I hear time and time again the importance of using social media to promote your business but I struggle to get my head round most platforms and am useless at “small talk”. I would also love to write a blog but struggle with what to talk about. I am planning a bit of a life change in July and hopefully will have more time on my hands so am determined to try and get to grips with it all. Has anyone got any recommendations for a book to read on the subject that might guide me in the right direction?
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@OrchardFelts
Hi Roz
I’d be interested in reading you blogging about the whole process involved in making one of your gorgeous scarves.
Have a look at the Dummies range to get you started, e.g.
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/blogging-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html
Make sure you let us know when you get started.
Kind regards
Jan.
I’m with you there Roz, don’t get it. I wish I could just employ someone to do it all for me and another thing is there just never seems to be enough time for it!!
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Hi Roz
I started from scratch with social media in January despite having my business for 5 years already! I agree getting your head around it all is a huge task!! I am finding this book brilliant by Folksy’s Hilary Pullen, Online marketing for your craft business. It takes you through all of the various social media platforms and so much more. I am forever going back to it.
I have started with fb, twitter and Instagram. I really like fb and Ig but am not a fan of twitter. Pintrest is great but I use that more for ideas than selling!! So far on fb I have found posts with work in progress have far greater reach and comments.
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Ive been on twitter for years and can say Ive had about 3 sales because of it, in comparison to the hundreds, possibly thousands of pics and links Ive posted, it really doesn’t seem worth it. I need to find other ways to promote.
I agree with @DewDropCrafts Hilary’s book is really good, I would definitely recommend it. Social media is about being social, interacting with others, sharing etc & not just about posting pictures of your makes. Hilary’s book explains all of this and gives loads of tips, it’s really worth getting 
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I think there are so many different types of social media, you’re bound to find one to suit you. From the sounds of it maybe Facebook and Blogs aren’t right for you because you do need to ‘chat’ to keep your audience interested. Maybe Instagram and Pinterest would be more your thing where you just curate great pictures of your own items and other things that take your fancy, no need for masses of text, just a quick why you like something, or your item’s details. With Instagram you’ll have to get to grips with adding keywords and phrases without spaces all prefixed with a hashtag, but that’s just like adding a listing on here with the keywords. Might be worth a look.
Jo
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Agree with the others here, that social media is about being social. It’s being you, and sharing about what makes you tick, what you enjoy, the thought processes behind what you make, why you make at all (what does crafting/designing mean to you?). It can be hard to do this for some people, I know I struggle with it most of the time. I have to relax to feel chatty and interact online or it just feels false.
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Hi,
I understand how social media can be so overwhelming, sepcially because each one has it’s own strategy, but yes nowadays it is very important to promote your business. I don’t have a book but it’s a special edition of a magazine. It’s a UK based magazine (I’m from Italy and in 2015 I took the advantage I traveled to London to buy this magazine). It’s called Mollie Makes Social Media, I don’t know if you have heard about it. I reccommend it because it explains very good each social network (facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram) and gives a lot of examples. I hope I helped a little
Yes! I have that magazine @mariagomes it’s brilliant. It’s actually part written by Hilary (the lady who wrote the book recommended above) I bought the book after reading the magazine as it was so good :0)
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google+ is also good if you’re not the chattie type and it helps with getting your items found in a google search.
You don’t have to say anything on google+ if you don’t want to but if you like plus 1 or even share a few of other people’s post or leave the odd comment then you’ll find people start to follow you.