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Blogging, blogging, blogging – it seems to be the only thing (besides social media) that you hear anyone talking about when it comes to expanding and promoting your crafty business. But has anyone ever really explained why?
Having a blog can be a great promotional tool for your online store or crafty business, but it is also a huge commitment and a lot of work if you want to get it off the ground. I started my blog to promote my Etsy store because I knew that relying on Etsy alone wasn’t going to get me the kind of traffic that I wanted without having to pay for it. I thought that having a blog to use as a free promotional tool would be a great way to spread the word about my shop and have another outlet for creative energy. Well, on some levels it was that. On others it was just another source of stress. But I will not stop working on it and here’s why:
- Once you start building a blog following and have some readers, they are going to be your best advertisers. This is why you want like and share buttons on your blog.
- Having a blog allows you to have new content to share on your social networks that’s different than just store updates all the time. This was you can talk about other cool craft tutorials you found or what you’re working on and be sharing new and fresh content with your fans, followers, and readers.
- Blogging is a community. Once you’ve entered into it, it’s really easy to start building a community around yourself of people that do similar things as you and are willing to help and support you on your way to growing your sites.
- Having a good readership can translate to sales for your online shops when you write shop updates or have links to your shops right on your blog. These are people who already like what you do and may not have found you simply through search.
The problem comes with getting to these points. To be able to build a readership and grow a community, you have to blog consistently. To make a blog worth your effort, you’ll have to do some organizing and planning. Make sure that you have fresh content going up at least weekly. Talk about your posts on your social media networks. There are a lot of websites and blogs out there. It is very hard for readers to find your specific blog through all that noise, so if you don’t take the initiative to get found it won’t happen on it’s own.
Have you started a blog yet? How do you promote yourself?
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I have recently started a blog, I love it! The hardest part for me is realizing how little I really know about blogging.
Thank you for all the tips!
I’ve been blogging for years and it’s great! That plus my Twitter presence were a great help when i started up my Etsy store were a great help in publicising it and helping to get my first sales. Because i was already an active blogger, blogging on a range of topics including crafts, environmental issues, nature and literature, then I’ve continued to have a lot of different things to blog about, not just my Etsy shop.
I don’t think though that it’s essentai lto have a blog to be able to make your Twitter or Facebook feed about more than just shop updates. It’s always possible to share links from elsewhere (eg craft magazines, style websites) that fit in with what you sell in your Etsy shop. For example because I make items from repurposed materials, I might share a link to an article about recycling, because I also sell sea glass i might share a link to an article about the most beautiful sea glass beaches in the world.