Are you ready for the first of our Folksy Friday Fun & Film Days tomorrow?
Will you be taking part and sharing your Folksy Friday? If you’re not sure what it is or how to join in, this blog post explains more - https://blog.folksy.com/2019/04/29/folksy-friday-fun-films - or you can just ask us here!
In the meantime look out for the first of our Folksy Friday Films by Leanne Warren on our social media channels, and please like, comment and share when you see it!
While I think this is a lovely idea I hope you don’t mind if I add my view on this.
There is much discussion about the need for us all to promote ourselves and our shops in order to be seen and get the Folksy Feel out there
As I’m sure you are aware I do that, possibly to an extreme. On a daily basis I post, I promote, I tag, I share, I Tweet and even sing my head off.
Not just about my own things but about other shops and certainly Folksy as a ‘brand’.
Now that is fine but I wonder if you could have better chosen your Friday themes for this initiative. Most of them are very exclusive. I don’t Felt and neither do the majority of sellers on here. Zombies ? Quite obscure.
Unicorns… wouldn’t magical or fantasty have provided a far more inclusive term which lots of people could get behind (I do have a unicorn as it happens so I’m not sour graping).
I am more than happy to do Folksy Friday themes and do when the fancy takes me, I have some spare time but in doing so I would always expect to be doing a teeny bit of self promotion at the same time and I’m sure I am not alone in that.
So I’m just saying perhaps wider themes would have a better response. We are all, I’m sure very very happy to promote Folksy but, slightly selfishly maybe, we cannot be expected to spend our time doing that while ignoring the promotion our own work needs.
Joy xx
Hi Joy. I do totally understand that. The themes were chosen to tie in with the animations but you are absolutely free to create your own themes - we’d love that. Please don’t feel you need to stick to the ones chosen for the homepage! Sorry if I haven’t made that clear.
I’ll try my best to share all Folksy Friday posts created too, so we can promote as many people as possible.
Also, perhaps we can change Unicorn to Magical or something similar, if people prefer that and don’t feel it’s too late?
Camilla Yes I know I can create my own theme and that is what I normally would do but I was just pointing out that this particular initiative would, I am sure, be much better received And responded to, if your chosen themes were less exclusive.
I quite often make Folksy Friday boards on random themes but I do always include one, and only one ( and never at the top of the board), of my own pieces. I have so many listings that I can cover a multitude of themes so that is easy for me but must be far less easy for most Folksy sellers with less stock, more restrictions on themes.
Thank you for responding. x
Morning! I’ve just been having a look at how to get involved. I think I might pick my own theme (thinking I might start easy & go for colours), as that means I can include one of my own designs. I had a couple of questions though - on Pinterest where do I put the hashtag - in the board name? And if I look at doing a canva collage for Instagram do I need to pick only from sellers who are use it & then just tag them in the post? Sorry if I’m being dense - I’m quite new to both platforms & this whole hashtag malarkey!
You’re right. I probably have made a mistake by making the themes too specific. The project was just designed as a bit of fun really, to do something joyful that people could get involved with if they wanted to, and share their own work as well as pieces on Folksy that they love. I’d hate anyone to feel excluded.
I’ll make sure the themes for June are more broad and try to make it more clear that all Folksy Friday themes are welcome.
Also, I just wanted to add that we so appreciate everything you all do to help us promote Folksy and get our name out there. We wouldn’t be here without all of you, shouting about Folksy and, Joy, I know you always go above and beyond, so thank you x
That’s brilliant news! A specific colour works really well as a theme and coloured boards or grids are always visually appealing. On Pinterest you can just title the board ‘Folksy Friday’ followed by your theme name eg ‘Folksy Friday - Spring Green’ and then maybe put the #folksyfriday hashtag in the description for each pin on there, if you want to. Hashtags aren’t essential on Pinterest although they are increasingly being used by their algorithm to determine search results, I believe.
On Instagram I would suggest choosing the pieces from Folksy that you think work best together in a grid format, and then tagging the people you can find who are on Instagram and also crediting the others who aren’t, so people can look for them ok Folksy.
Does that help?
If you link to them here, we can share them!
That’s fab, thanks Camilla! I will have a little play on my lunch break 
OK - so here’s my ‘Folksy Friday - Gorgeous Green’ board! I’m going to put a canva grid together with some of these & share on IG too
Dee What is a Canva grid ? Sorry but I don’t recognize the expression and could do to improve my IG posts. xx
Hi Joy! Canva is a free online tool for putting together collages, graphics etc - I’ve done all my banners / covers / business card designs etc on there. There are probably loads of different tools out there but I found canva first & have got the hang of it now I think! I’ll be tagging you shortly as I have one of your suncatchers in there so you can see what it looks like xx
Thanks Bee. I have a collage maker downloaded onto my laptop but it’s not on here, my office pc and I often wish it was. I’ll get Canva downloaded.
Have to say I really like it, but I just use the web version - which is great as you can use it on any machine. The app seems to have a lot of functionality stripped out of it (but that might just be my ancient phone!)
OK Here is an alternative #Folksyfriday board.
Decided to do a word play on Felted and made a Tactile Board instead.
All sorts of things you might like to hold in your hand for a while.
n JOY xxx
Thank you Camilla. We all of us need Folksy to succeed in order for our own small businesses to succeed so every little and all that
Have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend and if you could add a little warmth and sunshine that would be wonderful
I think it is a good idea to keep the specific themes as some sellers do specific work and they won’t be included in anything otherwise. I personally like the broad range of the themes you have.
I’ve no problem with the specific themes, I agree it lets others who might be excluded otherwise to get their day … which they will do in the Front Page daily theme collection…but it is just the inclusion of these limited themes for this new Friday fun feature which I was querying. I really don’t think it will encourage people to join in.
Folksy Friday has always been available to any of us but this is an extra initiative geared specifically to those themes of the day.
No sure if I’ve done this right.
Just having a read through as didn’t know what Folksy Friday was really…the boards look really good and thank you so much for including my trapunto picture 
My tablet allows me to make a collage of up to 4 photos so that’s all I manage to do…I really need to learn more but don’t seem to get around to it and spend so much time online and not enough time finishing my bears and dolls…I must work faster…I must learn more techy stuff …all added to my ‘to do’ list …Which is ever growing 
