TEAM CHALLENGE 2: TREASURY CHALLENGE

Thank you to TopiaryDesigns for putting this treasury challenge together for our team. (She stepped in for Carrie, who have been experiencing some computer problems).

If you are totally new to treasuries check out Esty's FAQ on treasuries
help.etsy.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/82

Treasuries are great marketing tools. Not only are treasuries selected for the front page they also browsed by thousands of customers everyday. There are currently 22,641 pages of treasuries with 20 treasuries per page, that's 452,820 treasuries! So it's extremely easy to for any treasury you create or that you are featured in to get lost. But we have a secret weapon! We have a team of over 1,100 members to help push our treasuries to the top pages!

Treasuries are listed by "hotness" not by creation date. Hotness is determined by how much activity a treasury generates, views, clicks and comments. With 1,100+ people and all their Facebook friends and Twitter followers to visit our team treasuries we can generate lots of activity pushing our treasuries to the first pages!

So that makes our treasuries easy to find but are they front page worthy? Will Etsy pick it to be featured? You don't have to be a mind reader to figure out what Etsy is looking for. They tell you! If you haven't found the merchandising desk yet head over and take a look. The link is below. In addition to the desk Etsy will send you emails telling you what they are interested in! The link to sign up is also listed below.

If you build your treasury around one of their trends it is more likely to be selected. And DON'T feature yourself! Treasuries are about sharing the love.

But at the end of the day it needs to be beautiful. Don't just pick random items from team member shops. Compose your treasury around a color, theme, season or story. Here's an Etsy Storque article about how to curate an amazing treasury. www.etsy.com/storque/how-to/how-to-make-a-great-treasury-list-671/


So before we begin the challenge, please tag ALL items in your shop that you would like to have other EE TEAM members be able to find in a search for items to put in their treasuries. (You can tag a few items or all items in your shop if you want).

1.Check out Etsy's Merchandising Desk. www.etsy.com/storque/search/title/merchandising/
2. Sign up for at least one Etsy newsletter www.etsy.com/mailinglist
3. Create a treasury based around a current trend Etsy has promoted on the merchandising desk or one of the email newsletters using at least 8 items from Etsy Entrepreneurs Team members.
4. Tag your treasury with the tag EE TEAM, EtsyTeam and Entrepreneurs
5. Send a convo to every seller featured in your treasury letting them know you've featured their item and asking them to come take a look.
6. Maintain your treasury by revisiting at least once a day to replace any items that have sold and respond to comments.
7. Comment on every treasury you are featured in.
8. Comment on at least 10 Etsy Entrepreneurs team treasuries you are not featured in. You can find them be searching Treasury for the tag EE TEAM
9. Promote your treasury and the ones you are featured in on any platforms you can, Facebook, your blog, Twitter. Etsy gives extra brownie points for using the tag #EtsyTeamTreasury on Twitter. I don't tweet so I hope that makes sense to those of you who do!

All right, when you are done with your treasury, please post them here so that all of our team members can view it, comment, click, tweet, blog, FB, etc..

We have over 1000 members, and if each of us make at least 1 treasury to share and then click on each other's treasuries, just imagine the amount of exposure that we all would get! I'm so excited just thinking about it. This challenge will last for about 1 week to 1.5 weeks. I want to give people enough time to tag all of their items and then make treasuries of items that they find.
Okay, let's have FUN!

TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE GO TO OUR TEAM FORUM:
http://www.etsy.com/teams/7978/etsy-entrepreneurs/discuss/6814175/

5 Types of Tweets to Boost Your Biz

Made up of a little bit art and a little bit science, proper tweeting is essential if you want your Twitter account to work for you, and not against you. There are a lot of opinions out there about the right way to tweet. Like so many things, it really comes down to the fact that there isn’t a single answer. It depends a lot on the type of business you have and what you’re trying to accomplish with your Twitter account. So how often you tweet and which combination of the types of tweets you use is not addressed here. But it’s just as important to explore the different types of tweets and know what your options are. So here’s a breakdown to get your brain working:

Personal - Twitter is for connecting with your audience. One of the best ways to do that is to let them get to know you. The type of business you’re in will dictate the nature of these tweets. For instance, if you’re a blogger, you can afford to be more personal, as you’re probably on a personal level with your readers anyway. If your business is tax consulting, you might be more concerned about how your clients will see certain kinds of tweets. That doesn’t mean you don’t tweet personal stuff, but you might be more inclined to tweet about your son’s soccer team winning last night, and less likely to tweet about the cool iPhone game you just found. The key is to show your human side, while adding some value in the form of insight into your life or maybe something entertaining. Tweets like, “Had a bowl of cereal for breakfast,” while personal, are probably of little to no value regardless of your goals.

Useful 3^rd party information – Posting a link to a blog post, video, e-book or other useful tool or information will help your followers and show them that you’re interested in more than just self-promotion. If you have a way people can save money or learn something interesting, share it, and they’ll keep checking your feed for more.

Re-tweets – Re-tweeting is saying that what someone else had to say was of value, and you’re letting your followers know that you respect the person whose tweet you repost. This adds value to your followers by passing on useful or entertaining information, and it lets the original tweeter know you appreciate them, which strengthens bonds on both sides.

Thank-yous – Mom was right – saying thank you is always a good idea. You can tweet thank you messages to thank people for following you on Twitter, which is a good way to connect, but might be difficult to keep up with, especially as your followers grow. Another way to use Twitter for a thank you shout out is for off-Twitter deeds. If someone wrote a guest blog for you or has agreed to speak at your event or webinar, for instance, thanking them on Twitter will accomplish the thank you, and it will get the word out about the blog or event as well.

Promotional – It’s no accident that this is last on the list. Twitter folks are very leery about people using Twitter for blatant self-promotion. That doesn’t mean you should never post a link to your products or services. It just means you need to be careful that you don’t turn anyone off. There are a lot of supposed “golden ratios” out there, ranging from 1 promo post per 3 other posts, to 1 per 10. The “right” one is probably somewhere in the middle, and again, it depends on your business and your goals.

If you want to see someone who uses a combination of all of these to effectively market her business, check out @MariSmith‘s page. Everything from her page design to her tweeting strategy are outstanding. Then again, she’s a social media consultant, so she’d better get it right! Do you have other recommendations for optimizing your Twitter efforts? Share your thoughts below in the comments.

(Source: http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2010/04/02/5-types-of-tweets-to-boost-your-biz/)

Thank you to our member for finding this article: CrochetBabyBoutique

HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL TREASURY

The team love is already starting to pour in with treasuries featuring our lovely and talented members. I've even seen a post or two with some questions about how treasuries work and what their value is so I thought I'd create a thread where we can all share our tips and techniques for creating successful treasuries. This first post is going to be long but I promise it's worth reading.

1. The value of treasuries: The main value of treasuries is exposure. But now that there are thousands of treasuries the exposure can be very limited. The Etsy team does select from member created treasuries for the front page but they aren't going to search down to page 57 to find them. You want your treasuries to make it into the first ten pages if possible. The question is, how to do that? You want as many views, clicks and comments as possible! Here are tips on how to achieve that.

2. Treasuries are searchable! You can search by your shop name to see any treasuries you have been featured in or created. The activity feature does show you treasuries you have created or been featured in as well but lately I've been experiencing a sporadic delay of 12-24 hours so I search the treasuries at least twice a day. Always always comment at least once on any treasury you're featured in. If you created the treasury respond to the comments you receive.

3. Tag you treasuries! The tags you use are also searchable. You want to tag treasuries as much as possible. Always tag treasuries featuring your team mates with the tag Etsy Entrepreneurs!!!! We are blessed with an enormous team. If half our team commented on your treasury it would have 500 comments. Also use a any trend tags Etsy Finds has been sending out in their emails. This is what the Etsy team is currently interested and is likely to search for when picking the front page. You want to use color tags, theme tags, style tags, season tags etc.

4. Composing a treasury. The Etsy team doesn't always just pick the hottest, most commented on treasury. The are looking for a beautiful well composed treasury. Select your items with care, compose them around a color, style, trend or subject. Include a variety categories, jewelry, home decor, paper goods, clothing, photography, painting etc. Also Etsy will not select your treasury if you feature yourself!

5. Using team love. We have an enormous out pouring of enthusiasm right now. To harness that on treasuries we should all take a few minutes a day to search the treasuries for "Etsy Entrepreneurs" and give those treasuries some love. If you've created a treasury but didn't use that tag don't worry! You can go back in and add it! That way the entire team can find and support the treasury even if they aren't featured.

If you have any tips I didn't include please post them!


Thank you to our member TopiaryDesigns for this wonderful post!