lördag, augusti 11, 2007

What can we learn from Crafty Nation?

Toni Lyn wrote that www.fro.fi is linked to Crafty Nation's Digg...oh no, it was delicious! But what is Digg and what is it good for? "Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the Digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote stuff that's important to you!"

Helge: The Fro Design & Craft project needs more attention and exposure on the net. I've been studying Social Media use in US and it's interesting to compare what crafter and design people are doing differently and better on the new continent. We Finns are more quiet and keep to ourselves. US crafters blog, twitter and build communities, they use the social media more efficiently. The US market is huge in proportion to our 5 million inhabitants national market. Finnish Craft and Design people have to extend sales and marketing outside our national borders in an early stage. But we have much in common as well.

This is how Toni Lyn tells about the Crafty Nation launch, social media, no big money behind Crafty Nation.

“We launch this week and what can I say? I’m seriously excited! This is going to be a fabulously fun adventure. I realize there is going tons that we will learn about social media, and since we are growing the site organically (no big names or money behind Crafty Nation), we will have to take many baby steps. We may make some mistakes, but we are mostly going to get the awesome things right (like keeping our priority the community). Our poor developer, she must feel like a pincushion with all of the little things we are poking at her to do here at the last hour, in addition to her actually having to get the site to function smoothly in time for the beta launch.”

Helge: Nyalands Hantverk and the Design & Craft project have been working for several years to get an online presence. Much of the work has been done with small budgets and some grants available for crafters and designers.

Toni Lyn: Apart from all the excitement and energy, what I really loved most about today was that I saw so many new small businesses started from creative dreams! We met a few of these today, and I will tell you more about them as the weekend progresses! But for now, just a few shots of the day and a video from the floor of CHA!

Helge: I guess CHA is a big expo for Craft and Design. Need to take a closer look.

Sure, it’s about exposure, marketing and companies and retailers coming together…but more importantly as we discovered as an underlying current today, it’s about community and doing things that make the world more beautiful!

  • And of course, I was shamelessly self-promoting Crafty Nation every chance I got!
  • Jim earns $2.00 during a session for a shameless self promotion about Crafty Nation!
Helge: We've a lot to learn about shameless self-promotion. A very good idea is the Interview. We need to do more interviews and profiling. www.fro.fi is a great tool to start with. This blog has been around since 2005 but we really didn't know how to use it efficiently. We've a language barrier, the local market is small, but the world is open for us if we are ready to embrace the new tools that help us to empower our efforts. Please, we need to write more and to profile people and products continuously.

Empower, Inspire, CREATE?

March 28th, 2007

Here at craftynation.com, our goal is to empower & inspire our community to create beautiful things. But what does it mean to be empowering? I think at a minimum, it means to help someone recognize their own ability to be creative, and then assist their confidence to use that ability. Why be empowering? To be a part of beautifying the world in which we live, move, and have our being.

Helge: I guess that's the starting time of the crafty nation blog? Ylva speaks about "making more beautiful days."




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