(You poor people will have to suffer through all my typos and grammatical errors till my editor (wife) returns from her girl’s weekend trip but I wanted to get this out)
I’ll admit it… I Love Twitter. I can easily communicate with all the people that follow me and I can do it all in 140 characters or less. Twitter is one of the web 2.0 sites that people on Etsy really recommend for promotion. The problem is most are doing it wrong - REALLY WRONG.
There’s a really interesting site http://twist.flaptor.com that allows you to compare how often people use a word on Twitter.
In this example people are talking as much about Etsy as the are about sex. The funny thing to me is that they seems to trend in the opposite directions. I don’t have a clue what that means. Maybe there’s another story for my blog in their but that’s beside the point. The real problem is that most of those people aren’t talking about Etsy, they’re pimping Etsy.
Do a search for the word Etsy on twitter and most of what you will see is something like “Holiday Stocking Stuffers– buy two get one free” or “Cute snowmen Christmas card” with links to their latest offering. If you open that persons Twitter page you will often see nothing but pitches for whatever they just added to their shop, or the sale they are having, etc. The way I view Twitter is that it’s like TV… you have to entertain and relate with people most of the time. If you do then they won’t mind the occasional commercial.
Let’s put this in real world perspective. Say you’re at the coffee shop and someone notices a t-shirt you’re wearing that says Disney World. They say “Oh I love Disney too. BTW I have an Etsy shop and today I’m having a sale on Mickey Mouse Coffee cozzies.” Then everyday when you go into the coffee shop they’ve left messages for you that tell you about the peace coffee cozzie they just posted on their Etsy store etc. Sucks huh?
Let’s turn that conversation around. “Oh I love Disney too. Did you know there are hidden Mickeys all over the Magic Kingdom. If you go to this site they have a list of all of them.” A week later you see that same person in the coffee shop and they say “That was an awesome site, you know we’re going next summer and we will look for all the hidden Mickeys we can find.” You say ” I wish I could go but the summer is a busy time for me since I’m a travel agent. Here’s my card, if you need some restaurant recommendations or anything just let me know.” Kind of night and day huh?
You see that’s why if you follow me on Twitter I’ll ask you how I can help you with your craft marketing. If you do ask then I’ll try and give you something helpful you can use. i post useful information on Twitter and I ask people questions. If you look at my Twitter profile it links to my blog where I give more useful information… and oh, BTW there’s a link to my Etsy shop on the blog. Every day I post parts of what’s going on in my life on Twitter. People feel like they know me and when I decide to occasionally have a Twitter only special for my Etsy Guide (<- super subtle plug for my guide) people don’t mind a bit 
There’s an old saying “People buy from people they like”
Help people first… communicate with them not at them… and when they need something you make guess who they are going to buy from?
P.S. If you think others on Etsy should see this post leave a comment Here on Etsy so it stays near the top of the Etsy Bussiness Forum.