Last week I listened to the BEST podcast I've ever heard about sharing-your-crafty-thing. It was Sister Diane's CraftyPod show about Engagement Marketing.
If you sell your crafty thing (patterns, yarns, purses, whatever!) you really need to listen to this.
What's Engagement Marketing?
Diane gives a great definition and explains why you'd want to use it, but I can't resist putting it in my own words.
It's sharing your thing by connecting. By making relationships, by talking to your customers one-by-one. It's what we (you and I) do here on the blog in the comments. It's chatting on Twitter. It's leaving comments on Flickr.
Ignore the word Marketing.
Because it's so much more than that.
(and I don't like the word marketing)
It's not just sharing my passion with you, even though that's always fun.
In all of this connecting, sharing, chatting; I've gotten to know you.
You share your yarn-ideas with me, you help me crochet, you review my class.
You challenge me, encourage me and inspire me.
For that, I thank you.
Enough with the gushing.
If this all sounds like utopian love-fest, it sort of is.
It makes my working life so much better, that I get to share it with such fabulously brilliant people.
But it's also REAL. And useful.
Useful in sharing my thing and useful in making my business sustainable.
And it's accessible to anyone. Really!
Want some of this gushy-ness?
To feel this good and gushy about the people involved in your business, start by listening to Diane's podcast.
And if after you've listened, you're looking for some concrete ways of applying it, check out my Share Your Thing class (which is now available for homestudy).