Day 20 Assignment, Bootcamp #4 - Pinterest, G+ & others

[Red Rock Designs]

Here's my Google+ ..https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/101317948585000609784/101317948585000609784/op/iph#101317948585000609784/posts

I'm having issues uploading photos.

[Jewelry by Kat]

Admin,  How do you make a friend request on facebook so I can connect with people?........Kat

[iCraft Admin]

Oh, thank you guys!   I tried to make this work for everyone
Please let me know if there is anything we could do differently next time to make things better.

I hope you will still chat on forum and make even more friends on iCraft.
As you see now, there is a power in a collective work and strength in numbers.
 
For the Next Steps:

• Please don't stop and keep following instructions for building your social media profiles.
• Blog, tweet and share thinks on various social media sites whenever you can.
• Comment on each others product pages and blog posts
• Review the rest of your pages and craft Keyword-rich Titles and Product Descriptions.
• Keep working on getting backlinks to your store, your product pages and your blog from external sites, forums or groups.
• Maybe even try to create promo videos or tutorials... Too bad we didn't spend any time on this topic. Videos are quite effective promo tool as well.
• Feel free to ask questions on forum under website questions whenever you are not sure how to optimize your pages or how to go about building backlinks.
• Please note - all the work we've done so far, will not bring immediate results. This is just a part of the foundation. Just keep doing this over time and you'll start seeing results.
• I feel like we just started doing the real work and then ran out of time.
  Technically, we could've spent on each social media site a couple of days. Instead, we rushed through those last few assignments.
  So... maybe we could take a break (let's say a month or so) and then continue with the same group? Next time we'd focus on SEO, Promotions (incl. social media), Rank monitoring, stats etc. There is a lot more to cover. Would you guys be interested in that?

Thanks for all your hard work! This group was awesome!!!  

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Kat,

There is a button in the top right corner that says "Add Friend", like on this FB Profile. When you don't see that button, you are probably looking at FB pages or groups and not on individuals' profiles. You can only "Like" or "Subscribe" to their updates. Hope this helps.

[iCraft Admin]

I'm having issues uploading photos.

Hi Bibi,
Can you please elaborate? Do you have difficulty replacing your G + banner or avatar? Or did you try to upload images?
When you want to share something on G +, you just have to paste URL of a page or an image in the "Share what's new..." field. There are also buttons beside that field to upload a photo or a video.

[iCraft Admin]

One thing I forgot to mention in regard to Google + is that you should also click on +1 button to vote for pages that you like/support. So make sure you click +1 on all Bootcampers' blog posts from your Google + accounts. Those are the social signals that Google counts when ranking pages (the more votes you have the better!).

We have G +1 buttons on most pages of our site too, so you can click on this button from iCraft as well, when viewing product or blog pages. Please vote on your own and each others pages! Thanks.

[Silver Workshop]

For some reason I just saw this post! I will work on this today, sorry about that! I also need to leave comments on people's products so I'll do that too.

[JaJeJems]

Yes, I would be interested in a continuation of the present bootcamp in the near future.  Didn't I would survive this one but its amazing what a good night's sleep can do!  Will keep in touch at least with the group and see what everyone else thinks.

Admin, I have a question.  I need to continue to work on my photos and pages.  I remember you saying that you don't need to optimize all of your pages but my question is this: about what %should you aim for?  I know that it probably isn't possible to come up with an exact amount but would I be looking at 50% or more?

[iCraft Admin]

Thanks Silver Workshop!
Everyone else who couldn't participate on some days, I'd appreciate if you could complete your tasks even later. 

[Delightful Suds]

A thank you from me as well for all the lessons and support!

I'm trying to wrap my head around Pinterest and Google +, but those 2 really confuse me and I must say I don't really understand them. But I'll do some reading on them when I get a chance. Thanks for providing the links.

I think I followed everybody back on these 2, but I'm not entirely sure as I didn't see any confirmation. My links are:

https://pinterest.com/delightful-suds/

Hmmm....I can't figure out my link for google+ 

[Red Rock Designs]

Hi, I've learned lots during the bootcamp, how to do certain things and how to do them better than I was.

I would also be interested in some continued lessons...but I think since the holidays are coming up and craft shows to get ready for...perhaps January would be a better time to continue ?  Since the bootcamp is focused on online selling and promotion and our in-person sales will most likely be slower giving us more time to focus on homework...what do you think? 

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I think my google + is all messed up.  Everything goes through my personal page instead of business.
Oh well... I'm there at least.

[JaJeJems]

Hi Fairy C I have the same issue, even though I set up a business page ,everything seems to go thru my personal page.

I like Red Rocks idea of waiting until January given that Novemeber and December will be busy.  I will however be happy to do it any time that suits the group.  I would hate to see the group lose its momentum with too long a break.  That could be a problem too.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I am interested in continuing, but also prefer afer the rush.  January should be better, in theory.  As a Chartered Accountant still working in a firm, our busiest season is Feb to April (although my office seems to be Sept to June!)

I feel like the business of an online store can be broken in to parts:
The store: things you can do behind the scenes in the store itself: SEO page optimizations, photos and descriptions, policies, etc.  We covered this with critiques and keywords (learned a lot!)
Target Market: Let's face it, your marketing efforts are wasted if you are marketing to the whole universe.  This is not online business centric but important none-the-less and there are tools and exercises we could employ to help each other define a market.  A target market is not your ONLY market, but your primary one which you must keep in mind when: designing products, marketing products, choosing keywords, choosing blog topics, choosing where you want to develop backlinks, choosing where and how to advertise, even choosing what your promotion or sale or coupon details will be when/if you have promos.  It's like your keywords for your store page: you have to pick one main on to optimize for and make the rest secondary.  Same with a target market (in my opinion, anyway).
Marketing: Link building, blogging, video stream (youtube/vimeo), photo stream (flikr, picasa, etc), and social media (twitter, FB, pinterest).  We covered blogging well, but we only scratched the surface of social media and didn't get to the more visual media (except pinterest, which is visual).
Customer Service/Engagement: Besides learning how the marketing tools function, how do you connect with customers and create actual engagement?  This is not unique to selling online, but there may be different steps to acheiving this online than in person.
Monitoring: Stats!  Traffic Stats.  Keyword replacementes used to find you.  Online mentions (backlink monitoring). Geographical stats. Time stats. Etc.  Most popular____ (product, blog post, etc.)

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm not thinking of.  This list was just off the cuff.  I'm not suggesting there be a bootcamp that does ALL of this, but it's something we can pick and choose on.  I'm also not suggesting all bootcampers should do ALL marketing.  There are limitations and fit to consider in my opinion.

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Delightful Suds,

Yes, please read more about Pinterest and Google +. Those 2 are quite useful in terms of promotions and driving traffic. I wish we spent more time on them during this Bootcamp. Your Google + Profile URL would look something like this https://plus.google.com/b/107064505335326844017/101814751773013099994