TAFA blossoms. Come join and be a member! Oh, wait! Is your website ugly?

TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List

On February 1st of this year, I launched my latest project, TAFA.  Using a blog format, in fact the same template as this one as I like it so much, textile and fiber art artists and businesses join as members.  Their member profile is listed as a blog post, showcasing their work and internet presence.  In the middle column, members are grouped in various categories which again lead to their member post.  Their blogs form the blog role.  Members can pay for or earn sponsor spots in the right sidebar.  We now have a facebook fan page and a private group, also on facebook, where members can meet, interact, toss ideas around, and hopefully create new friendships and business relationships.

Taki and Katsu Brave the Rain by Stacy Polson

In less than a month, our traffic is excellent, our membership has grown to 50 (around 20 still have to send in their info so I can set up their profiles), and an idea has blossomed into a beautiful reality.  Every new member that joins brings a special focus and talent, enhancing the site and broadening interest.  My goal is to have TAFA reflect the wide diversity of the little niche we all share via the various fiber arts: quilting, knitting, crocheting, felting, needlework, basketry, weaving, spinning, and so on.  I envision it as bringing together people from around the world through their own representation or through supporting businesses.  I would like galleries, stores, museums and handmade supplies to join, too.  Fair trade businesses, small importers who specialize in vintage textiles and basketry...  All observing a certain aesthetic in the quality of work and a respect for its provenance and the materials that were used.  In time, we will probably grow out of the blog format and have to move to a platform that can support a large membership with excellent search functions.  I would love it to become the resource people use to find connections for their needs.  A gallery searching for new artists, a writer looking for material, a new artist seeking inspiration, and so on. Who knows what potential there is once you bring all this talent and knowledge together.  About 20 of us are active in our facebook group and it floors me to think of the combined knowledge we have as a group.  It really is wonderful!

 

Sunset Composition by Gericon Designs

TAFA came to me as a concept born out of several places of frustration:

• Several of us sell on Etsy which was hailed as the handmade market at its inception some five years ago.  It has become junky with cheap crafts, has minimal seller tools, a bad search engine and caters to a younger crowd who neither has interest in nor can afford quality handmade work.
• The economy, of course, has thrown most of us into survival mode, desperately longing for the affluence of the 1980's.  Most of us cannot afford to advertise or get a foot in a door in those pockets where our work or product could be sold.  As a group, we can perhaps, inch our way in.
• Social media barged into our lives and many of us were forced to learn a whole new way of accessing our markets.  Fiber Focus is almost two years old, a time when I began to really explore what all of these new tools were.  The learning process is constant and frustrating, but has resulted in this whole group of people, tied together through our cyber connections.  We know each other, yet not really.  I kept bumping into the same people here and there and kept wishing for a list where I could see where they were.

All of things were itching away inside of me.  Last year I began to move more and more into helping my peers with their businesses and realized that I have a gift that way.  I am good at bringing people together and enjoy seeing their skills improve so that they feel confident about what they can do and where they want to go on the web.  And, finally, I realized that the fiber community is huge, enormous, almost endless.  I admit that I was trying to figure out how I could make an income within this niche that I so love, where I could use my skills, help others, and somehow it all morphed into TAFA.

 

Natural yarns available at Paloma Textiles 

There is a membership fee of $25 to join TAFA.  I've had three or four people question why a fee would be charged for a blog.  Believe me, after almost a month of working non-stop on the project, I can tell you that I have earned every cent.  It's an enormous amount of work.  If it continues to be this labor intensive, I may even have to raise it.  But, given this economy, I felt that $25 is an affordable contribution towards a new venture.  I feel the burden of member investment in this, too, and want to see TAFA succeed because of the trust they have put in me, in my young idea.  So, for the last three weeks, I have been glued to the computer, turning into a blob, visiting hundreds of websites, answering questions, sharing knowledge, setting up structures and building blocks.  Yes, it has been a tremendous amount of work, but the only reason it is succeeding and blossoming so beautifully is because each of these members saw the potential and jumped in with me.  Without them, I would be going bla-bla-bla into thin air.  They have been a wonderful support, blogging about TAFA, telling their peers about it, posting the logo around.  This is the beauty of viral marketing, of believing in something together.  It's really has been so exciting and so gratifying!

 

Antique Japanese boro kimono, Sri Gallery

So, is TAFA open to anyone working with textiles and fiber art?  Unfortunately, no.  I am burdened with the task of ensuring quality control on the site.  I hate this role, abhor it.  But, there is no way around it.  "Bad" sites and product (it is all somewhat subjective, isn't it?) dilute the potential for the rest of the members.  TAFA is intended to help those who have a serious web presence achieve a wider audience.  That means that you have to have good photos, an interesting and well made product, a web site that is easy on the eyes.  In other words, professional.  I have been using link lists to visit sites and extend membership invitations.  About a third of them have led to dead sites (the economy?) and then the great majority have led to truly awful websites.  Ugly, ugly, ugly.  I guess I never realized it was so bad out there because I had never spent this much time visiting so many sites.  It amazes me that people who can understand composition, color, balance and visual delight in making their work can't translate that into their websites.  I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or cast judgment or anything like that.  But, I can't describe how awful it is to spend hours looking for product and people and being visually assaulted like this.  I understand that many of these sites belong to people who consider themselves technically challenged.  However, blogs and web templates have become so user friendly that anyone can learn how to use them.  If you can knit, sew, weave, or felt, you can definitely learn how to have a simple yet beautiful blog or site.

 

Felted nesting bowls by Papaver Vert

The biggest challenge is photography.  I understand that.  Look at the photos in this post.  Do you see a common thread (no pun intended)?  All of them are excellent photos of beautiful product.  It does take a lot of time, energy and patience to learn how to create decent photos.  Take a class (see Intarsia's recent guest post), read tutorials online, understand your camera and photo editing program.  If you don't have it in you, then find someone in your community who can do it for you.  Do a trade, pay them, give them a bag of potatoes....  whatever.  Once you have your photos, you are over your biggest ugliness hurdle.

 

African Threads

The ugliest sites seemed to have used a similar template, perhaps frontpage:  A busy textured background with tiny thumbnails of the work and lots of big bold type.  Ugly, ugly, ugly!  Ouch!  The goal of having a website is to highlight the work, not to have big bold type all over the place.  If you have one of these sites, get rid of it.  Start fresh.  Here are some tips coming from my very biased, unprofessional opinions:

• Keep it simple and clean.  Solid background, simple type.  Keep colors to a minimal palette.  It's easier to read dark type against a light background, although many artists like to use a black background to show their work.
• Don't use tiny thumbnails unless a professional web designer lays them out in a slide show that is easy to use.  I saw many newer web designs that use this layout now, but still preferred sites that I landed on with nice, medium sized graphics that didn't have to be enlarged.
• Create pages that make sense: About/Gallery/Contact/Links/etc.  Don't have an endless amount of links that open to pages that can't be found without a header.
• On the newer sites, go easy on the java.  Some sites were so java heavy that it was hard to get to the product and see what there was inside.  For those of you who don't know what this means, some sites have flashing graphics that introduce the site or even within it, try to showcase the product in a fun way.  It's annoying and time consuming.
• Take the music off.  I'm sorry, but if I click on a page and music comes on, I'm out of there like lightening.  It's not even about taste.  I've usually got my own background stuff going on (NPR, books on tape, my music, dogs barking, etc) and don't need to add another layer on top of it all.  
• If you can't figure it out on your own get help.  Most teenagers know how to set up the basics of a blog or web template nowadays.  There are also people with a great deal of expertise, including TAFA member Aynex Mercado, who can turn out a gorgeous template for you.  

Hope that helps! If you have an ugly site, you will not make it into TAFA.  And, you won't sell much or generate interest in what you do.  The loveliest quilts will look awful if the photographs are bad, if they are reduced to tiny thumbnails and if they are swallowed up by busy graphics and fonts.  Show your work some love and give them a place of honor.

 

Oshiwa Namibia Team

Finally, TAFA is not only about product and service, but also about people.  When I look at a potential member, I evaluate their product, their work and try to sense if it is a labor of love.  There are several criteria I keep in mind: uniqueness, technique, materials used, how the product will enhance the rest of the group and how the member may potentially affect the rest of the group.  For example, a couple of members have joined who are very insular, quiet people, but they have incredible products and their blogs are exceptional.  People contribute in different ways.  Some are boisterous and fun while others might be quiet and introverted.  Textiles and Fiber Art are products.  They are made by people and ultimately, the people who represent them are what truly matter in my book.  I want TAFA to be green, fair trade, artistic, full of eye candy, handmade, gorgeous and so on, but more than anything, I want it to be good.  There is so much violence and cheapness in our world.  I am dreaming up my little utopia, united by some fibers and woven into a tapestry of unexpected delight.  Join us (ugly websites can still be our friends...) and support us as we explore this new place called TAFA.

Fireball by Sue Reno

Note:  All images in this post belong to the respective TAFA members.  Visit all of our profiles to learn more about each member.  Click to visit TAFA

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TAFA blossoms. Come join and be a member! Oh, wait! Is your website ugly?

Intarsia Concept Offers A Basic Online Product Photography Course

by Tara Agacayak, Intarsia Concept Co-Founder

My partner Figen Cakir and I met through our love of art and craft which is ironic considering that our husbands work together - a fact we didn't learn until months later! With two separate businesses selling handmade, culturally-inspired products from Turkey, we naturally began projects supporting local artisans in our community. Figen runs The Knit Box, featuring natural Turkish yarn, handknits and knitting accessories. I started Citara's Handcrafted Boutique to highlight modern home and fashion products reflecting traditional Turkish techniques and motifs.

In building our online businesses, we conceived of Intarsia Concept (IC) as a venue to share our experience and learn from the experiences of others. IC is for people who want to turn what they love into what they do. For us it is our love of Turkey, art, design and culture. For you it might be rugs, quilts, tapestries ... (fill in the blank here).

One of the things we learned working in a digital environment is that selling products online is vastly different than selling them in person where visitors can see and touch our products. In person they get the full impact of color and texture. Because they are handmade, our customers understand the care that goes into each product because they can see all the detail imprinted by the artist.

But selling online is completely different. In this two-dimensional environment your potential customers are people who click away in an instant if there is nothing to keep their attention. So when we started IC, one of the first things we wanted to do was put together a course teaching basic product photography skills. We're proud to report we have finally done this with Diana Brennan from D.S. Brennan Photography. We hope that this course will not only help independent designers and artists like you take good photographs of your projects and products for the purposes of selling, but more importantly that it will also help you present your work in a way that honors the love and care with which you have created it.

Because it's not just about what you do, it is also about how you communicate that to others. Good photography is one way to broadcast your artistic message. Whether you are selling something or not, a well-photographed image speaks a thousand words.

If you're interested in attending the Basic Product Photography Course to learn how to present your work at its best, registration is now open. The self-paced e-course begins Monday, February 22nd but is only open to the first 50 students who register. As a special thank you to Fiber Focus readers, anyone who registers from this blog will receive a $5 refund with the coupon code {prodphoto10}. In addition, for each registration that comes through this community, member Catherine Salter Bayar will donate $5 to Nest, a nonprofit that gives micro-loans to female artisans.

Tara Agacayak

 Figen Cakir

Note from Rachel:  Catherine has contributed several posts on life in Turkey and her business, Bazaar Bayar.  Click here to see them.

Intarsia Concept Offers A Basic Online Product Photography Course

Introducing TAFA: The Textile And Fiber Art List

 

The TAFA List

Hot off the press!  An idea that I've toyed with for years is finally becoming real!  The TAFA List is now live!  What is it?  Well, it's an illustrated database of people and businesses who share the love for textiles and fiber art.  It's a membership based group that hopes to access larger markets by coming together under one umbrella.  My hope is that fiber artists, fair trade groups, galleries, writers, collectors, museums, designers, creative entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to be a part of it will want to join. 

The list is in a blog format. In fact, I used the same template that I used for this one, but with different colors.  Each post showcases a member with links to where they can be found online.  Having a web presence is one of the criteria for becoming a member.  TAFA, a cyber community, provides links to each other.  Here is a sample of what a member post looks like:

Bonnie Samuel Designs

http://bonniesamueldesigns.com/

I am a fiber artisan, creating with textile and mixed media. My work reflects my love of nature, incorporating bold color and light play to set a mood. Fiber art brings all the mediums I love, like painting and sewing, into my work. Textiles have a deeper meaning for me than just creating my art, however. Indigenous peoples worldwide depend on the production and creation of fiber and textiles for their income. Their work reflects their cultural heritage and traditions handed down generation to generation. The world of fiber art today has many expressions, so interesting in depiction, but also in the need of the artist to portray an emotion, mood or make a statement. To explore this more, I write a blog themed, "fiber in art, culture and life."

 

Earth is the Sum of Its Parts with Strings Attached

21"  x  21.5"  July 2009 

By Bonnie Samuel

Artist Statement

My life experiential path has been diverse, yet of great value in building a foundation for my avocation as a fiber artisan.  Through years in various careers, I remained involved in art, building skills with different mediums. Each experience has added to a collage of interrelated segments,  that in recent years has brought my art expression into focus.

The quilt art format combines creative elements I find most interesting and expressive – fabric, stitch, thread and painting. I find quilt art allows the use of design and texture to employ the richness and emotions of color expressively. Shapes, representational or abstract, are utilized in purposeful images to evoke an emotion, memory or bring focus to the message expressed by the art piece.

Fiber art is a rich, fulfilling and creative medium for me. It is an expressive art form, diverse in methods, construct, visual applications and employs a variety of skills. Fiber art is challenging and enriching for me as an artist and I think, too, for the viewer.

My imagery is meant for the viewer to identify with, have a good laugh, raise a fist in affirmation or simply enjoy.


Location: Ames, Iowa, USA
Online Store: The gallery on my website.
Blog: Bonnie Samuel Designs
Memberships: Surface Designs Association, Studio Arts Quilters Association
Languages spoken:  English and according to my British friends, "American" English.


Tags: fiber artist, indigenous textiles, art, mixed media, natural fibers, quilt art, dyeing, textiles, painting, artist
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The members links are grouped into similar categories in the middle sidebar.  So far we have categories for Websites, Etsy, 1000 Markets, and Facebook Fan Pages.  These will grow as groupings become apparent.  Themes and locations are also listed as are the member blogs.

Membership Fee:
There is a one time set-up fee of $25 to become a member, no renewals. 

Referrals and Accountability:
As TAFA uses a blog format, the comments area for each member post can be used by the member for updates and for outside referrals.  For example, let's say you know someone on the list.  You can leave a comment saying how wonderful that person is, yada-yada, OR maybe you had a bad experience and want to warn others of that.  The comments are moderated and the negative ones might not necessarily be posted, but they will be kept.  If a member gets several negative comments, a conflict-resolution committee will be established to investigate the situation and the member just might get kicked off of TAFA.  I doubt this will ever happen, but felt that there needed to be a venue for accountability.  For example, let's say a gallery is asking for things on consignment, but they never pay their vendors.  We would not want to encourage that kind of behavior.

Facebook Group
Members will have the option to join the TAFA Facebook Group.  The group was set up for members as a place to discuss ideas on how to market the group and to network with each other.  Not all members like or want to be a part of facebook, so major decisions also include a mailing to all members.  But, facebook is the largest social media network around and it has great tools that we will be able to use to our benefit.  As TAFA is in a blog format, it has been registered with Networked Blogs and each new member will show up as a post.  Anyone who becomes a follower on facebook to the blog will be able to share the posts as they go live, a huge potential for viral marketing.

Sponsors
The third sidebar contains an area for sponsor ads.  Only members can be sponsors.  The ads cost $10 a month or $100 for a year or they can be earned through membership referrals.  Refer 10 members and you get a year for free.  As the list grows, this will give increased visibility to members who want to be sponsors.  The funds generated from the sponsor ads will be earmarked to marketing the whole group.  We will hopefully be able to advertise in mainstream magazines and sites that are too expensive for most of us on our own.  More info here.


Membership Form
Interested?  Would you like to join TAFA?  There is a process to the madness.  This link will take you to the membership information.  You will have to put together the info that you want on your member post and pay the membership fee.  You get a welcome email and can then join the TAFA facebook group.  As TAFA grows and blossoms into a full-fledged resource, it will generate more and more connections for all of the members.

Spread the Word
Word of mouth always does the best job in giving a new idea the ground level support it needs.  If you like the concept, whether you join or not, tell your people about it.  If you have a blog, you can use the logo with the link in your sidebar: http://tafalist.blogspot.com/

TAFA will be a great place to inspire blog post ideas, to find new connections and product sources and to share our love for textiles and fiber art.

Go take a look!  Then come back and give us some feedback on what you think of this new endeavor.  I am very interested in suggestions that might make TAFA the best it can be!

http://tafalist.blogspot.com/

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Introducing TAFA: The Textile And Fiber Art List

Scoutle and Entrecard: Two Interesting Tools for Bloggers

Etsy does a great job in providing tutorials and tips to its sellers.  Their blog, The Storque, is packed with information on how to improve your Etsy store, your photos, how to network with other sellers, how to market the store, and on and on.  A frequent contributor, daniellexo, recently posted about how to blog.  I have to admit that I started this blog because the Etsy community harped on and on about how important it is to have one.  Those of you who have a blog, know that it can be a lot of work, especially increasing your audience and reaching the right people.

Always read the comments when you read a "How to" post!  I found two gems in one of them on the blogging post.  The Etsian uses Scoutle and Entrecard to drive people to her blog.  I had never heard of either one of them.  Both look interesting.

Scoutle operates as a personal web crawler.  It looks for other websites and blogs that have similar content or interests to yours:

Entrecard works on a networking concept that connects its membership through "business cards" (actually, they are ads).  I have been using Project Wonderful for quite awhile now, and it seems to have some similar ideas.

I especially like the Scoutle concept, but will have to research both of these a bit more before jumping in with either of them.  Meanwhile, have any of you used Scoutle or Entrecard?  Did they drive traffic to your site?  Are you pleased or disenchanted?  Let us know so that we can learn from you, too.

Scoutle and Entrecard: Two Interesting Tools for Bloggers

Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!

A screenshot of my personal page on Facebook

Facebook?  I have lots of friends who are on it and we all enjoy the spontaneous access it gives us all to our humor, insights, links, photos and whatever else we want to share with each other.  From the ones that aren't there, I get groans, moans, disgust or misinformation.  "I don't want the whole world to know what's going on in my life!"   Facebook has definitely transformed how we communicate with each other, replacing email for many of us.  It's a household name that has millions of avid fans and as many avid enemies...

I was one of the converts who joined kicking, screaming, rolling my eyes, and foaming at the mouth.  Now I have been on there for several months and I have been completely, irrevocably brainwashed into a convert, one who stands at the airports with my flowers and invites the public to join.  Facebook is a tool that you can control and tweak to match your needs.  I think it is the best network out there and it has so permeated our social fabric that as a business or artist, it's as essential as having a phone.

The problem with Facebook is that the way it is set up assumes that the users know how to use it.  Most don't.  Most figure out how to add new friends, respond to updates, add photos and links, and that's about it.  Those are all nice tools, but they just explore the tip of the iceberg.  Learning how to use it well can really help artists and businesses get the kind of exposure they long for.  This post is for those of you who use Facebook minimally or not at all.  In the end, I hope that you will also want to join in and become part of this Facebook revolution.

Yep.  Being on facebook does mean having a public persona.  Social networking is a pretty recent phenomena, but it has become such a part of life on cyber space that it's hard to remember the days before we had all these venues where we could, for better or for worse, put ourselves out there.  Social networking falls under one of the many tools we now have under the umbrella of "Social Media".  Do you look at videos on YouTube?  Have a blog?  Tweet?  These are just a few of the more popular venues that people use to connect with each other, but there are many, many more.  Wikipedia has a good history and list.  Basically, social media has replaced the face-to-face interaction we had with our neighborhood shops and hang-outs.  As these tools developed, the mainstream marketplace was forced to adapt and include customer feedback, reviews and other interactive tools.  Unbelievably, Facebook was created by a Harvard student in his dorm room in 2003.  (see Wikipedia again)  It was one of those creations that came along at the right time and place.  The market and the people were ready.  When something catches on like this, it is said to have viral qualities and that is what artists and businesses hope for when they join facebook.  How exactly does this work then?

I've taken a bunch of screen shots to walk you through the different features Facebook offers which I think are important.  Click on the images to see a larger image, or you can go to my public page, Rayela Art, to follow along, or to your own page, if you have one.

First of all: How do you get friends?  You can have Facebook check your email address book and it will tell you who is already on there.  You can then choose who you want to invite to become your friend.  Then, once you have friends, you can check their friends and see if there is anybody you know.  The search bar also brings up names and if there are too many, you can narrow the search by location, school or job.  Somehow people start finding each other and last year was marked as a wonderful reconnecting for me with friends from that past that I had lost contact with.  Mine are grouped into family, Brazilian friends, missionary kids, high school and college, peer artists, Chicago people, and so on.  A creep from the past wants to be your friend?  Just say no!  Most of my re-connections have been treasures, but there are a couple that have raised my eyebrows.  "You were such a nice boy!  What happened to make you so bitter?" Believing in diversity, I try to find the common ground we share rather than keeping my friends limited to the same code of ethics, but I've noticed that some have "unfriended" me, which is just fine.  Not everyone wants to have a bleeding heart liberal flower child type in their midst...

Comment, Like and Share: the virus effect on Facebook.

Everybody who joins Facebook has a profile page where you can link to another website, upload a photo or video, or make a comment.  If this person has any "friends", those friends can comment, like or share, giving a reaction to what was posted.  Comment is straightforward.  You type some kind of a response.  If you like what you read, you click on that and you will be able to follow what other activity happens on this post.  You can set your settings to receive emails whenever any action like this happens on your page.  Now, the third option, Share, is the most important as far as achieving that viral effect. When a friend clicks on that, that post goes to their Home page and all their friends see it.  The hope is that those friends will also like it, click share, and on and on.  This is the viral effect of Facebook.  In theory, one post could have thousands of viewers.  However, this only happens on links or images that have public settings.  All personal comments get deleted in the sharing and the friend can say whatever he or she wants to about that link.  If you say something silly and you have private settings, the comment cannot leave your page.  Make sense?  Hopefully, this concept will become clear as we move along.

Friends, Fans and Members
There are three kinds of pages on Facebook and each has a different relationship.

• You have your personal profile where friends are accepted or rejected.  
• Personal pages can have sub-pages that are created for the public.  These are usually small businesses, special interest, artist, or music pages.  I have three: Rayela Art (for my business), Afghan Tribal Arts (for a friend's business that I manage) and Falamos Portugues (a just-for-fun page for Portuguese speakers).  Pages are public and anyone interested in the content can join as a fan.  An icon of that page pops up on that person's profile page and they will receive updates in their home page.
• The third type of page is for groups.  Larger organizations, families, teams, museums and non-profits would normally select this option.  This is also a public page and whoever joins becomes a member and receives updates in their home page as well.  Groups joined are listed in the personal info page.
  

 

Now let's look at some of the features in each of these structures.



Personal Pages
Whenever I start using a new site or software, I click around on the tabs and links and look at what happens.  Usually, I can figure out what they mean and if I don't get it, I will ask friends or use the search or help functions.  I numbered the most important parts of a profile page:

Key spots on a Facebook profile page.

1.  Your latest comment or post shows up here.
2. The space where a new comment can be posted.  The small icons under it mean that you can attach a photo, video or link.  Videos have to be ones that you made.  If you post a youtube video, use the regular link option with the video's url as the address.
3. The all-important Share button.
4. Recent activity.  This shows up differently to different viewers depending on your privacy settings.
5. At that bottom, left-hand corner, some little icons lead to applications and other functions.
6. Chat function.

The top bar shows that this is the profile page.  If you click on "Home", you see all the activity that has been posted by your friends or the pages and groups you have joined.  Click on "Friends" to find one of your friends and on "Inbox" to send a private message to one or more friends.

The "Home" page on Facebook where you see all the activity of your connections.

The home page is the one you will check and your profile is what others will look at when they want to see more info about you.  I normally check my home page in the morning and at night.  I do a quick scroll down and screech to a quick stop if something interesting catches my eye and then I'll banter with a friend, watch a video, or give feedback on something that was posted.  One could spend hours and hours doing this, but I try to limit how much time I spend here, even though I do enjoy it.  Most of my friends are actual people I know, family,peer artists, and the organizations or pages that I follow are ones that I am truly interested in, so the content does interest me.

Friends who are diligent about loading photos make their page more interesting.  It's a great way to see new artwork, view the kids who are growing up, see rehab projects and just get a better mental picture of what is happening in their lives.

Those who have videos have a special page for them, too.  I'm just learning how to do this, but have a couple.  Business pages and groups also have these features.

Facebook has hit on the most interesting and vibrant way of sharing news and information.  I am terrible at making phone calls, often do this non-business stuff late at night, so I can browse and comment when the rest of the world is asleep.



Business Pages

Business pages have many of the same functions as a profile page plus a few others.  You can include photos, videos, discussions, and events.

Screenshot of Rayela Art

One of the things that I like about Facebook is the clean template and consistency among pages.  I had only seen My Space before and hated the chaotic jumble of images and glitter.  But, you can still personalize your page with photos, logo and how much information you add on.

You can set up your pages to allow fan photos, one more way to encourage networking among peer businesses and customers.  If someone posts something you think is inappropriate, you can delete it.

Screen shots of Afghan Tribal Arts.

A great tool for artists who do a lot of shows is the events page.  Your customers and fan base can keep track of you and try to attend a live performance, sale or opening.  I use it to post an occasional event that is happening locally in Paducah or a festival that I wish I could go to.

List your events on your business page on Facebook!

Many of your friends on your personal page will probably be interested in your business.  You can invite them to receive your updates.  Click on "Suggest to Friends" and a window pops up with icons of your friends.  If the image looks cloudy, they have already become a fan.  This is so much better than spamming people who don't want to receive your emails!  These people choose to follow your business, become a fan and get your news because they are interested.  Your job, then, is to come up with information that is interesting enough to make them want to share it with their friends.

Messages can also be sent through Facebook's Inbox (your messaging system on Facebook).  This should be used sparingly.  It can be really annoying to get multiple messages from one of the pages you became a fan of, especially if those messages aren't even in a language you understand.  Again, you can always leave a business page that gets on your nerve an "un-fan" yourself.

A nice feature when you become a fan of someone's page is that you can add them on as a favorite on your page.  I've added like-minded pages to Rayela Art because I think my fans will also find them interesting.  Of course, the hope is that these businesses will reciprocate and give you some floor space on their page, too.  If you click on the "See All" in the box, you can scroll down and see larger icons and names of the pages.

 

The one big complaint that I have of the business pages so far is that you cannot become a fan using your business.  So, when I fan people that have similar businesses, I show up as Rachel Biel instead of Rayela Art.  I would much rather drive people that I do not know to my Rayela Art page than to my personal one.  In the same way, I would like to know if my fans have businesses that I can interact with professionally, but if I click on their icon, it will go to their personal page.  It would be nice if Facebook would give you options of how you become a fan or how you join a group.


Groups

Groups are organized in a similar but slightly different manner from the other pages on Facebook.  I won't go much more into them, except to say that one can find any topic or theme under the sun on facebook.  When you do a search for groups, the results will show you which groups your friends have joined and what the latest activity is on the groups you belong to.  Once again, that viral potential in action. 

Group search on Facebook will come up with endless possibilities.

Applications

Applications are little independent programs that interface on facebook.  Some have to do with business, family or school connections, many with general silliness brought to life by people with too much time on their hands.  It's important to understand how to find and use applications as they can be useful tools.  The first icon at the bottom left-hand corner is where you will find them.  Click on it and a box pops up:

If one of the applications you are looking for is there, click on it.  Otherwise use "Browse More Applications" and a new page will open up.  This is where you go to create your pages that we discussed above. "Networked Blogs" is an important application for any of you who have blogs.  You join the application, are given a profile page with public snippets of your blogs and recent posts.  Every time you create a new post on your blog, it shows up in your news feed where all your friends can see it.  I have it set up so that the posts will also go to my pages.  Most applications will give you an option to create a box or tab on your profile page, too.  Interested friends can then click on that tab and see your blog posts and sign up for them.

  

Networked Blogs on Facebook, an important application.

Applications can also bring on a nightmare of games and stupid stuff.  If you do open that applications page, you will see that there are business tools, education, lifestyle, sports, and the dreaded games and just for fun.  The two top games that my friends enjoy are Farmville and Mafia Wars.  They are addictive and they go on and on and every time they do something new on it, it shows up on our personal page news feeds.  I just have no interest in knowing that so and so just bought a new pig for their farm or however it goes.  I've got a couple hundred friends right now and just imagine if 30 or more of them are playing these games!  As my group of friends got bigger, the number of games increased and my annoyance level grew.  I was about ready to quit the whole thing and get off Facebook, when one of my friends told me that if I hovered my cursor next to the application, a box pops up that gives you the option to hide that person or that application.  Ha!  Well, I still wanted the other stuff from that person, just not the games.  Once you hide the application from one person, it is hidden forever!  Good-bye farmville!  Relief!  Facebook became fun again for me.

 Farmville and Mafia Wars, application nightmares on Facebook...

Settings
One of the greatest fears many people have about Facebook is whether their privacy will be protected.  This is a legitimate concern according to the Wikipedia article I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Hopefully, they will continue to improve this, but meanwhile, just make sure that you will not post things that might shame you later and check your settings so that they reflect the level of privacy you want to have.  I keep my updates so that only my friends can see them, but allow my photos to be seen by friends of friends.  If you have friends on your photos, you can tag them and that photo will show up in their photo page as well, so I figure that it's nice for their friends to be able to see them as well.  You might want to make an art album public to anyone.  The settings options can be accessed on the top bar, next to the search box.

Linked accounts and privacy are the two important settings to check whenever you have doubts about who is seeing what.  Many of my friends kids are on Facebook and they revel in silliness.  I think about how it will be for them, if they still have the same accounts in 10 years, where they will have mountains of records of how they behaved as teens...  Will they want to delete it or look back on these times with a smile?  Who knows where the world will be then, but never before has our private life become so public.

Pages also have settings that should be monitored.  You can decide how much fan input you want to have: whether they can submit comments, post photos, participate in discussions and so on.

Interfacing
As if all of the above is not enough to convince you that Facebook can be a powerful promotional tool for your business, there is one more feature that I really like.  Increasingly, Facebook is linking with other social media so that updates and information can be shared back and forth.  As an Etsy seller, I was thrilled when they became linked to each other.  There is an Etsy application that pulls items from your shop on an Etsy page that has its own tab in your profile page.  Click on an item and it takes you to the Etsy shop.

 

I have my Etsy shop application on both my personal profile page and on Rayela Art and Falamos Portugues.  I created one for Afghan Tribal Arts which is on the Afghan Tribal Arts page on Facebook.

When you post something on Etsy, there is a Facebook icon which you can click and send that item to your Home Page's stream.  Again, I wish this went to my business page instead of my personal one, but in time, maybe it will.

Twitter is also linked in.  I don't have the patience to post on Twitter, but know that I have to be there, too, so I was relieved to find that I could set up my Rayela Art Facebook posts to go there, too.  And, they go to my Linked In page.  All of it helps, all of it has viral potential, the sneeze we all want for our businesses!

There is much more, I am sure, but hopefully, this tutorial has helped you understand how to make use of Facebook your tool to fit your needs.  As a final tip, I would like to point to the Search box.  This is such a great tool in itself!  Once you become friends with someone or join a page or group, start typing the name and it pops up.  This is how I travel between my pages.  You can also search using any key word and all related pages and entries will pop up, giving preference to the ones your friends have created or posted.  Here is an example using the keyword "textile":

Topics show up, grouped into pages, groups, or posts and you can enter anyone of them to see more results.  You will certainly find more information than you ever imagined!  Facebook can be addictive and I even had one friend who was kicked off the site because she was accused of spamming.  She is an incredibly talented artist who was just enjoying the site and networking with other artists.  All of her information was lost and she had to start over from scratch.  There are definitely improvements that need to be made, but you can be that when things like that happen, the people start screaming and Facebook listens.

It's free and interesting.  I advertised there over the Holidays and got a couple thousand hits on my Etsy store.  It's not cheap and I don't know if it generated any extra sales, but my Google Analytics tells me that both my Etsy store and my blog are getting more and more traffic from my presence on Facebook.  As my fan base grows, it can only help my other endeavors.

Of all the social media efforts I engage in, I find Facebook to be the most valuable use of my time.  Get on there and expand your base.  You never know who will want to be your friend!

.

Facebook: The Virus You Want to Catch for Your Business!

Setting New Year's Resolutions for Your Art Business

The end of a year always brings a time of reflection for me.  What happened during these past twelve months?  Did I accomplish anything?  What worked?  What didn't?  Where do I need to improve?  I think about these things, as many of us do, both in terms of my personal life and in thinking about my business.  And, that leads to those resolutions that may or may not become concrete in the upcoming year.

My business has been evolving.  This past year was the worst one, in terms of sales, that I have ever had.  The recession hit the whole world and I was not surprised to see activity dwindle.  Fortunately, I had a good commission with Sidney's Ties and was able to work with other peers on technical work they needed done on their online profiles.  Doors open and close, new opportunities appear and over time, these become defined into new directions.  Rayela Art now has three arms: my own sewing creations, the product I sell on Etsy, and increasingly, as a technical assistance provider.  I've worked hard at learning how to promote my business online and that has translated into developing skills that many artists and small importers balk at.  So, I can help them look at how they can improve their business and then set up the structures they need and train them on how to keep them up.  The challenge then becomes how to juggle these three interests as they all demand time and continued attention in order to grow.

Resolutions?  Yes, I have some.  For the purpose of this post, I will list ten:

1. Time management.  I have to make better use of my time, especially for my own art work.
2. Learn photoshop.  Right now I use photoshop elements.  I have the software for Photoshop, but just haven't taken the time to learn it.
3. Make little documentaries.  I started learning how to edit videos this past fall, but haven't followed through on it.  The goal: one short a month.
4. Increase my web building abilities.  I can build simple ones, but need to fill in some gaps to have more design control.
5. Get back on eBay.  I closed my eBay shop and have to get back on there.  I moved a bunch of things around between stores and never got back to redoing my eBay store.
6. Write more posts here.  I have been slacking off and just need to get into the groove again.  The goal: three meaningful posts a week.
7. Re-do my logo.  I love my snake, but not how I drew it.  I need to re-work it so that it looks like I want it to.
8. Network locally with small businesses.  There are meetings I can attend.  I have been too much of a recluse and need to get out there and interact with the business community where I live.
9. Increase my products on 1000 Markets.  There I can only sell things that I make, so I have to just do it!  It means sitting down and doing several runs of bags, hats, pillows and other things that I make.  I have lots of new ideas and just have to focus on getting them made.
10. Stay healthy.  Too much sitting has been taking its toll on me.  This may seem like a personal resolution, but not feeling well affects how well I can focus on the business.

If I can look back at the end of 2010 and see that these ten goals were tackled with consistency, I will pat myself on the back.  You may notice that I did not have a financial goal.  I have found that it is terribly hard to predict how my business will grow or suffer from year to year, but believe that I am doing all I can to bring in customers and if I can keep focusing on the bones of the business, the money will follow.

Interested in learning more about what I do?  I just re-did my website to reflect more of my role as a technical assistance provider.  Hop over there to learn more and to see my sewing projects as well.

How about you?  Any resolutions for 2010?  Self-employed artists have a tough time managing their talent and their purse.  Would love to hear about how you balance all of this out!

Happy 2010!

May the Muse be with us all!!!

We'll finish this off with an irreverant Jib-Jab look at 2009:

Setting New Year's Resolutions for Your Art Business

Shameless Self-Promotion for Rayela Art: Free Shipping!

A friend posted on Facebook that the lines had been forming in front of Best Buy early yesterday and that there were even many tents...  It always strikes me as such a testament to our screwed up values when people will suffer the weather or discomfort for the cause of discounts or sports, but we can't get people out for causes like human rights, the environment, or peace.

Big heavy sigh....  

On that note, here I am facing the big buying season of the year, hoping that I, too, will have some brisk business in my shops.  It's the big contradiction of my life:  I want to live simply so that others may simply live, and yet I love stuff, buy it and sell it.  Stuff that nobody really needs.  My comfort lies in that I truly believe that helping keep handcrafts alive is part of the fundamental picture of supporting self-sufficiency and encourages the arts to flourish on all levels.  Understanding the source of raw materials, how they can be used and allowing self and cultural expression to make a mark is the spiritual side of stuff.  Or, so I believe.

Kuchi Beaded Patch, Afghanistan

Most of "stuff" I carry are traditional textiles and remnants from ethnic groups around the world: Kuchi, Banjara, Kuna, Miao, and other minority groups.  Many of them face terrible odds against surviving as a people as we force industrialization, relocation, and war upon them.  These pieces of fabric represent long histories that may not be around for much longer.

Molas look fantastic when they are framed!

My target audience in buying is geared towards other fiber artists and sewers who can incorporate these bits and pieces of living history into their own work.  But, they also make wonderful gifts.  What can you do with a beaded patch like the one above?  The easiest thing to make it into a finished gift is to frame it.  If you sew, you can add it on to a bag, hat, book cover, or any fabric background, thus personalizing a simple commercial object.

Ralli Quilt from Pakistan

I also carry larger finished pieces like ralli quilts and suzani textiles.  These are perfect gifts for college kids who like tribal art or for anyone who enjoys these textiles.  Do you have a world traveler on your list?  Then you surely will find something in my store for that hard-to-buy-for person!



Rayela Art can also be found on 1000 Markets.  There you will find the things that I have made: Hats, bags, pillow covers.

1000 Markets

Rayela Art

Visit the Shop

After the Holiday season, I will focus on more of my own work, but first I have to finish listing all of the bins of "stuff" that are still going to go on Etsy and eBay.  (I am in the process of re-organizing my eBay store and as of today, it is empty, but will soon be back on track...)

Now, for my shameless self-promotion:
Mention this blog post and get free shipping in the US on any purchases through December 5th.  Overseas customers, I'll refund $5 off your shipping cost, but don't forget to mention this post!

And, to all of us, I offer up my sincere hope that we may all experience great joy and bountiful love in this season!  This can be a time for great stress and depression for many, but my hope is that we may all have peace and love in our hearts, today and every day.

Shameless Self-Promotion for Rayela Art: Free Shipping!