interesting way to use four square I this is the first I've heard of it, so I think it'll be it'll be used even more, you know, I think it's kind of a newish saying this local thing um, linked in so you know, it's mainly for business to business kind of thing or people looking for jobs or business connections kind of thing, but there are a few etc business groups on linked in that you might want to connect with, so if you're on linked in it's really, you know it's worth taking a look to see if those groups or something that could help you out with your business stumble upon okay before pinterest who used to be really addicted to stumble upon because it was you know you have this little button on your desktop or a happened you just click on it and it just takes you to like literally a random page on the internet it's pretty awesome but within your stubble upon account it tracks thie new links that you have stumbled and stumbling means you can attribute this link two years double upon account so it's this kind of uh social media within the stumble upon community it is definitely worth checking out because you know it's been around for a really long time and some people were using it very smartly so stumble upon is just one of those that you might not have really thought about um yeah google glass I go I just I don't understand it does anybody use it? Oh that's good reading the thing about about pinterest and how it's like all female and saying like google plus is like really highly mail we're lena there's there's also quite a few letters on google plus oh interesting wow doesn't there's air everywhere I know they take over random there's like this weird chinese sort of like twitter but with less of a character limit website called clerk oh covered with knitters from china I feel like nobody uses it except for knitters and chinese I said somebody clerk okay yeah friend enmity check that out yeah, I kind of feel the same way that you do like do people use google plus but I mean I have a page on google plus but I it's I think it's just I don't see how it's bringing results to people so you know, if you're using google plus in a way that is bringing results to your etc shop you know please contact me because I just I want to know I haven't I haven't been able to find a lot of information on how to effectively use google plus eso yeah definitely um okay, so these air really interesting the's social shopping site it's one nello polyvore and we heard it those were the top three that I kept popping up when I was researching this stuff um what these are are it's basically like pinterest but for shopping so you're you're pinning links to places that are selling specific things polyvore is you can put outfits together based on different components and kind of put them into this kind of virtual design board on there. And, you know, a lot of people who are doing like accessories or clothing and things like that they're finding a lot of success being active on these social media platforms, so so yeah, I mean it's definitely worth checking out there a cz well especially in the fashion kind of accessories world anybody heard of these reporters ever uses yeah, holley, war, right? Yeah, it's, really it's a fun one.