Be Prepared!!! Part Two

Creating Your Brand

What do I mean by creating your brand?  

What I mean is, you should first and foremost create a business card.  As far as I'm concerned this is a must even if you don't do anything else.  You must have a way to tell people about your business and how they can contact you. 

There are so many sites you can find to order or create your own business cards.  I went through a site called Zazzle.  The printing quality isn't the best but I really liked the designs and it was very easy to customize.  This is a picture of the back of my card which has all of my contact information.

*You may want to wait to order cards until after you've created and have all the correct contact information.

This is what the front looks like and I really like how it turned out.  The prices are pretty reasonable and they have great coupons all the time.  I ended up ordering 200 cards.

I also ordered bags from Paper Mart.com and labels from Zazzle to put on the front.  This is an extra little step but I think it's nice when I receive a nice bag with my purchase.  Not to mention, it's also advertising.  Every time someone makes a purchase from me they receive a paper shopping bag with my label on it and I also include a business card in the bag as well.

 * I suggest that you insert your business cards in the bags before the show so you don't get too busy and forget.

They are very simple but there is something about a brown paper bag and stark white label.  It seems fresh and clean.

Price tags....I knew that I didn't want to put stickers on everything.  I already had a ton of shipping tags so I pulled out some of my stamp sets and created a very simple but cute tag.

 I later included a short description/name of the item on the back with the price.  That way I knew where to put it if it came off the item.

The next step is to create all your social media sites and link them.

I wanted to have all my different sites up and some what running when I had my first show.  It might not seem that important but in this cyber age you have to be connected.  It might take a while to get everything up and running but once you are done you will be so glad you did.  

My blog and my facebook page were the first ones I wanted to work on.  Facebook is such a great way to reach people. 

I also created an Instagram account.

I already had a Pinterest account and Youtube channel.  I just updated both of them with my new blog address and made sure to link all the accounts together.

This all may seem very obvious to some but not to everyone so here is a little recap on how to start creating your brand.

 1.  Order or make business cards with all your contact information.  (Make sure you have all your contact           information before ordering)

 2.  Order and make price tags, shopping bags and labels.

 3.  Create all your social media sites: Blog, Facebook page, Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube.

 4.  Make sure to link all the sites together the best way you can.

All of these sites are free of charge and an excellent way to advertise so take advantage of it!!

Be Prepared!! Part One

Thanks for stoppin' by!!