After you have tweeted, shared, joined, verified, uploaded your avatar 100 times and stumbled around a bit you definitely deserve a sit down and a cuppa, but don't forget to let everyone know in your status update!
Useful Links for Promoting a Craft Blog
This is a sort of craft blog promotion toolkit, with the links seperated into categories. It's by no means necessary to be a part of every single community listed of course! Nifty Knits, a featured blogger on CBuk wrote this in a recent blog post -
Don't spread yourself thinly like too little butter on too large a slice of toast. Go deep, be generous, do it properly!
She is of course talking about online social networking rather than the many other aspects of life where this is also exceptionally good advice - read the full article here. Your blog is essentially your very own social network as you invite comments and readers to'follow', but unless you take part in other networks and forums it is unlikely that your blog will become popular.
Also remember that every relevant link that points back to your blog is another 'vote' for your blog and will increase it's position within certain keyword searches in the eyes of google and other search engines.
Also remember that every relevant link that points back to your blog is another 'vote' for your blog and will increase it's position within certain keyword searches in the eyes of google and other search engines.
A few tips for succesful social networking -
- Don't be a spammer, try and genuinely get involved and find people you are interested in to connect with.
- Enjoy being an active part of a community and comment on other peoples ideas, updates, blog posts and products as well as adding your own links.
- The new connections you make through these sites can be sources of inspiration for many blog posts to come and also provide you with lots of great widgets and gadgets to spice up your blogger sidebars.
- If you are linking back to your blog try and link to a specific post which may be genuinely relevant to the discussion rather than your home page. Search engines prefer this type of link too.
- Dont be shy, advertising and marketing are a natural part of business. Promoting your craft blogs through social networking as a way of getting your products noticed is completely ok, as long as it is relevant!
The List!
General Social Media
Make friends, fans and followers, share blog posts, pictures & videos and update your status or add to discussions.
http://youtube.com
Bookmarking
Save and share bookmarks online using keywords, which can then be used as a sort of approved search engine for quality websites and blogs. Try not to only add your own posts but to also add interesting content that you think may be useful to others too. You can then begin to make friends or connections with other members of the community who may have created lists with similar keywords, inevitably bringing new traffic to your blog.
http://delicious.com
http://www.digg.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/
Craft Focussed Social Media
Etsy, Folksy, Artfire, Misi and all of the other artisan / crafts market places, these websites make a point of trying to bring the crafting community together and promote handmade goods and blogs.http://ukhandmade.ning.com
http://www.byhand.me/
http://craftjuice.com/
http://www.indiepublic.com/
http://craftstylish.com/
http://www.mixxmade.com/
http://www.bluecanvas.com/
http://www.getcrafty.com/
http://youcraft.org/
http://artscollab.com/
Search Engine Submissions and Pinging
Let the big guys know you exist - submit your url to these links! Submit to the first 3 just once and the last two after each post.
www.google.com/addurl/
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/au/free/submit
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
http://www.pingomatic.com/
http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/
Craft Directories
Lists and ranked lists of craft sites and blogs.
http://www.craftlinks.co.uk/
http://www.100craftlinks.com
http://craftbloguk.blogspot.com
http://craftyblogs.co.uk
http://craftylinks.com/
http://www.craftsitedirectory.com/index.html
Forums
Friendly places to meet up with crafters and add to discussions about all sorts of issues both craft and non craft related.You can also let people know about your latest posts and listings as alot of the threads are promotional.
http://forums.folksy.com/
http://www.etsy.com/forums_main.php
http://www.craftsforum.co.uk/
http://www.misi.co.uk/forum/
Blog Focussed Sites
Submit content (blog posts) to these sites, connect with people that may never come directly to your site otherwise.
http://technorati.com/
More!
There are masses more that could be added to every category, if I hear of any that are working well I'll add them on! Some of the lines blur between these sites so it's quite difficult to categorise them!
Did you find this information useful?
Please let us know which of these sites are your top 3 and why, hopefully your comments will help new bloggers reading this to quickly find where it is worth spending their precious time best!
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Posts
.jpg)
