March Team Meeting Madness!

March's team meeting was another great one. We discussed the basics of starting a blog and what's involved in writing posts and adding content. We also got a basic walk through of twitter and how you can weave together the two to get people to notice you as an artist, your shop and your products. We also went through a few Etsy features like google analyitics, alchemy and etsy mini. Social marketing is important, because it's a cheap and fairly easy way to get your name out there, all it costs is time. All great bloggers started small and grew their audiences - if they can do it we can too!

As a new feature of our team we are going to issue a challenge for the month ahead. In the coming weeks everyone is invited to participate by creating something for your personal shop that follows a theme. The theme for April's meeting is Springtime which is fitting since Easter is just a few weeks away. You can incorporate this theme into an item for your shop through use of spring colors, icons of spring like flowers or baby animals, or even weather patterns :) Then when we meet in April, we'll show and tell about our items and the inspirations and post pics of the items on the team blog.

As a heads up for next meeting, April 8th, we're planning to discuss local in home shows and marketing. We working towards having our first show by May and Bonnie(daysgonebyinc) has volunteered her home as the location. Be thinking about ways we can advertise and spread the word about our team to our friends and the community so they can learn about the joys of buying hand made! Another item we want to discuss at the meeting is membership. Do we want to limit our group to only etsy shop owners, or do we want to reach out to other craftspeople of Cache Valley. What are the pros and cons of both sides? Bring your thoughts and we'll figure it out together.

The April 8th meeting will be held at Jen's home(sparroworiginals) in Logan at 7pm. I'll send an email around with the address when we get closer. I don't want to post her home address for the whole world to see.

Thanks again to everyone that came and I hope to see even more of you next month!

Blaire

PS If you want to participate in the themed challenge but end up not being able to make it to the meeting, just email me a photo of the item and a brief summary and we'll show, tell and post on your behalf.