6 problems Etsy sellers have on Twitter—
and how to fix them today
If youre on Etsy, chances are good youve tried Twitter, and chances are equally good that you struggled with Twitter when you got there. For an abundance of reasons, Etsy sellers are less successful on Twitter than they should be—but it doesnt have to be that way. Take a look at your own Twitter account and see how many of these”Twitter crimes” you can fix today!
Problem 1: Your profile picture is a giant egg.
Why its a problem: Seasoned Twitter users run in the opposite direction when they see accounts with an egg as the profile pic. Why? Because so many of these brand-new accounts tend to be low-value. Spammers, trolls, and the like. Youre innocently minding your own business, but youre in with a bad crowd of egg-avatared neer-do-wells.
How to fix it: Simple enough. Put a picture up as an avatar. Optimally, either a picture of your smiling face, or a picture of your brand logo. Those are considered the most trustworthy avatars on Twitter, and youre more likely to get a good following and engagement if people trust you.
While youre at it, put up a banner photo. This will make you look like a seasoned Twitterer, even if youre just starting out. If youre feeling really ambitious, overlay some text on your banner picture. ”Get your hand-loomed mens longjohns here, 50% off until Christmas!” Something like that.
Problem 2: You never tweet
Why its a problem: If youre not sending out tweets, youre missing out on meaningful engagement with potential customers! As of this writing, about 80% of this blogs traffic is from Twitter. Yes, you read that right—80%. We get thousands of hits a day, and only a handful of them are from Facebook or Google results. The rest come from posting interesting stuff on Twitter every day, and hashtagging the posts so people see them and engage.
How to fix it: Log in to your Twitter account and check when the last time you posted was. Was it in 2012? Time to hang your head in shame, kiddo. You cant be neglecting Twitter like that!
Make a promise to yourself to post on Twitter every single day. Even better, 2-3 times/day. Optimally, 10+ times/day. If that sounds like a lot, dont worry—you can automate it!
To test how immediately effective this is, add a link in your Tweets to your website and see who engages!
Problem 3: Youre tweeting stuff that nobody wants to read
Why its a problem: If your Twitter feed is full of nothing but product listings or looks spammy, nobody will pay attention to it.
How to fix it: Luckily, this is an easy fix. We recommend you follow an 80%-20% rule when creating tweets. 80% should be generally interesting stuff (look at this adorable dog I saw this morning at the coffee shop #squee). You can safely reserve up to 20% of your tweets for things you want to sell, but remember, your audience is human beings, and they want to follow timelines that they find to be relatable. So help them out, by being relatable and human on your timeline.
Another way to think about this is, 80% telling a story, 20% showing people things they can buy.
Problem 4: Youre not engaging with people
Why its a problem: Conan OBrien may be able to get away with only following one person on Twitter, but you aint Conan. Twitter is a two-way medium, and if youre only broadcasting and never receiving or replying, you look spammy and uninteresting.
How to fix it: Follow interesting people. By interesting, we dont necessarily mean the Kardashians (but ok, why not follow them too?). We mean following some local bloggers and getting engaged in your community. Following influencers in design, if you like to make things. Following your favorite local Indian restaurant. Following news stories that interest you.
Also: Comment on things. Answer people who comment on your things.
In sum: Be a contributing member of the community.
Problem 5: Youre not hashtagging (or hashtagging inappropriately)
Why its a problem: If youre not hashtagging, youre limiting your potential audience to only people who are following you who also happen to be online at the exact time you tweet.
How to fix it: First off, hashtag. (That means putting a # in front of a set of words, #LikeThis). Add one or two good hashtags to every post you do. We recommend stuff like #HandMade, #OOAK, #VintageFashion, and so forth. Too many hash tags, and your posts will look spammy. Too few, and nobody will see them. 1-2 hashtags per post is a good rule of thumb.
Also beware the rookie mistake of hashtagging just the first word in a phrase (#like this). You need to run all your relevant words in your hashtag together without spaces, if you want them to mean something to the Twitter gods.
Problem 6: Youre not adding enough images
Why its a problem: Tweets with images get more clicks, more favorites, more retweets, and more replies. (you can also jam a lot of text into a carefully done image, thus saving yourself on character count)
How to fix it: Start adding images to in-line tweets (duh). Weve found that largeish images (a minimum of 440 pixels) actually do better on Twitter, as do landscape-style photos (wider than they are long). If you have a lot of text, consider putting some of that text into the image.