ScrapbookMarketing.com

We are currently seeking digital scrapbooking tutorials to post on the DSD event blog - you provide the tutorial, and we link the byline back to your site/blog.  If you would like to contribute a tutorial, please email it to digitalscrapbookingday/@/gmail.com.

I’ll be up front here - we would appreciate tutorials featuring techniques done in FxFoto, but we will consider other programs, in order to fully promote the digital scrapbooking hobby.

I look forward to seeing your submissions!  Thanks in advance for your support.

Potential Topics (feel free to brainstorm your own):

Basics

• remove red-eye
• adding text
• crop/resize photo
• changing to B&W/sepia

Intermediate/Advanced

• adding spot color
• text on a curve/path
• digital tearing
• Creating your first layout in FxFoto

Hybrid Scrapbooking - some tips on just using the computer in general to enhance projects

• journaling & fonts
• organizing digital photos/memorabilia/kits
• scanning
• cutting down on 3D bulk
• creating sketches/plotting out design

Legacy Lady and Paintchip - this means you! 

While at the nail salon over the weekend, I picked up Nails, a nail industry trade magazine. After years of reading Craftrends, Memorytrends, CNA, and Scrapbook Retailer, it was interesting to page through a trade mag from another industry. A lot of the same topics - how to get more clients, new product launches, industry trade shows. But the difference in market perspective provided another inspiration source — I may be picking up trade mags from other industries more often.

In just the first few pages, I got two marketing ideas that I wouldn’t have brainstormed on my own, based on two short pieces in the mag.

Using nail acrylic to make custom jewelry sets — Debbie Wilson, of Simply Debbie’s Nails in Cave Junction, OR, has branched out to offer jewelry to her customers as well - made using nail acrylics, then hand-painted and embellished (sorry, couldn’t find any links or images to save my life). Perhaps some of you scrapbooking professionals could branch out into jewelry as well? Think rearview mirror dangles and cell phone charms as well. Just have a nice display stand of impulse purchase items by the register.

I also saw that a salon is bringing in a special guest nail tech for an event - for $1, customers can have a pink ribbon design painted on a fingernail, accented with a crystal, and proceeds will be donated to breast cancer research in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Scrapbook business owners — If you’re having a crop this month, consider asking a local nail tech (or even beauty school student) to come in during the crop for a similar charity offering.

Another related idea would be to seek out a local henna tattoo artist — I believe henna tattoo dye comes in pink - you could offer a hand-painted pink ribbon temporary tattoo (color henna tattoos last about a week I think - traditional brown/black henna tatts last up to three weeks). Just arrange for the tattoo artist to set up a table somewhere in your store/at your event, and let her work. You could charge her a “booth rental” fee for working at your event, and she could keep the tattoo fees, or you could pay her a set fee for the afternoon, and customers pay you for the tattoo, etc. Try searching Craigslist for a local henna artist - or post seeking one.

The henna tattoo artist idea could work for other events as well - talk with local henna artists about offering henna tattoos of local school mascots on Homecoming weekend, or even loved ones’ names for Valentine’s Day! No long-term committment, and they’re kind of fun! It seemed like henna tattoos were offered in every other shop along the Strip in Vegas.

SO! Do you read any trade mags from other industries? What ideas have you gotten from them? Please share! Just click the Comments link up by the subject line.

While at MemoryTrends last month, I had the opportunity to chat (on camera) with Tasra Dawson, hostess of Real Women Scrap TV. Watch this piece carefully - I make a pretty significant announcement toward the end!

http://blip.tv/file/399950/

Another great marketing idea, this one from Scrapbook.com: Review A Product Win $25!

Scrapbook.com is giving away (3) $25 superstore-shopping-sprees to three lucky product reviewers!

Here’s what you need to do to be eligible to WIN:

1. Choose an E-book or digital product from the superstore that you own (or will soon own)
2. Go to that products page in the Scrapbook.com Superstore
3. Write a 50 word (minimum) review of the product (posted to the product page)

All reviews are eligible provided that they would likely be deemed helpful and informative by a person who does not yet own the product.
That’s it! Simple, right?

Clever marketing - offer an incentive to get your customers to dish on your products!  Since the contest does not imply the review must be positive, I don’t see any ethical problems.

Here’s what I like about this promotion:

• it will (most likely) provide lots of reviews in their online storefront, which boosts the confidence level of “looky-loo’s” - they see lots of reviews, they think a lot of people must shop here, they feel secure doing business with the site.
• they specified that the review must “likely be deemed helpful and informative by a person who does not yet own the product”.  That kind of guideline will help someone write a review.
• they asked for reviews on their *digital* products.  What a great way to highlight a specific segment of their business!
• they included this promotion in their e-newsletter, which is also archived online - instant search engine mojo, and easy to pass the word along to friends (viral marketing)!

You could do something similar in your business:

• every other month, solicit reviews/testimonials about a specific type of product or service - paper one month, classes another month
• change up the incentive every so often - store credit one month, personal consulting session another month.
• have customers apply to be on a rotating “Review Board”, of say, a three to six-month term.  During that term, they get special goodies for their service.
• definitely post about any kind of contest/promotion on your blog and in your newsletter

A Scrappy Marketer’s Hat Tip to Scrapbook.com!

I recently spotted a great grassroots/viral marketing idea on the Tinkering Ink BLOG. They are offering “blinkies” graphics for people to post in their message board signature lines (aka “sigs”). The little animated graphics scroll through various marketing slogans and feature some branded Tinkering Ink images.

TI goes a step further by providing coding instructions on their blog and on their message board, specifying how to post a blinkie to a message board sig.

THEN they go even another step further, and declare that they “will be hunting down Tinkering Ink blinkies online and giving away prize packs filled with Tinkering Ink goodies to random customers we find displaying our blinkie on their signature”. By choosing random winners (instead of submissions, or a talent contest), people are more likely to use the blinkie, in hopes that they could be noticed and chosen. And every time someone uses the TI blinkie, the marketing message is passed further down the pipeline.

A Scrappy Marketer’s Hat Tip to Tinkering Ink!

I recently got the following question via email:

I recently purchased a scrapbook store…I would love to do an online site as well and Im interested in hearing what you think of qbaroo and how it works. Will it provide a greater monthly cash flow?  I’ve contacted them, but I’m having some difficulty getting in touch with them.  I would love to hear from someone who uses their services.

Unfortunately, I have absolutely no experience with Qbaroo - I know some manufacturers that are pleased with the Shopatron service, but I don’t think that’s the same.  And I know that Qbaroo offers a scrapbook fulfillment service. I did find this example of an online store powered by Qbaroo: What’s Scrappening

Have any of the Local Scrapbooking Storeowners out there used Qbaroo?  Are you pleased?  How does it work?  Or has anyone used any other online service?

Via Digiscrap101, a link to a post on Renee Pearson’s blog: digital monday :: a request, a giveaway and a tip!  In this post, Renee asks for feedback:

So, here’s the question:

What digital products would you like to see on the shelves of your favorite scrapbook store?

I thought this comment from Olga was very helpful for retailers looking to stock digi-friendly products (or create digi-friendly displays):

…if I´d go to a scrapbooking store for supplies as a digital scrapper I´d be looking for things like DVD tutorials, books about digital, papers for printing at home, DVD with kits so I don´t have to worry about downloading and backing up my stuff, just loaded onto the computer, information about backup systems (every now and them you hear the horror story of losing everything), albums specific for layouts printed at home, that kind of stuff.

The comments to Renee’s post are helpful not only for retailers, but also manufacturers wondering how to address the demand for digital products, while also maintaining relationships with retailers.

Monday in my Blogging 201 class, someone asked for some “good” scrapbook blogs to read.  I told him that Ali Edwards, Donna Downey, Cathy Zielske, and Scrapability’s blogs were all very popular, but for a more comprehensive list, I said I’d just post a list to my blog! 

I keep a public blogroll of scrapbooking blogs at Bloglines, which I have posted here.

I also have a del.icio.us linkroll on Scrapbooking Industry “Thought Leaders”.  Click the link up by the subject line to leave me a comment if you think anyone is missing from my Thought Leader list.

Via Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Advisor newsletter, a link to the article: Eleven Tips For Optimizing PDFs For Search Engines.

…many businesses have a lot of PDF assets. These may include sell
sheets, brochures, white papers, technical briefs, etc…there are lots of PDFs
available on the web, and you can optimize PDFs to get high-ranking
search results.

This article, by Galen DeYoung, offers really specific tips for making sure your PDF documents are as “attractive” as they can be to search engines.  Like this simple, but often overlooked, tip:

2. Complete the document properties. It seems like the vast
majority of PDFs are without specified document properties, the most
important of which is the Title. The Title property, if present, almost
invariably represents the words that will be displayed as the heading
of the search result. It’s the equivalent of the html title tag. If you
don’t complete the Title property, the search engine is going to
generate a title from the PDF’s content, and it may not be what you
would choose.

I try to make a special point to complete the Properties fields, especially when creating Word documents.  It’s just an extra failsafe to make sure your name remains “attached” to your work.  (True, not really ‘failsafe’, but another point of security).

With more scrapbooking professionals marketing their ideas via ebooks, this PDF SEO article is a definite must-read.

Kevin Dugan has posted some tips for how to pitch bloggers over at Strategic Public Relations.

As blog-savvy firms forge ahead, here are six questions you should be able to answer in the affirmative before you start pitching a blog. Have you…

1. Read more than the most recent post of the blog?
2. Searched the blog for your client or relevant product/service/industry terms to see if they are even covered?
3. Subscribed to the blog’s RSS feed or e-mail delivery to make it easier to follow and to boost their audience metrics?
4. Left a comment on the blog that continues the discussion and is unrelated to your pitch?
5. Looked for posts and links from their home page telling you if/how the blog author likes to receive information?
6. Sent the blog author an email unrelated to your pitch?

These tips might be helpful for small manufacturers (or PR agencies working with said manufacturers) hoping to get coverage on scrapbooking blogs (or any blog, in general).  How about you?  Have you ever pitched a blogger with a post/story idea or newsworthy item-of-note?  Sent press releases to a blogger?  How did it turn out?