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Tips on Tuesday: Search Engine Optimization – How to optimize your products so they show up in Google

So you’ve developed your brand identity and you are interacting with your audience on Twitter and Facebook. So far, though, we have missed one major marketing platform: Google. Now it is time to tackle this area. Getting your shop and your products to show up in Google isn’t easy but you can dramatically increase your chances of showing up in relevant searches with a few simple steps.

The first thing you will need to do is do some basic keyword research. You know your products best but try to put yourself in a potential customer’s point of view. What terms would they use to find your product? Think long and hard on this, there are several tools that will help you with this such as Adwords Keyword Tool you can find at adwords.google.com.

Now, once you know what keywords you want to target say “Product-name T-Shirts”, you are going to take some basic steps so Google knows that your website is a good place for these terms. Remember, as smart as Google is they aren’t mind-readers and the robot Google uses to check webpages can’t always figure out what your website is about. This is why you need to give it as many hints as possible. When you create your product make sure the product name is descriptive and unique. Make sure the description includes a short but highly descriptive summary of what your product is. Using the keywords you researched earlier helps a lot for this. Furthermore, make sure that you fill out all the tags you can think as long as they are relevant to your product. If your product is about t-shirts, do not tag it with mugs, this will create confusion.

Google loves good, unique content and more of it you have on your page the better. If you are hosting your shop on your own website, it would be a good idea to write more content and start a blog that relates to your products. If Google’s robots crawls your page and finds a wealth of highly relevant content to a certain keyword it will make you rank for that keyword. Just remember to keep your content relevant and good. Do not simply repeat the keyword over and over again, check against spelling errors, and think of engaging content your readers would actually enjoy.

Want more information? Check out our Spreaducation section of our website: https://www.spreadshirt.com/spreaducation-marketing-C3558

Tips on Tuesday: Social Media – How to Build Up an Audience

Social Media is a buzz word lately and every business, small and large, is trying their best to make the best of it. Social media is a powerful tool because it allows you to directly connect to your audience for little to no cost. But it isn’t as easy as it seems. You cannot just get a twitter and assume people will flock to you. You have to ask yourself a fundamental question: What do you have to say that people want to hear?

Building up an audience on social networks is the most difficult thing one can do for themselves but it also pays off large dividends. Some people will just buy followers but that will get you nowhere. What makes social media valuable is how highly relevant your audience is. There’s no guess work, these are people who like you and want to hear what you have to say. So you have to make sure what you have to say is engaging.

First thing’s first: What does your audience what to hear? Sure, it may be nice for you to only talk about this week’s promo or this new product you’re pushing but why do people love you? Is it great designs? Is it witty jokes? Is it politically relevant content? Only you know what you do best, find that and embrace it on your social media.

Don’t be afraid to engage with your audience and talk back to them. See what they like and provide it to them.

Remember, content is king and you need to give your audience a reason to visit your page. From there, you have to find them. Talk to thought leaders in your industry, be personable and go to communities and forums that are about your area. Don’t rush things and don’t seem like you’re trying to simply gather followers. That will turn people off. Social media is about interacting with your audience and you must never forget that. Social media a great tool but if you misuse it, it will get you nowhere or could turn off your audience.

New WordPress plugin for Spreadshirt: Thimo, the pr3ssplay developer in this week’s interview

Thimo, who are you and what do you do when you aren’t developing plugins?

I am a media designer by trade, and I started up teaching myself to program software. For a while I have now been working for a company where I have created an ERP inventory control system. All in all it is not too much of a spectacular job, and it doesn’t involve parachuting, Walther PPK guns or dry martinis.

How did you come up with the idea of developing a new WordPress plugin?

The internet doesn’t offer all that many plugins for Spreadshirt, and if you do happen to find one it is either discontinued, limited to iFrames, can only be used to display products or costs a lot of money. That was a bit annoying. And I thought it was time to do something about it. So I decided to create my own plugin that offers quite a few functions as well as the possibility to create your own plugins on top.

What can the plugin do?

So far it cannot make you tea, but it has the following functionality:

  • Show product descriptions
  • Show a preview of the design (similar to the Spreadshirt Marketplace)
  • Colour and size selection for a given product (design colour remains constant)
  • Price listing
  • Navigation through so-called endless scrolling, so that the products of the following page will be shown immediately once you hit the bottom of a page.
  • Twitter & Facebook integration
  • Language support in German, French and English
  • Shopping basket runs through Spreadshirt (a click on the shopping basket first opens Spreadshirt’s shopping basket and initiates the checkout procedure).

Which advantages does the plugin offer?

You can easily tie in the plugin with an existing site whilst keeping total control over the sites visuals. You can use a separate stylesheet that can be adjusted to taste.

Who can use it?

Anyone who knows how to use WordPress and has administrative rights for a site.

Where do you find it?

Just log into wordpress, then click on ‘plugins’ and ‘install’. You will find a little search function where you can enter ’WP-Spreadplugin’, and off you go. Alternatively you can get access by using this link: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spreadplugin/

Which languages and currencies are supported?

Languages are read out by WordPress and then transferred to the plugin, and the plugin itself is currently available in English, French and German. In terms of currencies it gets the information directly from Spreadshirt, and it can use all the currencies that are available with Spreadshirt.

Are there any more functions for this plugin to come?

At the moment there is nothing in the pipeline, but I can always react to new requirements at short notice. So if there should be any demand for a new feature or functionality, I will take pleasure in making it happen. 🙂

What requirements are necessary in order to use it?

You need WordPress – at best the newest version. This should be in place for reasons of data safety. And:
A Spreadshirt Shop
A Spreadshirt API-Key and ‘secret’ can be found here:
US/NA: https://www.spreadshirt.com/-C6840
EU: https://www.spreadshirt.de/-C7120
In case you have any questions, please pay me a visit on my website or ping me on Facebook or Twitter. The information you need you will find here: http://www.pr3ss-play.de/
(PS – check out my shop ;))

Tips on Tuesday: Marketing 101 – Building a Brand Identity

So you decided upon starting your own Spreadshirt store? Great! But you have found that despite your many great designs you have not yet been able to make many sales? Spreadshirt understands this and that is why we are putting together a weekly series to help you make the best of your shop. Our first blog entry in this series will be how you should go about building your brand.

Remember, on the internet you’re just one store of many and it can be very hard to get your message out there. The first thing you should consider is what your store is about. Are you a fun or serious store? Are you about telling funny jokes or promoting a particular political campaign you care about? The very first step to marketing yourself is developing a clear idea about what you are about. We call this building up a brand identity. How do you want your customers to know you?

After you sorted out what you want to say you need to figure out how you’re going to say it. Let’s say you decided that your company is about funny t-shirts targeted towards teenagers. You are going to have to build your brand entirely around that. Think long about what your target audience wants and how you want to present yourself to them. Think of an enduring name then build a nice logo around it. Remember, you want it to be simple and to tell your audience exactly what you do at a glance. Make it overly complicated or unrelated to what you do, you will lose brand identity from the start. When someone looks at your shop name and logo they should have a good idea what you do. Furthermore, your logo should be interesting and should provoke some sort of emotion.

From here, you need to cultivate that identity. You need to engage with your customers actively and to promote products that showcase your brand identity. If your brand is about funny t-shirts remember to promote those first. You should join social networks and communities about funny t-shirts and you should generally promote yourself with your targeted audience. Build up your own content and actively engage with your customers. You want to cultivate an identity with your audience; you want them to know your quality and your close association with what you do.

This may seem simple but many people neglect this when they start a new shop. You cannot just be anybody, you have to be a brand, and you have to be somebody. You have to set yourself apart and putting a little bit of thought into how you present yourself to your audience will pay large dividends in the future. Focus on quality and on presenting a clear message to your audience and you will build up a great brand.

Find Spreadshirt’s Easter basket and win an iPad

This year you are given the chance to bag an IMMENSE egg from our Easter basket. All you need to do is find the hidden surprise banner on our site. Because it’s Easter time, and we make sure you can win an iPad plus personalised iPad sleeve.

This is how it works:

  1. Give our Spreadshirt Homepage a quick browse (by checking out the design categories) and find the Easter banner
  2. Found it? Then click on the sweepstake form and fill it in.
  3. To be raffled off on April 2nd  (please follow this on Facebook) we will get in touch with the winner via email.

Happy Easter and Good Luck!