Discuss the fun task of marketing a t-shirt shop. Where to advertise, link building, word of mouth, press releases, search engine marketing, keyword advertising, magazines, etc.
I've recently began to understand the ways blogs can be used to promote my site, and so far I've liked the results. My first step was to start reading the blogs by people with a similar aesthetic to mine. I wrote an e-mail to a blogger, got some positive feedback and even got my site mentioned on their blog. Now that my site is starting to get traffic, I want to start a blog of my own. My question is what should I bog about? Initially, I was just going to start a livejournal type thing, and the blog would be about all of the different adventures and projects I'm into. T-shirt designing would be but one of these, and I would hope that ALL of my interests would sort of draw in many different types of readers. But now, I see an advantage to putting my blog right on my actual site. Now that this is the case, does this mean I should only blog about things directly related to the specific business and brand? If that is the case, then there probably wouldn't be much to say on a regular basis. The example I'm thinking of is Johnny Cupcakes. The first page you reach when going to his site is his blog. Of course he mentions new shirt releases, etc, but often, he's just talking about what he's doing on vacation or whatever. Is that something he can get away with because people already know who he is? I mean I wouldn't blog about my vacation, but I would want to talk about other artistic ventures, and even mention t-shirts I have in contention on sites such as Uneetee and Threadless. Sort of a cross-promotion. Would this kind of personal interaction make me seem less professional? I think the overall goal of the blog is to help people get to know me and have an interest in me personally, hoping that will help them want to make a purchase. It is also to get people coming back to my site on a regular basis even when there aren't new products to promote. So what do you guys think?
I'm no blog expert, but the reason I read blogs is for personal interaction and to find out more about people.
I started a blog recently (again, I am no blog expert) and I talk about whatever interests me – TV shows, silly stuff, current events, etc. Of course I also talk about new products.
I think being down-to-earth in a blog just shows that you are a 'real', accessible person and that you are willing to take the time out to 'talk' to your potential customers.
thanks, Rodney. I checked out those links, and they were helpful. I actually ended up starting my blog last night. I've decided that the Johnny Cupcakes model will work pretty well for me. I don't think I will mention personal activities such as going to the movies like Johnny does, unless I can somehow make the post relate to how such activities provided creative inspiration. I like the format, though. It is a part of his actual site. It is mostly just a bulletin board, with no way for readers to really participate or leave comments. That will work for me, mostly because I don't know how to make a blog that can do that, and still have it be part of my actual site. I want my blog to show the artsy side of me, so they can associate that with the brand. I will post any art I do, even if it isn't related to t-shirts. I'm hoping this will make sense because I use paintings of models instead of photos for my product pages. I only use myself and my girlfriend as models, and in my blog I can sort of talk about that, too. It takes a long time to release new products, so the goal of my blog is to have something interesting for people to see on a regular basis so they don't forget about me!
I think you are on track with your blog. Also, one thing you can do with your blog every once in a while is just feature a shirt that you are selling. Talk about how it got its design or why its your favorite or why its the hottest seller. The important thing is to get the content out there.
Let's say you have a t-shirt with a firebird logo. Make a blog post about it using the words firebird in the title and many times in the post. Eventually search engines will pick it up and someone searching for firebird tshirt will find your blog post. It's much more difficult to get the search engine to find your firebird tshirt store URL because its just a picture of the shirt with no text.
Newer and recent content gets better search engine love. Also, with blogs you can add alot of text to your site. Most ecommerce stores lack text for SEO.
Wow, it never would have occurred to me to write a blog about current products. That all makes a lot of sense. That's killing two birds with one stone: getting SEO points and also plugging a shirt that is already selling pretty well if I have nothing "new" to blog about. Thanks!
Blogs are a good way to keep your website updated daily. Considering how search engines run, they especially like to see when your website gets updated. If you are blogging daily the better the search results will be on different search engines. This works incredibly well, especially if you have a lot of other people blogging or using threads much like this one. Easy way to do SEO, you can also post a bunch of ads on Craigslist, not necessarily to sell a bunch of product, but to be used as a cheap alternative to marketing
__________________ www.sbemedia.com - Print-On-Demand (POD) apparel solutions provider with free webstore for affiliates, from shirts to printed transfers
OK, so I'm starting to realize the limitations of the kind of "blog" I have directly on my site. Being that I don't know much about php, xhtml, etc, I don't know how to build a "real" blog, so what I have is mostly just a news bulletin. The problem with that sort of blog is that there isn't always going to be news related to the store. Also, with no way for people to leave comments, it is not as interactive, and so they have less of a reason to read what's there. So now I have questions about what I should do from here.
Option 1- Make a supplimentary blog on blogspot, xanga, livejournal, etc. in addition to my little news bulletin on my site. Pros: I can write in more stream of consciousness and be more entertaining without the limitations of having to only talk about my store. Also, apparently, being affiliated with a community like that, you get more traffic from random people. Cons of having 2 blogs: It's hard enough to get traffic to one, why would someone bother reading the one on my site after reading the other one. Cons of using an outside blog service: It seems less professional to have that 3rd party URL. I suppose I could simply stop calling the blog on my site a "blog" and start calling it a news bulletin. Then I'd have an external blog and an unrelated news bulletin, with separate focuses, yet I could still promote my store on my blog.
Option 2- Use a 3rd party blog INSTEAD of my newsbulletin blog. Pros: one blog, easier to get traffic, less confusing. Cons: Without the news bulletin dedicated to my store, there will be too much being blogged about that is not specific.
Option 3- Pay someone to build me an actual functioning blog attached to my site with my own url, customization, etc. Pros: More professional. Cons: lose the traffic which comes from the random people in blogging communities. Also, I'm sure its expensive.
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Re: Blog Advice
i would recommend keeping your blog separate from your website.... i had this discussion with my programmer...... depending on how you setup your site/etc...... my site is html and has my SS store embedded in it for now...... i talked about embedding my blog and he said i sould keep it "out" of the site due to search engine functions...... just make sure to put my site link in the blog and some fany pictures to push the curiousity a bit....
b
__________________ www.237am.com with featured artists in the blog and other creative things that happens in my life like breakdancing, robottin', welding stuff and supporting the detroit cultures in hip hop, techno, electro, house, etc..........
You can always go to www.merchantcircle.com its a great free website. There you can create your own blog and have it link back to your website. Additionally, its a fairly simple way of connecting with potential customers/vendors in your area.
__________________ www.sbemedia.com - Print-On-Demand (POD) apparel solutions provider with free webstore for affiliates, from shirts to printed transfers
Option 3- Pay someone to build me an actual functioning blog attached to my site with my own url, customization, etc. Pros: More professional. Cons: lose the traffic which comes from the random people in blogging communities. Also, I'm sure its expensive.
If you're going to be blogging regulary (and from the looks of what you've got, it seems like you are), I would actually go with putting a functional blog on your site with your own URL and customization.
I don't think the random traffic from a blogging community would beat the professional look and branding of having everything on your own URL. People will still find you.
It looks like you're with lunarpages, which means you can easily install a blog (I would highly suggest wordpress) on your site with one click. You don't need to know any PHP/XHMTL/etc to get it installed.
As far as the customization goes, you could mess around and figure it out yourself with help (as you did with the mojo script), or you could hire someone. Hiring someone to do it wouldn't cost more than $200 to have it fully customized the way you want (ie: matching your existing layout).
If you have the time, I really think you could customize your blog yourself. Once you've got the layout in dreamweaver, you basically copy and paste the URL into the wordpress templates.
It will really give you a much better way of organizing your blog and having a good URL for reach separate blog post.
I wouldn't recommend the merchcircle method as your goal isn't really to connect with vendors in your area and it takes the control of things away from your own site and puts it on a third party site. It also doesn't allow for the level of customization you're looking for.
Location: from detroit... now in lodi, jersey for a bit....pick me up
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Re: Blog Advice
i have blogspot...... does wordpress have more "search/crawler" features?
i have my blog practically looking like my site...same theme at least..... all i did was find a decent template that blogspot offered and changed the top banner and tweeked the colors/fonts a bit.....
i figured blogspot was good since it's tied to google...........
and i dont know much about programming/html....
b
__________________ www.237am.com with featured artists in the blog and other creative things that happens in my life like breakdancing, robottin', welding stuff and supporting the detroit cultures in hip hop, techno, electro, house, etc..........
I like WordPress personally, but it definitely takes a little bit of HTML coding knowledge to make it work, but as Rodney said if you have Dreamweaver it'll be a piece of cake
__________________ www.sbemedia.com - Print-On-Demand (POD) apparel solutions provider with free webstore for affiliates, from shirts to printed transfers
i have blogspot...... does wordpress have more "search/crawler" features?
I'm not sure what kind of "search/crawler" features you mean.
Quote:
i have my blog practically looking like my site...same theme at least..... all i did was find a decent template that blogspot offered and changed the top banner and tweeked the colors/fonts a bit.....
i figured blogspot was good since it's tied to google...........
and i dont know much about programming/html....
I'm not saying it's a bad choice for *everyone*, if blogspot is working for you, I'm not saying you need to change it or anything
I was mainly offering my recommendation about Ryan's specific case. Based on what features he was looking for and what he was looking to get out of it, and his level of knowledge.
Blog Advice 
