Blog About Crafts

Ever had a bad experience with a company? I know I have. And I wanted to tell the whole world just how bad my experience was. In the past, I would tell my friends and family about the company and suggest they find another company to deal with. When I had my last apartment I had a list in my address book of companies that had cheated friends and co-workers and a list of companies that came highly recommended by those same friends and co-workers.

With blogs, anyone can instantly tell hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of strangers about their unhappy experience. That single blog entry has the potential to lead to lost revenue for the company being discussed and hurt that company where it matters most. If you think about it, isn’t that really the intent of telling others that a company should be avoided?

A clever marketing or business owner might find that blog entry, work with the blogger to resolve the issues and turn an unhappy customer into one of their happiest. That blog entry suddenly becomes a real-life example of how well the company deals with problems and how they fix them.

Or, the company being discussed could simply hire a lawyer and file a lawsuit looking for reimbursement for lost revenues and even ask for punitive damages. The blogger might feel they are simply relating a factual accounting of their experience and stating an opinion. Free speech and all that. Right? Maybe not.

There are many wonderful crafters and artists who submit to Crafty Tips. The busiest category (and the one with the most listings) showcases the works of Jewelry Makers from all over the world. As you can imagine, I’ve seen a variety of photography styles and techniques. Some do a wonderful job of showing each piece to its full beauty, some are almost there and sometimes the photo is lovely but still fails to explain the piece.

One of the problems is that many pieces are hard to imagine in action. In action? Yep. Think about the action of jewelry - earrings and pendents hang and dangle and necklaces and bracelets drape. Pins are often designed with a specific top and bottom. While some jewelry is designed to wear a variety of ways; many jewelry artisans fail to make it clear how they envisioned or designed the item to be worn.

When selling jewelry online, you can never forget that your customers can not touch the piece and most will not take the time to email you to ask, “So, how do you wear this piece anyway?”

Off all the pieces of jewelry I look at when reviewing jewelry websites, artisans often make mistakes when selling pendents…

Many of us spend a great deal of time seeking ways to advertise our websites and businesses to stand out from the crowd.

How much time is spent actively reacting to what others are saying about us?

Some time ago I was subcontracted to do some marketing research for a company. Their products sold in the $100k+ range and they wanted to know what their primary competitor was doing online. The results surprised me and are something we could all learn from…

As a rule, I like some noise in the background when I’m working. The radio is on almost all day. When I do heavy duty writing for a client, there’s typically a classical CD softly playing (no words to sing to that way). I bring all that up because it was a spot for a radio station’s own advertising program that inspired this post.

Most business owners spend a great deal of time and money searching for places to advertise and often give little thought on what to advertise. I’ve seen this with my writing clients. People know they want to advertise but do not do their homework on what to advertise.

Seems like a fairly obvious thing. Ask most business owners what they advertise and they will respond with a question, “I advertise my business. What else would I be advertising?”

What else, indeed.

I was looking at someone’s blog today and noticed a conversation on how to advertise a crafting business on the cheap. One of the things mentioned was to ask bloggers if they would be willing to interview artists or review their sites.

I’ve toyed with the idea to review each of the sites submitted and accepted to Crafty Tips Arts & Crafts Directory but my concern was trying to be fair and impartial. I mean, let’s face it not all sites are created equal. Some directory sites have started adding blog entries for sites being submitted but it would seem that could become a real black hole of time and frustration.

In the past, I’ve offered free profiles on several forums. I did ask for a link to this site or one of my other craft-related sites and was disappointed when only two artists took me up on that offer. My thought was that since my blog is not on the fast lane that it was simply a matter of not being popular enough to attract interested folks. The blog I was reading happened to have a comment from one of the editor’s in the jewelry section of a very popular crafting site. She too lamented that she could not find folks who wanted to participate and receive free reviews and profile pieces.

So, rather than try another round in the forums, I thought I would make the offer again here on the site where the profile would reside. Do take heed, that this is free advertising for your business and I take that very seriously. Your site or shop must offer something of value for sale or offer information and project tutorials that would be of interest to crafters.

Participants might also receive a bit of free business consulting advice along the way and when combined with a bit of free advertising both will hopefully bring a some new visitors/customers to your site.

Just let me know if you are interested. The profiles/reviews are free.