Technorati used to rely on Alexa to produce the thumbnails used when indexing websites and Blogs, but I discovered that they are now using Snapshots from Snap.com, which explains why my Alexa thumbnail was current, but the thumbnail shown on Technorati was about 8 months old and showed my old blog design.

Never heard of Snapshots? You know when you go to a site and roll over a link and that giant picture bubble pops up with a thumbnail and description (and usually an ad too)? Yeah, That’s them. I think they’re kind of annoying, but some people find them handy. To each his own, I guess.

Getting Snap.com to update their thumbnail of your site is easy. Follow this link, and click on #14 - How do I update a preview image for a page. They are usually updated within 24 hours of submitting the request.

Et voila!

Yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to be posting items in the shop or making a new ad banner for Project Wonderful, but you know you’re gonna spend almost the whole time looking at cute pictures of your friend’s new cat on Flickr or looking up old boyfriends on Facebook. While you’re there, you might as well get a little marketing done. Here are some ways to drum up some interest for your shop while wasting time on the internet.

1. Upload all your item photos. *Given*
2. Search the Flickr groups for keywords related to Etsy or your craft and join the groups.
3. Upload a few photos to each group whenever you are on Flickr.  Etsy sellers, buyers and bloggers all frequent the groups as well as more popular design bloggers.
4. Make sure you have a link to your website in your profile. As per Flickr rules you are not supposed to use Flickr for marketing so you are not supposed to add your Etsy site address, just your blog address, but I haven’t been caught yet. Please don’t rat on me.
5. Search for users with tags related to Etsy or your craft and add these artists as a contact. Chances are they will add you too and see the your new items when you upload them to Flicker.
6. Comment on other artist’s photos - a lot. People follow the link back to your profile if you do, I promise.
7. Add me as a contact

1. Search Etsy forums for “Twitter” to find other Etsy buyers and sellers to follow. They will probably follow you too.
2. Go to TwitterFeed.com and set up your Etsy shop RSS so you will generate an automatic Tweet whenever you post an item to your Etsy shop. While you’re there set up a tweet for your blog too. Contact me if you need help with RSS or finding your Etsy RSS URL.
3. Fill out your profile and make sure there are links to your Etsy shop, blog and/or Flickr account.
4. Go to your favorite design blogs and look for a “follow me on Twitter” link to follow them. Even if they don’t follow you, they will probably still at least check out your webpage.
5. Of course, follow me on Twitter!

 

1. Add the My Etsy Application to your Facebook Profile - Go to the App page and enter your ID. While on that page (after hitting submit) go to the very top of facebook and go to Settings>My Etsy Settings (the settings menu beside your name) and chose the “Profile” tab, then click “add” beside the Box selection. You can try the Etsy Shop App too, but I just got an error when I tried to add it.
2. Join the Etsy Sellers Facebook Group, upload some pictures, explore the group page and write on the wall or participate in the discussions. Sellers can be buyers too, and I have referred more than one buyer I could not help to Etsy Sellers I talk to on facebook, Flickr or forums.
3. Add photos of your shop items into albums in your Photos section.
4. Add other Etsyians as friends by searching for “facebook” in Etsy forum posts (like this thread, or this one) to find people who want to add other Etsy sellers or buyers to their friend lists.
5. If you want to get REALLY into it, you can make a Facebook page for your store, and encourage other Etsyians to become your fans if you become theirs. I have not done this yet since I don’t have time to maintain a store on Facebook too, and this list is mostly for quick ideas you can do while puttering online.
6. Add me as a friend: (make sure you let me know you’re an Etsyian, or I’ll think you were a random serial-friender).

1. Add shops and items to your favorites, especially new shops. They shops with 1000+ hearts don’t always have time to visit each shop when someone favorites them, but the newer sellers will without fail.
2. Choose an interesting shop item of yours for your avatar. When people see your avatar in convos or forum posts they will be curious and click through to your shop.
3. Participate in lots of forum threads. Lots. Talk it up, baby.
4. Join street teams.
5. Create treasuries, or make friend with people who do!
6. Pitch story ideas for the Storque to the editors. If accepted, you will get a lot of exposure for authoring an article.
7. If you have nothing new to list, renew items on a regular basis to keep your page appearing in the recently listed sections.
8. As always, check out my shop.

Other Online Distractions:

1. Check out your Etsy stats at Majaba.org
2. Comment regularly on the Indie and design blogs you read
3. Add your name to the Etsy Sellers Blog List
4. Check out my blog! Oh, wait, you’re there now…

Yay for justifiable online puttering!

Need a new Twitter background? TwitterPatterns has lots of cute patterns, instructions on how to use and a nice clean design overall. I’m thinking of giving up my trademark brown (like I have a trademark on the the colour brown) for their cute Argyle designs.

Over time many of us like to change the look and feel of our blogs and websites and it is important that the most recent version of our site is being indexed by popular sites such as Alexa, a traffic ranking stats site that many people use to find new sites of interest. This will ensure that your website is up to date both on Alexa’s stat pages, but also on services that use Alexa Site Thumbnail Service. I went to Alexa’s site recently and for some reason it was showing a very outdated version of my blog’s screen shot. Updating it is pretty easy by one of two means:

1. Go to http://www.alexa.com/data/details/contact_info?url=http://yoursite.com - changing the yoursite.com to the exact web address of your blog or shop. Once there you will see the current thumbnail that Alexa has on file for you. If it is out of date, click the link below the thumbnail that says “Update Thumbnail Image of….” and your image will be updated in a few days to 1 week.

2. If the above URL has been changed and is no longer working, and if you have the Alexa toolbar installed on your browser, you can do the above by simply surfing to your site and clicking the “iInfo” tab. On the dropdown menu choose “More Site Info” and on the page that loads scroll to the bottom to the link labeled “Correct errors and omissions in this listing.” This will bring you to the info edit page I mentioned in the first method. This method is actually preferred because the direct link I listed above may change in the future if Alexa ever does a site re-org.

Making sure your Alexa Image is up to date is part of a healthy site maintenance and keeps your most recent brand image in the eyes of your readers! Plus it’s annoying to see that old image pop up in different places.

Twitter can be a fantastic marketing tool, if you take advantage of it. Otherwise it’s just a good way to tell the whole world that you just brushed your teeth or that the dog ate your cell phone again.

But using Twitter to promote can be a pain if it means making a separate tweet for each Etsy listing and each blog post, especially if you are already promoting by posting to your Flickr groups, your Facebook marketplace, your blog, your Etsy Street Team website, emailing design blogs, spray-painting it on derelict buildings and handing out flyers in Times Square. (Phew!)

There are Wordpress plug-ins to make tweets from your blog posts and blog posts from your tweets, but it can only be used on your blog. TwitterFeed is a customizable service that can make automatic tweets when you update any RSS feed you want, including your blog, your flickr account or your Etsy shop. All you need to do is enter the URL of the RSS, customize the frequency and the wording of the tweet and forget it. Each time you list to Etsy or post a new blog post a nice little tweet will be generated for your status. If you are using the Facebook Mobile App, or are using the Twitter App on Facebook, this will also update your Facebook status to promote your latest listing too… easy as pie.

Actually, easier. Pie can be complicated, especially blueberry because you have to watch or those little buggers roll away on you and the filling stains your counter.

For those of us that like to share our favorite treasuries from Etsy, web applications or useful websites with our readers on our blog, Kwout is an online service that will save much time and sanity for you. It allows you to take a screenshot of a particular webpage, crop the page as needed and post it to flickr, mail to an inbox or post anywhere as an embeddable code. The advantage is that this is all done from your browser with no need to save the screenshot to your desktop, or use an image editor to crop the area you want.

Easy to use, just add the little bookmarklet to your browser, and click when needed. Scroll to the bottom of the Kwout main page and chose one of the two bookmarklets (depending on if you would like the screenshot to open in a new window or not when you use it) and drag it to your bookmarks toolbar (or right click and “bookmark this link”). There is also a handy Firefox Extension, if you’re big into those.

When you are on a website you would like to get a screenshot of, go to your bookmarks and chose Kwout. You will then be shown a picture of the webpage with instructions on how to crop to your liking. Once you hit “cut out” you will be taken to the next page of configurable options and posting instructions.

Then post your cropped image. Couldn’t be easier!

I forgot to blog about it, but a little while ago I added a wimpy player to this site on the right sidebar, mostly for the purpose of being able to access some music and audiobooks of mine over the web, but also to share with you some music and stories I listen to as I create. “What’s your creative soundtrack” is a popular question in art forums, so I thought I’d show rather than tell.  You can listen to the files on your own computer via this site as you work, and I’ll be uploading more soon. I think I’ll concentrate on the audiobooks for now since I am kind of on n audiobook kick right now. I have several full, unabridged books now in the library - just scroll down to the player (the little iPod thingy) and navigate like a real iPod.

If you want to get your own, it is a simple script with a very reasonable price and it’s super-easy to install, skin and upload music. No, they aren’t paying me to write that, I just like the player.

I’m sure there are dozens of ways to do this, but this is the one I like best since it involves twitter, which I was already signed up for.  ED: As noted in the comments, you can also update your status by using the Facebook Mobile application (Thanks Shasta!) but I encourage you to try out Twitter and the method below to update both at once, for the reasons I give below. As I said, there are a million ways to do this, but this updates Twitter and Facebook with a single text. I want to see more Etsians on Twitter!!

Step 1: Sign up for Twitter. If you are not familiar with Twitter, it is a micro-blogging platform which is essentially the same as the status update in Facebook and nothing else. There are a lot of great tools, like the Wordpress Plug-in Twitter Tools, which automatically updates your twitter when you post a new blog post with the link and can even generate a blog post of your collected status updates for the day if you want. Services like Twitterific (which I have not used) can update your status across many platforms including MSN Messenger and Adium when you update your Twitter.

If you can’t believe you have to sign up for another damn service, you can just sign up once for Twitter, configure it to update your Facebook (as I’ll show you below) and then ignore it forever. Your cell phone updates will update your twitter and you never have to look a it again, though you will be missing out on a potentially powerful marketing tool.

Step 2: Set up your phone on Twitter by clicking “add device” on your home page beside “Device Updates” and follow the instructions.

Step 3: Navigate to http://www.twitter.com/sixthandelm and “follow” me. This, of course, will not help you update your Facebook on your cell phone, but it lets me know you are there and I can follow you and see your updates.

Step 4: Log into Facebook and add the Twitter application: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/. You’ll notice a link that says: Want Twitter to update your Facebook status? Click here!

Click “yes” and you’re good to go! Just text your updates to the text number twitter gives you when you set up your phone. It is best to start your posts with ” - ” or something else so that your Facebook status makes sense since twitter doesn’t append your message or put “is” in front of it.

(ED NOTE: THE TWITTER FACEBOOK APP IS TEMPORARILY DOWN FOR NEW SET-UPS AND SOME MAY NOT WORK YET, THOUGH MINE ARE DOING FINE)