Socializing the Modern Way

This year my aim is to move my shop forward, to actually start making money not pocket money.

Last year I started by cleaning up my work space, which went relatively well, the biggest problem I have encountered with that is, I don't always work at my work station, I work in the dinning room, I work in my bedroom, I work in the kitchen, but I don't seem to do much work in my beading area.

In this coming quarter I would like to try focusing on using Social Media to boost my business. The first step to this has been coming back to writing my blog.
Once again Etsy had some great ideas for me to use to boost interest and that was not only using my blog but also my Facebook page and Twitter account.
1. Post to my Adiesdesigns Facebook page at least once a week, not necessarily about the shop or my products, but occasionally something personal, like the fact that my two eldest girls went to the One Direction concert. I did this a while back and it did garner some attention.
2. Schedule your posts, so I found a site called 'around.io' and took up their 7 day trial. They schedule regular posts to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr throughout the day and you can schedule for the future. There cost after that are not bad if you are working in dollars which I am obviously not, but even then it is not terribly expensive. $10 per month or $100 per year and they post about 4-6 times per day. It is something to consider.

Something worked so far because I made more sales this month than I usually do at this time of year and with no new stock, in fact the items I sold have all been in the shop for sometime now. I also received more queries for custom items.

Even if the queries don't turn into sales immediately, the increased interest will help future sales.

I have also had positive feedback from joining nursing groups on Facebook and one such group "Scrubs Magazine" actually published a list of all nurse owned shops on Etsy and shops that feature Nursing orientated products.

The one thing that is certain is that word of mouth will always be the number one marketing tool for any business. If you want to move your business to the next level advertising is a must and social media is the cheapest way to do this.

This next week is definitely going to be a busy one, Passover (Pesach) starts on Friday so I would like to wish my Jewish readers "Chag Kosher L' Pesach" , happy passover every one

 and Happy Easter to those who celebrate.