Promoting Your Art or Crafts on FaceBook - Arts & Crafts 101

There are several ways that you can use Facebook to promote your arts and crafts. I'll share some of the methods I use and a few useful tips.

If you intend to use your FaceBook account to promote your art or crafts, networking is going to be important. You need to have a lot of friends in order to get the word out as far as possible. I suggest connecting to your real life family and friends first. After that connect to your online acquaintances. The next step is connecting to friends of friends. After that you can look on the side of your FaceBook homepage or notifications page and see suggestions. Connect to the people with the largest number of mutual friends first. You can also do searches on FaceBook to find people you think will be interested in your work and connect to them. However, having mutual friends can increase the likelihood that someone will accept your friend request.

Profile status - You can use your profile status to advertise the things that you're doing and the places where people can find your products online. This is by far the simplest use of FaceBook for promoting your artwork and crafts. Just be sure that you do more than just post links and hard sell to people. Give them a reason to read your profile and look at what you have to offer. Have a mix of promotion statuses and general ones.

FaceBook Pages - FaceBook Pages are a great way to advertise your work on FaceBook. I have several pages of my own. I have one for my jewelry, one for my Zazzle shops, one for my writing, and one that is about me and all that I do. When people "Like" a page, they are expecting it to be all about one topic, and often a product or service. You can have all the statuses on the Page relate to your work with no fear that people will think it's spammy. Pages can also have discussions, photos and other tabs that add more to the fan and customer experience.

One big benefit to having a FaceBook Page to promote your art or crafts is the fact that you can import an RSS feed that will auto-update on your Page's wall. For my Zazzle Page I use the RSS feed from my Zazzle shop, for my writing Page I use the feed from my Associated Content account, etc. This is great because it can keep a constant flow of information going to your Page for people to see, and you can just add more personal statuses when you have time.

FaceBook Groups - FaceBook groups are similar to pages, but they are intended more for personal interaction. They have a heavier focus on discussions and communicating with fans. If you do custom products or you want a lot of feedback and interaction from your followers, then a Group may be better for you than a Page.

Overall, I'd recommend a Page over a Group for a few reasons. First off, Groups can't have RSS feeds imported, so any and all content in a group has to be done manually by you. Pages having the RSS option means that you can automate some of the work and have time for other things. Another thing I discovered that I wish I'd known before I started a Group for my writing is the fact that Pages are indexed by Google, but Groups are not. Having your FaceBook Pages indexed by Google means that you get more backlinks and more traffic to your work.

Regardless of which option you choose, I have tracked hits to my various sales sites and found that a lot of traffic comes from my FaceBook account, so I'd say it's well worth using in any capacity. I will say, however, that I have never gotten so much as a single hit off my MySpace account. If you're trying to decide between the two, I highly recommend FaceBook.