Tactics! is a weekly tip from a seasoned crafter. We hope they will help you in the marketing of your making.

While all my friends seem to be linking up their updates on Facebook and Twitter (see this article on Mashable: Twitter to Facebook: 5 Ways to Post to Both),
I found that my audiences on both social networking sites are very different. Before you decide to link up your accounts, you may want to figure out if your audiences for these services are different. You may be mindlessly sending marketing to both without even realizing that you are talking to the wrong crowd.

Take inventory of your accounts. Here’s what I came up with for myself:

Facebook. My Facebook friends are largely made up of people that I actually know or used to know. Now, I’m talking about my personal Facebook page, not a “fan page”. My cousins and best friends from high school are not as interested in my handmade items as people who might friend me because they are already my customers or because they did a keyword search on Twitter.  So I market myself accordingly on Facebook, only posting new items to my feed. If I make something new, I tell people about it. I don’t tell them about old stuff over and over all day long. If I did, it would be like standing at a party of people who know you and saying, “I made this. Look!” over and over again.

Twitter is a different story for me. I have 7 times as many followers on Twitter. Many of them are already my customers, but don’t know me personally. Some of them found me based on a keyword search. Some of them saw me retweeted and liked what I said. Many of them follow me because of other projects. Many of them are Etsy sellers who just follow other Etsy sellers. The key to understanding your Twitter audience is in the numbers and how you gathered the followers. If you have 50 followers, you might not want to tweet old stuff over and over again or you will be shouting at the party again. With 400, 700 or 1,000 followers, it is likely that not all of your followers are on all day long. So you can go ahead and retweet your sales or product links more often. But, by all means, do the research. If you are annoying, people will unfollow you! And think about the quality of the follower in relationship to what you do.

Some things to remember when posting marketing to both. Don’t just post a link to your Etsy shop without a description. Once again, shouting, “I have a shop!” is meaningless. Take inventory of your followers on both to see if you are posting twice to the same group of people. Don’t show weakness, pity sales are bad karma! Remember sometimes the best marketing is actual content. I love to hear about the making process, about why you are doing what you are doing. This is often more interesting than your link to your BOGO sale or whatever. If I am interested in you, I will click on your shop link in your profile. Make me care about you as a person.

Your results may be very different from mine, but my point is this: Think about your audience. Know who you are talking to. Be smart and you won’t be wasting your time.

Image by papersparrow.