Rachel brings up some good points that I would like to expand upon. Many team members contact me to ask how they can increase their sales, and usually when I look at their shops, the one thing that stands out is that they usually have very few "followers" and are also not "following" many other Etsy shops outside of the team. To have a "following" on Etsy is the same concept as having a lot of "followers" on Facebook. There are more eyes seeing the items that you are favoriting such as during a Team Blitz. BUT it is also important to have a lot of sellers who are also "favoriting" your shop so that they can also see your new or renewed item listings. You need sellers who are doing both -- "following" your shop and "favoriting" your shop and not just favoriting your items. This is how you expand your reach on Etsy and increase your potential for sales.
You definitely should have team members among your "followers," but it's important to go beyond the team and encourage other Etsy sellers to "follow" you, too.
A lot of the difficulties we're having as a team in terms of being able to reach out to customers beyond our own circles is that we each have to take time to increase our individual Etsy presence by gaining followers outside of our own team.
The same is true of social networking. If all we are doing is "following" other team members on Facebook and Twitter and not reaching out to expand our reach beyond our team members -- well then, we're preaching to the choir when it comes to promoting our events whether on Etsy or off.
A lot of team members do not yet have business Facebook pages or are unsure how to gain Facebook followers if they don't have many Facebook friends. These are things we can discuss in the forum pages and help each other overcome -- and we will be discussing these things as 2015 approaches.
So.... what I would like to encourage EVERYONE to do is to use the next few months to expand your reach on Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, etc., beyond your own team members. This way, when we have future team events, the promotional effort that is expended goes way beyond what we are currently able to achieve. It will feel less like hitting a brick wall!
Also Cory -- I am not sure what coupon code you were telling your customers to use, but the code for the event was COUNTRYFAIR. The title of the event was NORTH GEORGIA COUNTRY FAIR and it was advertised as such to let people know we were promoting North Georgia sellers. I realize you are a newer member and this was your first event since joining the team and that you might not have been aware of where to find all the specific information.
For the benefit of other new members, you can find anything you need to know about an event on the team's informational blog at:
http://www.teamnorganews.wordpress.com. Lindsey of A Beautiful Simplicity does an exceptional job of promoting the team on Facebook. Her way of doing so is very creative and captivating, and I would encourage team members to take a look at what she is doing so that we can all learn from her. Thank you, Lindsey!