Charlotte Sometimes

Tag: writing

  • Does Blogging Help Your Handmade Business?

    Does Blogging Help Your Handmade Business?

    The short answer is yes; blogging for handmade business’ can totally be a way to help get sales! The long answer to “does blogging help your handmade business” is that it is not entirely straight forward. However there’s nothing difficult about blogging and it’s something everyone can do as part of their business!

    I’m not going to tell you how to set up a blog here (although I do suggest you go with WordPress as a platform). There are hundreds of people on the internet who will teach you to put together a WordPress site better than I could. However I am going to tell you the kind of things you want to write and how they will boost your handmade business through blogging.

    Identify Your Ideal Customer

    I’ve said it on other posts about running your handmade business, but it is always worth saying it again. Especially here. Identify who your ideal customer is. Once you know who they are you can start to work out what kind of blogs they like to read (if they like to read them at all!). Knowing where your customer hangs out online and what they like doing is key to marketing to them.

    Assuming your ideal customer is a blog reader you want to work out what kind of content they’ll stop and spend time reading. For example if you make kids accessories then a parenting blog might be your ideal customers thing. They might like to read about your story and your kids, and about the tips on how you’ve brought up great, well rounded, mini versions of you.

    I make costume accessories for live action roleplaying. This means my ideal customers are the people who do the hobby and who need costume. Although I link to my shop frequently on this blog I never make sales from the leads I make here. However I do make lots of sales from a related website that I run. Several years ago I started up a community website that deals with all aspects of playing roleplaying games. Because I chat with lots of my customers I’ve found that lots of them come specifically from an article I wrote on how to put a great costume together for LARP.

    Once You Figure It Out, Keep Writing!

    Once I figured out the kind of content that was sending customers to me I immediately started planning new articles. In my case I identified that the costumes I’d taken drew people in from Facebook and Pinterest, but the content of the article was what made it sharable on social media (and indeed sent it vital within the community).

    Essentially the articles that I was writing allowed my products to solve a problem that my visitor had. The question that my visitors were asking was “how do I put together a great costume for my character?” My article never directly says “buy my products” but they do provide pretty pictures and a link which then encourages customers to take a look around the shop. There’s also a small call to action near the bottom suggesting that if people would like a similar outfit they can head on over to my Etsy shop! I don’t enjoy doing the hard sell; I’d rather people came to me because they really, really wanted something that I make.

    Communicating Your Brand Values

    Blogging is unique in that it can communicate alot about you and your business in a very informal way. When considering blogging for handmade business you really do need to make sure that your brand values are absolutely clear in your mind and that every post you make helps to reinforce them.

    Although it can seem daunting to reveal lots of information about yourself on the internet don’t be too worried. Try to avoid giving out information that would make you vulnerable (such as your address and your holiday dates) but remember that people love to see the person behind the business when you’re a small handmade company.

    Stick To A Schedule

    It is the hardest part of blogging. And I should know, I’ve been blogging for over a decade now! Start with twice a month, or if you’re feeling on top of your game once a week. The most successful blogs get updated frequently with great content and a couple of times a week would be a great thing to aim for.

    Remember to think outside the box when you’re writing posts. For instance if you make gorgeous tote bags then a day out would provide you with the opportunity to shoot lifestyle images. You can blog about what you did for the day (it could be anything from a trip to the city to a trip to the seaside) and include the photos in your blog post. Don’t forget to link to where your readers can buy the product!

    Remember that the more content you produce the more readers will come back to read it.

    Collect Email Addresses

    As soon as you set your blog up you should get a mailing list set up too. Who you decide to use to host your mailing list is something for another post, but make sure you get collecting those email addresses ASAP!

    Why? Because it means that Etsy and Facebook aren’t in control of me contacting my customers. You never know when a service might either close its doors or charge you to be in touch with the people who want to hear from you. On Etsy you also can’t send messages out to everyone interested in your shop so a mailing list really is essential for you to keep in touch with your customers.

    I offer in my shop a 10% discount when you sign up to my mailing list. It is always good to offer an incentive, it much increases the chance that readers will give you their email address if they think they’re getting something in return. That could be some digital downloads, a percentage coupon, or even a monetary coupon. Whatever works for you and your business – and that’ll be different for everyone.

    Blogging For Handmade Business

    So with all that in mind, hopefully you’ll consider starting your blog and writing about your product. The traction you can get if a blog post goes viral on social media is incredible and it could end up making or breaking your shop. It’s all about creating content that is beautiful, useful, and also on brand for your business.

    Good luck!

  • Creating Illustrated Manuals If You Can’t Draw

    Creating Illustrated Manuals If You Can’t Draw

    I’ve been wondering for some time if I should write some illustrated manuals for product photography in order to help fund my PhD. I’ve been asked to produce a guide many times over the last few years by several creative business owners. It makes sense really, I did spend a year working in a top fashion catalogue photography studio and I learned many skills during that time.

    It’s been rewarding to put that photography knowledge into practice in my own costume making business, and I’m entirely sure it has helped my sales. I know personally that I hesitate to buy anything online that doesn’t have great pictures. I’m sure others must be the same.

    So what’s stopping me? I guess it’s because I can’t draw.

    To be honest, I’ve got the writing bit down. I’ve been writing for magazines and other outlets as a freelancer for years now. The problem is that visual manuals are best. And if you can’t draw, then how do you create the illustrations that you need in order to demonstrate what you’re trying to teach your reader?

    My illustration of the Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University.

    I taught myself a little bit of Google Sketchup in my second year at University in order to create some visuals for a project, but illustrating a whole book? It seems a little out of my league! I got kicked off my A Level Art course just five weeks in while I was at school, so confidence in my drawing skills has never been particularly high!

    How do you produce illustrated manuals if you can’t draw?

    Thankfully there are technical illustrators out there who will help you put together illustrated manuals, which is great for people like myself. Who can’t draw. At all. (Well maybe they can draw a little bit, but not enough for a job like this).  And of course they’ll be able to create a style that works with your brand too, making everything feel coherent when you go on to write more books and manuals.

    Sometimes the right option really is to speculatively pay someone to do the bits of the job that you’re not very good at in order to produce a more marketable product overall. You’ve got to take that gamble sometimes, right?

    Being well illustrated can make the difference between a how-to book selling or not, especially in the fast-moving world of e-books and online business. If your manual or book doesn’t get good reviews right from the start, then you’ve already lost a large portion of your sales. Every small business owner will know that a product needs to make an impact the moment you launch it, otherwise you’ll have wasted a considerable amount of time and potentially money too. First impressions stay with people. And once someone has a first impression that is negative of your brand it can be very hard to change that.

    If you’re considering, as I am, producing an illustrated manual on your specialist subject then sometimes it’s better to reach out to people who can help you to create your vision successfully. Occasionally even the solo entrepreneur has to admit that they can’t quite manage to do everything themselves.

  • Learning to write

    Learning to write

    This might sound like a strange title for a post. After all, I do make my living from writing and I’m also doing very well in a subject that involves lots of writing at university.

    I know we’re all supposed to get our grammar education while we’re at school, but it’s often not quite that simple. I seem to remember having English lessons that attempted to teach us the difference between a verb, a noun, and an adjective but I was never really that interested. I always figured that as long as I could express myself and be understood then it didn’t really matter. You see, there was just so much to learn about the world that grammar rules seemed to just not really be that important in the grand scheme of things.

    2014-11-06 07.56.30

    But the reality is that I’m now a writer and that means I have to hold myself to some sort of professional standard. So I invested in the Oxford style guides and have the Guardian version on the way . Now I can look up words and see if it should be newborn, new-born, or new born. I can see if it’s the right time to use an Oxford comma or if I should be using an Em rule or an En dash.

    While the main reason for spending £40 on style guides is to improve my professional writing I’m also looking forward to improving my academic writing. I’m very good at what I do. I routinely have been getting marks of 75+ on both essays and exams. My grasp of the content of the modules we study is pretty good but I feel it’s my writing that lets me down.

    I struggle to express myself in a nuanced way sometimes and find that I can’t write down exactly what I want to say. The words seem clumsy and inelegant too much of the time and they don’t do justice to the arguments I’m making.

    So in the future I’m hoping that whenever I write academically or professionally I’ll just spend an extra bit of time checking things against the style guides and making the words play nicer together. And occasionally I’ll just dip into a few pages for fun to try and learn something new.

     

  • What would you save?

    The next module of my degree starts in just two weeks, I’m studying A226 with the Open University and if the last two modules are anything to go by it should be excellent. The first course book arrived last week and it really is a beautiful book. This is a brand new course so I can only hope that this is the way that the OU will be producing their course books in the future. It’s lavishly printed and feels like something worth keeping on your bookcase to refer to.

    Anyway, onto the good stuff. An icebreaker activity was posted in the course forum, the question is “Imagine you are in a place you know where art is on show – it might be a national or local museum or gallery, a heritage site, an arts centre, etc.  The fire alarms start ringing, you can smell smoke, and you think: I must save something as I escape.  What work would you save – and why?”

    I think this is an interesting question and poses two distinct trails of thought. Are you going to save a work which is culturally important or are you going to save something that you like? Or course there’s no reason why the two can’t be one and the same, but it may sway your judgement on your selection depending on which way you approach the question.

    So I couldn’t pick just one work, I had to be difficult and pick two.

    Rhine II – Andreas Gursky


    I love Gurskys work. I love the colours, the use of composition, the repeating motifs, everything. This shot isn’t my favourite of his, but I do believe it’s important for other reasons. I believe it’s possibly one of the most important art photographs ever produced and sold.

    $4.3 million this work sold for last year at auction. That’s an awful lot of money. I mean it’s no $250 million Cézanne but it does put it firmly into the high flyers list of prices paid for art.

    The thing is, a piece of photographic work being sold for so much money means that the art world is finally beginning to recognise photography alongside the more traditional disciplines. For too long it’s been thought that photography does not involve as much skill as crafts like painting or sculpture and that it is somehow inferior. The fact that anyone can take a half decent photograph with todays technology only serves to reinforce that assumption in many circles.

    For anyone that produces or admires lens based work this is a huge step forward in the way that the art world and the public think about this subject. Each time a photograph is sold for more than the previous one it helps raise the status of all art photographers out there.

    So for that reason, I’d save it.

    Love Poem for CF – Tracey Emin

    Your put your hand across my mouth / But still the noise continues / Every part of my body / is Screaming / Smashed into a thousand, / million pieces / Each Part For Ever / Belonging to You


    Tracey Emin is true Marmite isn’t she? You either love her or you absolutely hate her. I happen to love her, as you might have guessed.

    I’d save an Emin because I believe she says both important things about our perception of art and also raises interesting questions about being a woman in todays society. Susan Hiller said “Being a woman artist is advantageous. If you are a minority, you already know two languages” (1991) which I also think happens to apply beautifully to Emins work as well.

    Her work always seems so expressive and directly from her heart. Almost like there are emotions and thoughts pouring out and she just has to capture them and immortalise them somehow. Especially the neon poems that she has produced over the years. However at the same time in every piece, she seems to poke a little fun at the consumerist nature of art, reminding us to not take anything too seriously.

    I love this particular piece though for other reasons. Some time ago someone smashed my heart into a thousand, million pieces and still it sometimes feels like every piece belongs to Him. What can I say, it resonates.