ON THE BIAS: In This Issue

• Retailer Survey
• Social Media—Where Do I Begin?
• Featured Product: Lutradur®
• Meet Us at Quilt Market
• April Releases
• Coming in May
• Top 10
• The Buzz

Retailer Survey:  Book-Buying Decisions

We need your feedback—please click here to take our short survey by April 25th and you will be entered in a drawing to win two free e-books of your choice!

Social Media—Where Do I Begin?

Reaching out to more people is a critical step for growing your business. Social media (such as blogs, online forums and groups, photo sharing sites, networking sites) provides you with many cost-effective resources to find and engage new customers. The best way to begin is just by tapping in and listening. Once you have spent some time learning who is talking, where they're talking, and what they're saying...it will be easier to determine which social media tools would be best for your needs, and then you can start talking!

Here are a few great tips on how to start using social media right now, summarized from marketing expert Adam Cohen's blog, A Thousand Cuts:

1. Do regular Google Blog searches on your shop's name and on industry terms like "quilting." Read through the resulting blog posts to see what people care about. Bookmark your favorites to refer to later.
2. Do the same searches on Twitter using search.twitter.com. Look for mentions of key words that relate to your business and read what people are chatting about. 
3. Use these same keywords to search online for a few websites, groups or forums where people are talking about topics and products that matter to your business. Subscribe to these sites via email or RSS feed to start listening.
4. Join Facebook – set up either a personal page or a business fan page. Facebook provides several ways to search for people you know, then send them invitations to "friend" you. You can also search for new people based on the interests (like quilting) they have listed in their profile.

Featured Product: Lutradur®

A Versatile Cross Between Fabric & Paper

Everyone's talking about Lutradur, the fabulously versatile non-woven fabric.

Your customers can do so much with it!

• sew • draw & paint • etch • inkjet print
• stencil • stamp • fold & pleat • dye
• distress • die-cut • punch
• sculpt & heat-set • bead • gel transfer
• weave

Meet us at Spring Market

• Quilt Market is May 15-17 in Pittsburg, PA—we will be in booth 640

Top 10

These are our best-sellers for the last 12 months—
it pays to keep these in stock!

The Buzz