Bad Public Relations

I have to say I am quite frustrated. I was reading around on the Etsy forums yesterday and read that Etsy sellers are being banned from certain websites because they are quite spammy! Also read that people are being told to "look out" for those Etsy sellers.. they're full of spam!

It's so sad to me that we have allowed ourselves to create this image of Etsy sellers. Pretty soon people will ignore us all together and totally disreguard anything Etsy because it's all just spam.

Advertising is so difficult now because we all are so overloaded with advertising everywhere and of course I realise it is so difficult for Etsy sellers to be able to compete with such a small budget. However, I feel that what we've done has caused the exact opposite of what we'd like our advertising to do.. and that is bring in more customers. Unfortunately it looks like people are being warned to stay away from us.. what does that do? Well it means people are disgusted and repelled by us.

So how do we fix it?
We can't undo the damage but here is what we can do.. make a great name for ourselves by being friendly and not always being so outrageously spammy with our twitters, facebooks, myspaces and blogs. Nobody reads spam.. no one wants to.
Create interesting, readable blogs that people actually want to look at and read, in turn they will be more interested in seeing what you have to sell because they actually have the choice to look at it.. it's not being shoved in their faces.
Another thing we can do is to be more present on our websites, put more of our personalities into what we do to gain attention toward our Etsy shops. That is what makes Etsy so personable in the first place, is that crafty, down-to-earth sensation people feel when they first sign up. Sadly that feeling has been lost because Etsy sellers become over zelous and too lazy to actually do effective advertising.

Advertising is not easy. Simply having a presence on all the social networks and posting on all the forums and making friends with everyone, everywhere... you must actually BE present. Be yourself, make FRIENDS not customers. People want to be treated like humans, not ATM machines. Be respectful of people and they will hopefully reward you for that.

I am not guarenteeing this will work, but I am concerned that people are loosing hope in Etsy because they feel it is ineffective when really, it's us who are making Etsy such a difficult place to do business.