Interview with Clothes.ie

My First Interview!


















This month I was invited to my first interview as Shen Wong Jewellery with Clothes.ie. This is very exciting as Clothes.ie are a Fashion website in Ireland that are really starting to take off!


How I Did It!

I simply reached out and tweeted Clothes.ie that I would like to feature on their website. To sweeten the deal I offered them an item from my product line for their readers as a competition prize. They responded positively and arranged the interview within a month.

If you are in a similar startup situation, I would advise you to start small and contact new or small fashion sites and bloggers to feature your products. It will help you gain a bit of experience and exposure before you move up to the likes of Vogue or So Sue Me!

Tip: Always ensure that the interviewer includes a link to your website and social media pages. Not only can it increase sales opportunities and connections, but it can improve your Google search rankings.

I hope you found this post helpful. Please leave a comment to share your thoughts and ideas.

Read my interview with Clothes.ie here.

Endorsement is Important - Online Startups

To all start ups I would advise you to seek endorsement where ever you can. It will make your new business look more official and reliable to potential customers. This is especially true for a start up business based solely online.

By endorsement, I mean joining an organisation that promotes your business. As a jewellery maker, I am in the crafting industry. Recently, I have been accepted as an Associate Member of the Crafts Council of Ireland. Just to be clear, this is an organisation formed to promote skilled craftsmanship, it is not a gathering of witches (yes, I had to explain this to a friend!). 

Needless to say, I am delighted with my membership. I had to submit a detailed application which then had to be assessed by a panel that only meets a limited number of times a year. This endorsement is a big deal to me. On top of obtaining a greater sense of pride for my work due to official recognition, there are also many practical benefits.

Benefits of Endorsements

• Improved SEO - Membership/Endorsement may include a bio about your business and a link to your website. If the organisation has a good website then they may rate highly with Google and a link from them to your site should improve your page ranking.

• Trust - Even if your potential customer has not heard of the organisation that 'endorsed' your business, it can help develop trust and faith in your company.

• Increased Awareness - By featuring on another page or becoming a member of an organisation, more people will immediately know about your business (even if it is just a handful, depending on the organisation).

• Learn from others -  By joining a good and relevant organisation, you should gain access to information that will be beneficial to helping your business specifically. 

• Support - You will be connecting with like minded people in similar situations, you never know, you might meet someone who can help and support you.

I hope you found this post helpful. If you are in the crafting industry based in Ireland, I would highly recommend you join the Crafts Council of Ireland. You will receive much useful information. www.ccoi.ie/

Author: Shen Wong

Maker of Fun Loving Jewellery at www.ShenWong.com

14 Steps to setting up an online business - Priorities

When setting up an online jewellery business, or any business for that matter, there seems to be an an infinite number of things to do. Once you have set up your business plan, it can be overwhelming to know what to do and in what order.

Today I will be sharing my list of priorities, hopefully it will be useful to someone else setting up their business.

Please note, this post is not an 'How To' post, it is just a list of what I do.

1. Decide on business name (research online to find minimum competition for those key words).
2. Register business name with your local office to check availability.
3. Register your domain name, do at same time as Step 2 to check availability.
4. Choose the keywords to optimise for e.g. Organic - Fruit - Dublin
5. Write a paragraph about the business & post on webpage, incorporating keywords.
6. Register your website with Webmaster tools so it comes up on Google search results. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
7. Set up social media pages and link them to your website for SEO. Try to use the same name for them all, incorporating business name. Write a bio for each, incorporating keywords. I write off the top of my head rather than using same copy as Google does not to like block duplicate content. It may not matter for short Bio's, but I also prefer original content. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en
8. Manage expectations by posting a goal launch date on all the sites & pages.
9. Start working on your products. Steps 1-8 was to lay the foundation for search engines to find your site.
10. Develop your website with a basic homepage and about us.
11. List your products. Make sure to use your keywords throughout product descriptions. Basically your keywords should be naturally placed on every page related to you.
12. Register your page with SEO optimising site such as https://www.attracta.com/. Do this after listing products as you will understand better what to say about them. Once registered, I don't think you can change the information submitted.
13. Make sure to update your social media pages minimum twice a week throughout the whole process.
14. Once you are happy for your site to get some traffic, announce on your launch on social media pages.

My list is not perfect, but it's what I do on a generic level. I am selling my products through Etsy at the moment, but still working on my own site, so not ready to go fully live yet. 

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions. I am always keen to learn.

by Shen Wong

Renaming Dublin Designer to Shen Wong

Going forward this blog will be renamed under the Shen Wong brand.

For the purposes of SEO (explained in my earlier post), it was becoming too much to optimise for the Dublin Designer brand and Shen Wong Jewellery, so I had to merge everything into one. 

Over the week I will be refreshing the layout of this page. Keep an eye out for the new look. 

Sometimes we have to sacrifice preference for SEO. *sigh*

Goodbye Dublin Designer and hello Shen Wong Blog. 

Did you ever have to change your branding to suit SEO? Leave a comment to share your thoughts. 

by Shen Wong 

7 Steps to using Instagram for Online Business - Building SEO

Intro

You set up your website, put up good pictures of products with enticing descriptions and many people will think  your done. Well unfortunately that is just not enough. One of the (many) most important things with an eCommerce website is for it to be found. To do this you need to optimise your website for search engines, this process is called SEO. 

There are many thing you can do to optimise your website. One strategyis to create inbound links. This means setting up links to your website, Google loves this. The more relevant links that directs to your website, the better. Social Media is a great way to achieve this. 

The Social Media that I will be talking about today is Instagram.

    My Instagram page

How To 

1. Download Instagram to your smartphone. 
2. Set up your account with your business name. This will then be a relevant link to your website. Please be sure to use your business name & not anything else. For me, Shen Wong was taken across most SM platforms, so I used ShenWongCo as my alias. Ideally I should have used ShenWongJewellery so I could optimise for "Jewellery" also, but that was too many characters than most would allow and the competition for that word is too heavy anyway. 
3. Decide on the 3-5 keywords you would like to optimise for. Use these words in your description
4. Decide on the pictures you should be posting. I like to post pictures of my jewellery, me wearing my products and some 'behind the scenes' images of me preparing my creations. 
5. When posting up images describe it in a few words, but try to fit in some key words. Be sure to include your website!
6. Tag your pictures. Instagram allows up to 30 tags. By tagging your pictures, there are better chances of people finding them & then liking & following you. This is good for SEO & spreading awareness for your website. I use tags like #jewellery #bracelets which are both relevant to help people find my pictures & useful keywords for my SEO.
7. Post often so your followers don't lose interest. 

Tip: Set up a custom auto correct on your smartphone. I have a full list of possible tags I will use, plus a short bio with my key words that I add to all my image posts. When I type 'instabio' into my phone, my description and tags auto populates. Saves me typing it out each time.

That's it on this topic. If I have missed anything or if you have found this useful, please comment. 

You can find me on Instagram @ShenWongCo. 

Sample images that I post on Instagram

Written by Shen Wong