Quilters never cut corners.
Quilters come with strings attached.
Quilters aren't greedy, they're just materialistic.
Quilting with a friend will keep you in stitches.
When life gives you scraps - make a quilt.
Quilt 'til you wilt!
I love sewing & have a plenty of material witnesses.
My soul is fed by my needle and thread.
Welcome to today's special announcement.
Today, I have a lot of stuff to announce about this quilting community!
• • •
Spreading The Word About The Quilting Message Board
The message board, even though only eight months old, has already become a nice community -- thanks to you!
I just took a glace over the topics on the board and realized that it's a true goldmine of information for quilters of all skill levels. I don't think there is a quilter in the world that wouldn't discover something new just by reading the posts on the board. Not to mention the inspiration that the Pictures section brings, showing all the wonderful work of people who upload the images of their quilts.
Because of that, I think we need to get more quilters to learn about the board so that they wouldn't be missing out on all the knowledge and insight shared by all the active members of this quilting community.
If you have a website or a blog, please link to http://www.quiltingboard.com/ to let other quilters out there know about it.
If you are not sure how to create a link, then please contact me and I'll walk you through it.
Send an email to all your quilting buddies and let them know how to get to the message board. They'll thank you for it :)
Also, let your local quilt guild members know.
After all, the more people join in to talk, ask questions and share ideas, the more fun it will be for everyone.
• • •
Talking Not Just About Quilting
A few weeks ago, I created a new section on the message board called General Chit-Chat.
I didn't run a dedicated announcement in the newsletter for this section, when it was opened, because I didn't want to crowd your inbox with an extra email, but the section is up and running and people are chatting it up in there.
As you can see, there are various existing topics there not related to quilting. So if you feel like discussing something else with the other message board users that doesn't involve quilting, then feel free to do it in that section.
• • •
For Those Who Offer Products/Services To Quilters (if you don't, feel free to skip this section)
If you offer products or services to quilters and if you have something informative to share, then please contact me.
I'm planning on starting a series of hosted live chats and message board posts. Just to be clear, I'm not looking for sales pitches. There is enough of that going around. But if you truly want to contribute to the community while getting some exposure, then please read below.
There are two formats I can think of: the hosted chat sessions, message board posts.
Chat Sessions
If you have a product that might interest quilters and you believe it would be beneficial to be able to talk about it with people in real time, I'll schedule a chat session and run an announcement with the date/time and the topic of the chat.
Everyone who becomes interested in this product would be able to join the chat room at the specified time to ask you questions about your offer, and you'll be able to explain all details and how your product/service benefits quilters (who might choose to become your customers if they like what you have to offer).
Again, I have to stress that a chat session cannot be a hard sales presentation. This is not Home Shopping Network, and people will not be joining just to be sold to. The chat session has to be educational -- centered around how your product can help quilters quilt, so that people who are interested can conveniently order from you.
Message Board Posts
Here, I'm not talking about the Classifieds / Fabric Swap section where you can post your offers.
I'm talking about posting mini-articles in the main section of the message board. Such posts will be prefixed with "**" to let the users know what they are. So instead of "My Topic Name" the topic would look like "** My Topic Name".
Such posts cannot themselves be about promoting your product. They have to contain a tutorial of some sort or a description of some quilting technique or a set of tips. It should be at least 500 words long. It is preferable that the post is related to your main area of interest. That way the users of the board can read your article, learn from you, judge your level of expertise, and decide if they would like to buy from you.
You have to think about the people reading your material more than about the sales to be made. Otherwise, I don't want it in the newsletter or on the board.
At the end of such mini-articles, you'll be able to insert up to five lines of text with your "about us" information, the offer and/or the link to your website where the visitors can order or get more information.
If interested, please contact me first, before posting, so I can take a look at your material.
I'm also thinking about allowing people to contribute the content for the weekly newsletter issues to bring fresh perspective and cover more topics. If you are interested in participating, then please contact me as well.
• • •
Private Live Chat Channels
The live quilting chat (located here) has a function for creating private channels. If you want to discuss a fabric swap with one or more people in real time and need to post your private information, you can create a private chat room so that the information is not displayed in public.
To do so, log in to the chat and type the following command (type it right in the box where you usually type responses):
/join CHANNELNAME
where CHANNELNAME is any name you want to call the private channel. Don't forget to start with a slash "/" and make sure there are no spaces in the name of your channel.
You can tell the other people with whom you want to chat the name of the channel so they can type the same command and enter your channel.
This is just an alternative to private messages on the board, in case you need to discuss something with multiple people and/or in real time mode.
• • •
Empty Chat Room
Speaking of the chat room, I noticed two things. It is empty most of the time, and there are plenty of people who log into the chat room each day.
These statements seem to contradict each other, but after examining the activity log I realized what's happening.
Someone joins the chat room, sees that it's empty and logs out. Two minutes later, someone else logs in, sees that the room is empty and also logs out. And this keeps happening all day long :)
I understand that it's no fun to sit in an empty chat room and wait for someone to join in, so I think we need to organize scheduled chat sessions so that everyone knows that the room won't be empty at a certain time.
We can schedule many different sessions because someone might prefer to chat on, say, Wednesday mornings while someone else might be available only on Sunday evenings.
If you would like to host a chat session at some specified time, then please let me know and we'll try to arrange it. You don't need to be an expert quilter or anything like that, just a person who enjoys a good conversation.
Also, last week I tested a small notification icon that leads to the chat room. You might have seen it. It's a small rectangular notification box in the bottom-right corner of the pages, both on the message board and the newsletter.
I'm going to enable it in the near future as a signaling mechanism that there is a chat in progress. So if you are reading the message board or a newsletter issue, you would know that there is someone in the chat right that minute and you can join to talk.
• • •
Posting On The Message Board
If you subscribed for this newsletter recently and never posted on the message board, then take a look at the screenshots I created that explain the process of registering and posting on the board. You can find them here.
Also, keep in mind that you can get to the message board directly. You don't have to wait for the next week's issue to see the new topics. Just go to http://www.quiltingboard.com/.
If you have any quilting-related questions, then don't be shy and post them on the board. We have plenty of great quilters over there that will always help you out.
Custom Notification Times
I'm trying a new feature in the newsletter delivery system. This feature would allow me to deliver notifications of new issues at different times based on individual subscriber settings.
In other words, I can set it up so that you get your notification for "this week's" issue on a specific day of week at specific time.
Right now, I'm only beginning to test it, but if you would like to try it out, then send me an email stating your email address (the one you used to sign up for the newsletter) and the day of week and time (please use eastern time zone) at which you would like to receive future issues.
This is not mandatory by any means, but if you prefer to receive the notifications at some specific time that is more convenient for you, then please let me know.
That's all for today.
Till next time!
Konstantin,
www.QuiltedParadise.com
Feel free to use the suggestion box below for any questions or comments for me personally. If you want to ask a quilting question, then the best place to do so is the quilting board: http://www.quiltingboard.com/ -- there are plenty of great quilters over there who are always willing to help.
P.S. In case you just wandered to this page and are not subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here and start receiving notifications for the new issues. It's free.