Regalia
Professional Tailoring & Refashioning
Lisa Lansford
Professional Seamstress
Business Media Network
Week 4 Reflections
The most challenging thing I encountered during weeks 3 / 4 was just the mere establishing of these social media profiles and connecting them to my business and its website. I had a Facebook profile but never used it for anything other than buying and selling on Marketplace, that’s it. I had to discover how to create a profile within a profile (business within personal). Although time-consuming for me, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and am glad for what I learned through this process. I also had a Linkedin profile for career networking but had the experience of linking that to my business as well. The other two other social media network sites I established during this week are Twitter and Instagram. So, this was my challenge for this week and my gain was newfound knowledge through experience, a better understanding of the benefits social media networking provides for businesses by creating/increasing brand awareness, keeping your business foremost in the minds of your followers, and driving traffic to your website.
Week 5 Reflections
I am following The Renegade Seamstress and Refashionista on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linked in (and also on Pinterest). While I consider my refashioning business to be in competition with these two businesses, I also am thoroughly inspired by them. Their creative ideas serve to motivate me to try new things and think outside the box. I have always been quite “anti-social media” because I feel like people waste too much time engaged in passive use of it. But being on the other side, I now understand that if this is where your customers are, this is where you need to be in order for your business to grow and remain active in the minds of your customers. An important element in customer retention and growing one’s business is the human element. Your customers and potential customers need to see you as human, and this can be accomplished through social media posts and interactions with them.
Week 6 Reflections
My reflection and advice to myself for this week after following others on social media that are in sewing-related businesses is that I shouldn’t quit my day job to solely pursue this venture. It is clear that I will need to keep my primary job and that my sewing business will strictly be a part-time side hustle. And this is fine with me. Being self-employed, has many benefits, such as being my own boss in addition to being able to actually earn money doing something I am really passionate about, but it wouldn’t be wise for me to give up the security of a steady paycheck, pension, and other benefits my job provides.