My Favorite Collection/Treasury Contest

 IS HERE!!

This event is two days, Posting on Saturday, but Voting is on Sunday. If you have your IBH tags and keywords in place for your items on Artfire or Etsy, you will most likely be added by someone for this contest.

•SEARCH Etsy or ArtFire for items using the abbreviation: IBH
♥ArtFire IBH search
...
•MAKE A COLLECTION OR TREASURY from searching "ibh" on either venue. Our guild and group members' items should come up in search.



NOTE☼Your Collections and Treasuries Need to have tags and keywords "ibh" also for them to be entered into the contest!

•POST OR SHARE the Treasury or Collection from IBH member items, on our FACEBOOK GROUP WALL on SATURDAY!

•ON SUNDAY, a gallery of all the IBH treasuries and collections will be created in a very special viewer. POLLS will be open for you to come and vote! I will message everyone on Saturday nite where to find the virtual voting booth.

The page will be labeled "Handmade Saturday" at http://www.itsbetterhandmade.com/ ..ie.."HANDMADE SATURDAY" TAB PAGE.

WINNING COLLECTION/TREASURY AND AUTHOR GETS FEATURED AT:
♥It's Better Handmade Social Network Front Page♥
♥It's Better Handmade Guild News Page♥
♥Handmade Saturday Chatterbox Forums on ArtFire♥
♥Handmade Saturday IBH Email♥
♥IBH News Online♥
♥MFG Network♥
♥MyFathersGifts Shops♥
♥MFGSocialNetworking Shop♥
♥It's Better Handmade Artfire Shop♥

New Facebook Format Increases Spam Reports

The new Facebook Policies and format for Groups can not only bombard you with messages but also increase your reports from others.  The new Groups pages are even less secure than before.  You can not lock your group and then reset it again, you have to start over again with a new group page.  The Closed or "locked" groups are also hidden from search engines making is impossible for sellers to network under secure settings.  

Anyone can create a group, and what's worse, anyone can create a "hidden" group making it completely invisible.  Now, you could be added to a group without an invitation or knowledge and get bombarded with messages.  Everytime Facebook updates their format, new notification settings are acquired.  You see a change and all of a sudden your email box is flooded with notifications.  If someone isn't aware of the new policies and format, they automatically think you are spamming them and report you.  You will get a bunch of people screaming at you in messages at Facebook and many will just report you, locking you out of your account. 


The old Facebook Group format is still in place for the existing groups.  But the new Groups pages no longer have "share" options so that your posts in groups are viral, but 'subscribe' instead.  You will see that person's posts anywhere they post.  Making your News stream even more active.  This could be good if you want to follow that person, but bad when you are trying to network and broadcast your posts to a larger audience.  This policy is so that people don't complain anymore to Facebook for sharing to much info to their friends.  So only you see it. Good, and bad. People don't understand that Facebook is like a huge auditorium and you cannot expect to find a quiet place in the midst of a crowd!  ie...SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK. 


 Why create an account if you don't plan to socialize.  If you are not a people person, I don't advise you join the party.  If you are a seller and are still pretty shy, social media can be a learning and growing environment for you.  It is also a necessity to learn to socialize and to promote your business.  Otherwise, you probably should consider investing in Google ads.

Business pages are still pretty close to the same.  However, when you create a page you can adjust who see's it and who is blocked.  This includes search engines for that location as well as for Facebook directories.  So say you want to keep a certain geographic location from seeing your page, you can remove it from your list of who can see the page in settings for that page.  That helps with fire-walling unwanted viewers.  But I know that they will get smarter and eventually get around that by creating fake identities on Facebook with a different Geo-location.  


Facebook is getting bigger and bigger, making it's potential good and very bad at the same time.  Be very careful who you accept as friends, make sure your avatar has a proper picture(good quality above 300px) and make sure you reset your security settings to prevent anyone from grabbing your email address, your family name list, your location, your address, your phone number and your birthday(identity theft).  Keep your business page exclusive and don't leave a link to your personal profile on any of your business pages for security.  These are supposed to be separate identities from your personal profile. 

Still to come!  ...Why we have so many groups in our lists.

It's Better Handmade Group News

Hello, Everyone!  

What an interesting week! ;)  

Thanks for following me here!

OK, here's the skinny!  We have decided to stay at Facebook for the time being as a group as long as we can.  Your hard work has built this great network and it is worth fighting for!  I won't let bullies take it from us and I won't back down.

I am now using this official It's Better Handmade Blogspot as our public network hub!  You can find our Newsletters, information on Events, our new link hub and other helpful information here. I have also created some great pages including a Collections page. There is a new Contact Susan Now (my personal creation, no 3rd parties)at the left of the page if you need to email me for any questions you might have.  I will be keeping a private roster of those who have checked in via email with their support and questions for future reference when we begin working on our new website.  I am looking to the possibility of creating our own Social network hub sometime after the holidays.  

Every week, I will be sending a simple message to you in your private box via our Facebook Group to let you know there is a newsletter waiting for you here.  You can also access partner links such as ZeroZoomPizazz, It's Better Handmade HQ on ArtFire and several others.  We can create a Member Roster Link page if you are game.  

The new HQ at ArtFire has some great benefits.  We have live Chat, Forums, Picture Gallery for any members to add to and an events calender.  I have already started some great forums over there that I think you will love.  

I know some of you don't have ArtFire accounts, that's OK.  There is no requirement to sign up and participate there.    Those of us who are there find ArtFire to be somewhat of a safe haven.

Take a look at my most recent post here called Blog Blitz!  It's a carry over from a forum at HQ and a cooperative effort the Mavens(I am one) have been doing since Summer.  I think you will have fun with it.

One more thing, we have some changes in our officers.  Please make Sparks feel welcome as she steps up to officer and possibly taking Admin responsibilities in the future.  

Find Her on Facebook

You will find that life sometimes takes you away from the things you want to do.  But I know that we are being refined like a precious metal.  Thanks for all your hard work and support.  You are ALL WORTH IT.