Saturday, April 12, 2014

Networking Saturday; Free to Promote Your Shop, Social Sites, or Blog 7

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Twitter...
I think that I have Twitter to be so important to me as a networking tool that it bares enough weight to spend a little more time talking about it.  Last week I talked briefly about some of the tools available and how important it is.
But as with any social network Twitter is only as good as the person's skills, creativity and network.  If you do not spend anytime growing followers, tweeting or retweeting there will be little reason for you to even have an account.  Some of my own networks are week just because there is only so much time in the day to work on this (my second job.)  But since I get such great results from Twitter it is one of my first choices.

Christie Cottage
Christie Cottage
One of the networking tools I use and find so few people really take advantage of is the Twitter Tree.  Just like Julie and Blu's Countdowns pack a punch so does the Twitter Tree.  Jacki from Christie Cottage was the first person to introduce me to this wonderful network. Christie Cottage is one place you do not want to overlook if you are looking to network.  Jacki spends endless hours promoting and advertising other small businesses and all she expects in return is for those participating to promote and return the favor.  I have had an online friendship with her for several years and I have to admit she has had a huge impact on the traffic to my sites.   She also offers advertisement from her blog which has over 1,900 followers.

With that introduction to Christie Cottage I want to focus on Jacki's Twitter Tree.  The Twitter Tree is a wonderful group of shops that will gather 3 days a week to a dedicated blog and spend about an hour total throughout the day tweeting their items and tweeting the items from other participants.  First the evidence that it really works (from my four shops:
As much as I would like to say that I am a perfect net-worker, as you can see this poor little shop of mine has been neglected a little.  But hopefully things will settle down at my day job and I will be able to spend a more time on my precious diamond in the rough.
So it is evident that Twitter Tree really does drive a significant amount of traffic to your shops so why not try it?  It really isn't that challenging, it takes a small investment of time for a big pay off, and if you do have questions that group will help you gladly.  The more participants the more tweets we all get so we want you there!
Check out the details here and watch for the Twitter Tree Monday
Wednesday and Friday
For fear of making this post too long I am going to wrap it up here but I do want to leave you with some great statistics to show the impact Twitter can have on your shop. 

From Postcards In The Attic on Artfire
Note the Ow.ly urls are from Tweeting using Hootsuite

60% of my incoming URLs are from Twitter from 4/11 to date

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If you have any great networking opportunities you would like me to feature please contact me directly at ButterflyInTheAttic at yahoo dot com or post the information in the comments section.  I will add it to next week's post. 

So now a little homework; think about the barriers you have keeping you from starting to use Twitter as a networking tool.  Also what are the barriers keeping you from using the Twitter Tree.  Are they valid?  Does the outcome out way working through those barriers?  My homework:  of course to research some of my barriers for better developing G+, Pinterest, etc. Also I will be investigating and testing some more tools that will help me increase my traffic and sales.  And of course sharing this information with my wonderful followers

Now lets have some Networking Fun!!!
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Post any of your family friendly sites (blogs, shops, FB, etc.)  What ever sites you would like to share. 

Please help promote this post using your social networks.  Here is an easy one:

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5 comments:

The Gossamer Tearoom said...

Dear Colleen,
Thank you so much for this information about Twitter today. I fully admit that I do not use it to it's full advantage and so I hope to take a bit more time to remedy that!

Wishing you a successful weekend!

Betty

ShadowDogDesigns said...

Thank you, Colleen, for providing a place to leave links. It is greatly appreciated. I totally agree about the importance of twitter in networking and in the Twitter Tree. I do have 3 big spikes each week from participating in the Twitter Tree. Each of my tweets also automatically goes to RebelMouse which gives an added bang for the buck (: Find your posts very interesting. THanks again.

Butterfly In The Attic said...

Wonderful to see both of you stop by. I love finding things that really work. So often great ideas don't give you what you expect but the Twitter Tree truly performs.

Have a blessed day
Colleen

DianesDangles said...

Thank you for this post, getting together three times per week for tweeting also gives me lots of traffic through each of my shops.

Butterfly In The Attic said...

Thanks for joining in Networking Saturday Diane

Blessings
Colleen