Getting Your Work Noticed On-Line Be Seen, Be Seen, Be Seen ~~PART 3~~

Okay - class?, class?, class? - oops sorry, had a Sister Mary Elephant flashback.

Before I move on, I’d like to share a small experiment I did recently using elements from the first 2 Be Seen articles. You did read them didn’t you?
I recently put 4 photos up in my Flickr account – 2 of the Mens' Diamond Ring, and 2 of the Double Swinging Topaz pendant (both are in the gallery here). One each (ring and pendant) photos, I just added to my jewelry groups I belong to. The other set I added to my groups AND added them to Diigo, Mr Wong, Delicious, and Stumbleupon. The view differences were staggering. For the ring photo 1 (heavily bookmarked) the views were 134 for one day, while the un-bookmarked photo 2 received only 43 views. The same for the pendant photo 1 – bookmarked, the views were 271, and photo 2 received only 15 views. Social bookmarking DOES work.

Google Tools

Now that you've added your work in every social bookmark you can, (http://mywiredimagination.blogspot.com/2009/10/getting-your-work-noticed-on-line-be.html ) and started a blog (http://mywiredimagination.blogspot.com/2009/09/getting-your-work-noticed-on-line-be.html ), now it's time to for more tools to get you into searches, and see how well things are working, AND see what needs to be changed to be more effective.

First you’ll need to get a Google account if you don’t already have one. Now before you start groaning about having another e-mail account (I can hear you), aside from being about the best e-mail service on the planet (no I don’t work for them), it is loaded with simple, but very useful tools. Gmail is free, and though it may take a little getting used its well worth it.

1) You have the ability to enable POP3 settings (without having to pay extra like Yahoo), so that you can still use Outlook, and Outlook Express mail.
2) You can have all your other mail accounts forwarded to Gmail, and access them all from one location, and set up filters and folders to easily keep track.
3) You have labels and filters, you set up so your mail is automatically sorted and labeled, and be color coded. Corra helped to put this one to the best use, as I have it set up to sort my sales, and PayPal receipts.
4) There is built in chat with other Gmail contacts, with one click…
5) A one click vacation responder with personal message…
There is a search mail function that actually works well, and tons of other features.
2 of the most useful features (I bet you thought I wasn’t going to get to it) are Google Alerts and Google Base

Google Alerts "http://www.google.com/alerts"
I have igoogle as my homepage, so to get to alerts, I just click on the “my account” link at the top right. Underneath your profile and personal settings are the tabs to access all sorts of useful goodies besides Alerts and Base.
Adsense -- Blogger -- igoogle -- Talk -- Docs -- Orkut -- YouTube -- Gmail -- Picassa Web Albums -- Adwords -- Groups -- Web History
If you click on “more under try something new”, you have a full page of tools worth checking out.

Once you are on your account page, click on alerts. For the most part you will want to choose “comprehensive” to get the most information from your alert, but you can set the alert for specifics, such as news.

Now you enter your search terms – You’ll want to create a new alert for each term. Set up alerts for your name; your user ID – all of them if you have more than one; your shop name, again all of them if you have more than one; your products, especially if they are very specific, such as the name of a tutorial or a very unique design to YOU (try not to use just the term ‘tutorial’, you’ll be flooded with all kinds of miss-information); the title of your blog(s), the address of your blog(s); your username at every site you’re registered at, or have an account with such as http://www.facebook.com/people/Bobbi-Maw

There are no limits to how many alerts you can create, so ‘cover all your bases’. Set up a folder for “Google alerts”, and color code it so it doesn’t get lost in your mail.

Not all returns will pertain to you, but those sometimes provide useful info too, in helping to refine your alerts, and see what people are searching for. I set my alerts to once a day – that’s once a day for EACH alert, which depending on how many alerts you have, will determine how much info is returned. Most alerts will show what folks were searching for, and where they finally landed in their search.

Google Base "http://www.google.com/base"
Now to help move you along, there is Google Base, a free service for submitting all kinds of content for Google to host. You manually put your products and info into Google search engines. You can post items one at a time; use a data feed by uploading a spreadsheet or XML file which allows you to uploaded multiple items at one time; or for the techno-savvy there is API.

All 3 options have wonderful, very detailed instructions.

If you already have an Etsy shop – http://letsets.com has a free Google Base formatter. You just enter your user name or ID number and click “fetch my items”. It returns a complete list of all your shop items. At the bottom of the list, is the link to save the XML file to your computer, and even a link right there to take you back to Google Base to input your whole shop into Google.You can set it to renew on a monthly basis, or delete and re-create it, it if you have a lot of changes in your shop.

Now if you've stuck with me through all this go have a beer, cup of hot tea, or play at recess – you earned it.
Thanks for listening….SEE ya soon...........
~Bobbi
http://MyWiredImagination.etsy.com
http://www.KarmaWired.blogspot.com