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Does Moving In Social Media Circles Support Your Clay Career?


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I haven't done anything with it. I have an Etsy account and I sold some on it. I just haven't lately due to the , it's complicated, issues. But I will be getting back on soon. And when I posted a picture on FB I had some friends that shop Etsy and they bought some of my stuff.

 

I think it's a numbers game, as you said, getting 5000. On FB, I think that's all they allow, but on the others you can reach many more, but FB is a goto social media for most.  Another thing about media is that you can meet some people that can help promote your brand, as they say. I think it's a viable outlet for making sells. It's so viable, in fact, that the SBA and SBDC now offer classes for using social media as a marketing tool. I found them at my City Chamber of Commerce. 

 

I'm glad you asked this question. it was on my mind. It's good to see the many answers you got here. I am learning. Thanks. 

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Marko: so you are content with Etsy? We once had a thread here discussing etsy and other online shops and the opinions were very varied. Do you still have the etsy account? Can't find you. I just wanted to have a look what kind of ceramics you are making.

Regarding FB: I am not interested in befriending people who only accumulate numbers ("friends"). With the ones I connected, there is a flowing exchange of ideas and helpful tips.

In my town the university and also other schools offer courses in social media: how to use them and not going lost... Surely a good thing for people who are new to the media.

You are welcome! I hope to see you more often in the "Question of the Week" part of the forum.

 

Evelyne

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Marko: so you are content with Etsy? We once had a thread here discussing etsy and other online shops and the opinions were very varied. Do you still have the etsy account? Can't find you. I just wanted to have a look what kind of ceramics you are making.

Regarding FB: I am not interested in befriending people who only accumulate numbers ("friends"). With the ones I connected, there is a flowing exchange of ideas and helpful tips.

In my town the university and also other schools offer courses in social media: how to use them and not going lost... Surely a good thing for people who are new to the media.

You are welcome! I hope to see you more often in the "Question of the Week" part of the forum.

 

Evelyne

Hi Evelyne, I am putting together new items for Etsy. I have been off for a while due to many, as some would say, "It's complicated," personal issues, but I have been getting back into it. I am a vegan, so I sell vegan ware. I know this seems a bit limiting, but I know there is a growing desire for vegan items. And being a vegan is important to me. I will post some new items soon. You can find me as Marko Ceramics. I am also working on a website. That's very complicated, but something I want to do. I haven't made a lot of sales, but I know I will do more. My biggest problems are past me not so I think I can get back in the game. 

I went to you web page and I really was impressed. Beautiful works of art. I would love to pit fire sometime. I just don't know when. I love your pictures showing some of your process. Your a very advanced artist. It shows in you work and your descriptions.

I think I am bipolar or something. Because I have many days I don't do anything and some days you have to drag me out of my shop. I wish I could focus on just making artworks instead of worrying about making money. I know I ranting. I do that. 

Anyway, I will let you know when I get something done. Thanks for your inspiration and questions. I love these people in PC. They, too, have really found a passion. Thank you and many blessing and success your way. Marko

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Marko: I will be on the lookout for your etsy site. Thank you for your compliment, I appreciate your kind words! What I'am doing is my passion and that shows in my work. I've put a lot of money in my website (a young professional graphic designer made it for me) but I think it is worth it.

If I were you, I would not be afraid that you are bipolar (if it wasn't verified that is). That happens to all of us, that we have days we procrastinate, and other days that we work almost round the clock in the studio. Just do what you like to do, whenever you like to do it, and everything will be fine. I definitely would be happy to see your work in the Potters Council gallery. All the best for you too. I love to see you posting in the forum!

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

The Canton MS flea market is May 14.  I am spearheading a Face Book campaign which will start around May 5.  Myself and about 6 other flea market vendors are planning on promoting on FB between our group.    We will be bantering back and forth about our products, promoting attendance to the flea market as well as our products.   I've sent around "planned posts".   It will start with me asking another vendor about their new products.    Other vendors chirping in, with all of us posting new pictures.  This was my idea ... we'll see how it goes.

 

 

Sharon Grimes

^This was an epic fail.  I made posts on two other vendor's Face Book pages.    Only one of the two vendors responded.    A short dialog, certainly nothing that prompted many customers.  I did get 2 or 3 sales from reminding my customers about the Canton Flea Market.  But with no participation among vendors, nothing of consequence was accomplished.

 

I'm not giving up on the idea that social media could be beneficial to this event.  I outlined a campaign for the October event and it will be presented to the organizers.  Here's a cut and paste from my first draft.

 

 1.  Create a "brand" for our area "The Catholic Church" . This flea market has (supposedly ) about 1000 vendors, all in different areas and we want "The Catholic Church" area to be a recognizable destination point.

     We will mark the area with coordinating banners and signs, same font, lime green, black and white hopefully creating brand recognition and awareness.

 

2.  Increase brand awareness by creating a Face Book page entitled "The Canton Flea Market Catholic Church".  The FB page will try to friend all 100 plus vendors in this area.  Hopefully getting 75 to participate.    The FB page will be introduced in the application packet.  Vendors will start "liking" this page and other Canton Flea Market FB pages 2-3 weeks before the event.    Emphasis on "saving the date",  increasing primary demand (getting people to come to The Canton Flea Market).   I think that the central FB page will be key to the success.

 

3.  Create selective demand for Catholic Church vendors by featuring products on the Face Book page, hopefully sharing and liking among 20K of  Face Book friends.    Objective here is for customers to see items they want to purchase and make a destination shopping trip to attend the flea market and to specifically come to the Catholic Church to see/buy these featured products.  We will ask vendors to post pictures of their best products.   A target number would be 3 to 5 pictures from 60 vendors.

 

4.  On the day before the flea market, someone I know that has 8K of followers on Instagram will snap pictures of interesting products and displays and send them around.  Target number of pictures 200-300.  Hopefully creating more selective demand.

 

I'm sure I'll work on this a little more.  Just my initial thoughts which I've sent to the Chairman of the Event. 

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Evelyn

(Mark: I'am happy for you that you sell your ceramics outside social media with no problems. Are you going to fairs often?)

 

After doing shows for over 40 years one develops a large customer base at the same shows. This base builds over time.People want to add to what they have as well as new customers find you. I have about a 40% return base at most shows with some over 50% like my local two shows I have done for over 40 years.

No amount of social media will do this for me at this stage in my career.

When I was in my 20's 30,s 40,s and 50,s I averaged 12 shows a year plus as I have always mentioned I have some wholesale and consignment outlets.

Now I'm down to 7 shows per year- (4 are out of state,Ca) all I have done repeatedly for many many decades so my customer base is big.

As I have downsized (not doing a petaculair show somewhere) I walked away from large customers bases-this has happened in Denver and San Francisco area as I gave up my show in those areas as well as few others.

I still get orders from customers from those areas.

My plan is to get to 5 shows per year very soon.

What I have also found is many shows after a long term go sideways usually with a NEW director who re-envents the wheel.

That is a big issue these days for myself and fellow profesionals in this field.Its what my peers all talk about these days.

As a V.P. board member who puts on a local art show the past 43 years I have some backside knowledge as well about what it takes for shows.

I also will not put up with change that I know will hurt sales or wreck shows or is greedy.

I can afford to be picky at this point in my career.I cannot think for one moment what I might get out of taking the time to promote myself on social media. I'd rather spend that time here on this forum helping others from pitfalls I have already fallen into or making pots.

After doing production pottery for so long the selling of it really is the easy part for me at this point. Keeping all my outlets constantly supplied is the harder part as I only take on what I can do well. I have learned this over a long learning curve.

In my area shops and galleries cannot find funtional potters work to sell anymore as no one is replacing the older potters now retiring.

Seems young folks do not want to work that hard  anymore or thats my guess. Maybe they are to busy with facebook or twitter to make pots?

The real secret is that people pay me to make pots in my studio when ever I want to go work there-now thats a dream  I had at 18 thats come true. It was not always this easy but after the first 10 lean years its been great. Now I want to go there a bit less as I have many interests.

Mark

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Dirt Roads/Sharon    Sorry for the disappointment. I think the let-down is sad and even painful when we put ourselves out there, and offer so much, and then there is no response or lukewarm response or (the worst) an enthusiastic BS response with no follow-through. Hope you post updates after you get a response from the organizers.

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Sharon: that must have been a disappointment all right. But you know, the idea is very interesting and I'm sure you will be successfull with it, but maybe you have to try again one or two times until other vendors see the positive. I think you are on a very good road and I want to encourage you to follow your gut feeling! All the best for next time!!

 

MarkC: Yes, 40 years of experience in organizing and carry out fairs is a lot and I think one should listen to experts like you. I have a friend, living in Florida, her name is Brenda McMahon, and she's doing a lot of shows and fairs too and she is very successfull and sells always very good. She has a professional website and she sells also through her website. 

And, as you say, a website can point possible customers to fairs too. To be honest: I seldom heard that a ceramist got customers only through social media like fb or Twitter or how they are called. I wish you that you can reach your goal of 5 fairs/year! All the best.

 

Evelyne

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Sorry, but I don't use social media, like Facebook or LinkedIn. I don't get it.

A lot of any information I need comes from maybe a web site, which I don't have

or want. I am on Facebook only because a pottery acquaintance said I needed to

keep up with her. Her Facebook page is all about her pottery and dogs, which I used to find out by CALLING her. Social media needs to rightly called "antisocial

media". My fb account is my initials and my Tablet automatically gives

me access to Facebook, which I don't particularly like. Fb tracks every key stroke

and I don't particularly like that, so I use it sparingly. I guess I'm just an

old dinosaur who could care less about meteors. :)

My past social media was a business card, which I no longer have. I've been

to craft shows that had free booths and others which were $500. Can't say which

was better. When and if I go to craft shows I never tell another potter I make

pottery. I'm there to observe.

I seldom if ever do craft shows, I will attend an event of historical significance. There is an event in Nashville I might attend in November. The

event, S.E.A.C,( Southeastern Archaeological Conference)

will be my extent of social media.

See ya,

Alabama

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  • 1 month later...

I don't use FB very often ... in fact you can see where I've only posted a couple times this year.  However, I had customers calling about my studio hours for July 3 & 4, wanting to bring out of town guests.  So I made a post and added a few pictures.

 

https://www.facebook.com/115707868509343/photos/a.585908001489325.1073741826.115707868509343/890757277671061/?type=1&theater

 

Nothing great ... as you can see.  That ^ photo has reached over 1900 people.   Today 5 new customers came to the studio because either the customer or someone they knew saw that we were going to be open today.   And some returns because they saw the open hours message.   Around $800 in sales, which is pretty good, especially considering that I was closed last year.  And Friday was a record day too.   Only thing I wish I was closing at 5:00 so I could go to the family outing now, instead of waiting another hour.

 

Yeah, I have to say it works.   One key thing is not to overuse it.  I really need to learn how to get rid of my personal page and only use the DirtRoads page but I'm not sure exactly how to do this.   AND I want it to be Dirt Roads with a space.  When I first started this I thought it would be neat to run the words together .. it's NOT.   Just causes spelling confusion.   I've been in the process of separating the 2 words.  Again, I think it's key not to over use this.

 

So ... here I am poking around, waiting until 6:00 pm.  Pretty sure I'm done with customers for the day. 

 

Main page

 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/DirtRoads-Pottery/115707868509343?fref=photo

 

As you can see ... the number of reaches increases drastically with "shares".   And photo's have way more impact than words.  And reach decreases as you add more photo's.  Sort of a diminishing return effect.  For some reason, customers jumped on and shared the red photo.  Something to be learned here:   A FEW good photo's, not used that often and directed toward a specific objective (letting people know store is open on July 3 & 4).   I think this same approach would direct customers to a show.  I still have much to learn about this.

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Re: Facebook "dirtroads", theoretically you "should" be able to add that space by going to Settings and re-entering the name as a first name in one field and a last name in the other field, instead of as all one word. 

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Re: Facebook "dirtroads", theoretically you "should" be able to add that space by going to Settings and re-entering the name as a first name in one field and a last name in the other field, instead of as all one word. 

 

Thanks!  It's been changed!   That photo is up to 2200 views now.

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  • 3 months later...

Dragging this back up ...  I mentioned trying to start a face book campaign for my section at the Canton Flea Market.  The Catholic Church.    As mentioned last spring, the "campaign" consisted of me making a few floundering remarks.  We did it again.  Flea Market was yesterday.  Here's the page:

 

https://www.facebook.com/CantonFleaMarketCatholicChurch?fref=ts

 

Quite a few posts from vendors.   You can see I'm at the bottom.   I did get 500 plus website visits from the page.   I know 3 vendors got direct sales from the page.    I had several calls about specific items on my website and some people came in the booth to see them.   And a few customers told me they had never shopped the church area before.   We also did some banners and yard signs.  For sure, we created a "brand" for our area and created location awareness.  And several customers said our banners and signs made our section easy to find ... there are over 1000 vendors at this bi-annual event.

 

The page only got 261 likes and I will admit that I was the main "liker" and "sharer" on most of the photos but I felt it was a good start.     You might notice my merchandise is at the bottom of  page, one of the first posts, and I didn't post again.   I didn't want it to look like self promotion .... but, every time I used "dirt roads pottery" I got a link to my facebook page.   Which accounted for the increased web traffic.

 

This could definitely be used to get customers to save the date for shows.   Maybe even get some new customers to come to an event.

 

Attached:  Our banners and signs ... we're using this as a brand identity.   Vendors banding together and sharing customers ... just like back in the day of the power inside malls.

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