Helping Designers and Resellers to Learn Internet Marketing Strategies and Tactics that will Attract Customers and Sell Jewelry Online.

I am often asked: can you do the marketing for me?

original photo by pshutterbug

No, I can't.

There is no way you can outsource your marketing to anyone. At least not in the way that I feel marketing should be done.

For example: you can get a babysitter for your child, but can you outsource being a parent?

Same here - there is only one person who really cares about your business, and that is YOU.

In order to succeed you need to know:

• marketing is not the same as search engine optimization;
• marketing is not having a website;
• marketing is not advertising;
• marketing is not the many other things that people tend to believe it is.

Marketing is a STRATEGY. Only you can decide how you are going to design your products and services, build your brand and reach the right audience. That is your true plan - the blue print for your business.

You can seek advise, you can outsource most of the individual tasks to certain professionals and have them do some of the heavy lifting for you, but never let anybody decide what should you do with Your Business.

There is a very useful service called Website Grader.

"Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective."

You may have a FREE detailed report in a few seconds, which usually costs few hundred if you hire an expert. Skilled professional, though, may do a better job then the Website Grader but it is a very good start to check your jewelry website.

Accidentally I got across Benjamin Zander's talk on Ted.com.

It is amazing. He will make you love classical music even if you don't.

Now here is a question for you - are You THAT passionate about what You do?

Just imagine how differently you could influence other people if you would have such an obsession yourself.

Shouldn't we all really surrender to our dreams to have a never-ending source of energy and inspiration?

If you think about creating a web store for you jewelry business but did not make it happen yet then I'd like you to consider an alternative way to extend you brand to the online arena and have a web presence today.

You can easily start from having a jewelry blog to share what you create and already start building you list of followers. Who knows, may be on you web store opening you will have a bunch of ready to buy customers waiting in line. Sounds good? Get to work then.

It especially a shame not to have an online presence when nowadays it is free. If you feel that you have no budget for your blog yet - go to Blogger or Wordpress, compare their features and get a free account. You may have your blog up and running in few hours if will start NOW.

I hear you saying that you already talk about your jewelry designs on an online forum and people like them. That is all right but in that case you work to promote some other website. Would you rather like to have your own popular website? Of course you do and the good news are: it costs very little or nothing and it is very easy.

But do not take only my word on this. See what a jewelry designer has to say about blogging.

Figaro made a vivid example that it is going to be a bit challenging to serve two masters. So, it is.

To promote our business online we make our web pages "search engine friendly" and, along with other techniques, we use "clean URLs". In Plain English it means a human readable web address without any special characters.

Here is one:

http://copperreflections.com/handmade-jewelry-blog/2008/08/how-to-market-handmade-jewelry-online/

and that is how it should be.

However, when it comes to micro-blogging it becomes a problem because there will be not enough space left for your message if you want to include that web link.

So, same time we want the address to be long and self-explanatory and we do not.

That is exactly where free services like is.gd and tinyurl.com come in handy. This link http://is.gd/2xPM points to the same page. It is much shorter and easier to use when you tweet.

Why not? There is a good chance that some of your clients love and use Twitter. There are almost 3 millions of `twitterers` out there. Do you know how many of them are your potential customers or may be your future partners?

What is Twitter?

Twitter is many things to many people and may work incredibly well as a marketing tool and help you to build your community and keep in touch with your loyal customers.

Wikipedia says, “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), ...” while Twitter itself says that it is ".. a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

In short, the main ideas as I see it is this: Twitter is a real time broadcasting medium, which designed to help people to feel connected.

Unlike email you can easily ignore all the noise in Twitter if you choose to. On the other hand, if you have people following you, write a message regularly. Every time when you write a tweet - all you followers will immediately see it. You even can link your Twitter account to you cell phone, so, you could send and receive updates on go.

How Can Twitter Help My Business?

• Twitter can help you stay in touch with your clients.
• Twitter can help you instantly inform your customers about new products or your new design ideas (although, I should mention, try not to look like a direct seller and do not be too noisy nor be silent or you may loose your followers).
• Twitter can help you to look `more human` and thus improve your connection with your clients.
• Twitter can help you network with other jewelry designers.

If you have 7 spare minutes and want to learn more about using Twitter for Internet Marketing - here is a good video tutorial by Ed Dale.

OK. Give Me a Quick Tip

Be wise on how do you use "Bio" line in your profile. You can put up to 160 characters in there, so you should get creative. If you sell jewelry online and you interested in building a list, you might try to mention that you have a coupon or a free gift for your new followers. Think about your clients - what might catch their attention? We all should not try to impress the wrong people, so do not try to write that message for everyone.

Try it yourself and let me know how it works for your business.

They say: "Before you do something you always have to do something else".

By all means - stop it. The only way to succeed is to focus on what will make a real difference and move you closer to your goal.

We should be clear on what our goals are and we must act on them. Every single day. Try to start your day by doing what is the most important for your buisiness and see what will happen and how you will feel at the end of that day.

In this regard, although it may be oversimplified, it is very easy to determine if I am being smart. Obviously, if I do something that brings me closer to one of my goals, I am doing a smart thing. Otherwise, I am being stupid.

Looking back, I have to say that I could have been much smarter. What about you?