As you may have noticed if you are following me on Twitter, I have closed the Twitter account of Silverlight and Whiteleaf Jewellery.
Twitter is a lot of fun, and I have enjoyed using it. However, in the past month or so I realised that I was spending time tweeting when I should have been creating new designs. This simply wasn't good for my business or for my customers.
There are so many people on Twitter, and so many crafters and small businesses using Twitter to drum up business instead of using Twitter as it was intended to be used: for conversing, keeping in touch, and chatting with people all over the world. It is so easy to become a spammer on Twitter rather than using it as a natural extension of one's business and activities.
So I have decided to close down Silverlight and Whiteleaf Jewellery's Twitter account, ten months after I opened it in July 2010 (as posted here). In that ten months, I amassed 2,450 followers, but I doubt that any of them will miss my tweets. And maybe that's a good thing.
So: farewell, Twitter, and happy tweeting to all of my fellow Twitterers! Thank you for all the fun times. May the little blue birdie continue to bring you happiness.
29 May, 2011
Bye bye birdie!
25 April, 2011
I've done it: Silverlight & Whiteleaf Jewellery is on Facebook.
My third big step into the world of social media (this blog and my Twitter account being the first and second): I reluctantly joined Facebook in early February.
I put it off for a long time, but after multiple requests from friends, acquaintances, and relatives, and after hearing for the umpteenth time about artisans who find that one of their best promotional tools is their Facebook pages, I decided to give it a try, and scheduled it for early February. Perhaps the reality of Facebook would be more fun than my mental image of it.
Regrettably, that was not the case. It took me 48 hours to grasp Twitter, and that felt like a long time. Two weeks after joining Facebook, I thought that I might be getting the hang of it, and I was starting to see the possibilities in it. Twitter was overwhelming because of the sheer amount of information being flung about; Facebook is overwhelming because it is complex, sprawling, feels unnatural, and, despite the fact that it's the biggest social network in the world, it's not user-friendly.
Despite all that, I'm now almost starting to like it. Unlike on Twitter, on Facebook you can post images and get rapid feedback from potential customers. Now that's handy. I can also say that I have made a sale due to Facebook, which is more than I can say about Twitter, fun though Twitter is. I've also found that customers are clicking on the Facebook link in my E-mail signature and are 'liking' my page, which is brilliant as it means that they are keen to keep in touch with my work and to see new designs.
Facebook is sort of like a blog, a bit like Twitter, a bit like StumbleUpon, and a bit like Tumblr. It's as though each of those social media platforms took an idea from Facebook and expanded on it, while Facebook itself, as the original social media platform, is the (more or less) happy medium.
You will notice that there is now a Facebook badge in the sidebar on the left of this blog. So you can now officially 'like' Silverlight & Whiteleaf Jewellery on Facebook.
16 July, 2010
Twitter!
My second big step into the world of social media (this blog being the first): I joined Twitter last night.
Wow. It is huge.
Hundreds of thousands of people, all talking.
You will see, in the sidebar on the left of this blog, a little 'Follow me on Twitter' gadget. I have spent most of today playing around with my account, following people, and trying to get my head around how the whole thing works. It really is enormous. It feels like I'm wasting time, but I remind myself that once I have a grip on Twitter, I will not need to spend all day on it. And yes, I will be tweeting special discount codes for my followers.
One of the first things I did this morning was go to Zibbet's community and search for 'Twitter'. I found a handful of discussion threads with advice on how to use Twitter. The Zibbet community is very helpful and friendly. I found some information that I'm very grateful I found now, rather than later on in my Twitter career. As a result, I've signed up on bit.ly, and am planning to sign up on HootSuite to manage my tweets.
But not tonight. Tonight I need to go and do some of the work that has been piling up while I have been getting to know my new, little, blue birdy friend.
So, here's to Twittering success, and many happy tweeple for all of us!
