It all depends! It is my opinion that anywhere you post online is a good thing for your shop and business name for SEO and name recognition. Get out there and be seen and recognized!
But, it is SO easy to twiddle your time away online chatting on various sites, so what is the balance and how do you manage it?
I have a couple of thoughts for you to ponder:
1) Anywhere you post online, if used correctly by using links to your shop and your shop name, will add to your SEO factor and make your business easier to be found.
2) There is strength found in networking with people who are your target customer market.
3) Networking can create a great support group for you and your business.
There are two types of networking - social and business. Do both.
I suggest that you also select handmade networks AND regular business networks to find potential customers everywhere.
Realize that the handmade networks are made up of mostly sellers like you. However, sellers of handmade are also buyers of handmade for products other than what they make.
Business networks are made up of businesses of all kinds, big and small, and may need to be educated on why buying handmade creates value.
I am a member of about 15-20 social and professional networking sites. It could make my head swim if I fretted about nurturing all of those!
Here is a plan:
**Keep your profiles on ALL networking sites up-to-date and visit them frequently. Even a teeny change in an edit will bump your profile up for the search engines to find again. If you don't do this, it will just lay there gasping its last breath.
**Make a list of all of them. Decide which ones you want to be involved heavily in or not. Then decide on your weekly time allowance split between all you selected, and stick to it.
**You can visit your profiles by editing one a day if you have a lot of them. That takes 3 minutes each. You can do that to boost your SEO.
**For the ones you want to be heavliy involved in, be sure to keep your links and business name before the other participants. Upload photos if allowed and use all tools available to you (photos, blogs, etc...)
Here are some networking sites to look into:
HANDMADE Networking Siteshttp://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=handmade - LIST of many
http://yourhandmade.ning.com/http://www.Byhand.mehttp://www.starvingjewelryartists.com/http://www.votehandmadehttp://www.craftjuicehttp://www.indiepublic.comhttp://www.webjam.comhttp://www.plumdrop.comhttp://chainmaillebymboi.com/forum/index.php[/list]BUSINESS Networking Sites:
http://www.linkedin.comhttp://wozone.ning.com/ (Website Owners' Zone)
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=women+business - list of sites for business women
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=business - list of networking for businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=small+business - list of networking for small businesses
http://www.ning.com/search/networks?q=home+business - list of networking for home businesses[/list]Be sure to click the "notify me when a reply is posted" below so you will know when others are added.
If you have a great networking source, post here and I will add to the list!
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