new-page

From: Aunty Alias (aka NJ)
To: CCBA <CITY-CraftBizAdvice@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 10:45:39 PM
Subject: [CITY-CraftBizAdvice] How to get Found

PatS brought up a good topic. How to get found. (Pat you know I'm coming to Austin on Nov. 14th?)

In the old days it was through social networking. Now it's through marketing. Marketing online is a low to no cost affair with the advent of blogs and webrings.
http://city-lists.com/CITY-Computer/Blogs-Webrings.htm

I just did a google search for "polymer clay" and got 727,000 links for polymer clay, but there's a blog search on google too, and there were 161,853 blog references for polymer clay. When checking the images on that search I got 57,300 for polymer clay. Those links and images came up because there was some sort of tag identifying it as a particular thing.

Ok, how do we get attention in a real life situation? We could do jumping jacks while hollering "Look at MEEE". That'll work but it'll also get you locked up if done in the wrong place.

How do we do a "Look at me" sort of gesture online? As I said, having a blog is one way. You can set up a blog for free. http://city-lists.com/CITY-Computer/Blogs.htm Every post you make in a blog is gathered up by sites like Technorati. http://www.technorati.com/ Add tags to your blog posts that say "polymer clay", "Jewelry", "Naked Men", what ever is applicable.

If you add something with the product, like Civil War, Going Green, Humor, Fishing, then you get cross over notice by someone doing an online search for those things.

You can get attention by sharing a technique and loading it up on YouTube. Put your web site url in the captions. http://www.youtube.com/ It's not as difficult as it seems. I use a webcam on "motion detection" and it stops recording when my hands stop working. I save that and load it into Movie Magic, which is part of the Windows package. I add captions, one can add music although I don't, and load it up.

When we do things like this we need to look at them as "Lost Leaders". That's a marketing technique where you sell one item for a low cost, maybe at cost to you, just to get people into the store. Once in they'll buy something else, that's the hope.

Tutorials are lost leaders. They get attention because they are free, they get you name recognition, they did for me. If a church or school is having a fund raiser, donate some of your work, get your name out there in the local community. I gave clay covered pens out instead of business cards at the Yahoo Groups Moderator's Town Hall meeting last week. When I met the cast and crew of LEXX in 2001 I handed out mini sushi and mini cheeseburgers, giving them "I'm a Rice Cracker" line when I gave them minis instead of the usual business card. Make them laugh, give them an example of your work. Seems to be more of a chance of being remembered.

Another way to get exposure is to load your pictures up on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ give those pictures descriptive captions: Polymer Clay Jewelry, Tiger Picture Frame, and any time someone does an image search for a particular thing it's those captions and tags that get your picture pulled up.

If you don't have a website yet you can get exposure by way of free blog sites, free photo sharing sites, places where you can strut your stuff like YouTube. Take advantage of these free outlets for your desire to share your artwork and when someone does a search for your name or your brand you'll have an electronic foot print.

That being said, let's add each other as contacts for Flickr, like Eva did earlier.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41521346@N00/ That's mine.

I see this as virtual social networking. When I look at someone's Flickr pictures I also check their contacts and check out their stuff. There's "Groups" on Flickr, in fact there's http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?q=polymerclay 333 groups that identify themselves as having a polymer clay interest. I'm using polymer clay as an example. You can search for groups that focus on doll making or leather work.

Look at these groups that are featuring items that look like what you want your inventory to look like. Know what's being made and shown online because that's what your future customers are going to be looking at, I'll betcha. From there you can find website that sell what you want to sell and you can see what the market seems to be able to bear by way of price. We don't want to under charge or over charge if we're entering a market that already has folks doing jumping jacks saying "look at meeee".

So how do you get exposure in this hubbub? Carve out a niche that you can occupy happily, making things that tickle you to bits, write free articles for online outlets like PolymerClayCentral or PCpolyzine, using the polymer clay example again.

You'll be surprised how old tutorials still pull in folks on a search. Just this week I had an Army guy wanting me to make PB&J "foldie" beads for a charm bracelet for his beloved. He's in Kuwait and she's in Kentucky, I think. He found my tutorial on a google for Peanut Butter and Jelly Jewelry. It's not a commercial section, it's a tute. He just wanted to know if I'd make it for him. I says, sure honey, you know paypal?

What's your lost leader? Where are you sharing your expertise? What bread have you thrown on the waters that will come back to you as a sale? Wanting to sell is one part, getting found is a whole other kettle of fish and being shy ain't going to cut it unless you have a outgoing relative who'll do your PR for you.

Consider me your outgoing online Aunty and I'll put your commercial link up on our CCBA website. That's a start. http://city-lists.com/CCBA/CCBACityZenSites.htm How will you promote yourself? Here's when being humble is detrimental. When promoting yourself you got to believe in the product and that product is you as a future vendor. This is worth mulling over. If you were given 30 seconds or a short paragraph, how would you present yourself to the unsuspecting public?

I go with humor, here's my technorati profile:

Rice Cracker geek posing as a wilted flower child Boomer granny online art teacher who rants on a blog so as not to drive my family crazier than they already are. Main Fault: Mercury in Virgo, holding nouns hostage with too many adjectives.
http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/AuntyAlias/

There's other social networking sites like MySpace and Tribe, but I don't see them as being fertile fields because their interface is wonky.

So anyway, that's all I can think of for now about getting exposure.

xoxo

NJ

08/10/08