Hi all, I see quite a few etsyians who are a little unfamiliar with twitter and how it can be used to enhance their etsy shops. I get approximately 50-60% of my sales through twitter and it's a valuable tool. Here's some tips that might help you get noticed on Twitter.
1. When posting a shop listing be sure and keep your post under the 140 character limit by enough that someone can easily re tweet it for you. I usually try allow at least a 10 character margin.
2. Don't forget the hashtags in your post. hashtags are even more important if you don't yet have a large following because they are the only way someone not following you is likely to see your post. For example I often use #jewelry or #handmade with my listings. Someone searching for those terms on twitter will at least have a chance of seeing your tweet in the search results.
3 You can automate and preschedule your tweets using a tool like tweetdeck, you can also use a tool like Etsy-fu to randomly go through your listings and create and post a tweet for you at a set interval. I would recommend that you auto tweet no more than once an hour.
4. Be sure and tweet more than just your listings. People following you may get annoyed if that's all they see in your feed. I include notes on my creative process, tips for collecting rocks, my thoughts on design etc.
5. Be generous with your re tweets. It costs you nothing to re tweet fellow artists and it builds a lot of good will. If you can create a network of social media support I can guarantee your sales will go up!
6. Engage! You don't have to tweet 24/7 but you can't just create an account and add a few tweets and expect that people will flock to you. Comment, compliment, RT and share. That's what it's really all about. We as Artists and Artisans have a creative spirit that we were meant to share. Others out there value what we can give so don't hesitate to jump in!
Good luck and good tweeting everyone!
Charlie
