TaoGem Gemstones

About a year ago I began exploring various marketing and promotional techniques for the purpose of boosting my online presence.

I think just like myself, a lot of brand new online lapidary related business owners find ourselves somewhat overwhelmed with the many different possibilities that just sorta seem to present themselves to us as we embark on SEO related techniques.

These practices are completely different in application and technique today than they were when I first gave thought to developing my online presence a little over a year ago.

Different in technique and application, but the basic practices are much the same. Not much sense in sharing in detail. Today my main primary online sites although different are similar in a lot of ways.

I have gone through a couple of different selling sites and have now settled into a great shopping cart. Gone through several blogging software packages and have now finally settled into one that is excellent.

Online jewelry design related business owners like myself who have at least these two basic and very important type of sites up and running properly have just by the nature and course of events that lead to accomplishing them, found ourselves also educated about a few other very important things along the way.

Without a doubt we were told the importance of participating in at least a couple of forums that discussed jewelry design related topics. We learned the importance of joining in discussions and starting topics of interest related to our jewelry related niches. The forums we choose can be a little different for each of us depending upon what exactly our jewelry design related niches are.

From the time I first started out right up until just recently, my jewelry design related niche solely consisted of the sale of gemstones to jewelry designers. Because of that I settled into a couple of fun forums that were a mix of jewelry making related topics.

Still today, this “practice” is still the same, although the technique has changed because I started a lapidary related forum of my own. Still…. the need to mingle with others who share my same interests is extremely important. One big bonus is that I am truly having a great deal of fun. Although I have not actually met any of our forum members in person, we have connected. Connected with many who I have come to feel share a friendship as well as our common interests.

Let there be no mistake though. No matter if I had created a forum of my own or not, the need to mingle and connect with others is a must. Making participation in a couple of forums a daily routine is beneficial because sales can and usually do result from participating.

We also without a doubt learned yet another important, almost daily practice that would become just as routine to us as forum participation. “Social networking”.

Not just any social networking, but a group of people that socialize within a community. Unlike a forum, these communities consist of many different categories of network groups. This was much harder for me to get an understanding of than was the straight forward and easy to understand forum process. When I would participate within the arena of a forum, it all made perfect sense. You post a topic that you want to share or learn from and or reply to someone elses post.

Social networking did not come so easy for myself, and that is really putting it quite mildly. With the exception of the very first community that was introduced to me. It is the Squidoo community. At least this Squidoo community did make sense. Although….. when a person becomes a member and creates a “lens” which is your home page within the community, the interaction with other “lensmasters” is different from that of truly socializing within a network of community members. It is really just a community of home pages, or lenses.

Squidoo was really the only community that I found and participated in where at least it made some sense. You could add your jewelry design related lens to other jewelry design related groups within the Squidoo community. The ideal result for myself was for an actual designer to see my gemstone supply lens and hopefully purchase from me after visiting my lens.

This was not really social networking. I was sure that social networking had to be somewhat similar to participating within a forum. No matter which social network I signed up with, they just make absolutely no sense at all. Networks like StumbleUpon, Delicious, and others just seemed completely unorganized. I could not see how social networking was suppose to improve upon my internet presence in any way.

Finally I gave up on the whole thing…..

Then recently while trying to come up with some ideas for my forum members to use for their own developing of an online presence, I posted several social networking communities and shared how important it is to participate within one or two. Yes, for myself too !

I could hardly preach such a thing without at least giving it another whirl myself. I tried to list social networks that in one way or another had something to do with lapidary, gemstones, jewelry, and or jewelry design. While going through and looking at each of the networks that I listed for members to consider, I found one called Ning. The Ning community consists of a wide range of social networks. They have several jewelry and jewelry design related networks within the community. There are several perfectly fine jewelry design networks to pick from.

It was not long before I had created a page about myself. Then I headed off to the main page for the network I joined. I picked the Jewelry Design Network. I don’t really want to go into lengthy details about the group. I just really wanted to share that the Ning community networks made sense to me right away. The Jewelry Design Network consists of a variety of different kinds of jewelry design related members.

I am really glad that I found a jewelry design related network that has other online lapidary businesses as well as a variety of other crafts people. In no time at all I found myself joining in and discussing lots of interesting topics.

Joining this network is turning out really a-ok. Turning out to be a lot of fun. Not to mention that I can report some sales directly related because of participation within a social network. A network that finally made sense to me.

Just felt like adding a blog entry with a few of my own trials, tribulations and success with trying to get started in social networks. There are many out there to pick from. What my have been awkward and or uncomfortable for me to participate in, may well suit someone else just fine. The bottom line, is that it really is something that everyone should really include in our arsenal of tools/sites towards developing and maintaining the best possible jewelry design related online presence that we possibly can.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 5:36 am and is filed under Gemstone Announcements / Promotional. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.