Coupons, Pinterest and more social media

As Cynthia says on her card,
"Weavings are heirlooms, too!"

Arkansas Women Bloggers are having their Unplugged conference at the Ozark Folk Center later this week. We've been planning and working on making it a great three days.

I asked any crafts people who were interested to offer coupons or at least business cards to put in the ladies swag bags. Of course, that led to a whole discussion in craft meeting about what a blog was... at least I didn't have to explain the internet to anyone, though there are many of our crafts people who still don't do email.

So, I've got coupons from several shops, and I want to put them out so that the ladies can see what is available and start planning how to spend the little bit of free time they'll have. I also want them to be out there so that they don't have to have the physical coupon with them to use it, they can just show the coupon on their smart phone. But what is the best way to do that?

Look at your coupon envelope carefully.
It's a coupon from the Old Time Print Shop!

This might not be the right way, but I think I can figure out how to post them here, and then share them to Pinterest, so that they can access them there.

This coupon covers lots of different styles
of Pottery from  John Perry and Judi Munn,
 including some fired in the wood-fired kiln
 and some fired in the vegetable oil kiln that
 uses waste oil from our Ozark Folk Center
restaurants.

Of course, one of the main things to realize about computer programs, web constructs and social media is that as soon as you figure out how to work it, they will change it. So learning to be adaptable is good.

Lots of pretty choices at the Doll shop.

Original art from the Leather shop

You can order a custom broom in the Broom
Shop or pick from the fine selection. Make
sure you read this coupon for a chance to
earn an extra broom!

Great soap made in Aunt Linda's Apothecary
Shop. Buy some to take home and/or
sign up to take a class to learn to
make your own!

Kids of all ages love to spin Shernan's
hand turned tops.

I don't know if I'll have time to write this week, but look for some new ideas to show up when I do!

Venturing into social media

America is the land of advertising. We are constantly being told we need to do this, learn that, use x or buy y. Our family tries to be educated consumers, in what we do, use and buy.

We haven't had access to broadcast television since the big antenna blew off our farm house in La Junta. Firefly had just gone off the air and we couldn't see any reason to spend the money to replace the antenna. Besides, who needs tv when you have the internet? We research anything we are interested in there. Can you spin chinchilla fur? How do you make green curry? I've loved the internet for a long time.

Shawn is a tech guy and he likes to test and work with any new technologies that come out. He beta tests software and always seems to have some new gadget he is trying out. I get a few of them tried out on me, so he can experiment on how non-techies can relate to the item before recommending it to his web clients. The droid phone and tablet were disappointing. Iphones and Ipads rock. Netflix and Pandora radio fit well into my active farm life. My digital cameras enabled me to chronicle my days and share them with friends and family who live far away, before they got too plugged up with hay and dust to work. The Minolta Dimage worked for more than seven years, the little Samsung, only one. Now I have my iphone camera, not really happy with it, but better than nothing to keep family and friends up-to-date here in my blog.

Online sales and marketing have worked well for our farmstead craft business in the past. We had a very active ebay store for many years, and I have had good success with etsy for what little I've tried it. These marketing avenues take a lot more time and consistent effort than you would ever imagine. But they are effective and work into some time periods and for some businesses.

So, we aren't total luddites, nor are we afraid of trying tech, but... I get told from various angles that I need to learn to navigate social media - Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google plus, LinkedIn, new-flavor-of-the-week  and use it. Why? What use is it? What do I need it for? And, I can see where it could take all the time that I currently spend making things and caring for the farm.

Because of the lack of time, I don't see where it can help my own small craft business, but for any group of craft businesses, I can see where having many individuals liking, tweeting and connecting with pictures and links, it could really draw people physically to an area. So, with that in mind, I am attending the Arkansas Women Blogger's Unplugged conference this week. It will be a whole new forum for how to "get connected."

Now off to read how to effectively use pinterest (jenonthefarm) and find something interesting to tweet (@jlonthefarm) that I haven't already shared on facebook (Jeanette Larson) ...