So much Better for Productivity

As most of you already know i have very recently changed my approach on facebook - I have spent some time researching the activity of hiking likes via networking pages and learning how to make the most of facebook page insights.  Its taken me a bit of time to do all this but it has proven to be time very well spent :) 

I have now stopped using any of the networking pages that focus on gaining page likes as i found them to be detrimental to my page visibility for several reasons as previously discussed.  I have also stopped visiting other peoples pages just to leave a 'like' with my page tagged.  I found i was spending quite a lot of time each day doing these things and really started to question the use of it when my page activity levels dropped considerably.

I have now changed my strategy completely and i am focussing on my own page and really thinking about what it is i am posting on there.  As you an see the impact on my page stats has been considerable:

I note specifically the huge jump in people talking about this stat - up by a whopping 71% and the reduction in the negative figure on the weekly total reach figure which was -69% on Monday of this week. This figure has gone up and done a bit this week but overall is going in the right direction which is great news :) 

The main difference i have noticed myself is my own levels of productivity and creativity on the page - I am coming up with all sorts of ideas to try and build up interaction on my own page rather than doing something that a) pulls my attention away from my page and onto networking pages, boosting only their page stats and b) has had a detrimental effect on my own stats.

I have been looking only at ways to increase what i would classify as quality interactions - not just people leaving links to their page in the hopes of getting more likes in other words. As a result i have created posts with the highest levels of virality ever on my page (which means other people are sharing my posts and updates) and I am still hitting reasonable engaging users figures on my page - not the highest levels i have to say, however this is without having to spend hours sharing and liking etc myself.  All of this means i have actually managed to do much more craftwise, more planning for my business, and things like organise and clear out my craft room which i have been wanting to do for months.

Some very interesting responses!

Well I have to say there have been some very interesting responses to my past few blog posts Is a Like Enough and An Explanation of the Problem with Hiked 'Likes'.....Its a shame they aren't all on the blog comments but to help facilitate a balanced view i will add a copy of them here (facebook is a public arena so copying the comments on here is allowed). 

These are the comments from The Fabulous Craft Fair Page: 

and these comments are from a group i belong to:

Personally i find these comments make some very good points and help to raise awareness of things to look out for and some actions that can be taken. I am currently looking into what steps we can take to improve page visibility and reach etc.

Interesting that the stats on my own page have changed over the past few days since i changed my own approach: 

First a reminder of yesterdays stats:

This was taken this morning: 

This was taken this evening:

As you can see the weekly total reach stat has changed dramatically and is very much improved since yesterday.  I have made some major changes in how i am interacting on my page and with other pages as well.  I have also not been involved in any hiking activities whatsoever.  

I will be continuing to monitor my page stats and activities for a few more days before i share additional information on what changes i have made as i want to make sure the improvement is a consistent one.  

I hope this post has given you some more food for thought - as always i am happy to receive any comments.

An Explanation of the Problem with Hiked 'Likes'

After my rather unexpected discovery of using 'like' ladders and hikes causing a reduction in the reach of my posts on facebook (see Previous Post - Is a Like Enough? for more details) I have been investigating why on earth this should be the case.  I should point out that i am no facebook expert, i have simply spent time looking into how it all works.

On closer inspection i have discovered a few different reasons why this may be the case:

1.  All of the people using 'like' ladders and hike pages are businesses.  Even though they may actually engage in the 'liking' the way they are supposed to - i.e. by returning 'likes' from a personal profile quite a few business people have a separate fb account they use for options such as liking ladders which do not have any connection to their friends or customers.  Many of them on inspection have NO friends associated with their 'liking account'.

This then means that you, if you are using your actual account, are giving these businesses free access to your newsfeed and helping them to gain reach while you are oblivious to the fact that your access to other people is actually halted.

2.  Similarly, as business owners themselves many of the people using ladders have discovered how to use the privacy controls on their own newsfeeds to prevent your updates showing in their newsfeeds.  Again, as above if you are not doing this the balance is completely in their favour.

3.  When your newsfeed is taken up with lots of business updates that your friends are simply not interested in they get fed up looking at it and don't access it anymore.  As far as i can tell the reach statistic is affected by the number of people actually engaging with a newsfeed in some way - commenting, liking etc.  if they stop looking then the level of interaction will go down! 

4.  Although people may join in with the 'like ladders' at the time they may clear these likes again just afterwards - if you have ever watched your like number go down this is probably the reason - it is NOT a fb glitch.  This is perhaps one of the main reasons for your reach to suddenly drop - if people remove the 'like' from your page you will see a drastic reduction in your reach statistics because they have just removed your access to however many friends they have.  

5.  The final reason i have discovered for this drop in activity is because people, once again getting fed up with all the status updates of business pages find out that they can hide pages updates.  Here is a quote from a business strategy page i came across in my investigations: "When you network a lot for your business you can often end up with a newsfeed full of posts by pages and your friends get missed. This usually leads to people hiding the pages and pages not being seen - in effect making tagging lists/ladders/marches pointless".

My conclusion therefore has to be one of questioning this so called 'networking' and asking myself is all that time spent on doing something productive for my business or was the time investigating it time better spent? 

Now you have a better understanding of what is going on you can take appropriate action to ACTUALLY grow your business rather than waste precious time on these activities.  Next time i will look at some of the positive steps you can take to achieve your business goals! 

As always comments are very welcome - using the comment box below will mean they do not get lost and i can respond to them.  

If you don't want to miss out on updates why not sign up for an email subscription using the box at the top right of this post :) 

Is a Like Enough?

Like many other businesses I tend to spend some considerable time on facebook - Its a great place for promoting and networking after all so I would be foolish not to use it.  One thing i have noticed however is the quest to increase the number of 'likes' on business pages.  There are whole groups of people who either spend their days seeking 'likes' or who have set up so called networking pages to allow other people to get more 'likes'.  

So what is this all about? Obviously people liking your business page is a good thing - it means they are happy to connect with you and get your updates appearing in their newsfeed.  So getting page likes is a way to help get your information out to more people right? 

Just in case you don't know how the like button works here is a quick explanation:

Whenever you 'like' a page it opens a gateway so that information about that page appears in your newsfeed.  Friends of yours will then be able to see this as well because they can see your newsfeed. If they see something interesting chances are they will 'like' it and then their friends will be able to see updates as well! And so it goes on, opening gateways to more and more people.

So its no wonder all these networking pages are so busy - everyone wants more likes for their page, and the reason they want it to be from your personal page is so your friends will see it.  The theory is a good one from a business perspective, in reality though does this actually work? 

I started wondering about this when I began getting involved in all these ladders and hike those like type activities and being one for paying attention to what happened i noticed that the activity on my business page actually went down: 

As you can see the number of 'likes' has gone up, the number of friends of fans has gone up and the number of people talking about it have all gone up - the weekly total reach however has decreased by a whopping 69%!!!

Why is this important? 

As shown here the weekly total reach is the number of people who have seen any content associated with my page - so LESS people are seeing anything i post!!!! 

To see the impact of any actions you take on facebook you should check your stats before your campaign then check it daily to see the impact it has (click on your insights button at the top of your page to see the stats).  You can also see the type of posts that are actually engaging people with your page.

For the next week i am going to concentrate on my posts and avoid the ladders and hike pages and see what happens to my stats then - I will of course share my findings with you all for that as well :) 

Why not join me in checking your stats and see what happens? if you want to add details of your stats for today in the comments on this blog (not on facebook cos they will get lost!) and we can all check what happens daily for the next week :) It will be an interesting experiment! 


Don't forget you can now subscribe to this blog by email - just add your address in the box at the top right of this post :) 

Time for some Shopping :)

One of the best things about having a craft website is being able to admire all the fab products that other people have made and listed - I have such a big list of wants already LOL!

So far there are 12 shops which have been created on the site and lots of individual listings too - almost 200 items are listed for sale which is just brilliant to see :)

There are 5 featured shops as you can see from the pic above! After having a look through their listings over the past few days i think i have come up with some favourites which i thought i would share :)



The Craftee Panther has a great range of keyring and handbag charms, all of which are very unique.  I love the seasons handbag charms with their multi coloured themes which relate to the 4 seasons of summer, spring, autumn and winter.  Typical for me as an earth sign my favourite of the 4 has to be the Silver Plated Bag Charm 'Autumn'  .  I just love the colours on this charm and already have a handbag that it would suit :)





Novelty Party Chocolates has just a few items added so far, but they are all chocolate so i can't possibly decide on a favourite........LOL!

That said it is impossible to see the White Chocolate Wedding Dress without admiring the detail on this and imagining it as a perfect wedding favour :)

It matches perfectly with the White Chocolate Tuxedo of course to make the full set :)








Funky Junk Crafts is my own shop so i don't need to pick a favourite from that one hahahaha!

Jellypoppy on the other hand has lots of amazing products to choose from......Described as  "Home of Flannellymooz, Forget-Me-Bags, Me-Keys and other gifts guaranteed to raise a smile". it just makes me smile before i even get to look at the products :).  When i look and see fairies, dreams necklaces, charms and wishes i just get lost in a whole other world! I have already bought some items from Jellypoppy as i just couldn't resist the Smelly Noseys which i got personalised in my favourite purple and orange combination and a bag tag with Live, Love Laugh also in my infamous colour combo :)

Friesian Crafts is the last of the featured shops on the site so far, and there is only 1 item listed in this shop at the minute....... The Mobile Phone Jack is also hard to resist with the cutest little owls on it as you can see :) - I know Friesian Crafts products rather well already i have to admit, and am the proud owner of one of her brilliant polymer clay keyrings :) No doubt she will be adding more products very soon which i will also want to buy hahaha! 

Well that is my little shopping trip done for today - There will be many more, I assure you :) I have the rest of the shops and the individual listings to check out yet and i won't be able to resist for long!! I hope you enjoyed accompanying me on my wee shopping trip round the site this evening - i hope you will invite me to yours :) 

Why Choose Craft Fair Central?

There are many craft websites out there, many of which are well established, so why would you choose Craft Fair Central?

There are many reasons to choose our website, but the main one is because it really is a central resource for craft lovers, artists and organisers alike.  It has various sections all of which are detailed below:

Craft Fair Calendar

The Craft Fair Calendar is how the website began.  I noticed there was a lack of a comprehensive list of local craft fair events for those interested in either displaying their own products at fairs, or for those wishing to attend them.  There is information all over the place but it is not always freely available.  Some are only for crafters to access, some charge to view them, some are for publicising certain events only etc etc.  The Craft Fair Central Calendar however is freely available to everyone looking for this information, is easy to add your own events to and, as the name suggests is provided in a calendar format for ease of use.

There are several Calendars available including one for Northern Ireland, one for Southern Ireland, and most recently added is one for England.

Work Shops Calendar

The Calendar feature has recently been extended to provide information on when and where craft related workshops are being held.  Again this website allows for addition of your own workshop details.

Craft Artists Showcase

The Craft Artists Showcase section allows for specific craft artists work to be presented on a personalised page or pages.  It is like having a mini website to display and sell your own products on.  Of course many craft artists have their own websites but find they don't get a lot of visitors to these.  Craft Fair Central has already got a regular 800 - 1000 visitors every week.

The showcase is the perfect solution for those who wish to have an online presence without having to pay for website design or have an understanding of how to get included in search engine results.  It is also a less time consuming option than adding items to the Worldwide Auction Section yourself.  It gives the additional benefit of being featured on a popular craft website where people interested in crafts already visit.

Worldwide Auction and Shops 

This section does what it says on the tin - it is an auction and selling area for people all over the world to use. This area allows for products to be added by the sellers using an auction, buy it now or shop listing.  This means the seller can choose which option suits their own business best, including having a fully integrated build your own personalised shop feature such as Funky Junk Crafts has done.

The benefits of listing here include:

It is in the format of the highly popular site Ebay but is limited to craft products only.
There are a large variety of items available to buy which encourages those interested in craft products to visit.
There are items available to purchase which are not available elsewhere.
It provides the opportunity to sell handmade products without having to attend craft fairs.
Items listed here are frequently promoted (at least 3 times per week) on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to approx 2000 people all interested in craft products.

Directory of Crafters

In addition to the craft artists shops and pages being available to view, the Directory of Crafters allows for links to be included to facebook pages and websites of many different artists as well.  This is also a very useful tool for organisers of craft fairs and workshops.

Tutorials

Another very recent addition to the website is the Tutorials section.  This will prove to be a useful resource for anyone interested in learning how to .... as many new tutorials get added.

This section also provides the opportunity for artists using the site to have another form of contact with those interested in crafts.

Charity Product Sales

Many crafters like to support charities, and Craft Fair Central will continue to promote this activity via the Charity Product Sales Page.  There is currently a listing here for fundraising on behalf of Tinylife, Northern Ireland's premature and vulnerable baby charity.  I expect this will become a very popular section with more listings being added very shortly.

Business Development

As many craft artists tend to know quite a lot about making products and struggle at times with the Business Development side of things, this new section will be made available to members who pay for access and one to one support with their business.

Blog

Last but not least, this blog is also available via the website, giving access to all sorts of useful information.


Craft Fair Central, despite being so new, has already developed considerably into a one stop resource and selling site for craft artists throughout Ireland.  Content continues to be added on an almost daily basis and associations in crafting circles continue to develop as well.  The website continues to go from strength to strength and even more plans are underway already.  Watch this space as they say.......and i hope you enjoy using the site :)

The Amazing 1p auctions has started!

Today I have started a new campaign on Fabulous Online Craft Fairs which is proving popular already! It is the Amazing 1p Auctions Campaign ...........

What can you get for 1p?
On Fabulous Online Craft Fairs it will be lots :) 

Todays Amazing 1p Auction has just started - check out what it is by clicking HERE :) 

I will be adding more 1p auction items each day for the next 2 weeks!!!!! Bargains will be grabbed i'm sure! Its not to be missed because you just never know what will be added ;) 

Happy Bidding :D