How to supercharge your reach and revenue

Twitter delivers indie craft business its annual revenue in only two months

Dragonfly Jewellery Design in Torquay features handcrafted designs, handmade jewellery and gifts. For shop owner and designer Louise Roberts, her love of nature is intrinsic to her use of natural materials. As a mum, she's proud to offer a lovely organic children’s range as well as lots of little gifts and trinkets inspired by Torquay. Louise uses Twitter Handmade Craft hours to boost her sales and now receives a lot of her orders through Twitter or from Twitter to her Etsy Shop. Where most businesses focus on Instagram, Louise is a firm believer in Twitter.

“I set up a website 2019 and it just was hard work and didn’t work so I started focusing on Etsy and social media. Prior to pandemic I was doing physical craft events, seasonal at Christmas. I now receive a lot of orders from abroad through Twitter and my Etsy shop,” says Louise.

During the pandemic Louise increased orders to no fewer than 30 achieving her annual revenue in only 2 months. Louise took to Twitter to achieve this result. She joined the craft hours on Twitter where the crafting community gather to chat. She joined the conversation and ensured she was sharing  a link to her  Etsy shop or website and was creating a short, sweet and impactful post. She was consistent in showing up and joining the right conversation for her business and the people she wanted to reach, and that engagement paid off.

How Made in Ashford achieved an organic reach of 1 million people

Made In Ashford, a collaborative and creative shop hosting a collection of Ashford-based independent businesses, is run by Melissa Dawkins. Made in Ashford is all about making creativity accessible. The business supports over 50 different small independent retailers in their shop who all make handmade, locally-designed products.

During the lockdowns of 2020 Melissa realised that by showing up daily on social media and creating  authentic, value-driven content that is community-focussed, she could help support an additional 50 businesses who might otherwise be struggling.

Melissa used the lockdowns wisely. Taking stock of which posts worked, which didn't and looked at how she could engage more with people. Using the Maybe* tools she realised that her flat lay images worked better for selling products, while her posts sharing her thoughts and feelings but incorporating the brands within her shop got higher engagement. She also discovered that by creating lots of content daily for all of her social channels, she could add real value for her customers as well as businesses she looks after.

Melissa says: “ I joined forces with a local scrub making company and raised £15k and they all got together with the sewing effort. Our VE Day activity pack that was a free download was the biggest social media success we have ever had with a reach of around a million.”