This year TNNA and the Yarn Group are showing support for brick-and-mortar yarn shops with a special appreciation day, Local Yarn Store Day on April 21, 2018. There are many plans in the works including special collaborations between shops, yarn companies, and the creative services who work together to make our LYSes special. This post provides a quick overview to the toolkit that was developed to help spread the word and drive awareness of this event.
Local yarn stores are an important part of our community. It is a challenging retail environment and many have closed recently. I can no longer pop into a shop near to where I live; I either need to travel further to reach a yarn store, turn to a big box, or shop online. Local stores are part of two ecosystems–the local community and the fiber community. Last year I wrote about why it’s important to try to shop small, shop local, at little acorn creations.
Why am I writing this post?
I’m not an expert in marketing, how you use these elements is up to you. I heard that the tool kit page could feel overwhelming. This post will go through it and discuss how you might incorporate it into your website.
Landing Page
A landing page is a really just a webpage. It’s marketing lingo for we want people who click on an image or a link about this thing to go to a specific webpage that’s designed for them to learn (or do) something. TNNA has created a special page for this event that can be found at www.localyarnstoreday.com.
Do you need to use that link? I think it is better for you to create a place–either a webpage (if you’re doing a multiple things around the event, you can link to all of them there) or at least blog post–with your details about what, where, why you’re supporting Local Yarn Store Day. It’s a good idea to also link to www.localyarnstoreday.com, there are lists of all participating stores and vendors.
When you include the graphics on your website, link them to your landing page for LYS Day. For now, this post is my LYS Day landing page. I am assuming that the majority of my site visitors are participants looking to understand the toolkit.
LYS Day Graphics
There’s a lot here. I know it’s tempting to download one and use it everywhere. You could. However, this is where things get a little frustrating. Perhaps you remember watching movies on your TV and they were letterboxed to fit the screen. Each image that’s been provided in the toolkit is set for a specific size.
Do you really care about the different sizes? They help make sure that the image that you display is clear (not pixelated) and that information you want to share isn’t inadvertently cropped from display. This happens more frequently in social media sharing than on your webpage.
In the case of your webpage choose the image that’s appropriate for your site’s style (theme). For example, my blog post index page prefers images that are at a 1:1 ratio. I’ve used the Instagram image as my featured image for this post. However, I know that’s not ideal for all social media. I use the Yoast SEO plugin to help me out with sharing and I added both the Twitter and Facebook photos to the social tab of the meta box for this post. As for an image to use in a sidebar or footer, this really does depend on your site.
Event Listing, Email Signature, Promotional Email Copy, & Social Media Posts
These sections are my favourite part. The team behind LYS Day has done the hard part for you and banished the blank page! Now you have ideas that you can copy-and-paste and be ready to promote. Or you can use these as ideas for writing your own language. Please use the suggested hashtag, #LYSDay.
I hope this quick introduction to the tool kit will help you share your passion for yarn and yarn stores during Local Yarn Store Day, a day meant to bring together the community, drive awareness, and celebrate the craft at local brick-and-mortar shops.