MENU

Idea of Thirds for Online Content

This is the next edition of a semi-regular series From the Business Desk I am writing to look at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business.  This feature revolves around some ideas and concepts that you can use when posting content online and via social media.

Driving content to any website or blog isn’t easy.  Especially with the proliferation of social media and so-called link aggregation sites like Buzzfeed or Tumblr, online viewers are faced with an overwhelming amount of content to sift through.  How can you, the publisher, rise above the noise, and provide your audience with a healthy variety of content to keep them engaged and continuing to return to your site?  Social Media giant Facebook has some analysis from their experience, much of it is good advice: ask questions, vary your style, and keep up your volume.

In terms of content, however, there’s a quick little memonic that I’ve always believed in to help you not only have varied style and volume, but different topics as well.  I think this is particularly apropos for the fiberarts industry, where so much of the culture and community is derived from sharing new ideas and teaching others’ new tips and techniques. It’s called the Idea (or rule) of Thirds for Online Content.  It goes like this:

1/3 of your content should be Informational
1/3 should be Instructional
1/3 should be Personal

Here at Tinking Turtle, we try (and emphasis on try given life’s challenges as mentioned before) to come up with a monthly posting schedule and theme, and then break down the posts based on these buckets.

This is our Posting Schedule for last November.  Note the other topics for me at the bottom… I’m just now getting to writing about the Idea of Thirds!

Each of these buckets can engage a different set of readers, or engage frequent readers in different ways.  The Informational grouping for content can encompass topics such as reviews of new patterns, new yarns, new books, or other knowledge based topics that you the poster want to share with your audience, for example this post you’re reading!  Instructional topics are pretty straight forward, and engage the folks’ who peruse your site hoping to learn something new (like Jen’s Embroidering with Crochet piece) or with a question to be answered.  Instructional topics can also lead into a more active offline engagement with readers, as once they have learned a technique or style they may want to pursue that with you through one on one interactions or even taking an in depth class.

Personal topics are topic matter most commonly associated with blogs; they are stories, experiences, and musings of the poster (such as my German Restaurant post about the origins of the Tinking Turtle name from last year) and add a human element to a website.  Readers want to know they are dealing with people, not robots, and having this down to earth content helps drive that connection to keep them coming back.

There are any number of ways you can break down posting content to achieve variety to provide engaging and provoking content.  The Idea of Thirds is one great concept to keep in the back of your mind when contemplating your online content, whatever the platform, going forward!

~ Mr. Turtle

Technology and Organization: How to stay on top of your files.

This is the next edition of a semi-regular series From the Business Desk I am writing to look at some of the important factors in running a Small Fiber Arts Business.  This month’s feature revolves around using some technology solutions to manage the data and documents your business creates.
In today’s technological age, more and more business documents are being created, transmitted, and stored solely in an electronic format.  Gone are the days of massive file rooms and large physical filing cabinets full of records; for small businesses in particular, digital storage is a booming need.  Being able to store and organize documents smartly is a crucial aspect of any business operation, and the time and effort saved through organization can make a real difference for a business of one or two employees.  This is especially true for fiber arts design shops, where the products, patterns, and media being created comprise the bulk of the value for the business.
For the small business today, there are a wealth of resources available, ranging from free to very cost effective.  These resources are able to store documents in a manner where they can be easily accessible to the business, yet secure and organized to protect the data.  Cloud storage, available through GoogleApple, or Dropbox, to name but a few, can initially be used for free.  This online storage can be accessed anywhere that you have an internet connection.
More locally is the emerging concept of a Personal Cloud.  A personal cloud is a hybrid setup of storage; a cross between an internet based Cloud Storage service and a personal hard drive attached to a computer.  Also known technically as Network Attached Storage (NAS), this technology solution allows you to create, save, and share documents locally within your own business or home network.  
Tinking Turtle’s Personal Cloud looks like any Windows file structure, and
is organized and accessible across multiple computers.

Tinking Turtle has recently set up our own Personal Cloud system to store all of our business data including design information, contracts, and other important documents, in one simple, easy to access location that any computer on our business network can connect to.  This allows us to categorize and file designs and other business documents in an organized, hierarchical manner, while still preserving the ability to share these among members of the business.

Personal Cloud providers such as Western Digital or Seagate now offer affordible data storage solutions with a wide range of features, including automatic backups, audio and video streaming services, and even the ability to access documents anywhere across the internet.  This functionality offers small businesses a key competitive advantage, as by being organized with your company data, you are better able to use your available resources.

5 Ways I Manage My Time

Things have been hopping over here at Chez Turtle lately, with a number of deadlines, both big and small, looming at the end of January.  I’ve got designing deadlines, design proposals, teaching proposals, finishing and everyday tasks vying for my attention.  And the kicker is?  I’m not by nature a very organized person – in fact, I’d venture to say that must of us who enjoy crafting tend toward the more disorganized side of things.  So how do I stay on top of things?

I share a few tips.

  1. Stay accountable – for me, it means that I’m not running my business alone.  Behind the scenes I have Mr. Turtle (my wonderful husband Michael), checking in with me and making sure things get done.  It’s a delicate balance – asking him to keep me accountable doesn’t mean I want him harping on me.  But it does mean I count on him to check in and make sure things get on my task list, big and small.
  2. Keep track of deadlines – I have a calendar to the left of my computer where I write down deadlines, so I can see, visually, when my high volume parts of the month occur.  it might seem obvious to some that it’s a good idea to keep a calendar, but at one point I had all my deadlines on little scraps of paper scattered throughout the apartment.  Naturally, it didn’t work.
  3. Break it down – I have a bunch of lists that hang out in the center of our kitchen table. There’s a monthly personal list, a monthly business list, and a weekly list, for both myself and Mr. Turtle.  The weekly list is then culled for a few things (no more than seven seems to be my sweet spot) that need to get done each day.  I break things down into tiny steps – like knitting 2″ on a shawl I have due, and I check them off as they get done.  I like watching things get crossed off.
  4. Keep it small – Mr. Turtle helps me a lot with this one.  Sometimes I get these grand ideas of what I can accomplish in a day… and he has to remind me that I need to keep things from getting overwhelming!  Small attainable goals will always beat big goals.
  5. Enable yourself to succeed – I realized that there was an item on my list that’d been copied to the new list for several weeks.  Last night I stopped and thought through why I hadn’t gotten the task done… and I realized I didn’t have the tools to get it done.  I needed information I didn’t have.  No wonder why I’d been avoiding it!  So today, instead of that task being on my list, I’ve broken the task down, and just set myself the goal of getting the information I need to finish the task.
How do you manage to keep yourself organized?