Saturday, June 21, 2014

Free to Promote Your Shop, Social Sites, or Blog; on Networking Saturday 15

Good morning networking friends.  Happy First Day of Summer!!!!

My work week has been a bit insane so I am suffering from a little burn out this morning.  I have sat for the last half hour staring at my computer trying to pick a topic out of the sea of thoughts floating randomly in my head, alas without much luck.  So to avoid spending another 30 minutes trying to put together an intelligent thought I decided to make this post simple and hopefully interactive.

Most of what I do on this blog is promotion and networking; while I want to reach out to others and help them become more successful, the goal for me personally is to become more successful myself.  I truly hope one day to become a true entrepreneur and a self sufficient business.  One of my issues, and I think I may not be alone, is the ever growing options in social platforms.  Every time I turn on the computer there is a latest and greatest social site.  Some turning out to be not so great and then again is it me?  I am so limited in time am I spreading myself so thin that I can't utilize these great tools as I should?  This is where you come in and networking is important.

I would love it if you would share your success stories or a app, platform, etc that you have found to be very useful so that we can all learn together.  Please add it to the comments or if it is too long a note and is blog worthy please email me at ButterflyInTheAttic at Yahoo dot com.

My main tools that I rely on consistently are the following:

Twitter

Twitter is one that I completely rely on to bring people to my shop.  The quick, one or two line blips of information are perfect me because of my time limits. Millions of people that do not own shops own twitter accounts so that means my reach is not only going to other businesses but to the general public and potential customers.

This is a must have free tool for anyone with an online shop.  If you don't have an account I strongly suggest that you create one and build a following.  I would love to follow you so post it in the link up and I will.

The next two I have a love/hate relationship with.  I love the ability to hoard images and to repost or pin my favorites but I can burn up so much time without even knowing it and all the while accomplishing absolutely nothing if I am not careful.

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the newer social networks and has been come a very valuable tool. I can watch the impact on my dashboards and see it has successfully driven traffic to my shops.    I would say that this is a necessity but take care because it is also a time vampire.

Facebook

While Facebook used to be an essential tool in the pocket of any true entrepreneur, with its ever changing rules and games it plays this site has become less and less important to me.  If it wasn't for the ease of using it I more than likely wouldn't bother.  I rarely see a lot of traffic from FB but again it is easy to use and I am by nature a very optimistic and hopeful person.  I have a feeling that I may be able to do better with it one day if I could invest a bit more time.

Google+


Google Plus is definitely one of those that I should spend more time getting to know but haven't.  It doesn't tend to suck me in as much as the latter two but it does drive traffic to my shop



The next two are very new to me.  I have been posting to them and have been active but I really haven't taken the time to explore them or use them like I should

Polyvore

I haven't done much at with this one aside from posting to it and creating the account.  Has anyone noticed an impact from using it?






Amazine

Again I certainly haven't used this one to any kind of potential.  But I have heard others comment on how much they enjoy using it.  Please share with us your experience with this interesting new social site.




So time for true confessions and please be honest if you have a few (or several like me) of these lying around collecting dust.  This is a collection of only a few of the  social platforms that I have accounts for have never used for anything.  I don't even know where to start with them.  If anyone uses these please leave a comment below and any success stories or why you like it.  I would love to know if they would be worth the time.

Instagram (yes I know this is popular but remember I just got my first big girl cell phone *non-tracfone* only about a year ago LOL)

Issuu

RebelMouse

Storenvy

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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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8 comments:

The Gossamer Tearoom said...

Hi Colleen,
As always, thank you for all that you do to help promote!! As for social networking, I find that unless I enjoy doing it, I'm not very effective at it! I don't have a Facebook page, as it seems that there are always so many changes and some of them don't seem to be beneficial to the users. I do like Pinterest and find that if I am active on it, I do see traffic in my shops from there. I do agree that Twitter seems quite effective, however, I struggle with using so few words, so I'm sure I don't use it as effectively as I could. So far I haven't gotten to promote enough on Amazine to see if it works or not, but I do think it's fun to use!

Thanks for your thoughts today on the ways to promote on social networks!

Betty

ShadowDogDesigns said...

Thanks, Colleen, for letting us link on your page. I have been using RebelMouse since it first started, but do not use it to the full extent that I could. However, every day I get quite a few URLs back into my ArtFire studio from people checking it out from there. I basically set it up, feed all my tweets, both FB pages and G+ to there and then forget about it. Really, the only time go to my RebelMouse page is to freeze a newly listed piece of jewelry. Easy to use . . . lots of URLs. Here's my link if you want to check it out: https://www.rebelmouse.com/ShadowDogDesigns/

Butterfly In The Attic said...

Thank you for the tips. Rebelmouse is one that I have done so little with but it sounds perfect for me. I will have to make sure everything is set up.

Have a blessed day
Colleen

DianesDangles said...

Thank you for letting us post our social sites. I use twitter and pinterest quite a bit. I also have a Facebook, G+, and a blog, but not enough time to engage on these sites. I still find Facebook a bit overwhelming due to their constant changes. Need to better manage my time so I can do it all.

watercolors said...

Most effective for me is twitter.

I believe a good amount of my sales comes from the posts.


Thanks Colleen.
Roxanne

watercolors said...

I really enjoy Pinterest, but not sure if any sales generate from it. I can be so consuming as you keep running boards.

Facebook is not too important to me for sales, just personal networking.

Will come back this afternoon and check out some of the great posts links.

TheTwistedRedhead said...

Thanks for the platform, Colleen!

I probably spend more time on Twitter; while you see support and promoting on other sites, it seems more robust on twitter. I set my Rebelmouse account up and it just kind of does its thing. I used to check in with facebook at least once a day but now, like Roxanne, it's more of a personal 'touching base' which is down to once a week or so.

Unfortunately, I haven't invested much time on my Wanelo and G+ accounts. Love Pinterest and how 'visual' it is, but you're right about the time-sucking issue...I REALLY have to watch it!

Thanks again for the link-up opportunity. And it's always interesting to read other people's experiences with the social networking sites.

Butterfly In The Attic said...

It looks like I Need to invest a minute in rebelmouse because even though I haven't touch the account in at least a year there has been some traffic from it. Plus it sounds as if there are many of my networking friends on it:)

I have to be so careful with Pinterest and FB too. I find myself often getting lost in the funnies and pretties. But they are great tools if you can keep from getting distract.

Thanks so much for sharing everyone. Great Information!

Blessings
CC