Tweeting Our Treasuries

We are always looking for ways to spread the word about our Etsy shop and have found that Twitter is a great resource and simple to use. At first, Twitter made little sense to me with all of the hashtags #, @ symbols, RT’s, and only 140 characters allowed. But, after taking a little time to read a few tips and chat with a good friend who owns a boutique PR company I was ready to go! I recently asked my friend, Angela Moore (@ledgedancer on Twitter), from Starfish PR if she would share a few tips with ETTEAM for this blog post. Here are a few that she shared with me:

1. If you want your tweet retweeted (RT in Twitter talk), allow extra room so stick to 120 characters or less. When you RT and add a comment, it takes up more characters.
2. Stick to the 80/20 rule and make your tweets 80% about other people/topic, 20% about you.
3. Remember that if you begin your tweet with a user name, it will only be seen by that user's followers and yours - so if you want it public be sure to insert a word first. Example:  "Wondering how @jsmith thinks about the new Star Trek movie"
4. Be yourself and interact with people.
5. Share interesting info/links
6. If you RT someone be sure to add a little comment
7. If you share someone's blog or article, try to add a comment and their user name

As I read her suggestions I thought about how I could apply those to our @sockprints tweets with regard to Etsy. Here are some of my ideas:

1. Utilize Etsy’s tweet button by clicking on it in the lower right hand corner of your treasury after creating it. A window will pop up with the title, curator and the link to the treasury. Add some of the featured ETTEAM members’ Twitter names and post. With only 140 characters you won’t be able to add everyone, but you should be able to add a few.
2. Be sure to use the team hashtag #ETTEAM in each treasury tweet to make it easy for other teammates to search for our team tweets and then retweet them. Retweeting is like clicks and comments on treasures. The more RT’s the better. It shows Twitter that it’s a great tweet and worth noticing.
3. When mentioning teammates in tweets by using Twitter handles, it alerts that member via Twitter that someone mentioned them. You can then go on Twitter and retweet their tweet to your followers.
4. When retweeting, remember Angela’s tip about adding a comment. It’s easy to thank the teammate for including them in their treasury or simply compliment their collection. If you don’t have time to comment, no worries, just click retweet!

Angela also suggested using hashtags # to help people find topics on Twitter and to be sure to add your Twitter handle on your business cards, email signature and other visible sites like your Etsy shop. Etsy has a Twitter button that is simple to install on your shop’s home page. New followers can follow you by clicking on that button.

The ETTEAM blog has a list of all members who are on Twitter on the right hand side of the page. You can click on each one to follow them which makes it easy to include and mention their Twitter handle in your tweets. I’ve also created an online spreadsheet with our ETTEAM members’ Twitter handles and I periodically update it. You’re welcome to use it too. When I tweet ETTEAM treasuries or thank teammates for including @sockprints, I use the bookmarked spreadsheet and then copy and paste their Twitter handles in my tweet. It saves time looking up each teammate’s handle and typing it. Here’s the shortened link for viewing: http://bit.ly/1c0NbsG

Happy tweeting #ETTEAM!

Hayley Mullin

SockprintsOnEtsy, PillowprintzOnEtsy and UbUdesigns

P.S. Thank you and shout out to my friend Angela Moore for her contributions to this post!