Networking (#3 How to Market Your Brand Online)

How do you network online? There are many ways to network online so I will be breaking up this article over a few posts yet to come. Firstly I’ll start with blogging, since well… you are on my blog reading this! I would love comments from fellow sellers on how they are making their blog work for them so please leave comments!

BLOGGING

I have just gotten into blogs (as you can see). I love to write articles that can benefit other sellers or buyers online.

On my blog you will find now (and in the future):

1. Marketing Articles
2. Interviews with Sellers & How they do Business
3. Featured Sellers
4. New Products
5. Treasuries of Favourite Items & Sellers
6. Giveaways & Competitions

Here are some tips for fellow bloggers or those of you who may be thinking of starting one. 

LOOK AND FEEL

There are plenty of free blog templates online for you to look a little different. It doesn’t take too long to work out how to use them. What is great about blogs is that you can get one for free and use pre-designed templates without having extensive HTML coding experience (phew!). One thing I did encounter with blogger.com is some of the free templates were created in Word Press and aren’t compatible so they will have tabs at the top of the page like ‘home, contact, products’ but these wouldn’t work – so be mindful of that when testing and choosing templates. It took me a few goes to get one I like the look of and that is functional.

SELF PROMOTION

I started many years ago on blogger.com just writing a general diary of my daily events, they were pretty funny too because it was all based on customer service and the people I encountered… the weird and wonderful… Now I decided that I needed to get back into the blogging realm to boost my brand name on google searches and get more fans of my product! Blogs are great for your product launches, new ideas etc

FOLLOWERS

Your number of followers isn't the end of the world. I never stressed about how MANY people I had following my blog, it’s more about quality… about promoting to others that can relate to your brand and products and making new friends internationally.  Recently I decided to up my followers and I did this by putting a post in the Etsy forums to find new crafters and I followed their blogs too, this was successful as most of you who may be reading this followed me from exactly that. Follow Others – find blogs that interest you by searching the web on a topic or posting in a forum.  Follow others and make comments on posts you like!

CONTENT

You need to have interesting content in your blog otherwise you won’t get anyone reading your blog. Offer something more than your normal website offers so people have a reason to check it out! (personal profile, other sellers, hints and tips, videos, giveaways etc).

SUPPORT FELLOW SELLERS

Not everyone wants to hear solely about what YOU sell, feature some of your favourite sellers and spread the word. People appreciate new insights and new finds.

One downside of a blog is that not everyone has one, so can’t follow you or don’t know what to do to sign up.  This is where social networking is great to target other markets that may be missed via the blogosphere! My next article will be on these networks…

http://www.etsy.com/shop/SecretSafeBooks

I love this idea from Secret Safe Books, takes me back to my childhood and wanting to find secret passageways in houses and finding new places to hide my diary! Check out her Etsy store.