April Trend Challenge!

********************** WE HAVE A WINNER!!! THERE WILL BE A SHOP FEATURE HERE ON THIS BLOG SOON. PLEASE KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR A LOVELY FEATURE ON: 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Peelirohini   ***********************

  CONGRATS Peeli !!!



The Promotional Frenzy Team wants to help online small businesses sell their products through smart marketing. One way you can really help the visibility of your shop is by keeping up with current trends. If your shop has items each month that people are looking for, and you tag them appropriately you should get good traffic just from listing and tagging items with current trends!

With that in mind we will be giving Challenges to help Inspire and Motivate you to keep your shop current. For this challenge, there is a list below of trends to watch for this Spring. Your challenge:  Make 1 NEW item for your shop inspired by something in the list below.

Once you have made a piece, list it in your shop, tag it with the trend keywords and then POST YOUR NEW ITEM in the Comments of this blog!  

We would really love it if you would add to your description of your listing, "Inspired by The Promo Frenzy Trend Challenge: http://promofrenzyteam.blogspot.com/2012/03/april-trend-challenge.html "

With links to your items on our blog and links in your item listings to our blog we should all receive valuable back-links for our shops and wonderful exposure!

 You have to post a link to the comments of this blog NO LATER THAN MARCH 27th Midnight (eastern/etsy time). We will pick a winner at random (using random.org ) from the links posted in the comments.  The winner will be announced and given a feature on the blog on April 4th.

 ****** LIMIT OF 2 ENTRIES ******

WE ENCOURAGE you to make treasuries based on these trends, and include the people who post links in this blog!  Tag: Promofrenzy for extra exposure!!  You can feel free to post the treasuries in a comment here too!

COLOR  TRENDS

1.  Caramel Colors

2.  Coral

3.  Peach

4.  Banana

5.  Orange/tangerine

6.  Total White (all white)

THEMES / PATTERNS

1.  Floral Prints

2.  Blooming flowers

3.  Animal Prints

4.  Print Mixes

5.  Sea Inspired (shell, pearl, crystals)

6.  Ethnic (fringe, feathers, bright pops of colors)

HOLIDAYS

1.  April Fools (pranks and jokes) - April 1st

2.  Good Friday -  April 6th 

3.  Passover - April 7th

4.  Easter (eggs, pastel colors, bunnies) -  April 8th

5.  Patriot's Day - April 16th

  ALL THE DETAILS (Other)

1.  Spring Weddings

2.  April Birthstone - DIAMONDS

3.  April Zodiac Signs - April 1st - 19th Aries   April 20th - Taurus

4.  Cropped Tops and Hot Pants

5.  Asymmetrical designs

6.  Lace Dresses

7.  Pleats

8.  Multi-layer Necklace

9.  Boatneck Tops

10.  Boudoir Fashion - (slinky fabrics, lace trim, ruffles, revealing necklines, and splits)

*****  We will update this as Etsy Posts April Merchandising Trends.

HAVE FUN and get creating!

From your Promo Frenzy Team

Promo Frenzy BNR - 03/20

At 4pm Etsy time our BNR will open!  You can find the link to the BNR and ALL the SALES and SPECIALS here:

http://www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team/discuss/9992856/

If you want to be notified of future BNR's by Promo Frenzy at the top Right of this blog is a link to subscribe to our notifications!

HAPPY SALES!

Promo Frenzy Team

http://www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team

Tagging - Help Buyers Find You

What are Tags?

Understanding tagging and the importance of tagging can help you become more visible.
Tagging on Etsy and many websites is a way to attach keywords to your listing.  The tags are mainly used for the internal search engine of each site.  Meaning your tags are for people using Etsy's search engine, not Google or other search engines.  Although it is said the top few tags can pop up on external search engines such as Google.  TAGS are important in your listings but also in your treasuries.

Determining the Tags to Use

The key to making your tags work for your shop are you have to know what customers are looking for.  What will a target customer type into a search to find your item?

This is very challenging to figure out. But here is a HUGE trick:

Go to the Etsy homepage and use their search bar.  Start typing in a word for one of your products.  If you sell pearl jewelry you may want to just start typing pearl, as you type a few letters you will notice Etsy starts to finish the word and add words for you.  These fill in words are based upon the most recent searches performed on Etsy.  If recently people were searching rose pearl jewelry, as you type in pearl you will see rose pearl jewelry pop up.  This tells you what people are searching for, and if you can apply those words to your listing you should!

Making the Most of Your Tags

1.  Use ALL 13 slots for your tags.  13 tags gives each listing 13 ways to be found, plus your keywords in your title help too!  So every keyword is precious!

2.  Use your shop name for a few tags throughout your shop.  This way if someone is searching for your shop they will find you. 

3.  New Etsy Relevancy searches means you want to reinforce your keywords from your title.  So the 1st few words of your title should be the MOST important keywords. Those keywords SHOULD be repeated in the 1st few tags of your listing.  

4.  Vary your tags from listing to listing for maximum exposure.  Even if you have 20 cards in your shop, try to vary the tags in each listing.  This way you can cover 100's of possible searches. 

5.  Make sure you use colors for your tags.  Color searches are very popular for several reasons. One is customers are looking for trends, especially for special occasions.  But another reason is to help with treasury exposure.  Here are some great resources to help you come up with shades of each color:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors

Pantone sets many trends for colors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantone

6.  Lastly check out this blog on Etsy for wonderful ideas on what to use for your tags.  We all have trouble figuring out 13 words to fill all the spots.  So this will help when you are stuck.

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2009/seller-how-to-tag-o-rama-with-descriptive-keywords/

You have to be visible and help your customers find your product.  This can be time consuming to do but worth the effort.

Treasury Tuesday

Promotional Frenzy Team and Activities

Want to know what the Promotional Frenzy Team is, and what they do?
Do you want more exposure to your etsy shop?  Do you need more views, sales, and improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
A team on Etsy is starting to help you:  “Promotional Frenzy”
We are a group/team of people wanting to combine our efforts to gain more than we could on our own.  The heart of this group is for promotions.  We are a very nice group, and supportive and will help each other as much as we can, but the idea is to gain more momentum to the shops who participate.
Each day a new thread is started by a team leader.  The very 1st post of the thread gives the details for that days activities.  Any important information is highlighted in the threads to make it as easy as possible for teammates to know what is going on.

TEAM REQUIREMENTS

REQUIREMENTS: Must have required social networking accounts set up PRIOR to joining PFT.

1. You have to participate in a minimum of TWO activities per week which is approximately a 60 minutes for the week sometimes more.
2. You must be willing to put in consistent effort into improving your shop. This can entail creating new product lines, listing more inventory, working on product photography, improving on keywords and placements of those keywords etc.
3. You must be willing to use social networking sites, and be willing to try new ones as we grow and evolve. No business will be successful OR stay successful if they become stagnant. So the sites we use will change and/or grow over time.
Minimum requirements for social networking sites:
A.  www.stumbleupon.com – For instructions to set up and account:   http://galla15.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-is-stumbling-and-how-you-can-use.html
B.  www.twitter.com
C.  www.flickr.com
D. www.pinterest.com 
Other optional networks (squidoo, kaboodle)
HIGHLY recommended: Facebook and kaboodle. Digg is great for the Blog activity. GOOGLE BUZZ is the next big thing, so please seriously consider this.
4. You must post in our social networking thread all of your social networks so that we can follow each other.

5.  Provide your Email address and sign up for our Team Newsletter once you join the team.
This way even if a shop is on vacation we are able to make sure all members have the most up to date information. This will eliminate confusion when important changes are made. Anyone not signed up or that removes themselves from this newsletter will be removed. We won’t be spamming people only important updates will be sent out.
6. You must have a blog, and have it set up prior to joining.
7. You must join these 2 treasury teams (there are no requirements or additional tasks to do for these treasury teams- just if you want them to click and comment on yours, you must click and comment on theirs)
Read their rules for details or see our thread here -
www.etsy.com/teams/7512/promotional-frenzy-team/discuss/75625­96/page/1/
TPT – http://www.etsy.com/teams/7288/treasury-promotion-team
Click & Comment – http://www.etsy.com/teams/8963/click-comment/members?page=

LIST OF TEAM ACTIVITIES

MONDAY – We have a list for team members to add an item to, and then the list is promoted via social networks.

TUESDAY – One week is a team BNR the next week is team treasuries

WEDNESDAY – Blog Day

THURSDAY – List a NEW Item challenge.  List is promoted via social networks.

FRIDAY – Casual Friday, we set up various activities each week that help improve our Etsy shops (Ex. work on tags, photo’s, networking etc.)

SATURDAY and SUNDAYS are off days.

***Feel free to share your social networking links, blog links, flickr links etc. And when someone posts a new item you can help promote that item then, you don’t have to wait for an event to promote.  The key is to stay for awhile and network and participate in all the events you can.****

Final note: if only a handful of us participate in these events there will not be a payoff.  So nothing is required but if you want to see success it would be highly benefical to get involved and do what you can.  The list of events is only a guide.  You can still list any day you want, blog anytime you want etc.  And please feel free to chat and have fun anytime. 

CHECKLIST TO APPLY TO THE TEAM:

1.  Sign up for team newsletter

2. Have twitter, stumbleupon, flickr, pinterest accounts set up

3.  Have a blog setup

4.  Be willing to give minimum of 60 minutes a week to promoting/networking