To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

[Orchiada]

I am trying my best to maximize my exposure and gain business. I love my art (I make handmade jewelry), but I also know that it is a saturated market. However, I am head over heels in love with my business, and am 100% devoted to making it work. I have a fb page for my business, I also blog (need to be a little more regular) and I am on pinterest and wanelo. I am on teams here and participate in forums here on etsy..... I was wondering should I also open a twitter account.... Can you all give me a little advice on using twitter, i.e., would you recommend it? If you use it do you or have you seen beneficial results? Would it be worth my time to be on another social networking platform? Any and all suggestions and help is welcomed!!

[PiecesofMeCardsnMore]

I have a Twitter account but to be honest, I hardly ever log in and post something manually. My FB page and my blog both feed to my Twitter. My blog has been neglected for the past several months. It never saw much action. I got busy and decided it wasn't worth trying to compete for views with bigger blogs that are sponsored by companies. I'd rather focus my energy on my shop than on a blog. That being said, my Twitter looks like it's active but the person behind it does very little with it.

[Former_Member]

I am kinda the same as Judy, I send links of my items and get pretty good views from Twitter. I think it depends on your market as well , Twitter is becoming popular again for the younger crowd.

[Orchiada]

ok thanks Judy and Jackie, still undecided

[PiecesofMeCardsnMore]

I agree that it's more popular with the young crowd. I'm 50-something so I like Facebook. The younger ones are getting away from FB and finding other social sites. My daughter and her friends (teenagers) don't use anything but Instagram and Twitter.

[AttentionGetting]

Hi Sheena

For selling jewelry and any fashion accessory, Tumblr and Instagram are really the way to go.

[Orchiada]

ok, I looked at tumblr before and started opening an account but couldn't figure it out.... so I never used it, maybe I need to take a second look. I haven't checked out instagram, a lot of my friends have instagram and use it for personal stuff, posting pics etc, but I never checked it out to use for business or personal either, for that matter. So I'll take a look at that too. Thanks!

[Former_Member]

I just opened an account (@TarrenMari) and I find it totally hard to get followers and it's just an odd platform.

[Former_Member]

I adore Twitter as a social media platform, but I use it for more than just promoting my work. I also blog, which I consider its own thing, and I have a Facebook page but I kind of suck at it. I've never managed to get any traffic from tumblr but twitter is great for me for networking and interacting with fellow bloggers and small business owners. I love the chats and things. Can't give you hard cold stats as to whether it's helped my business though - I just enjoy it a lot. I love interacting with people and reading the people I follow.

That said, it took me like two years to get the hang of Twitter on my personal account, and I only started REALLY milking it for social interaction about a year ago. You have to decide if it's worth the effort if you don't feel comfortable on it right away.

[Former_Member]

Then, if any of you use social media, how often should the postings happen?

Anyone knows any good program to auto-tweet? I am not lazy: just figuring out ways to maximize opportunities :)

[Orchiada]

Ok I appreciate your input I think I may give it a go, if it doesn't work I can always not use it, right?!

Quynh, I always hear it should be regular but not like to overdo it or nothinglike that. I've heard some say at least once a week, I also think that it is up to you and what do have that is "post worthy" to keep people engaged. However, I am by far no expert, as you can see, LOL considering that I started this thread and also poste this question in the etsy forums as far as twitter is concerned, LOL Oh and someone mentioned to me in the forum that there is an etsy app called EtsyFU that you can use to set up automatic tweets, the seller told me the first month is free then after that if you like it there is a small fee to use it. I haven't checked it out yet, but I plan to do so. So happy social networking :) and happy sales :)

[Former_Member]

Re: scheduling tweets, there's a lot of blog posts about it. I've heard a lot about HootSuite and TweetDeck. It's not automatic but they're both free.

[Orchiada]

Thanks Lix, I checked out your twitter page, cool! :)

[Former_Member]

I've been active on twitter for longer than I've had my shop open (5+ years) and I absolutely love it!

The key to making twitter work for you is to consider exactly what it is.

Think of twitter as a huge cocktail party. When you first arrive (create an account) you don't know anyone at all. So you very softly say 'hi' to a few people and jump into a few conversations.

As the time passes you meet more and more people who have the same interests as you and you start to follow what they have to say. And in turn, others like what you have to say and start following you.

But if you go to that cocktail party and the first thing you do is scream at the top of your lungs ""Look what I'm selling""" chances are that you will be pretty much ignored.

And the other thing to remember is that if you are auto tweeting and don't log in to the account every now and then, how are you going to reply to any inquiries on twitter?

I've seen many many wonderful items that have been tweeted but when I reply to the tweet I've never got a response.

So if you are really interested in interacting with your customers then twitter MAY be the right platform for you. But if all you are wanting to do is to post link after link, you can probably get as much exposure by joining one of the many promo teams right here on Etsy.

Just my 2 cents.

[WilliamsGiftshop]

Looks to me like you've got too much going on already.

My personal opinion about social media, or simply any online platform, pick 1 or 2 and make the most of them.
It works much better than doing lots of things halfheartedly, just because you think you are supposed to do them.

I don't do any of the popular social media sites, yet I make sales.
Don't let anybody fool you that you should join all te big crowds in order to make sales. You don't need to drown in huge crowds of people in order to stand out from the crowd. To the contrary!

You need to define your target market and let them know about your shop.
And you need to make good use of keywords (SEO), so your target market can find your shop.

[Orchiada]

Thanks Crochetgal for the avice on going on twitter.

Also thank you BeaG, that is a very good thought, Though it is another avenue, I figured I can give it a try an see if I get any results from it and if not then at least I will know it to continue or not with that avenue.

Thank you so much for your feedback

[katherinefathisilver]

The grand unified theory of social media seems to be promote without seeming to promote. This gets on my nerves. I use facebook to visit with friends on a variety of subjects and I have a facebook business page. I don't share much on the business page beyound posting new work. Someday I may try making tutorials on a blog or something, but for right now I just share the stuff I make on the business page and very occasionally share business stuff on my personal page. I also have a board on pinterest just for my jewelry.