5 Mistakes Most Businesses Make Using Facebook

My friend and college over at Uniquely UK, Erika (she who makes divine jewellery!) recently wrote a blog post about Getting Facebook Updates and it prompted me to think about how we use Facebook as small business owners and where we all typically go wrong.

Using Facebook as a promotional tool, a marketing tool is a new concept to a lot of us. Especially those who are used to traditional marketing methods, like advertising, direct marketing (leaflet drops), press releases and sponsored links. All of these cost money and for most small businesses out there, especially newly formed businesses with little or no capital backup, these are simply unattainable.

I recently shared a post whereby the 'payment' for some work was a quarter page advert in the Craftseller Magazine:

This advert would have cost me £250 plus VAT which is far more than I could afford for one month's worth of advertising, even in a great magazine like this.

So we are left with the ever popular 'free advertising' that can be done on social media sites like Facebook.

Here are 5 of the things that most business page owners will do on Facebook, why they're not good and what you can do instead:

1. Liking from a business page

A like from a business page doesn't count towards your total number of likes, as seen here:

Now while this isn't really a problem for the business page doing the 'liking' it will potentially bother the owner of the page you are liking. Whilst it isn't all about the 'likes' counter, it is important to most of us as a reflection of how many people potentially we can reach with our products and how many potential customers we have. You are much more likely to get a visit (and hopefully a 'like') in return if you like the fellow business page from your personal page and leave a comment such as "Just visiting your gorgeous page, love the XXX you make! Simmi from @Grace's Favours xxx"

2. Not posting often enough

In order to keep up interest in your page, you need to be posted content at least once a day in an ideal world. This is easy for some of us, who like me, are practically glued to their computer or smart phone... ahem... but for others, this poses a real time management issue.

Did you know you can schedule posts? It's really easy:

Write your post as normal and then click on the little clock icon in the bottom left hand corner of the box

Choose the date and time you want the post released and click 'Schedule'

Note: UTC means Coordinated Universal Time or as we more often know it, GMT - Greenwich Mean Time.

3. Just posting product links

One thing that puts me off quicker than anything else on any social media platform (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc) is when a business just posts links to it's new products and listings. Nothing else, no behind the screens tidbits, no work in progress photos, no chatty posts to help you get to know the person behind the business, just links to products.

If I come across a business doing this, I unfollow and unlike quickly. As a customer/potential customer you need to feel interested in the business page and engaged with them. The best pages for this are the ones who share a great mix of product photos and links, information about their workspace, or what they find hard to motivate themselves to do for their business or stories about disasters - everyone loves a good disaster - it's happened to us all, but we do like the reassurance that even the most organised, together of business owners don't get it right all the time!

4. Not interacting with networking pages

This is a debatable issue as some people get a lot more out of this practice than others. I have wasted many many hours (more than I care to admit!) on networking pages like UK Mums Who Make or I Run A Small Business trawling through posts, leaving comments with links to my products, posting about new products that I've made, etc BUT.... there are times when it's really worth putting up a post on a networking page. If you have a new product to shout about, especially one which is relevant to an upcoming event like Easter or St Patrick's Day, it can boost your reach enormously to interact with the appropriate networking pages.

If you are a new business, or just new to Facebook, it can definitely be worthwhile checking out some of these networking pages and seeing if your products are of interest to customers (a lot of customers do post on these pages when they're looking for something specific) and if they're sensibly priced, appealingly photographed, etc.

Last year, when I released my St Patrick's Day Cuddly Campervan I posted it to a couple of the different networking sites on Facebook and within 1 week it generated me 7 sales! (luckily I had some already made up!)

5. Paying to promote your page

This is another contentious issue. The 'reach' (the number of people who see your posts) is dropping and Facebook have admitted that this is because they want businesses to pay to 'promote their page' Most small businesses don't feel that this is fair and can't afford to. I was lucky enough to be given some advertising by Facebook and as it wasn't going to cost me anything, I did use it. My 'likes' went through the roof. But, although they were genuine people, they weren't really potential customers as most of them have never interacted with my page and have never made a purchase. This seems like a false economy to me. I would have been really put out if I'd paid for the advertising and got no sales as a result.


I hope this has been of some use to you, but if you do have any questions, please feel free to drop me a comment here or come and pester me on Facebook

Craft, Hobby & Stitch International at the NEC

Yesterday was the start of the 2014 CHSI event at the huge and amazing NEC:

I hadn't planned on attending this year, as it's more relevant to retailers, looking for suppliers of craft and stitch products, but I was invited to attend the British Craft Awards, which was being hosted by Immediate Media, who I made the hearts for last week so I thought it would be a good networking opportunity.

I met up with a friend who lives near Birmingham and we had a lovely, child-free, husband-free day, we nattered, shopped, drank copious cups of tea and had a great time!

I stopped by the CRS Fur Fabric stand and bought a small fortune's worth of teddy bear making materials (guess what'll be coming this way soon?!) and also some lovely ribbon from Unitrim which I'm really excited about getting my hands on!

I also had a very exciting conversation with a lady who manufactures soft toy kits.... but more of that to come soon (hopefully!)

The awards ceremony was a lovely event:

The awards were mainly for retailers, best retail websites, best gadgets and most useful products, etc but it was hosted in a conference room just up from the main hall the exhibition takes place in, there was a lovely buffet and free bar laid on and the amazing Singing Waiters who had us all in stitches!

For me this was just a nice extra at the end of a good day at the show and a bit of gentle networking, which is always useful.

All in all, a great day.

Oh, and I nearly forgot... the rest of the hearts that I made for Immediate Media!!

All packaged up, ready for the postie :-)

I might be a little quiet for the rest of the week as it's half term and we're out everyday (trying to keep my little monsters busy and wear them out!) so have a lovely week everyone!

Hearts for Craftseller's owner Immediate Media

Well, I had a very exciting moment on Thursday when I responded to a post that I'd seen CraftSeller Magazine's Facebook page:

So I emailed Jane straight away and was delighted to receive a reply within the hour saying, yes please, they'd love me to make the hearts!!

Yay!

So I immediately had a panic... 50 hearts in 5 days, I could manage that, right? Er, lets hope so!

I wanted to make them a bit more exciting than just gingham so (having first confirmed that they were happy for me to be more adventurous!) I set about creating my hearts.

These are the first 3 designs:

I'm really pleased with them so far, although they're SO fiddly to make as they're only 6cm by 6cm!

This is what the backs look like:

They're taking quite a long time, but definitely worth doing right as they'll be going to advertisers and agencies that Immediate Media work with as part of a promotion for Craftseller, which is very exciting as it means my little hearts will be heading out to all sorts of different companies and will also be passing under the eyes of the editor of Craftseller and the other crafty publications that Immediate Media run.

Normally I try not to work too much at the weekend, so I can spend time with my husband and my kids, but this weekend my lovely husband has taken the kids out for a day of fun (which I'm secretly jealous of missing out on) so I can crack on.... So I suppose I'd best go and make sure I have lots to show for my alone-time!

Have a good weekend xxx

PS. I've already had an enquiry about turning these little beauties into Pincushions, so keep an eye on the Etsy Shop and the Uniquely UK website for them!

Sewing for my Kids

When I first started sewing, I made loads of things for my kids. Since it's become my day job, I make less and less for them, which I constantly feel guilty about, especially when they ask if every pretty, brightly coloured object is for them!

So this weekend I did some sewing just for them, and just because I could.

Seren had spotted this gorgeous 'make your own kit' on my Facebook news feed:

From Clara & Macy: Do you fancy a 'get your very own squirrel kit first before they are available anywhere else and at a super marvellous price' kind of offer. You do? Of course you do! 

Okay so I'm offering 20 squirrel kits with a super pre-launch offer of 30% off their usual price of £18. That makes them a mere £12.60. 

P&P is £1 for the UK, £2.50 for Europe, £3.50 for everywhere else.

The lovely Laura from Clara & Macy has designed a new kit which is going on sale soon and this was a chance to get one before they were on general release.

Initially I said no, I wouldn't buy one for Seren as I could make her something similar without needing to spend anything (as I already had the felt, threads & stuffing), but then I thought that a) she said she liked this and copying it would be wrong and b) it would be quite nice to sit with all the things I needed, with the instructions and pattern all worked out for me, by someone else and just do what I was told, rather than trying, reworking, retrying, getting annoyed, leaving it for 2 weeks, coming back to it later.... etc!

So I got the kit. I was thinking maybe Seren could try sewing it herself, but it's a bit too advanced for her (the packaging says 8+ and I think that's about right) Seren is only 5 and although I like to think she's advanced... I didn't want to set her up to fail with something too fiddly.

I was really pleased that when I measured it all out, there was actually enough felt in there to make 2 squirrels, because of course as soon as Patrick saw it, he needed one too!

So here are the two finished squirrels: (Ellie, Seren's one on the left and Bertie, Patrick's one on the right)

Front and back of the squirrels

Irritatingly not as neat as the one on the box!!

The gorgeous packaging the kit came in, including a Clara paper doll and clothes (Seren's claimed that!)

I think the kits are lovely. They do expect a level of experience, not in terms of understanding the instructions, but in terms of getting the finished product looking anywhere near as cute as the one on the box... my first attempt shows Bertie (on the right of the pic above) with very skewiff eyes and not the neatest of stitching. But Ellie (2nd attempt) fared better!

In terms of the time it took me to create these little critters... I started at 5pm on Saturday evening and finished at about 11.30pm the same evening.

As I'd expected, I needed to add more stuffing and a tiny bit of extra brown felt for the second one, but to make one squirrel, there's more than enough of everything you need in the kit and I'd definitely recommend them to anyone who wants something cute and fun to make, without needing a sewing machine or too many fancy stitches.

The other bit of sewing I did was in honour of Chinese New Year and it was to make a couple of dragons on sticks to be taken into school today:

I spotted something similar to this funny little dragony chap on a google search and decided that I could adapt it quite easily to make up a couple of dragons on a Sunday evening... so that's what I did.

The kids loved parading them off into school today and I really enjoyed the stress free experience of making things this week, just to be enjoyed and played with by my two little monsters!

How to - Valentine's Day Felt Card Tutorial

Ohhh it's that smoochy time of year coming up again and so I thought I'd do a fun little no-sew felt tutorial for you.

Here's what we're making:

It's a fairly simple tutorial, so I'm going to put the step by step instructions in the comment field for each photo.

If you're looking for presents to go with your handmade card, have a look in my Etsy Shop and also at Uniquely UK for masses of gorgeous pressie ideas!

Obviously you can change the slogan, but as it's supposed to be a jigsaw puzzle I chose 'We are a perfect fit!'

Materials:

Card (I had a pre-fold card in my stash, but you can always fold in both ends to meet like a door)
Thick red felt (if you want to make your felt thicker you can glue two layers together but it doesn't matter if it's thinner felt)
Paper
Pencil
Ruler
Red Pen
Glue

Instructions:

1. All the materials you'll need

Fold the piece of paper in half and draw half a heart shape as shown

Cut out the heart shape (with the paper folded over so you have a perfect heart shape)

Using your pencil, draw around the heart onto the felt.

Draw a jigsaw shape into the heart. I went straight down the middle, but you can do it in any shape and on any angle you like.

Cut the heart into two pieces according to your jigsaw line

Draw around the jigsaw line, using one side of the paper template (it doesn't matter which you use)

The trickiest bit is to cut out the heart and cut the jigsaw line into the shape keeping both sides looking perfect... small cuts and take it slowly is the best advice.

Your cut out heart should look like this when placed back together.

Using your paper heart, work out where to draw your lines on the card (you may need more or less lines, depending on what you want to say)

Write your message in pencil first, to make sure it fits on ok.

Go over the pencil writing with your red pen.

Then stick your heart onto either side of the card, so when it's closed, the heart fits together.

If you don't want to use a card like the one above with two doors, you can use a standard folded piece of card and either stick the heart pieces together, or just apart to make the jigsaw shape more obvious.

When the red pen is dry, rub out the pencil marks and you're done :-)

I hope you all have a very Happy Valentine's Day!

Goal: Creating PDF Sewing Patterns

One thing I promised myself that I was going to make time for this year was to get a line of PDF patterns in my shop and I'm really really proud of myself, that before the first month is out, I've made a great start!

I've started off with the masks that I've had rolling about in my head for a while and I really love the Easter ones, particularly the cute Lamb Mask:

And sticking with the Easter theme... the next up will be these 3 adorable Finger Puppets:

You'll be able to find all these patterns through my Etsy shop and also my Craftsy Shop.

Changes at Uniquely UK - the Home of Gorgeous & Unusual Gifts!

I was thinking about trying to be a bit more organised with my blog posts this year, rather than just crashing from one event to another at the last minute, which is rather how I feel last year's posts were put together!

So I Googled a calendar of events and created a spreadsheet for myself.

Do you know what though? Since then I've had complete brain freeze when it comes to creating new posts!

Typical.

So I thought I'd just give you a flavour of some new things going on...

We've rearranged our Uniquely UK website a bit, so it's got a fresher, more contemporary feel:

I love the Spring colours that the clever ladies who made the changes have chosen (can't claim any credit for that bit) and the brilliant 'New!' section, where you can jump immediately to the new things that have been added:

We're all quite a bit in love with our resident photographer's cushions! This one is my favourite:

And lastly a little something that has landed in my Etsy shop (can't work out how to get it instantly downloadable (is that a word?) from the Uniquely UK website, but as soon as I do, it'll be there too!)

Duck Dressing Up Mask

It's the first of a new range of PDF patterns that I've been promising (threatening?!) for a while now... watch this space for more!

Belated Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!

Sorry it's a little late, but as with everything, when you have two over excited kids underfoot, nothing quite gets done on time.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas - we were visiting family in London and Hampshire and then came back for New Year, which we had at home, with friends over (for that, read: too much food & booze and not enough sleep!)

Presents with their cousin at the Great Grandparents' house

Meeting Santa (again!)

Patrick modelling one of his pressies at Grandad's on Christmas Morning

Seren modelling a pressie at Grandad's house on Christmas Morning

I didn't take any pictures on New Year's Eve, but I do have a link to the fabulous recipe I used for our 'grown up' meal (once the kids were in bed)

We were given two pheasants by our local pub landlord, plucked, gutted and frozen... so initially I thought I'd just put them into the casserole whole, but there were some sharp shards of bone already sticking out, so I decided to joint them. Well. That was a whole saga on it's own! But 2 plasters, lots of swearing and an hour and a half later, two jointed pheasants!

I meant to do all the prep and cooking the day before, so that it had time to settle, but of course, I ran out of time (for that read: I drank too much to remember to take the damn birds out of the freezer!) so had to cook them on the morning of New Year's Eve. Still, the meal was delicious!

I added an apple, cored and chopped and some leaks and served it with just crusty bread as we'd already had a starter and had pudding, I didn't want everyone too sleepy after an enormous meal!

The kids are (thankfully) back to school on Monday, so I can get back to some kind of routine and some desperately needed sewing time as I have orders piling up!

Keep your eyes peeled here as the first Spring Patterns will be going on sale next week!

Creating Felt Baby Mobiles

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have joined with a group of other UK based artists, designers and creators to try and highlight the quality of Handmade products in this country. The new website is called Uniquely UK

We have started a blog, to try and raise the profile of the site and I recently wrote a piece about the process of creating a bespoke item for a customer.

The item in question was 3 enormous cloud baby mobiles, definitely the largest things I'd ever tackled!

If you want to hear more about the steps I went through to get to this point of having a 3.5 foot wide cloud hanging in the only room in my house with a high enough ceiling to take a decent photo, have a read here

Tutorial: How to Ladder Stitch - The Secret to Hidden Sewing

I've been thinking about how good demonstrating ladder stitch would be for my first video tutorial and for anyone who's seen my Facebook posts this week will know that I've been manically producing large rainbow coloured raindrops for a collection of huge baby mobiles that are due to be sent off tomorrow to The States.

So I've created the following video to show how to sew up a stuffed object (such a soft toy, a cushion, part of a baby mobile like this) without your stitches showing. Ladder stitch is a wonderful took, that once learnt will make all your stuffed plush creations look so much more professional.

 

 Feel free to leave any comments below, especially if you have any questions. Hopefully as I get more practice at making video tutorials they'll get a bit more professional too!

 Thanks for watching :-)