Sunday, May 28, 2017

My Experience with a Loop Giveaway on Instagram

To be honest, my first experience entering a loop giveaway, was not pleasant. I mean, really? I have to follow stores I'm really not interested in, and then wait a few days to a week to find out if I won? The directions were even a little screwy. Do you tag other stores on all the IG feeds you're supposed to be following? I didn't have a clue. Then I decided to join a loop giveaway to see what the fuss was about.

The Hive Handmade was the organizer. There were 8 other stores involved. At first I was a little overwhelmed with the details and preparations needed to be done for the contest. I've never really dealt with reposting yet, and have never tagged an image with an IG handle. So I learned as I went along. The organizer was very helpful, and the stores involved, were welcoming. It really felt like a camp almost, where we were all in this together.

When the contest launched, it was fun to experience so many follows and likes. At the end of the day, I'd say it was a positive experiment. I started off with 225 followers and ended up with 305 followers or so when the contest ended. Since then, I've lost a few, and gained some others reacting to my newer posts. Seems like I've been getting quite a few bots probably, following me. IGers, who don't exactly look like shops that would be following me. No doubt, looking for a reciprocal follow. Sometimes I follow, and sometimes I don't. I'm still trying to follow only those that interest me.

So, I think I'll do another one, for sure, but I'm not sure I gained followers that will necessarily be buyers from my shop.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

My Experience with Publish Craft & Etsy Hunter on Instagram

Just yesterday, Publish Craft, posted an image of my "Gold Collection" jewelry bowls, on their Instagram feed. They have 134k followers, and the average likes per image they post, is about 1k, give or take. After a couple of hours, my gold bowls image garnered 1k in likes. Not a huge change in followers. Seems the majority liked the image and that's about it. But it was still a great feeling to see the positive likes. I think it went live around 7pm EST, on a saturday night. So, overall, i'm very pleased with the back and forth with Chris, at Publish Craft, and the willingness to work with me in choosing an image to feature. I'd most likely work with them again.

Etsy Hunter, on the other hand, only gathered around 448 likes. Could it be the time of day, the image, the txt used describing my wares, or the usage of the same exact tags I used for the same image? I don't know. But there you have it. For $23, I probably won't be running back to use this form of marketing dollars. Publish Craft was having a special price break, so I got the spot for $13. Now that's a bargain.

Baby steps. And boy does it ever feel like BABY STEPS!!!

What's your experience with using these marketing companies on Instagram?

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

I'm Featured on Etsy Hunter!

Ok so, it doesn't sound as thrilling when you hear I paid $23 for the honor. But they say they "choose" who gets to be featured on their IG feed. So that means we're all really good, right? Sales galore, I'm ready for ya! Post time was at 4:24pm, to be exact. Normally, each post is getting roughly 1k likes. As far as followers, who knows. It really depends on the product, the image chosen, and the tags used. Now, get this, I noticed the tags I wrote up myself, for the image Etsy Hunter ended up choosing, were used again by Etsy Hunter! Now that was weird I thought. Shouldn't they have used their own magic mojo combination of tags that grab the most eyes? Hmmm, I'll have to enquire about that.

So, last time I checked, the post has garnered about 293 likes at 8:25pm. A few followers, but who knows who are following because of them. Maybe it's from my own feed.

Tomorrow will be like xmas morning to see how many eyeballs have liked my bowls.

Monday, May 1, 2017

Feature coming on Instagram 5/3/2017

As I continue to market myself, I decided to do one of those paid feature options I'm seeing so often on Instagram. Etsy Hunter will be feature my store for 5 days. Starting at exactly 4:24pm this Wednesday, they will pick one of my images from my IG account. Let's see how much of an impact it makes. Anyone out there go this route? What was your experience?

Still adding followers on IG, without following people just because they follow me. Of course the meanies that are just looking for me to follow are still dropping me like a hot potato once they see I'm not going to follow them. Nothing personal people!


What's My Niche?

As I continue to write freely here, by no means with any sort of schedule, I'm finding I should follow some of the steps I've been r...