05/12/12

How to Market Your Handcrafts Business Online

Crafts business, Australian and Pan-Asian crafts 1 Carrara Market—avlxyz (Flickr.com)

You’ve got crafts to sell, and they’re awesome. How come you’re not making money from them? Chances are, you have not taken advantage of online marketing for your business, and all its accompanying tools.

Let’s say you have a handcrafted jewelry business, and you want to make people aware that it exists. What do you do?

For starters, recognize if there is already an existing market for your kind of business online. If it does, check it out and do a bit of research to see if it is thriving, and if you’re up for a lot of competition. This will help you come up with a unique approach to sell your wares and see the bigger picture as to how long you can sustain your online business.

If you can afford it, buy a domain with your store’s name as the site name. This will give your products instant recall and it will be easier to look for your online store once your jewelry start making a name for themselves. If you can’t afford your own site yet, take advantage of free blogging sites like WordPress to start with. There are a lot of templates you can choose from, and you can tweak the settings to come up with a more personalized and customized look that will go with your wares.

You can customize the site to look like a virtual brochure where clients can pick out the designs they want. Or you can make it look like a virtual tour of your workshop. Add lots of interesting pictures so people can have an idea of what goes on behind your craft. A lot of customers like a bit of history with their finished product, so take advantage of that curiosity. It’s always vital to keep your site update because it will make people aware that you’re always working on something new for them.

If you’re going to be transacting online, bear in mind that you have to be committed to checking out your site regularly because it’s not nice to keep customers waiting for answers. Also, you must have a reliable shipping service that will deliver the goods to clients on time. This will pave the way for satisfied, and hopefully returning, clients who can promote your online business for you without you asking them to!

You can also participate or sign up in an online crafts forum or gallery. Etsy and Multiply are good examples. You can think of them as a virtual crafts bazaar or mall where you can check out other people’s wares. This way, if you aren’t too confident about how to price your products, you can use others’ pricing schemes as a gauge for your own. The beauty of these sites is that your wares can be instantly categorized so anyone looking for hand crafted jewelry has a big likelihood of stumbling upon your stuff.

The downside of this is of course, the competition. While handmade jewelry pieces can be considered one-of-a-kind, the handmade jewelry niche is by no means a unique one.

05/7/12

Creating an Online Buzz for Your Biz

Twitter Tree—pandemia (Flickr.com)

A business that has no online presence may as well pack up and quit being a business. These days, there is no reason for a business owner, even the humblest of start-ups, to NOT use the Internet to raise awareness for a product, service, or idea.

Take social networking sites, for instance. Pages, groups, and accounts are devoted to trying to sell new products and services every day. Since these sites take up a sizable chunk of the average Internet user’s time, it’s safe to predict that putting up a page or account for your business will get the attention of Netizens one way or another. You just have to know the right tools and methods to gain more views, Likes, Followers, and the kind of attention from Netizens long enough to keep them hooked on what you’re selling.

Micro blogging is also a great modern tool to promote your business online. Blogging is, of course, quite awesome in itself, but Twitter is a very effective way to stick to a conversational tone using not more than 140 characters per Tweet so you can make people aware of what you have to offer. The conversational tone part is important…otherwise you run the risk of sounding like an infomercial gone viral.

Speaking of viral, member-submitted videos on Tube sites have pretty much established how effective these online tools are at creating a buzz for just about ANYTHING: events, causes, new programs, products, talent, services, ideologies, etc. Whether the messages are good, bad, uplifting, enlightening, depressing, entertaining, annoying, anger-inducing, informative, or what-have-you, videos have become powerful forms of media to make people sit up and notice. Imagine what they can do for your business.

Then there are the online “malls” like Multiply, eBay, Amazon, and other similar ones which are devoted expressly for online selling. You know you are up against a lot of competition, but if your product or service is truly unique and has the potential to make lives better, then you shouldn’t worry about anything (except, of course, using the proper tools for selling online—more on this later). The beauty of these “virtual stores” is that people can find you easily if your product or service is what they are looking for. You can choose how to categorize what you are selling, and place tags or keywords to refine the search some more.

But the most important virtual tool that can help you promote and sell your product, service, or idea? Constant UPDATES. You may have several online accounts, IDs, forum handles, virtual stores, blogs, videos, etc., but if you don’t update, then you don’t stay relevant. Keep your online presence as dynamic as you would your real life one, and people will notice what you have to offer them.

05/1/12

The Three V’s of Effective New Media Marketing

Any product, idea, or service can become ripe for the picking with the proper use of new media marketing. There are so many ways to get it right…and so many ways to get it wrong, as well. To help you get started, we will discuss the three V’s which can help you on the path to using social media to your advantage, and to get people to notice your product, idea or service.

V #1: Go viral.

Batman Viral marketing 08—KellBailey (Flickr.com)

Memes, viral videos, and other forms of things that get shared to infinity can REALLY help your product, idea, or service get noticed in a major way. Create a buzz for your biz by taking advantage of all that social media sites have to offer. The great thing about these sites is you are no longer bound by geographic and other previously insurmountable limitations. You can reach MORE people by using a free account and creating something memorable with it.

A reminder, though: don’t become a spammy online business person. If you have something great to offer, word of mouth can help you make it known. Avoid spamming people with what you have to offer, or you’ll end up with a product or service people will be eager…to shun.

V #2: Make a video.

You cannot belittle the power of user-submitted videos. So many have proven that the audience for “Tube” sites and other streaming video accounts is huge, and the response to great video clips is almost instantaneous and nothing short of phenomenal. If talents can be discovered on Tube sites and launched into stardom, think of what they can do to your business. You can come up with a creative marketing pitch, or ask loyal and satisfied customers to give you an online testimonial. Either way, the objective is to make your product or service unforgettable.

V #3: Verbalize like crazy.

$A D\'Arcy Inspired History of Blog$

A D'Arcy Inspired History of Blog—cogdogblog (Flickr.com)

If you are excited about what you have to offer and have a LOT to say about your product or service: VERBALIZE it. Start a blog around it and keep it updated. If you are SEO-savvy (more of this in later posts), take advantage of the power of blogging and keywords to keep your product or service in the first pages of top search engines. Be as creative as you can get, and soon people will take notice of what you have to offer.

04/27/12

The Cons of Social Media

A few days ago, we discussed the pros of social media for your business. Today, we will tackle its cons. This video presents many good points worth thinking about to make the most out of social media.

You could have too many followers, but not niche-specific ones. In Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media, many people fall into the trap of thinking that thousands of followers, fans, and Likes mean being able to reach a wide audience to be able to promote your product or service. This is not always the case. Bear in mind that plenty of social media accounts are bot-generated or are put up to spam other accounts. Still others might just be “friend”-happy, or are the ones who keep adding other accounts for popularity or even to promote their own products or services! Bottom line is, if you are not careful about the people who follow or add your social media account, you might have to spend more time trying to weed out the useful ones from the potentially annoying (or even harmful) ones.

Your correspondence might get stuck at the virtual level. Let’s face it, people use social media because it’s so easy to “connect” without having to leave the comfort of one’s home. Now, this self-same pro can become a con for your business because you would have to go the extra mile to convince people to meet you in real time. You could sell and promote your product or service online, but in certain businesses like insurance, sales, medicine, etc., demonstrating your product or service face-to-face is a must. If you create too much of an online presence, people might think that is all you are good at.

You could get plagiarized or ripped off. Internet privacy laws are still experiencing birthing pains, so there are a lot of grey areas which can become spring-boards for defamation, libel, slander, plagiarism, and other cases concerning privacy. If you put up something on the Internet for people to see, there is a huge chance that anyone can rip off what you have put up. There are ways to prevent this from happening, like putting watermarks on your images. However, people who are hell-bent on taking advantage of other people’s work will not balk at ripping off something from you, anyway.

TMI online can ruin opportunities for you. TMI, or too much information, has been the bane of many social media users. Posting not-safe-for-work pictures, incriminating information, or a statement which is politically incorrect or offensive, can ruin your reputation even if your product or service is very, very good. So the best advice for you is to post with common sense, and post with caution.

04/21/12

Why Investing in a Membership Website Can Do Your Business Good

Membership Site Development Digital Markteing—Maria Reyes-McDavis (Flickr.com)

If you have a business, you definitely need social media AND a membership website in these fast-paced times. Why? For starters, you can get all the pros of social media as mentioned in the previous post. These include developing your brand, creating a network of contacts, and using automated posts for convenience, just to name a few.

Now, add the investment of a membership website, and you are sure to make money for your business.

Membership websites contribute a unique set of benefits for any business owner, even the most old-fashioned ones who want to literally put up shop and hire a store clerk to oversee things because that’s the way they had been taught by their business mentors.

Yaro Starak is a great example of a business owner who profited from putting up membership websites. He is now considered one of the “internet millionaires”, who started out as an individual blogger and who made over $200,000 in 2007 alone because he focused on instructing people how to set up money-making blogs called Blog Mastermind. He now runs a successful site called Membership Site Mastermind.

Yaro Starak Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett at Prob…—TheCreativePenn (Flickr.com)

It’s great to be inspired by successful people who have done what you want to do, so internet millionaires who followed the lure of social media and other pros of the Internet should be looked up to.

One other thing to consider is how a membership website instantly adds value to your product or service. You cannot just keep promoting your product or service via old-fashioned leaf-letting, TV or radio commercials, posters, and other means requiring a lot of attention, effort, and maintenance.

Putting up a membership website will guarantee that your business will promote itself given the right Internet tools. You only have to maintain your site for updates and check for occasional bugs. Otherwise, you can relax and not run around trying to organize with people and waiting to listen or watch out for your ad, etc.

Some of the best brands out there have websites that are simple to look at, but get a lot of visits and sales from people. You do not have to make your site sleek, hi-tech, and glossy. You simply have to put your brand out there and take advantage of all the help that social media and Internet marketing tools can give to your business.

04/18/12

The Pros of Social Media

Social media pros, Social Media Comic New School vs Old School Market…—seanrnicholson (Flickr.com)

In an article called Social Media Pros and Cons Web Design App Development, the author cites two of the main pros of social media:

“(1) It’s here to STAY so you might as well learn to live with it (what choice do you have right?), and (2) social media has many possible benefits regardless of your attitude towards it.”

Though many have embraced social media in its many forms, some are still reluctant to use it to their advantage despite the obvious benefits it brings. As portrayed in the cartoon above, some business owners still regard the online community as merely virtual, and with no real purchasing and deciding powers. They can not be farther from the truth.

Social media is all about creating relationships and networking. The same can be said of businesses. James Roughton expounds more on the pros of social media in the video below:

Everyday, new sites, blogs, and online sources use newer and newer tools and apps to make social media even more adaptable. It is rapidly changing and always catering to people who want to capitalize on its usefulness in selling products and ideas. Some of the benefits you can get using social media for your business include:

developing your brand
creating a network of contacts
use automated posts for convenience

There are many other advantages, including promoting what you do either professionally or as a hobby (whether you are a craftsman, musician, painter, photographer, etc.) much faster and more efficiently than you would by using traditional promotional tools such as snail mail and the telephone. With today’s inundation of new apps and programs, networking and promotion is quicker than ever.

Social media also allows for real-time exchange of ideas among people you consider your peers, in forums and other sites. This way, there is a constant influx of inspiration for whatever it is you do.

There is a downside to social media, though, as will be discussed in the next entry. The bottomline is, it is good to weigh social media’s pros and cons, and to recognize that it is, indeed, here to stay.

new media wise

modern communications

How to Market Your Handcrafts Business Online

Why Investing in a Membership Website Can Do Your Business Good

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