Adding Email Subscription to Your Blog

I think this is a very important feature of a blog. I will admit, I don't always look through the list of blogs I follow looking for updates. I do have the best intentions, but I don't have the time in the day to do that. BUT! I never miss an email though. Anymore, when I follow a blog, this is the first thing I do after I subscribe...look for the email subscription box. Very few take advantage of this free and easy to set up feature for your blog. I want to walk you through it.

Maybe you don't like to have your email flooded, but I'm more likely to read your blog update and comment if it's emailed right to me. This was handy when I was working full time and even more so now that I'm unemployed and glued to my email. Slowly, I'm going back through the blogs I follow and subscribing to emails to whoever has it set up.

When someone signs up for an email subscription to your blog, they are receiving an email when you have updated it - added something new. How fab is that? Instant gratification. Here's how you add the email subscription. I suggest putting it at the top of your blog in very close proximity to your followers box. (Side note: your followers box should be at the top of your blog, not buried below.)

First you will need to set up an account with Google Feedburner. You can do this through your Blogger Settings tab and then click on Site Feed.

Once you have set up your account, you will need to burn a feed. Here, you will add your blog URL. You will need to title your blog feed. This should be the name of your blog. 

After you get your success page, you will want to customize your options.  You will then be presented with a Dashboard. Click the tab that says Publicize.

On the left handside, you will see a column of links to various topics.  Click on Email Subscriptions.

Choose Feedburner and activate. 

You will then be on a screen that's titled Subscription Management or go to Email Subscription again on the left (doing this from memory). 

You will see a box of code. Don't copy it just yet! You will see a drop down box just under the code box. Be sure to change it to your blog format - Typepad, Google, language etc to your liking.  Then go back and copy the code.

You will then come back to Blogger and in the Design mode you will add an HTML gadget. Remember to put the gadget toward the top of your blog!

Save changes and you're done!

Hope this helps you out in increasing your blog traffic and comments.

Finding Charm Featured on The Handmade Gift Guide

I was elated to read that I got featured on the Handmade Gift Guide. This is such a wonderful place to support handmade. I'm transitioning most of my gift giving to handmade and proud to do so!

You too can get featured on The Handmade Gift Guide as well.  This link will take you to the Guide and the process of submitting your shop for consideration.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Keywords and Google Wonder Wheel

I came across this great tip or tool in one of my marketing email newsletters I receive. Some of you Etsy folks may know of Bill Walton. I typically use the Google Keyword tool to help me brainstorm possible keywords. It still doesn't seem to display the right words. Often times I find myself double checking what words I keyed in because the results are nothing like what I entered.  So I utilize the Keyword Tool and now the Google Wonder Wheel. It is much like those brainstorm wheels we did in school. It can go on and on. Let me walk you through it.

1. Go to Google and enter your keywords, such as "Purple Flower Ring" hit enter

2. You will get the results page. Look to the left and you will see "More Search Tools" - click the arrow down/carrot button

3. Scroll down the list of tools until you get to "Wonder Wheel" and click it.

4. Google's top rated related keywords to Purple Flower Ring are displayed.

5. Click on "Floral Wedding Ring" and you get that keywords' related keywords. You will see another brainstorm wheel shoot off from the "Purple Flower Ring"

As you can tell, this can go on and on. Have fun, play with it. You'll get the hang of it. Even if the words are faded blue, you can go back and click any of the words.  I think it takes some practice. But it automatically gives you the top related keywords.

EtsyBloggers: June 18 Blog Carnival

Carnival Topic: What are your goals? Short term, long term? It's up to you. 

Host: RainyDayArt
Blog: http://rainydayart.blogspot.com 

I have a very important short term goal involving my Etsy shop and that is optimizing it. I'm getting the hang of promotion and the whole selling a good online. Now I'm wanting to utilize all the tools that I can that will help me free up some time for myself and fun things and not tied to the computer. I have had a lot of my items that are expiring. Seems to go in spurts for some reason. As I renew, I also take a look at what keywords I have used in the keyword section, item description and title. I've been utilizing the Google Keyword Tool to help me. It's too soon yet to see if I can see a difference since sites aren't crawled everyday, but I can tell my views are up slightly. And I feel good at what I'm doing. It helps that I have a marketing background.  I know in the long run, having optimized listings will do some of the work for me as well. As I list new items, they're going up optimized. I've got under 100 to go. Man oh man!

Another big goal was to figure out how to get my items to tweet and post to Facebook without me having to do it manually. I thought there just has to be something out there that will do it. I know some already figured it out, but I still consider myself new at all this. Hasn't been a year yet. I found Twaitter and finally decided to try Hootsuite. At the time, Twaitter didn't support FB postings, and now it's developed a program to do that. But it has helped free up a lot of time for me and also time to actually tweet with others and check out what other people are doing. Plus, being that I work full time, it was hard to compete. Now it's like I'm working during the day without having to do everything manually except for my RTs of others.  I've made a sale already from the auto tweets and I have wonderful followers who support by RTing as well. If you retweet me, I retweet you back.

The next goal I have for my shop is to try more paid advertising online. I'd like to try some content ads instead of the adwords. I tried some project wonderful ads, and didn't find that I could get it to work for me. I tried it for a month tweaking it everyday.  I'm still trying to figure out where my customers are coming from. I'm getting enough sales now that I'm seeing some trends, but not enough yet to do any moderate investing. I hope by end of the year I'll have found a good online advertising mix.

 

Marketing Tip of the Week - Opt Out of Facebook Instant Personalization

This is a loosely defined marketing tip. Since it includes Facebook which we use for promotion, I thought it applicable.  I had seen rumors of our personal information being used for promotion on Facebook with third parties. Did you know there is a solution for this that is simple to do? You can opt out of sharing your information.  It'll take you 2 seconds following these directions. It explains what the "Instant Personalization" project is, how it works and how to opt-out.

I saw this tip from a retweet on Twitter. Credit goes to Purplehayz.

Marketing Tip of the Week - Avatar Consistency

I know it's tempting to change your Twitter and Facebook avatars, but when you have a business profile, it's necessary to keep your avatar the same. The best solution is to keep your avatar as a logo. If it's important to change it up, then I suggest you create a personal profile that you can change to reflect your personality.  I for one recognize everyone on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking by their avatar. I have recently been running into the changing avatars for shops that I'm looking for and cannot find because the avatar has changed to the latest theme on Facebook or their pets latest pictures. I know, that's fun!  I'm happy to see them, but tell me about them instead.

I know the handmade community like correspondence on the personal side, and you still can by using a consistent avatar. You can post in your Facebook photos tab your latest dog's trick or you child's first steps.  Or blog about it. It makes for another example to draw people in and see all your latest products.  Your customers and potential customers don't get bored with your logo or avatar. It's how they recognize you. They grow to know it and expect to see it.  McDonald's golden arches do not change, ever and neither should your 'golden arches'.

Marketing Tip of the Week - Facebook Vanity URL

I got this tip from A Slice of Delight after I had purchased some cool Lemon Citrus Slice Soap from her Etsy shop. Not only did I get great smelling soap, I also got a technical tip as well. Don't think too many buyers and sellers can say that. As most of us know, Facebook can be a bit cumbersome. So I asked  A Slice of Delight if I could pass this wonderful tip on to my blog readers and she was more than happy to help out any one she can.  I copied her tip from our conversation to insure accuracy.


When you have at least 25 fans you can change your facebook fan page to what they call a "Vanity Url". When you first create your facebook fan page it's a long jumbled up string of letters/numbers and your business name. Some of you may still be using this long name and have 100's of fans at this point...here's what you can do...

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Click on this link - http://facebook.com/username - at the bottom of that page you will see this link - Set a username for your Pages - click on that then you will see a drop down and when you click the drop down you should see your ' business fan page'. I actually created two by accident so I picked the one that had already started getting a few fans - at that point you should have a chance to just put in the name (with or without spaces) or any form of upper/lower case you want) and check the availability. At that point you make the big 'commit' and you can't go back. At that point this long url (I've made this up) - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Berkeley-CA/A-Slice-Of-Delight/20800345155?v=wall#/pages/Berkeley-CA/A-Slice-Of-Delight /20800345155?ref=ts will get to be www.facebook.com/asliceofdelight (if that's how you want it) - It doesn't change the name of the page title (which may have spaces) but this gets the url down to something nice and manageable

Now the URL is nice and simple and can easily be put on a business card or any other place you want it posted/tweeted/promoted/etsy/blog/website/etc..

Marketing Tip of the Week - Shop Announcements

This is my first in my Sunday Marketing Tips of the Week.  This week I'm going to start with something I learned this week in the Etsy forums.  It's something quick and easy.

Did you know if you change your shop announcement, that moves your shop up to the top in the local searches?  You can just change an exclamation point and it's considered a change.  I recommend you change your shop announcement every morning or lunch time, whatever works for you.  It'll take just a minute.

Feel free to comment/share your tips as well.