Announcing CentralFloridaOnline Where IndieCEO Contributes Articles

You can find IndieCEO and GalleriaLinda now on CentralFloridaOnline as an author!

Authoring articles about you, your businesses' services, or products is a great way to become known. Articles that will offer up informative topics that can be used by others is a goodwill gesture that will not be forgotten. Share your knowledge and people will appreciate you. And, every time you are posted online is an SEO target for people to find you!

I write for several blogs, as well as my own and have recently written blog posts for placement on CentralFloridaOnline. If you are from Florida, this is a great website to get Florida news, human interest stories, and happenings in Central Florida!

Speechless Advertising

We are so bombarded by visual and audio stimulation that it can become overwhelming clutter. Advertisers are quickly invading every nook and cranny of your lives to get their message to you. Sometimes, their tactics are self defeating.

We cannot even watch TV without a bottom scroll, animated images popping up in the corner, and reminder text of shows to come. It is frustrating.

As I thought about this, I was working on a design for new postcards for GalleriaLinda. I tried putting multiple jewelry designs on the card, then thumbnails on one side of a bigger photo, and it all just looked junky. There was no clear message other than “here, see EVERYTHING I have ever created!”

I came up with “speechless advertising.” This is not a new concept, although I put my own name to it. Speechless advertising for my postcard utilized one strong photo and my web address. That is all. The idea is to peak interest and curiosity. If a visual is strong, simple, and uncluttered, curious people will go to the web site.

When I look at these postcards, I breathe a sigh of relief. Relief felt from animation, pop-ups, voices, and all the other things that try to get our attention.

Less is more. Strip your message to its essentials. Try a minimalist approach to your advertising!

Free Advertising for Online Shops that Sell Handmade - Diary 2010 Project

There are opportunities for FREE advertising and promotion all around us. Just keep up with a few forums and you will always see calls for product and seller features. Keep your eyes open!

One such project that GalleriaLinda has participated in for three years is the Diary Project, organized and implemented by Fantazya, a long-time Etsy seller of handmade. The Diary 2010 Project is gaining steam, as we get to the final deadline for artwork.

The diary is a calendar book, spiral bound, that has all dated pages created and designed by handmade artists! The artists work their shop information into the designs and get year-round exposure for FREE. What a great concept this is!

And, it has been successful for years. Once all of the artwork is sent in, Fantazya coordinates the printing and cover options. Pictured above is my 2009 diary with GalleriaLinda pages. I ordered a plain cover so I could embellish it myself. These make GREAT gifts too.

When you participate, you are NOT obligated to purchase the Diary, but you are simply a featured artist.

Diaries are offered to participants at a discounted rate, should you care to purchase. Each page is a window of original art for each day of the year. See the Diary 2010 Project Flickr group to see what has been created so far.

Back to YOUR opportunity for advertising...go lock in a date today, send in your designed page with your shop information, and you have year-round exposure of your web site or shop URL to people all over the world.

This year, for the first time, the diary will be available in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. How global can you get?

Go right now to get YOUR

Diary 2010 Project date.
Artwork deadline is JULY 15.

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!

Utilize Help and Information From Your Selling Venues

One of the ways online sellers can benefit from marketing and selling success strategies is through the selling venues that they use. You can find a lot of selling, promotional, and marketing tips in the venue's documentation that is very valuable!

The forums on each of the venues becomes a treasure trove of shared experiences about everything for selling online. Use it! Even if you just read, you will gain such valuable information that you can use. Read, read, read.

Today, I want to introduce the Sellers' Boot camp going on right now at iCraft.ca!

Sellers' Boot camp is a new admin-supported program started by Christine of PillowThrowDecor for sellers on iCraft.ca! Check out the iCraft.ca forum for lots of details on the Sellers' Boot camp program.

Christine not only produces the most elegant pillows for your home, but she is also a sales expert that creates energy that motivates!

She is the one that started the awesome "Odd Sock" category to move merchandise. Check out PillowThrowDecor's "Odd Sock" deals - unbelievable!

The Sellers' Boot camp program goes for 28 days with assignments for each day that will help you fill your promotional "bag of tricks" by the end of the month. The idea is to get into the habit of spending up to 30-45 minutes a day doing things that will help sales.

Retired from another career, Christine states that a part of her professional background is in sales training. She states, "As independent business people it is all about accountability. I do much better when I know there is a team of people marching along with me every day and are as committed as I am to doing assigned activities!

If you are considering trying iCraft.ca as your handmade selling venue, now is the time! Remember, if you use a referral number when you pay your one-time registration fee, you receive six months of shop fees free for an unlimited number of items! Shop fees are very reasonable. In case you need one, GalleriaLinda's referral number is: 1c28439c38!

Must go...off to boot camp!!

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.

If You Haven't Told Them 57 Times, You Haven't Told Them At All

There is an old saying among ad agencies, "If you haven't told them 57 times, you haven't told them at all." How well are you communicating your messages to your customers?

I think this is an area of customer communication where we all have challenges - getting the message out so people remember what we said. We should (1) tell them what we are going to tell them, (2) tell them, then (3) tell them what we told them.

For example, let's pretend that you are going to start a new product line called Funky Widgets...your 3-pronged message plan could be:

1. Tell them what you are going to tell them

Coming Soon! Our new product line, Funky Widgets, is launching in March, 2009. Watch for the announcement, as you won't want to miss this! It will be fabulous......etc...

2. Tell them

Announcing the anticipated launch of our new product line, Funky Widgets! They are unique and lovable because.....etc...

3. Tell them what you told them

We hope you have not missed the opportunity to try our new product line, Funky Widgets! They will make your life wonderful! etc...

Each phase of this communication matrix can be deployed to outlets on your standard media list. Your media list is simply a list of places where you will promote your message.

Your media list can include online and offline "outlets" (places), such as specific blogs, your web site, multiple social networking sites, YouTube, photo sharing sites, forums, your shop announcements, advertisements, press releases, grocery store bulletin boards, free shopper classifieds in your town, and any other avenues you have for message distribution. Use your media list for each of the three phases.

With so many distractions in the media today, it is important to keep punching out your message in frequency and in a variety of methods. People absorb information in different ways and not all methods will work well on one person. The repetition of the message in different forms will be more successful than using one form.

Consider your messages in a variety of forms:

• Print/Collateral (advertisements, press releases, coupons, postcards, flyers, samples of products, B&M store bulletin boards, etc...)
• Online Reads (email newsletters, blogs, web site content, article submissions, shop announcements, social media, forums, etc...)
• Online Visual Graphic Placements (Project Wonderful, web site, blogs, social media)
• Online Video or Photo Slide Shows (YouTube, Blip.tv, social media, etc...
• Online Photos (Flickr and other photo sharing sites, social media, etc...)
• Online Audio (podcasts, audio with your short videos, etc...)

The next time you have a great message to deploy, think about your frequency and repetition of message, as well as the method of message distribution. Plan it for the greatest success!

Be sure to check out GalleriaLinda's resource pages for things you can use! And, if you see any Project Wonderful ads that are only $0, feel free to help yourself!