Using Web 2.0
to Promote Your Jewelry Business

© by Pamela Bruce; all rights reserved

If you have been watching the news lately, you probably were astounded to find out that Google bought YouTube.com for 1.6 billion dollars. You also probably did not see any connection between this event and your business.

Well, you might be wrong in that. The YouTube deal marks the definite arrival of Web 2.0. Google may have been wrong in buying YouTube, but it certainly must have seen future opportunities in this Web 2.0 business.

Before we go on, let's look at what Web 2.0 actually is. Wikipedia, itself often cited as a prime example of Web 2.0, defines it as "a supposed second-generation of Internet-based services - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies - that let people collaborate and share information online in previously unavailable ways."

You can find a detailed discussion of the term at What is Web 2.0?.

Note the word "supposed" in the Wikipedia definition. There are critics who see Web 2.0 as little more that marketing hype - a repetition of the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s.

Besides noting the fact that the social networking site MySpace appeared in a cover story of a national news magazine (US News & World Report, September 10, 2006), I started receiving more and more spam from online marketers promising me floods of traffic to my website through the miracle of social networking, if I only signed up for their programs.

Instead, I looked around on my own and found the following techniques and services that might be useful to jewelry business owners:

• Blogs on steroids
  By now, pretty much everyone should know how easy it is to set up a blog (though continuing to write for it is definitely not so easy). However, you can also upgrade the effectiveness of your blog by publicizing it with free services such as Pingoat, burning an RSS feed with Feedburner, or inserting slide shows with Slide.
• Flickr.com
  This site lets you upload your photos and "tag" them. It is a good way to showcase your work if you do not have your own website, or to supplement the reach of your website. However, it is not a marketplace (the community guidelines state: "Flickr is for personal use only. If you sell products, services or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account.").
• Squidoo.com
  This website lets you create so-called "lenses" (don't ask me what squids have to do with lenses!) that can contain your articles, photos, feeds from a blog, reviews, link lists and more. You can also include ads by Amazon.com or other online shops and will receive a commission on affiliate income. Here is an example (my lens): Love Beads Unlimited.
• Style Hive
  This site allows users to publish images and links of cool design and fashion. Prices and links to your website are allowed. I found a number of Etsy store owners who advertise their products there.
• Ebay My World
  Yes, even this behemoth of online auctions is changing the old "About Me" pages into a blog-like format.

These are only a few examples, and new sites seem to be appearing all the time (take a look at the French Zlio for instance). So should you embrace Web 2.0 for promoting your jewelry business? My answer is a conditional "Yes, but ...."

Take a close look at a site before signing up. What stage is the service in? If it is in Alpha, it might change considerably when (and if) it reaches its final form. How much traffic does it get (Alexa.com can give you statistics)? Finally, what do you receive for contributing free content?

Be careful not to underestimate the true cost of free services. If you sign up for too many and spread yourself too thin, you are losing time you could devote to other aspects of your business.

Look at the traffic logs provided by your website's ISP, or install tracking software (StatCounter and ShinyStat offer free versions, as do many others) to find out which of these services actually refer visitors to your website.

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