Your customer is your wholesale buyer. Have a nice chat with them and see what you can do to improve communication with them.

I started quilting with the help of many great teachers, shop owners, friends, book authors, self publishers and quilt store managers and every single one of them has in some way contributed to my perspective. I love marketing and I really enjoy social media, but most of all, I understand exactly how confusing this changing scene is for so many people in the quilting industry.

More than anything, I’d love to help create win-win partnerships for quilt shop owners and quilting industry manufacturers of tools, fabrics, patterns, books and more. If I can help you, please contact me at MMQuilts @ gmail.com

What I’ve written is a proposal for a partnership that can benefit both manufacturers and quilt shop owners. There are three strategies and 100 tips in it. I hope that you can use this as a communication tool to open a dialog with your business partners and that it gives you tips to create an even more successful business.

Email me and I will send it to you as an attachment and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Please don’t make the mistake that YouTube is just a place to shove your videos, untagged, no description, and a title that’s some type of code. Let’s take step number one – understanding just what YouTube is and why you should use it.

Write 240 characters describing yourself or your business as your introduction to everyone on YouTube. What message do you most want people to know about you?

Show us your face, your best work of art, the cover of your book, something that says “this is me, this is what I’m all about”. YouTube calls this an avatar, I call it a visual introduction or eye-candy. On my quilting channel I used a quilt block from our most popular quilt. On my coaching channel, I use a recent photo of myself. Make a 1600 x 1600 representation of yourself and upload it to your channel.

Add links to your site, your Facebook page, your blog, whatever internet presence you want. These will be live links, clickable. Isn’t that sweet? YouTube is basically giving you a platform to funnel your viewers to your website. You couldn’t ask for more than that – and it’s free!

Choose a layout style. Let me make this easy for you: Blogger if you just have a few videos (or none yet) and Everything if you already have several videos and a playlist.

Fix your name. Your channel name should either be your business name or your own name, not bunnybumpkin456. If you already have a channel with a dufus name but only a few videos, delete it and start over. The goal is for people to find you. YouTube will, by default, display your name in lowercase, all run together. You can fix that, here’s how.

Go make a short video! Here’s my best tip on making one: use a tripod. You can find them cheap at second hand shops, big box stores or on Craigslist.org if you are on a budget, but don’t hand hold a camera and expect people to watch your shaky video. Just don’t do it. Lights are great, use as many as you can and if you get into making many videos and are on a tight budget, check out the Frugal Filmmaker’s Channel on YouTube for great DIY gear. My camera is a Canon VIXIA HF R20 Full HD Camcorder and I edit with Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11.