Activity

I've been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out how the heck I'm going to improve my shop and my Etsy experience in general.  In that process, I've been reading what I can find on the beaten-to-death subject of tweaking everything til blood shoots out your eyes or your head explodes.

Fortunately, I did learn a couple of new things.  We all knew that tweaking and getting good keywords to use in titles and tags, does makes a huge difference.  We all knew this.  The new thing I learned is they should exactly match to get the best results.  Whatever two-word keywords you use in your title, should be repeated exactly in your tags.  I also learned that shop activity helps.  Even if it's just freshening up your profile or shop policies.  Regular activity seems to help keep you from sinking to the bottom of the "I don't exist on Etsy" pit. 

I was gone for two weeks and not very active upon my immediate return from my trip.  My views tanked.  The past week or so, I've been very busy in my shop.  Listed a couple of items.  Rearranged my listings so that my first page looks more fitting for autumn.  Making treasuries and I even joined another team and became more active in another one I already belonged to.

My views immediately started going back up.  Then I had some little feature, I still haven't been able to find out where, that boosted my views even more for a couple of days. 

Activity. 

Another thing I noticed on one of the other teams I belong to is the nature of their discussions and team participation.  Relatively speaking, we have a very active discussion forum which is a huge asset for our team.  Fortunately, our team allows members to start threads.  Some teams do not allow this.  Only the team leader can post new discussions.  I understand the need for some control, but I think this is very limiting.  I love that we can all start threads.  It encourages, rather than inhibits member participation.  But I would love to see more members joining in.  I don't know how to do that.

We have some great promotional threads going.  Those are important to every team and to all members.  We need those.  The next level is to have discussions that engage members in conversations that are a little more helpful.  I've done that with a couple of posts about suggesting a new item to the shop above you and the tag game where we suggest tags to each other.  Kind of like brainstorming.  Some of the best ideas come out of brainstorm sessions and I've always known that two heads are better than one.

But it all comes back to activity.  The more activity, the more visible you are. 

So don't be afraid to jump in or suggest to someone you know on the team to come join the discussions.  The better our discussion threads are the more people participate.  The more people who participate, the better the quality of our discussions.  More ideas from more sources.  All for the good of the individual which then leads to the good of the team.  Or is it the other way around?

Doesn't matter.  Moving forward is what matters.  Moving forward, being active and remembering that there is always room for improvement.