How-to: Create Photo Mosaics for Instagram

At a recent Nutmeg Collective Social Media Meet Up, a few members mentioned they’d like to make the mini mosaics that several of our members have been making for a while and sharing on Instagram, like the one above. It looks like there are a lot of steps, but I promise I’m just being uber-specific. Once you get the hang of it, making mini mosaics doesn’t take much time at all.

1. Choose four items you’d like to use.   If you don’t have specific users or items in mind, this is a trick I use so I don’t re-create the wheel: Look at etsy treasuries. Someone took time to sort through and find a theme, chose coordinating items, and all the information you’ll need is 80% right there. In the search box on the treasury page, search NUTMEGCOLLECTIVE.  Evelyn Pelati, DiGiJewels, and Designer Dwellings have current treasuries that have some Nutmeg Collective items in them that I have used. Note: They’re not ALL member items in team treasuries, so you do need to select who is a member to use this method.

2. Once you’ve picked your items, save the picture to your computer or device. Since I usually do this task while my family is relaxing at night, I mostly make these mini mosaics on my laptop, but I can do this from my phone just as quickly. Make note of the people who made the items and what they have named them, this will help when you add a caption. On my laptop, I just leave allllll the tabs open, or put their name as the file.

3. Using the design app of your choice, arrange photos in a square mosaic format. I use Pixlr. When our group was polled, others use Picstitch (for phone), fotor (for computer), Aviary, PicCollage, and PictureCollageMakerLite. What it comes down to is that there are plenty out there, you can pick the one you like the most.

4. Once you have the layout you like, save the photo mosaic. If I’ve done these steps on my computer, I now email the mosaic to myself so Iyou can access it from my phone. If you use a cloud or link your devices, move to the one where you can upload to Instagram.

5. Upload to Instagram. List the items shown with the maker’s Instagram username. If they’re not on Instagram, I use their Etsy shop or web address. Note: I started making these mosaics to share Instagram user’s items, and people are more likely to click and follow your team members on Instagram if the links work. I try not to use too many items that are for people NOT using Instagram.

6. Tag the users on the photo as well as in the description.

7. Hashtag #nutmegcollective so team leaders and your teammates can see it!

8. I also hashtag #madeinct #ctmade #connecticut and maybe one or two other relevant tags.

That’s about all there is to it! Some nights I’ll make three or four and space out posting them to prolong the fun.   Please ask if something isn’t clear here, I do love to chat!

Photos and items in this sample mosaic are by:

Treefort Naturals // tinymack //  Baby Blossom Co.  // Sprinkles Of Color

Vanessa Felie, aka "Queenvanna" juggles a husband and two blond pixies while running her burgeoning paper arts and crafts business, QueenvannaCreations. Her job and family inspire her to create crafty projects for holidays, vacations, as well as times when there's just not much going on. Perpetual calendars and other home items, scrapbooking album kits and personalized gifts of all kinds - She looks to add a little flair to everything she makes, to put some extra fun in to daily life, as well as special occassions.
Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | queenvanna@cox.net

2016: A Year to Shine

via Harebrained Schemes

Happy New Year!

We are so thrilled to welcome in 2016 and say Happy 2nd Birthday to the Nutmeg Collective.  Now entering our third year, we are looking forward to bringing you the best handmade artisan goods in the state and highlighting some of the best local places to find them.  

Make sure you are keeping in touch with us by following us on social media:

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We are so glad you are here and hope you will help us make 2016 a year to remember!

Nutmeg Newsletter: Let's Connect!

The Nutmeg Collective is looking forward to some big things in the second half of 2015, one of which is our brand new newsletter!  Get local goodness right in your inbox: all you have to do is sign up here:

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We are also so thrilled to be so close to 1000 likes on Facebook.  Have you liked us yet?

You can also join us on Twitter and Instagram.

One Thing: Set Up Your Avatar.

An avatar is a small icon that represents a person's online persona.  Avatars can be a person's head shot, their logo, or any other graphic representation of that person online.  Most social media platforms have them, and when you are setting up your account, it is one of the first things you are asked to fill in.  For some, if you do not provide a photo, you are left with the stock image that the platform uses.  On Twitter, this is an egg.  You do not want to be an egg.

As a business owner, you want to make sure that you have a professional-looking avatar that represents your business- it's often the first look someone gets of you online.  Without a custom avatar, your account not only looks unused and neglected, but it gives a potential client no idea who you are.  You either want people to see you, or you want them to identify your business through your branding.

Some quick tips for businesses on social media:

• Avatar graphics should be sharp and sized appropriately to avoid getting cut off or stretched out.
• Graphics should be professional- ask youself: if your boss was looking at your account, would you be embarrassed by the photo?
• Make sure the image is easily identifiable. You don't want someone wondering, "What is that?"
• Use a consistent image over all your business-based social media accounts.  This helps with branding.

What's one thing you do to help your business?

Written by Kristen of Milo and Molly.  Kristen runs her business while staying at home with her two small children. Fueled by an endless supply of tea, she sews late into the night when the house is quiet, most often accompanied by her faithful poodle, Casey.

Social Media Etiquette: All Platforms

Navigating various social media platforms can be overwhelming.  Each one seems to have its own "rules" for posting and interacting.  Below, we've listed some general guidelines that follow an unspoken etiquette for social media.

• Think about the number of posts you make per day, don't inundate your followers.
• Straight-up self promotion should be kept to a minimum.
• Keep tagging to a minimum. Tagging shouldn't be used to encourage people to look at your posts. People like to control their own feeds.
• Tag only when giving credit to someone who played a role in the subject of your post or photo. (i.e. location, product, creative talent, etc.)
• Ask some questions privately that should not be public. (i.e. What is your wholesale rate? How do you make this? Why have you not responded to my email?)
• Do not point out mistakes publicly. (i.e. spelling, grammar, price, etc.) Instead, send a private message if you believe this mistake warrants attention.
• Refrain from giving unsolicited advice.
• Do not post anything with customer information, as in, showing a photo of an outgoing shipment that shows a postage label.
• Always credit the original owner if you regram or share a post.

If you have additional points, please leave them in the comments!  

One Thing: Add a Photo.

What is one thing can you do today that's quick and easy to accomplish that can help run your business in a better way?  One very simple suggestion is to add a photo to your social media postings.

People are visual- they like to see what it is you're talking about, or want an image to guide their mind along with your words- and they're more likely to click if you include an image:

Infographic via Socially Sorted

Instagram and Pinterest are built-in visual platforms, but for Facebook and Twitter, it does help if you add an image to you post.  If you are on your smartphone, emailing yourself an image from your blog or other source makes for easy posting, as does taking a screenshot with your phone.  (Just make sure to credit any borrowed images.)  This will help you make the most of your posts!

What's one quick thing you can do to help your business?

See more here!

Written by Kristen of Milo and Molly.  Kristen runs her business while staying at home with her two small children. Fueled by an endless supply of tea, she sews late into the night when the house is quiet, most often accompanied by her faithful poodle, Casey.

One Thing: Use Social Media Tags.

What is one thing can you do today that's quick and easy to accomplish that can help run your business in a better way?  We already suggested some ways to tweet smart to connect with your followers, so now it's time to reach out to others in your community that you wish to interact with.  The easiest way to do this is through social media tags.

There are two main types of tags:  a hashtag and an "at" tag.  

A hastag, initiated with a number sign (#) is an unspaced phrase used to identify a group of similar comments.  Hashtags are searchable, so if you click on one, you can see who else is tagging the same thing.  Many groups and businesses online use branded hashtags to connect with followers and reach out to their community.

At "at" tag, using the @ symbol and the person's or business's username will usually trigger a notification to a person's account that someone is tagging them and commenting about them.  It's a great way to give a quick shout-out to someone whose product you like, whose blog post is a good read, or whose an awesome member of the community.  Many times, you'll get a comment back, and if you do, you can start a dialogue.

By using tags, you are putting yourself out there to connect with others, plus it makes your social media posts searchable.  Others may find you through a common hashtag or a trending topic.  A few words to the wise: just make sure not to overdo it.  Too many or excessively long hashtags can be an annoyance to followers, as can persistent spammy tagging.  Make sure you are genuinely tagging someone to give kudos, and keep the amount of hashtags to the most important ones for the best results.

What's one quick thing you can do to help your business?

See more here!

Written by Kristen of Milo and Molly.  Kristen runs her business while staying at home with her two small children. Fueled by an endless supply of tea, she sews late into the night when the house is quiet, most often accompanied by her faithful poodle, Casey.

Crafting Perfect Posts on Social Media

Social media and online business are an inevitable combination.  In order to bring in business and connect with customers, you are most likely going to need to use some form of social media to gain an audience.  Once you have followers and people interested in your brand, you can then use these platforms to connect further- offer sales and promotions, announce upcoming events, introduce brands, even get opinions.  Social media can be an invaluable tool if you know how to do it right.  We'll be covering some of the big name platforms over the next few weeks and why they're good and how best to use them, but this infographic from My Clever Agency provides a great quick guide on how to create a good post in some of today's most popular platforms, plus the best time of the day to send out a post.

How to Create Perfect Posts on Social Platforms

What is your favorite social media platform?
Do you feel you're utilizing it to the best of its ability?
Is there a platform you're ready to try but haven't yet?

Written by Kristen of Milo and Molly.  Kristen runs her business while staying at home with her two small children. Fueled by an endless supply of tea, she sews late into the night when the house is quiet, most often accompanied by her faithful poodle, Casey.

Using Twitter for Business.

In the day and age of social media as king, businesses are trying to effectively use as many platforms as they can in hopes of reaching more customers and clients.  One of the first and most popular of these platforms is Twitter, a fast-action form of social media that allows people to interact through statements of 140 characters or less.  Think of it a little as public texting.  The messages that go out from your account are seen by all of your followers in your feed, but they are also public to anyone who clicks on your account.

What is Twitter anyway, and how does it work?

from Edudemic

But what about for business?  How can you effectively use your account to help your business?  Ideally, connecting with others on Twitter will help get your brand out there, connect with potential customers and other sellers, and help you find opportunities for your business.  Here's a quick guide to help you get started:

from Render Positive

Twitter can be insanely helpful for business networking, but you have to be proactive and work it.  I polled a bunch of my Internet-based buddies and asked them for their biggest Twitter do's and don'ts:

The biggest "do" from everyone I asked: Actually post!  If you are being yourself and you are live-posting information (as opposed to scheduling your tweets), that is going to be the best way to attract an audience.  Twitter happens in real time, so the biggest reaction you are going to get is going to happen almost immediately.  Be there to respond to comments and questions and connect with your audience.  People who respond to your tweet want to connect with you, so take the opportunity to do so.  It also helps to tag people that you want to know in your tweets, and if they respond, respond back.  Get a dialogue going and become the "face" of your brand.

As for those things you don't want to do:

1. Consistently complaining.  About work, life, your kids, your husband.  We know you're human and have things happen, but it's the constant griping about everything that gets on people's nerves and will cause them to unfollow.  This also includes long multi-tweet rants about something that's on your nerves.

2. Being too personal.  If you are using a Twitter account as a business and it's your only account, be careful about what personal details you are putting out there.  Your feed is public unless otherwise set, so anyone can see about your illnesses and bad dates and your cuss words.  Think about what you're saying- if you had a boss, would you want them to see it?

2. Tweeting nothing but self-promotion. Yes, you are a business.  Yes, you want to (and should!) promote yourself.  But you also need to interact with people.  If you post a promotion, a new listing, a new blog post, etc., and that's all you ever do, and you never actually talk to anyone, no one is going to care about your business.  It's social media, so you have to be social.

3. Retweeting a whole bunch of things in a row.  Please space it out.  While you may find every single thing you read to be interesting, think about what will connect best with your followers and share those things a few at a time.  You are trying to cull your audience and present yourself as a brand so choose your retweets wisely.

4. Tweeting every single thing you list on Etsy.  If you have an online shop, and you're loading it up, you have the option of sharing it quickly on Facebook and Twitter.  Don't do it for every item!!  Perhaps choose one item in a category you're working on and share it instead of tweeting all 50 listings that you're putting online.  People will not click on them, and it's a great way to get people to unfollow.  Similarly...

5. Auto-linking all your accounts.  Social media sites have this great feature of being able to link up, so say if you take a photo of a new product and post it on Instagram, you can also share it on Twitter.  This is a great feature, as you often have different followers on different platforms, but you have to try and not abuse it.  People hate (I don't know if I can say it strongly enough- HATE) when Twitter accounts are auto-linked to Pinterest and Facebook.  Meaning, if you go and pin 20 recipes for rice, your followers are going to see all. 20. links.  And that is just plain annoying and will lead to unfollowing.  Same goes for Facebook.  Do not auto-link your Twitter feed to tweet everything you post to Facebook.  First, it's repetitive to followers on both platforms.  Second, it's better to do these manually and have control over what you're posting.  In some cases people forget they're linked and may post something they didn't intend for certain followers to see, or you end up seeing the exact same thing two tweets in a row.

The moral of the story?  Twitter is a great conversational medium, but you have to work at it for it to work for you and you have to be authentic about it.

Written by Kristen of Milo and Molly.  Kristen runs her business while staying at home with her two small children. Fueled by an endless supply of tea, she sews late into the night when the house is quiet, most often accompanied by her faithful poodle, Casey. (Follow her on Twitter!)

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