Saturday, March 16, 2013

Vlogging, or how to shear a sheep

Today we are trying something new on here on Havencroft Farm, I am going to show you how easy it is to shear a sheep, one of my first steps in making the high quality yarn you can buy at Common Threads.

This past week, I was lucky enough to be able to spend an hour with Stephanie Crampton Buckley, one of the founders of Arkansas Women Bloggers and owner of The Women Bloggers. She went through my connections - my blog, my Facebook account and my etsy store and gave me some advice for a tune up.

One of her suggestions was start vlogging (video blogging) some of our How-to's. Shawn was feeling well enough today to come outside and film this "How we shear our sheep" here on our farm; this is our first attempt.


My etsy store, Common Threads, has been doing ok this winter, but I'd like to increase my reach. I have been advertising on Facebook, and on etsy. I saw a spike in hits after the great article in the Three Rivers Edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette by Emily van Zandt and photographed by Rusty Hubbard. But, I'm still looking for ways to spread the word about the wonderful yarns and rugs that my sheep and goats grow the wool and mohair for.

Also, Stephanie said, as a craft person, I just had to do Pinterest. I haven't felt like I had the time for one more thing, but she showed me how to make it easy to at least update my boards and keep things fresh. So, I did some of that last night.

She suggested that I come up with 5 words or phrases that describe what I am/do to focus my efforts and then to use one of them in the first paragraph of everything for SEO  (that's "search engine optimization" mom). I've come up with YARN, FARM, WOOL RUG and I'm looking for the other two. Wool rug might not stay, but yarn and farm definitely do. What suggestions do you have for words? What words would you use to search and find out about our products.

And then, she pointed out that how-to's get the top hits. If you look on my stats for this blog, the two top articles are "How to build a sheep feeder," and "Hoop houses for sheep shelters".

So, as you saw above, I started Vlogging today. And I combined it with sheep shearing, which is one of the major foci of my life right now here on the farm. Keep tuned for more how-to video blogs. Maybe we'll start a Common Threads YouTube channel.

1 comment:

Summer Woodsong said...

How about 'handmade', 'crafts' or 'handcrafted'. Artisan is also an attractive descriptor.

I enjoyed seeing the farm, and that the 'sheeree' was so mellow about the process.

Yeah for vlogging - it sounds very nordic, somehow....