Tips for Branding Your Online Business

A lot of us started our handmade businesses from humble beginnings of creating items for ourselves, family, and friends. After much encouragement from this group, we took the plunge into the world of online selling.

With so many handmade/supplies/vintage selling venues available today, it is no wonder that we might be watering down our own brand and not even know it. We should not brand our business with the name of the venue where our products are at this time. This can change over the years.

Why have a brand? Why protect that brand? Branding a business is one of the most important strategic marketing tasks that you can do.

A brand is your reputation, your recognition, and the soul of your company. It is that split-second understanding of who you are and what you do. It matters not if your business is "just" a hobby business - if you are selling online, you will benefit from a brand.

A brand can consist of the name of your business, a logo, and/or a byline motto, slogan, tag line. As your business grows, your brand becomes your reputation.Your brand can be known for excelling customer service or stellar quality. A brand is more than a logo. It can be the essence of your business practices.

The most important thing with growing your brand, is consistent use of your brand at all times and in all ways.

Here are some tips for you about branding your handmade business:

• Create a visual that resonates with your business name and/or product. This can be your business name in fancy fonts, iconic logos, or a tag line that you consistently use.
• Once you create your visual - use it everywhere, such as on your online banners for your shops, banners for your networking pages, business cards, avatar, blog headers, packaging, invoices, signs at craft shows, etc...
• If you choose to use a tag line, use it always when you use your business name. An example, would be "Susie's Pet Apparel - for Stylish Pets Everywhere!"
• If you send out press releases on new products or other business news, be sure to be consistent with your brand decisions.
• Purchase a domain name with your brand name and point it to your venue shop. This is very important to use YOUR domain name in all your branding efforts and not the links to the venue shop. 
• Use YOUR custom domain link in all your materials, online, and business cards. 
• Another tip is to create your domain name with words that tells us what you are all about. An example of what not to do is my domain (LOL) - gatllerialinda.com - I need to change this because it tells us nothing. It would be better as GalleriaLindaHandmadeJewelry.com instead. 
•  If you have your own website, utilized consistency with your strategic brand decisions.

I read a lot of forums on several of the most popular handmade selling venues. I always see that some sellers are branding the venue and not their shop. Your venue shop is just a rental space and is not "yours." You want people to search for YOU and not just find you accidentally through the venue. Your business is who you are and what you do, so brand your business - not the venue.

These tips just scratch the surface of branding your business but is the most basic start to a good relationship with your business!

Are You Rolling The Dice with Your Advertising?

No one wants to waste money, the least of which is business money for a very small business owner. Are you rolling the dice with your advertising dollars? Hit or miss? Whether you advertise online, offline, or both, it is important to plan your markets.

To small online sellers, that means we need to know who our customer is and where they can be found. When that is determined, we must go through the exercise of researching advertising opportunities within that demographic.

Artists and crafters especially can be unaware of this important step. I read in forums all the time about sellers sharing their advertising success and missteps, regardless of product, customer demographic, or price category. If you sell little girls' hair bows and have great success with advertising on several blogs, it is likely that my jewelry is not targeted to that audience. Although sellers have a kind heart and want to share what they know, it is important for you to step back and ask "is this where the customers for my products are?"

Basic marketing is truly not rocket science but requires that we think through our decisions. Here are a couple of out-of-the-box conceptual ideas of where to find customers online or offline for a variety of handmade products to jump-start your thinking for your own products:

• Handmade hats, crochet, knitted, felted-cold climates, cold weather sports gatherings, colleges/universities,
  

• Little girl hair bows-dance schools, pageants, first communion outfits, children's photographers
  

• Home decor pillows-independent interior designers and decorators, model home stagers, home staging consultants
  

• Photography-tourist shops, independent interior designers, home stagers, model home designers
  

• Journals and Diaries-college students, poetry reading groups, English teachers/assistants
  

I hope you get the picture. Brainstorm about who would love and use your product. Then, think out-of-the-box about where they are!

Social Networking: Time Waster or Business Builder?

It all depends! It is my opinion that anywhere you post online is a good thing for your shop and business name for SEO and name recognition. Get out there and be seen and recognized!

However, it is SO easy to twiddle your time away online chatting on various sites, so what is the balance and how do you manage it? I have a couple of thoughts for you to ponder:

1) Anywhere you post online, if used correctly by using links to your shop and your shop name, will add to your SEO factor and make your business easier to be found.

2) There is strength found in networking with people who are your target customer market.

3) Networking can create a great support group for you and your business.

There are a couple of types of networking - social and business. Then, they breakdown into handmade, corporate business, and a zillion other categories.

I suggest that the handmade online sellers participate in both handmade networks AND regular business networks to find potential customers everywhere.

Realize that the handmade networks are made up of a lot of sellers like you. However, sellers of handmade are also buyers of handmade for products other than what they make.

Business networks are made up of businesses of all kinds, big and small, and may need to be educated on why buying handmade creates value. You can be the voice for the handmade community.

I am a member of about 15-20 social and professional networking sites. It could make my head swim if I fretted about nurturing all of those! Here is a plan:

**Keep your profiles on ALL networking sites up-to-date and visit them frequently. Even a teeny edit will bump your profile up for the search engines to find again. If you don't do this, it will just lay there gasping its last breath.

**Make a list of all of your online networks. Decide which ones you want to participate in. Decide on your weekly time allowance split between all you selected, and stick to it.

**You can visit your profiles and edit one a day if you have a lot of them. That takes 3 minutes each and just keep the rotation going. You can do that to boost your SEO.

**For the networks where you want to be heavily involved, be sure to keep your links and business name before the other participants per the Terms of Use for the sites. Upload photos if allowed and use all tools available to you (photos, blogs, etc...) And above all, be SOCIAL, be friendly, and be yourself!

Here are some networking sites to look into:

HANDMADE Networking Sites
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=handmade - LIST of many
http://yourhandmade.ning.com/
http://www.byhand.me/
http://www.starvingjewelryartists.com/
http://www.votehandmade/
http://www.craftjuice/
http://www.indiepublic.com/
http://www.webjam.com/
http://www.plumdrop.com/
http://chainmaillebymboi.com/forum/index.php

BUSINESS Networking Sites:
http://www.linkedin.com/ http://wozone.ning.com/ (Website Owners' Zone)
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=women+business - list of sites for business women
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=business - list of networking for businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=small+business - list of networking for small businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=home+business - list of networking for home businesses

And, don't forget your local online business networking sites. I belong to

http://www.wqmagonline.com/ and http://www.local-shops-1.com/LocalShops1/social-network.html that cover Regional Florida and I have made some great contacts!

If you have a great networking source for online sellers, post here and I will add to the list!

Product Descriptions: Introduction

As artists, crafters, and designers, many of us can be challenged with the business of business. Oh, if we could only create and not have to tend to those things such as accounting, shipping, taxes, and copywriting!

When selling products online or in the real world, product descriptions become critical to your overall selling strategy. They are the gears that makes the marketing wheels turn.

As a handcrafted jewelry designer with my own GalleriaLinda shop, I have noticed from my searches online that independent designers, crafters, and artists, especially have difficulty in understanding how to describe, title, and promote products through their writing styles and descriptions in their listings.

You know that content is the key to being searched and found online. There is a balance, however, to offering descriptions that will satisfy online searches while giving your buyer the information they need quickly.

I can’t address product descriptions without mentioning the importance of product photos. Product photos work either with your descriptions or against them. More on that subject later.

I found a variety of approaches to writing product descriptions. They seem to fall into five categories:

• The technical – no matter the product, all you get is size, materials, color, and use in the description, if even that much
• The story teller – will spin a creative and interesting tale that swirls around the product to enchant you but may leave you without real information
• The disorganized – throws information darts and misses the board altogether
• The creative – describes the product with flourish and marketing spin – much of which may be extraneous
• The “got it together” – has description, technical information, and titles working together with appropriate keywords and provides all the information needed for one to decide to buy the product

Which one are you?

If you are serious about improving your product descriptions, the first thing to do is research, read, and ponder. Here are a few tips that will help you research:

• Research the top online sellers of similar products to yours and read their descriptions. Be sure to research many selling venues and not just the one that you are using, as they each have a different “flavor.” This will give you a broader view into your product descriptions.
• Grab a few printed catalogs that include products like yours and read it from cover to cover. What you gain from print media expands to not only the descriptive elements, but also photography styles and description structure.
• Note things that you want to avoid and note those things that you would want to include in your own product descriptions. These could be key words, format, or writing style.

Think about this and check back, as there is more to come in this interesting series!

Know Your Selling Venues: iCraft.ca

Continuing an ongoing series of "Know Your Venues," I wanted to present the online Canadian handmade selling venue iCraft.ca. Over a year old, iCraft is beginning to make a name for itself in the online handmade community. Still new in "online business" years, it has made great strides to service both sellers and buyers in its short time.

From personal experience, I truly love this site for many reasons, one of which is that iCraft accepts only handmade items direct from the artist. No reseller items, reseller supplies, or vintage...just handmade. If you made it with your own two hands, you can sell it on iCraft. This makes for a very focused ambiance as you enter the site and targets a specific audience.

The front page of iCraft is classy. Recently, the very top banner that highlights handmade items was added and has enhanced the professionalism of the sellers. It is a flash presentation of close-up photos of featured items that changes and is designed into their own iCraft identity look.

Recently-listed items become a part of the "flash" parade in the next section. The items stay on the flash presentation for a couple of days as the flash parade pages march on to include every listed item.

Below the flash parade is another flash presentation of iCraft-selected items to be featured. The flash featured presentation changes every few seconds so a lot of great handmade items are included and they are changed out frequently to include as many sellers as possible.

Some of the features I like as a seller on iCraft include:

• One page listing form - this is a great time saver


• Select all photos before upload - another time saver


• Choice of selling in $USD or $CAD


• Clone feature - copy a listing, change a little, and is useful for listing similar items


• Each listing's status has a choice of "Live," "Reserve," or "On Hold"


• The reserve feature is genius. You can place an item on reserve and send a link to your customer - no one else sees it so there is no stressing about someone else purchasing it


• No restrictions on tagging - tag away for those key words that would best suit your item - any number of them


• For vacation mode, you just put all items on hold


• Ability to bump up your item in the searches by editing the listing - this is free


• Ability to "relist" your item so it shows up in the "just listed" flash parade - this is free


• No other fees other than your monthly fee - iCraft has several very reasonable price plans available - if you are a US seller, be sure to convert the CAD to USD - right now it is a little less in $USD but the exchange rate does change from day to day


• If you are not able to purchase a paid plan, you can have full access to the site, a shop, and are able to have 5 live listings for free - you may set up as many as you want in your back office and rotate a selected group of 5 live listing if you wish


• iCraft referral promotion - this is Win/Win for both! Once you pay your registration fee through a referral, YOU receive 6 free months - to benefit, you must use a referral code. GalleriaLinda's referral code is 1c28439c38

Things iCraft is working on that I miss and can't wait to be rolled out include a shop widget and expanded shop stats. Included now are views of shop visits and views of individual item. These features are in the works.

iCraft has impressed me with their methodical planning and roll out. Features rolled out work the first time and this goes a long way with me.

As a marketing professional, I understand that it is easier to get to your target audience if you know who it is and where to find them. To market to only those who love handmade makes marketing much easier! I see ways they promote the site. Using Twitter, each listing is automatically tweeted. How great is that? They are also on IndiePublic, Facebook, Kaboodle, TeamSugar, and Flickr. You can read some of iCraft's featured articles online here.

iCraft is recommended from my positive experience as a seller on the site. It is worth a look if you are interested in a selling venue for handmade.

Newsletters are Meant to Be Shared

I found an interesting blog from Pam Hawk, who makes "Pass it on Plates." What a great concept these plates are for sharing goodies. You must visit her Etsy store to find out all about it.

Pam has a blog about street-smart business, promotion, marketing, and a lot of excellent topics! I was so enthralled with the blog's rich content, that I wanted to share it with you.

Her latest post is about using newsletters as marketing strategies. Just like "Pass it on Plates," newsletters are meant to be shared and she shows you how.

Keep Pam in your sights for good, usable strategies for your Indie Arts business!

The Pam Hawk blog will go on the Indie Business Blog Roll on the left. I am building resources for you!
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Handmadeology is Coming to Town! (The Internet "Town," That Is...)

Handmadeology is yet a mystery but soon to be revealed on January 26, 2009 by TimothyAdamDesigns! Billed as "a teaching the formula that I use to sell handmade goods online," I know we can all learn practical and easy-to-understand processes to gain more traffic to our stores and web sites, online advertising, and other mysteries.

TimothyAdamDesigns is known for cool, contemporary metal jewelry. He has made a reputable name for himself in his knowledge of the online marketing process and how to use online tools to his advantage. Always sharing his knowledge in his blog, we look forward to the Handmadeology class. Sign up for the handmadeology free newsletter today!

I think handmadeology will have highly useful content, based upon the blog content for the last year and will be recommended for all Indie CEOs!