*Sigh* Today is June first,  the beginning of the summer season.  If you’re in the yarn & knitting industry you know you’re about to face a long summer of sluggish sales and possible cash flow troubles (unless you’re lucky enough to be in a tourist town like my lovely shop Fringe).

In light of the “panic” I always hear this time of the year, I wanted to provide some helpful tips and ideas to take advantage of the slower time here:

Optimize your website for mobile users:
Mobile phone use is increasing at an ever increasing clip. Over 93% of Americans own a cell phone and mobile phone use is up 34% from last year. Trends indicate users are engaging in what’s called ROBO behavior, “Research Online and Buying Offline”. That means, they use their mobile phones to look up your shop, check the hours, get directions and then come in to buy yarn.

According to this article on SearchEngineLand, 20% of Americans access the mobile web everyday. With FourSquare, Twitter Geolocation and Yelp for Mobile on the rise, this is not a passing trend.

Quick summer tasks here include:

• Ensure your key contact info is accessible and obvious on every page (phone, address, directional information (we’re across from the marina etc).
• Experience your website on a mobile platform.  Opera has a mini mobile view just for this purpose.
• Create a mobile-friendly version of your site. Use a converter like Mofuse for this purpose. There are also wordpress plugins for mobile use.

Optimize Your Website for SEO

An often neglected task that’s worth revisiting in the summer. What are your stats looking like for your website? Could you use this downtime to work on search engine optimization?

Quick summer tasks here include:

• Relevant Commenting on other blogs
• Improving your social bookmarking (here is a good list to start with)
• Work on your inbound links (reciprocal are not as highly valued as incoming)
• Improving your title tags, and keyword density

Begin to lay the foundation for your FALL social media efforts:

I wish social media worked like my lightswitch– *flick* and you instantly have 100 fans on Facebook and 100 followers on Twitter. If this were true, I’d be out of a job!  Although social media is an incredible tool for engaging your customer base, it doesn’t happen overnight. NOW is the time you should be laying the groundwork for Fall:

• Set up your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Ravelry.
• Design your backgrounds, headers and such to brand the spaces.
• Begin to generate postings which eventually build the traffic— by Fall you’ll be poised for the busier season.

I might add– that if you DO have a nice social media following already– then congratulations! This is one of THE BEST ways to stay in touch with your customers when they’re NOT coming into the shop during the Summer! Connect with them through contests, events and sales to motivate in-store visits.

Other things to consider during the Summer slow season?

• Evaluate and freshen up your merchandising and displays.
• Have you considered carrying other non-seasonal items such as gifts, fabrics or beads?
• Offer summer events to get folks in the store such as wine-tastings, yarn crawls, Ravelry parties or other clever ideas.
• Take a breather and care for yourself! Now is the time for personal restoration or vacations!

Of course, if you find you want some help with any of these tasks–our full media kit of services offerings is available here. We also offer a new line of service offerings dedicated  to website improvements and SEO. Download that here.

I say it all the time… familiarity develops trust and trust brings the business. But, how can you achieve mulitple touchpoints with  knitters & crocheters in a way that is not costly, annoying or spammy?

Creating a “brand story” or a personality behind your brand is an effective way to deepen the engagement with your customer.  Let’s take  look at one of my clients, Sanguine Gryphon as a successful case study:

Sanguine Gryphon is an duo of  independent yarn dyers that have mostly built their brand in the Ravelry community among dedicated indie yarn worshipers.  You know the type– these are the folks that clamored to get into Sock Summit Classes and would trade a first-born child for a skein of  Wollmeise sock yarn.  Sanguine Gryphon’s “brand theme” is primarily rooted in a backdrop of  ”medieval times”.

Almost everything within the brand references some aspect of medieval history and culture including her logo, fonts, website, newsletter, and some yarn names. Gryphon and Sarah even play the part wearing period clothing at consumer shows. We are always looking for ways to expand on the brand ”story”– for example, we’ll be crafting a buyer loyalty program around the concept of the medieval hierarchy, which is in development for  launch later this year.

Further, Sanguine Gryphon have other ”story lines” within the brand that serve to further engage with the customer base. Their Bugga! yarn line is one such example. All the yarn colors are named after similarly-colored insects.

I’m in awe how this one little aspect of her brand has become almost a subculture of interest for her customers (and they’re not all geeky entomologist types either!)

cotton stainer

cotton stainer bugga!

On Ravelry, there is a lot of chatter in their group about the bug names and colorways and they skillfully use that interest to deepen engagement. In the newsletter, for example, they are offering a puzzle contest. Readers who can successfully identify the names of insect photos and unscramble the puzzle are eligible for a $100 gift certificate.   

Brilliant!

Instead of just being online pushing sales of  a nice ball of yarn, they’ve got a “hook”, a tool for engagement–something that entices the buyer to spend time with the brand even when they’re not buying it.   They’re talking about it, they’re playing games around it, they’re learning something (about bugs) and connecting with each other around it,  and all of a sudden,

you’ve got familiarity!     You’ve got trust!    and you’ve got buyers!

Just recently,  they’ve created another new brand story for Bugga!    Although a bit unorthodox, the response has been incredible.  They’ve created a personality for a skein of Bugga! called the “Traveling Bugga!”  Yes, that’s right— a skein yarn has taken on lifelike form with eyes and glasses and a bad-boy personality and all.

Traveling Bugga!

Traveling Bugga! lives on a Facebook Fanpage and will be jet-setting around the world teaching about unique and interesting fiber facts along the way.  On the first day the page went up, we instantly had 56 fans. After the newsletter went out, introducing him, the fanbase shot up to 200 overnight.  I predict this fanpage will climb to over 1000 by the end of the year. You know you’re curious… so here’s the link.

Again, this is going to be successful because it’s a very effective way to stay connected with  Bugga! buyers through a frequent connection 2-3 times per week where humor becomes the touchpoint, not sales push.

How can YOU create a brand story as a tool of engagement for your  yarn company?

Aside from the examples in our case-study above, there are a few other ways you can create a ”story”  behind your brand. Sometimes, with a strong presence– YOU can become the personality behind your brand. Sheri Berger at The Loopy Ewe and Kathy Elkins of Webs both stand out as real people behind the brand. They are the ones blogging and tweeting and responding in the knitting community AS themselves.  The only downside to this is if you’re ever wanting to sell your company… so be sure to consider your long-term business goals with this approach.

You can develop a brand “story”  based on a character or a concept much like Linda Niemeyer’s “Spud & Chloë” line which she developed  independently of her other brand, Blue Sky Alpacas. I’d bet some readers didn’t even know they were connected in that way because of how effectively Spud & Chloë stands apart.  The logo images, the website, the blog,the pattern line and even Tweets on Twitter.com are all a unique brand.

Spud & Chloë

However you arrive at a branding story or personality, be sure you are consistent across all your efforts in the social media, advertising and promotion realm.  Achieving consistency in your messaging is a blog posting for another time—- for now, start thinking about how you can get your yarn skeins traveling!

Facebook.com is an incredible marketing tool that allows yarn companies and yarn shops to see inside the hearts and minds of their customer. Having a fanpage about your yarn company or yarn shop puts your finger directly on the pulse of how knitters and crocheters experience your brand and allows you to gain  insight into their behaviors their perceptions, and even potential problems.

Once you understand exactly what it is your consumers love about your yarn and how they use it, you can begin to either solidify (if you got it right the first time) or redirect your brand message around your customer experience.

Furthermore, the viral effect of the fanpage is the modern version of word-of-mouth advertising– and it’s free! We love free marketing around here!

For the purpose of illustration, let’s just assume you’re a yarn company.  Suppose you had a Facebook fanpage where you began posting about how fabulous your yarn was partly because it came in larger skeins. But, after about a month of promoting this aspect of your product, you discover from your fan’s wall postings that the yarn base was VERY popular….. among sock knitters….. and the large skein that you thought was so fantastic, was actually falling short of meeting the needs of sock knitters  who were posting they really wished it came in smaller balls?

(sidenote, thank you to Maggie Pace for the image from her company Pick Up Sticks, She actually does sell “small balls”!)

In addition to providing this kind of quality feedback which helps you improve and refine your brand message,  you might discover confusion about your brand, inconsistency with your advertising messages or even hidden opportunities, like introducing the smaller skein of your bestselling yarn base!

Yarn Shops, can get feedback on your class offerings, feedback on yarn lines you’re considering and the best time to offer that Spring sale so it doesn’t conflict with something else in town that weekend?

Let’s examine one company using Facebook  and getting it right. With over 100,000 fans, the Lion Brand fanpage serves as an excellent feedback mechanism from consumers, as well as a direct (and cost-free) line of communication back to them.  A few things I noticed they do well:

• They’ve got their “Join our Facebook fanpage” prominently displayed on their website.
• They are using photos, videos, discussions and other tabs that help index content on Facebook. Don’t just rely on your wall postings.
• They blend a variety of “giving content” with “push content” — which means they offer content that is valuable to the reader like tips, tricks, free patterns and even  knitting humor. They’re not screaming “BUY OUR YARN” in every posting.
• They comment back and respond to their fans photos to further increase engagement.
• They connect to their other social media. Every so often, they remind the fanbase about the e-newsletter, and Twitter account  and also encourage fans to suggest the page to other fans, thereby increasing the viral effect of Facebook. I also like how they’ve listed the location of ALL these other vehicles in their INFO tab– that’s just where I’d look!

It’s never too late to get started on your Facebook page. Here is where you get started on Facebook.

I’d love to hear other examples of how a Facebook fanpage has helped your Yarn Company or shop? As always, if you need help or have questions, feel free to send me an email at Leanne (AT) thewoolwideweb.com

Over the holiday I visited a girlfriend out of town. While there, I dropped into a music store and bought a few things for my daughter who plays violin.  On a whim, I asked the owner if he had any 1/2 size violins for sale as my daughter is about ready for an upgrade in size– he DID, I was excited.

kids violin

He then proceeded down a perilous path of small violations of my trust which ultimately killed a potentially large sale.

Are you doing these kinds of things in your yarn shop?

We are on the cusp of a new era of commerce where TRUST becomes just as important as price, as quality, as availablility and if you are unknowingly compromising that trust with your customers, you’re on the road to peril.

Let me tell you more about his small transgressions and I’ll extrapolate those instances to the yarn shop experience:

“Little Lies”

In showing me the instrument, the owner of the shop says to me that renting a violin is MUCH better than buying one because I’d “never recoup the investment in an outright purchase.”  But when I did the math on his theory, I calculated that his rental would cost me $300 per year. I’d likely have the violin at least two or three. I know I can get a decent instrument between $300-$600, and I know that they can appreciate with time.  So I’m not happy with what seems like he’s just steering me to the higher revenue rental option.

My mind registers the first betrayal of trust here….  

Little Lies in your shop? Now yarn is a much smaller investment, but sometimes you have a customer contemplating a sweater quantity of wool which can easily become a large sale. When your customers are asking questions about the yarn, the durability, the washability, the best match for a pattern they want…. are you giving the whole and truthful answer?

If the expensive cashmere in the customer’s one hand is not really the best choice for the kitchen washcloth project in their other hand– then you need to do the thing that BUILDS trust here

Which is:

a) steer them toward a fantastic pattern for the said cashmere
b) steer them toward the fantastic (but less costly) kitchen cotton
*earn their trust here and you’ll likely sell both?

“Bait and switch?”

 The second transgression came when the owner says…. “It’s only $18 per month, so just take it home and try it out.” When I get to the register however, the rental agreement says there is an additional $7 for an insurance and maintenance fee–

so really the rental is $25 per month– that’s a difference of $84 per year. I know many of you are doing the same math when you shop and thinking, ”well, that’s actually 4 skeins of handpainted sock yarn I could buy instead.”

 And you know what? It WASN’T about the violin rental being $25… which I still might have paid…

it was about the fact it felt like he misrepresented the true cost which was another degradation of trust…

Bait and switch in your store? Now bait and switch may be too strong of a term here because a yarn shop owner is not likely doing anything like this— but I have experienced outdated price tags. It’s your job to update prices, or honor the one that is printed. If I pick up 5 balls that are $5.95 and 5 that are marked $5.50 (or anything lower)– what is the right thing to do?

“A matter of interpretation”

So, I’m still not listening to my gut instinct in the store, and begin filling out paperwork to rent this violin and I see at the bottom of the form, “two months free with 1 month paid rental”  So, I’m thinking, great– I can see if this instrument is the one I want, and I save a little money!  I ask the register clerk about that offer and he tells me, “Oh, yeah, sorry….. we’re not honoring that anymore”

Here registers my third infraction– Um, so why  is it screaming at me from your rental agreement??

A matter of interpretation in your shop?  I actually witnessed a yarn shop experience like this over the pre-holiday sale season. I was in a yarn shop offering a 20% sale on red and green yarns. My girlfriend picked up a teal skein of yarn– similar to this:

Rowan Felted Tweed

So, you’ve got an e-newsletter for your yarn shop but maybe it’s very small or hasn’t grown much in recent months. What to do? Here are some tips to build your consumer e-newsletter specifically for yarn shops:

Tip 1: Be sure you’re gaining PERMISSION to send an email to your customer. Too many times, yarn shop owners put out a sign-up sheet next to the cash register or have a fish bowl of business cards with a sign that says “enter to win a basket of yarn” without disclosing that you are planning to enter those cards into your database and add them to your email list. 

Are you collecting names in a fishbowl?

A recent study showed that 76% of consumers deleted an unsolicited email without reading it compared to 2% for permission email.  People who switched to permission-based emails reported seeing click throughs jump upwards of 10%.

I certainly encourage you to collect names at the point of sale, but be sure that your customer is fully aware that by putting their card in the fish bowl means they’re giving you permission to send them your yarn shop e-newsletter.

Tip 2:  Be sure your website has an automated sign-up form. Many services, including the one I use, Constant Contact will provide free, easy to use coding tools to create your sign-up form. You need only copy and paste into your website. This saves the hassle of manualy entry too! Read more about tips for creating a great sign-up form here!

Tip 3: Segment your lists. Once you begin to build a decent list, I’d recommend beginning an autoresponder program that is designed to further tailor the content and offers your readers want to see. Did you have 100 people click on your “free sock pattern” link in your last email? Those people might be great for another targeted email focused on sock yarns, sock pattern books, sock classes etc. Sending readers content they want to read ensures loyalty and that will reduce your opt-out rate.

Tip 4: Turn your “forward to a friend” into a contest. Offer a random freebie gift to a group of people who forward your email. Constant Contact allows you to easily see who did forward your email and you can choose a winner. Be sure your “join our mailing list” button is clearly visible and prominent in your newsletter.

Tip 5: Promote in your other social networks. Encourage frequent visitors to your ravelrygroup or facebook fanclub to sign up for your newsletter. Be sure your “signatures” on other forums such as knitters review, knitting daily and knitty include a link to sign up for your newsletters.

Please use the comment form to add YOUR best practices for increasing your e-newsletter mailing list!  Oh, and don’t forget to sign up for mine!

In my last posting, I blogged about the social media tool, Twitter and the many reasons WHY it’s so important for yarn shops and yarn businesses to establish Twitter accounts for your main identities. At the very least, set up an account for your knitting business or yarn shop name and your personal name—even if you never tweet in your entire life. It’s just smart identity protection. Read that post here.

Today, I’ll just give you some quickie marketing suggestions on how LYSO’s and yarn/ knitting companies can and should be using Twitter. First, I present the mother-of-all success stories: Dell Computer. If you’ve got a minute to read this article  from the gal who actually tweets for Dell, Stefanie N. it’s an interesting read.  Basically, she started out with “twitter exclusive offers” which were “retweeted” or repeated on Twitter creating an ever expanding message.

SO, why can’t YOU offer twitter-only offers for your yarn shop? Here’s a few tips to get you started:

1) Prepare a list of Twitter-only offers you can make in one month (yarn discounts, special knitting offers etc..) so you don’t have to think about it 2 minutes after you log into your Twitter account.

2) Keep it clever and funny. With so many tweets, you need to stand out and give people a reason to hone in on your postings.  “Novelty Yarn Sale, First 100 people to pound down the door get a free pair of 1990’s acid wash jeans”

3) Mix your offers with other interesting tweets— DON’T just be selling in your Tweets or you’ll be losing followers.  New yarn colors, new books, Class announcements (on the day of class?) are all good info.

4) Make your Tweets time-sensitive and include the call to action (which I’ve bolded and italicized here): “Come in before 5pm friday and ask for a free sample of the new Ravelry SOAK scent sample with any purchase” . Use Tinyurl to truncate longer website addy’s to get it all in 140 character limit that Twitter imposes.

4) After you’ve sent out a couple of tweets, follow others who might be interested in your shop. I use Monitter for live twitter feeds which you can search for key terms. For example, if your shop is in Dallas, Type in Dallas+Knitting, or the name of your shop to see who’s tweeting about those terms. Then follow them. They’ll likely follow you back.

5) Once you get rolling, consider some tools to help you manage Twitter. I use Tweetdeck to categorize the people I follow into “knitterati” “shops” “friends” etc… and I use Hootsuite to schedule tweets and monitor brands.  Check out this article in the Top 10 twitter tools to organize your Tweeps. which lists even more apps to help you  navigate the Twitter world.

Don’t worry dear yarn shop owner, I know this may seem very daunting and impossible– but it will be worth it

Malabrigo

when you DO have people banging down the door for the new Malabrigo worsted merino in Ravelry Red in that just arrived.  The knitting world right now is VERY dialed into community and exclusivity… you can take advantage of those two traits with Twitter.

 If you think sticking an Addi Turbo in your eye sounds more fun than all this… I’m happy to put you on my social media monitoring and marketing program and get you started, or do it all for you. Just send me an email at inqury@thewoolwideweb.com

Good Business to you! Leanne

 The New York Times calls Twitter “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet.” TIME Magazine says, “Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app,” and Newsweek noted that “Suddenly, it seems as though all the world’s a-twitter.”

I know, I know….  Many of you are thinking, “oh great, one more thing I don’t have time for in my yarn shop”  It’s important to know, however, that these social media utilities can really help your business and with just a few minutes of learning curve and a little test-driving– you can do it!

Let me also stress WHY it’s so important that you scoop up your Twitter name– even if you never post anything! First, there is the matter of identity protection. You really want to be sure you reserve your name on Twitter (and other social media sites for that matter) so that nobody else takes your name… Do you know how many Yarn Barns and Knit Shacks there are out there? Good names go quickly and you need to  protect yours.

I have three accounts on Twitter– one for the name I just started using years ago and want to keep consistent in the knitting forum world which is “knittydiva”. I use that one on all the sites when I’m talking about my personal knitting. I use “thewoolwideweb” when I’m talking business and I also reserved LeannePressly.

Why? Here are a few reasons…

• Because it’s free and easy and why take the risk? Your name IS your brand once your company gets large enough.
• It helps the Twitter search engines find me in a search. If you’re looking for me and don’t know my other names, you can find me using my real name in the search field
• It protects your yarn shop name or your yarn company from impostors.

I’d recommend that you reserve your company names in all the big social media sites including Digg, YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and be sure to hit all the user forums in the yarn world too, Ravelry, Knitting Daily, Knitters Review and Knitty are the biggies right now. 

So, how do I do it? Let me hold your  hand and show you how easy it is….Here are a few screen shots to guide you. First, go to Twitter.com and click the “sign up for new account” button. Complete this form as I did below:

 Once I set up my main Twitter accounts (knittydiva and thewoolwideweb) then I set up the one for my main name, Leanne Pressly and I posted this message (otherwise known as a tweet) so people can find me.

 That’s it– setting up your account is the first step. I’ll blog about using twitter in your shop in the next installment! ~Leanne

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE stories about how businesses were born. Here is mine:

As an advertising sales rep for a national knitting magazine, I spent several years talking to shop owners and what I call “yarnie entrepreneurs” about what marketing efforts gave them the best bang for the buck.

Consistently, I heard that “e-newsletters” and “social media” were doing very well for them. Most of them had experienced good returns from magazine ads but when the recession hit some of the smaller businesses REALLY struggled to get a good return on their investment and they wanted more accountability and statistical tracking.  Again and again, they told me they were investing more marketing money into the online world.

Then, in the March 2009 issue of Yarn Market News, I saw a chart (on page 26 for those with hardcopy) that summarized  the State of Specialty Needlearts survey results on various marketing methods. 

Here is a quickie summary of the items that “increased sales a lot”

1)     Customer word of mouth……………………. 76%

2)     E-mail Newsletter……………………………… 56%

3)     Classes  & Workshops ……………………..56%

4)     Attractive product displays ……………..52%

 I realized right in that very moment that there was a need for an e-newsletter service for the yarnie entrepreneurs out there.  The Wool Wide Web was born.

If you’re that yarn shop owner or yarnie entrepreneur deluged with “tasks” that don’t seem to include getting out your business e-newsletter then this service may be for you! I’m also going to be offering social media services such as reputation monitoring and Twitter, Facebook and other Knitting community sites. Browse the site and give me your comments!

Leanne
PS- from November through the end of the year, I’m taking “beta” clients for free. Email me at inquiry@thewoolwideweb.com if you’re interested in participating. This offer is ONLY open to yarnie businesses.