Rabbit Hollow Prims: Twitter- Branding Your Etsy Business 140 Characters at a Time

Written on Handmade Spark....wanted to share

Effectively Using Twitter to Brand your Etsy Business:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. wiki

Branding over time: Twitter allows you to post only 140 characters at a time, so you have to keep in mind your overall long term goal. Are you using Twitter as a marketing tool or just for personal use? If your long term goal is to use Twitter as a tool to add to your marketing toolbox, you want to leave your personal posts out. Your customers don’t care if you are going to the grocery store. Keep in mind that you are building a footprint with the Twitter community. Set your long term goal and stick with it.

Twitter Background:

One of the first steps you should take in branding is designing a custom background for your Twitter channel/page. Twitter gives us tons of real estate and we should be using it to our advantage. As Etsy sellers we should have pictures of our products and text that points to your website, facebook , blog, and shops.

If are not able to design your own Twitter background I would suggest looking for a designer to design one for you. You can also find free backgrounds at Twitter Backgrounds.
Here is a great tutorial that shows you how to create a Twitter background using Power Point

What should you be tweeting about?

You should be posting new items in your Etsy shop. This will keep people updated on what is going on in your shop. You can also post sales, deals…anything related to your shop. I like to post every time I list a new item. You should also be tweeting about things you find around the web. This will keep your Twitter channel diverse and fun to read.
Twitter also allows you to interact with customers in a unique way… so make sure to be active!
1.Interactive posts:
Just like the forums on Etsy…you should try some interactive posts. I have created the “Lunch Time Series” on my channel which includes…Top 10 Monday…Saturday Super Shop Feature…and Mid-Week Etsy Feature. All three of these are promoting other shops, and never my own. Each one of these have generated thousands of hits and many sales for other shops . I do promote my own information…like blog posts and items in my Etsy shop. Building a readership takes more than spamming your followers…you have to provide them something to look forward to when they see your posts.
2. Ask for help:
This can fall under the interactive category also. You can ask for opinions on products…just like the Critique section of the Etsy forums.
3. Promote your blog:
I also like to promote my blog on twitter. If you are more focused on the marketing side…be sure your blog is headed in the same direction.
4. Interact and Retweet your followers:
If you are really looking to build your Twitter following and have your Twitter channel become an effective tool to market your Etsy shop, you need to interact with your followers. If they respond to a tweet of your you need to respond back. They took the time to do so, and so should you. Also when you start to retweet what your folowers are tweeting about the likely hood of them reciprocating a retweet is high. When you are picking tweets to retweet keep in mind your audience/followers. Make sure your retweets are something your followers are going to want to see.
There are thousands of business using Twitter as a marketing tool…here are just a few that come to mind:
Woot – a popular online retailer will often post their newest deals
JetBlue- they will post their promo deals
New York Times- news
BBC -news
Apple- news and deals
Managing and growing your Followers:
Find targeted followers to follow to grow your following. I like to use a few different sites to find my targeted followers.
First is Tweepi.com, and this is by far the best twitter tool out there to manage your Twitter followers. You can clean up your followers and find very targeted channels to follow.

Tweepi’s Cleanup tool is awesome. You can search your followers by many different criteria to weed out spammers and inactive accounts.

Second is Handmade Spark, here you can find super targeted Twitter pages in the handmade scene. You can search many different categories and drill through 600+ listings to find Twitter channels to follow. Along with Twitter channels to follow you will find blogs to follow and Facebook pages to fan.

Lastly is Wefollow.com, and this is another place to find those targeted Twitter pages you want to follow.

Everyone loves tools….. here are a few Twitter tools that I use.

TweetStats provides colorful graphs on month-to-month Twitter use, daily and hourly tweets, people replied to most, interfaces preferred for individual Twitter users. I love this tool…it is easy to use and it looks cool!

Search Twitter – With this tool, you can find out what is happening right now. This search tool is on the Twitter site, and is a great way to keep updated on the latest trends.

Hoot Suite – Manage your Twitter accounts and other social media accounts all in one place. I love to schedule my Tweets and shorten my urls. Hoot Suite rocks!

Twitt(url)y – Twitturly is a service for tracking what URLs people are talking about as they talk about them on Twitter. To keep things fresh and the quality high, twitturly only shows the 100 most popular URLs over the last 24 hours. The 24 hours are constantly sliding and we have an advanced algorithm in place so you always see what people are currently talking about. Another cool option is you can filter out Tweets by language.

Twistori- This little tool is a complete time waster..but really COOL! You have to check it out!

One Forty : 2531 Twitter tools that make Twitter more useful for your business, career or life.

Quick Do’s and Don’t s
1. Do use Twitter to promote your Etsy shop…items…sales…coupons…giveaways
2. Do use Twitter to create a brand/footprint for your Etsy business
3. Do promote your Twitter channel all over. My Twitter
4. Do interact with your readers

5. Don’t be a spammer. You don’t need to post everything all the time.

PLEASE Look the Twitter Terms of use>>> HERE
6. Don’t use Twitter as your only marketing tool. Spread yourself out there. Just like we say on Etsy, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.