SILKFAIR Blog – January 2012

Your online business depends on your ability to constantly be proactive with your business. Ensuring that you take advantage of all of Silkfair’s resources is necessary to do this. Utilizing the proper tag lines, keeping fresh images and descriptions available on your site, and even taking advantage of video to make descriptions even more in-depth are all benefits that are readily available to you through Silkfair’s services.

Besides the basic online shop, you can also upgrade to a custom shop, allowing for an even more personalized store where you can create your own style. These custom shops offer all the amenities of a basic store plus more.

Keeping your items up-to-date

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and when it comes to making a sale they can hold their own value. But pictures do get old, or maybe they aren’t flashy enough. Make sure that you keep your photos updated, particularly for seasonal or promotional reasons. Give your items the feel for the time and environment they’re in.

Even descriptions should be updated periodically. Perhaps there’s a catchy way you can say things to help your items sell. Since SEOs constantly search for new images and data, keeping your descriptions and photos fresh can help bring your store and its items to the top of the list.

Be sure that your tags are catchy- SEO style

This brings us to the assistance that SEOs provide. Silkfair provides Google based product submission, so you need to make sure that your tittle tags and meta tags will ensure that your items will catch the attention of Google. This is why it’s important to keep your information fresh, since Google likes to draw upon fresh information. Besides just posting a meta tag for your shop, Silkfair also allows you to add meta tags to your items as well. This is a great opportunity to utilize popular items to draw in an audience.

Make use of your video descriptions

Perhaps one of the most interesting additions to Silkfair is their video marketing ability. Besides a photo and a brief description, you can make your own sales video to describe your items. This gives your store a personalized feel, and you’re able to completely describe and show off your items to your audience. Nothing makes a sale more personal than being able to hear and see what they are buying just like they’re in a hometown store. Just make sure that you follow Silkfair’s guidelines for videos.

Have your say

Another bonus that Silkfair offers is the opportunity to post your own blogs and discuss in-personalized forums. This gives you a chance to start conversations with your own words. The articles you write aren’t just for you to talk out loud, but are there to grab the attention of your audience. Because fresh information is what people are interested in, it is important that you constantly update blogs with new material. Although it can be difficult to say different things about what your store does, keep in mind that this is your shop, so don’t be afraid to get a little creative with the material. Make use of the season, sales, and stories that you’ve experienced with your store. If you have a forum, make sure that you continuously keep up with what’s going on there. Keep up with what others are talking about, and keep fresh information posted as well.

Silkfair helps you advertise

While there are various things you can do within Silkfair’s site, you can expand its abilities onto your own or other exterior sites with a Silkfairbadge. This static advertising is easily used, and allows a direct channel from a separate site to your online store at Silkfair.

The Mini Store Widget is another advertising item that allows for you to advertise your site through other sites. It is a link between social media, websites, and other online opportunities that will allow a direct window for your audience to see and visit your store. Conveniently, the widget can be picked up by friends and associates to be posted on their own sites to give your store more face time.
Silkfair is your online opportunity to make the most of your online store. All of these benefits are just waiting for you to take advantage of them. Make sure that you keep your information fresh, pictures and videos up-to-date, and your name out there and visible!

Have you ever talked to someone who was just plain boring? Yes? I’m sure we all have at some point (even I’ve found myself a little boring from time to time). But when you’re providing your audience with a reason to visit your site, the last thing you want to do is bore them right out of your store. You have to provide them with more than just good merchandise. You have to have the right sales pitch as well. Your words and content sell your brand, and your brand sells your merchandise. So what you say, sells your product.

Quality content

How do you come up with quality content? Anyone can state the facts, so it’s up to you to make them colorful. Facts supported by stories or even comments make information far more interesting to read.  Speaking of comments, this is where some of your best material can come from. When people talk to you, listen. You may find something interesting to talk about.

You may even want to try helpful hints regarding certain situations (holiday shopping or shopping for the kids) can be a great incentive to enter your site to see what you’ve said. Keep in mind that not everyone is shopping when they’re surfing the web. Sometimes they’re just looking for information. When they click on your site for some info, they may find themselves intrigued by what you have in store for them. Quality content is a great way to pick up new customers.

Mix and remix

Same song- same dance. That’s something you don’t really want to be singing for your audience. While a classic never seems to get old, folks are always looking for something new and shiny. So mix things up by shifting conversation gears constantly. When you’re writing a blog, cover a new topic this week. If you keep talking about the same thing, folks are bound to get bored. That doesn’t mean that you can’t circle around and come back to that topic at a later time, but you don’t want to burn folks out with a monotonous dialogue in which the words are the only thing that change. Needless to say, all you have to do is mix things up, and when in doubt, remix a classic.

Website, blogs, and even your social media

Content isn’t just limited to your articles and blogs, it’s in everything you write. From simple product description to comments and tweets, people read what you say. If you start off well, they continue to read. And that’s what you want. Folks that visit your site are not only looking for merchandise, but also want to find something that makes your site unique and special.

Since social media is one of the largest outlets and inlets of content, this is one of the best places to be creative. Make use of pictures, quotes, and discussion. While blogs have comments where you can discuss with the public, using social media to constantly get new ideas and post them can be one of the best ways to be creative. Because of the wide audience you are in contact with, developing relationships with your audience is so much easier. This in mind, when you have a frequent reviewer or commenters on your sites, it is helpful to write their names down and keep tabs on what they say. And always remember to speak when spoken to. Discussion is a two-way street, so keep traffic moving along to generate good content. You don’t want folks to feel like it’s a dead-end street when they leave a comment. Who knows, something that they say can lead to a great idea for an article, blog, or even a product that you should carry in the future.

Don’t forget that your brand website also needs to be full of good and colorful information. A site littered with advertisements and sales pitches isn’t exactly the most unique site. Though these ads may be important, you don’t want them composing 90% of your website. You want it filled with something that folks will see it and say to themselves: Well, that’s interesting. That’s what gets folks traveling to your site- a view worth seeing.

Essentially, people aren’t just shopping for merchandise, sometimes they’re shopping for information. So, it only makes sense to attract both groups. With a colorful and creative shop that is filled with good quality info, you’re bound to find your customers returning to your shop for something more than just your merchandise.