Want to know some good ways to get your Team or Guild more popular on the sites? Want to boost your Team’s population and increase the sales for its members?

To have your group become more widely recognized, join in on group sales and promotional packages. If groups you belong to do not partake in these activities, encourage your group leaders to start, as these are very valuable in building a nice flow of new potential customers to your site and your fellow group members’ sites.  Create a mailing list for your Team to help it become more famous and keep people up-to-date on events and sales.

So you made a Team or Guild.  What now?  PROMOTE!  Spread the word of your Team through every legal site that you can; your Twitter, Plurk, and blog accounts are good places to start as are social networking sites like Myspace, Livejournal, and Facebook.  The heavier the group’s promoted, the stronger the recognition. 

Do not spam anywhere; it’s pushy and customers do not like it.  Post a thread on Artfire if you have a Guild, or on Etsy if you have a Team, to get your group noticed.  To encourage participation in the group’s threads, make games with your fellow group members and site members. One of those games can be: "What item would you buy from the post above?" and "1000th post wins an item". Games boost group moral and make group members mingle together. To keep the thread alive, allow members to post their newest items, promote each other, and keep people informed on the newest Team updates. On Etsy, make Team treasuries either by theme or in alphabetic order to be fair. Doing this makes it possible for everyone to get a chance to be in the group treasury. Posting the links of the treasury on your sites is effective in increase traffic flow for your group and its members.

Group sales are always beneficial in getting Teams and Guilds noticed. Customers like getting quality merchandise for less money. Sales are a good way for customers to sample your products, which brings the possibility of return customers. Set aside a week or a day every month or two for a group wide sale. With each shop being a unique entity within itself, they need to create their own sales how they see fit, and they don’t have to join the sales at all if they wish. Leave the group sale optional; never force your members to participate. Then, make a thread in the promotion section of the site where each participating group member can post individual sale information. Make a group sale avatar for members to use during group sale times to help draw attention to their own and other members’ shops. Members don’t have to use the group’s avatar since some like to use their own, but it helps customers become aware of other Team/Guild members. It would also be helpful to post your Team tag at the beginning of your thread. This allows the customers to view all the sale items and it will likely help in boosting the view count, and potential purchases, of other Team members that may not be participating in the group sale.

Promotional packages and swaps are valuable to the group by allowing customers to sample the products. Get some members to join your promotion by choice, not by knifepoint.  For example’s sake, we are going to say that your Team has ten members and they all want to participate in the promotion.  Have everyone, including yourself, create nine items and send them to you. These can be promotional items like buttons, business cards, sample sized items, or any type of small items that your members want to make.  When you receive everyone’s items, divide them so that everyone has an equal amount of each others’ items. Once divided, send the items back to each member who joined the promotion. The group members can send one or a few items to each customer in their shop or hand them out at craft shows.

Another good way to promote your Team/Guild is by passing out flyers with every sale. Create a flyer for your group, or if you lack the computer know-how, there are many great potential Graphic Artists on Artfire and Etsy who will gladly make one for a nominal fee.  By having an artist on either of these sites make your flyer, will also help to promote your group and help another artist in the end.  Make sure to put the group’s mission statement on the flyer, along with sales information, and upcoming events to keep the customers interested.  Be sure not to forget to put the link to the group’s homepage, and even list Team tags to let potential customers or potential new group members know the groups whereabouts.  Give your Team/Guild members the flyers or sell them since you went to all the trouble in attaining them.  Now your members can hand out the flyers with every sale they make or pass them out at craft shows they attend.

If you follow these handy tips, you will have a thriving Team in no time.  Promoting your Guild will build it’s renown.  Group sales will increase traffic into your group members site.  Promotional packages will help build rapport with your customers.  But the most important thing in making a Team or Guild prosper, is listening to input from your group members.   They are very creative people and can come up with unique ideas.  Listen to them and keep them happy, but most of all; just have fun!