I had a post on this site for a giant list of t-shirt blogs that was very popular but haven’t updated it in a while. I had their page rank in the list so you could see how important google views the sites but there is a lot more information to compare all these sites.

Andy over at hide your arms made the site http://t-shirtblo.gs/
A good idea but a voting system isn’t the best way I would compare all the site. What ends up happening is blogs tell their readers to go vote for them on the site so they can be number one.

I then ran across the holy grail of t-shirt blog lists. Check out http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/T-shirts
You can sort the sites by Google PR, Alexa ranking, Compete rank and many more. Find the most popular blogs and contact the owners to get your shirts seen by as many people as possible.

Also check out this article about how to talk to bloggers

Ohh yeah sorry wasn’t a top 20 list at all. I just liked the sound of it. Rank the blogs by a couple of different ways at http://www.invesp.com/blog-rank/T-shirts

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Top 20 T-Shirt Blogs

I saw this on smallbiztrends.com

Combining social media marketing with traditional branding efforts may be the wave of the future. After all branding is one area social media can help social media the most, establishing brand identity in a way that once required much larger budgets. The following roundup looks at social media, branding, small business and more.

Branding & Sales

What does your branding say about you? Your brand is important especially in terms of how it communicates to your target market or audience. Does your brand really say what you intend or are you unintentionally communicating a message that does not portray you in the best possible light. Urbane Technology Solutions.

What are the reasons for a business owner to sell? There may be a couple of reasons why owners may wish to sell their business, but according to business broker Scott Messinger, one stands out above all others. If you think he’s being overly simplistic, just take a look at his guest post and judge for yourself. Noobpreneur.com

Social Tools

Are you using the new LinkedIn buttons? The Web’s top business networking site has added a further social marketing and Search Engine Optimization tool similar to share buttons already found on other social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Using networking tools like the new LinkedIn button can have many positive results for your networking and marketing efforts. Test the new application today. SEO Tips and Updates

Could branding threaten the location-based social media revolution? Mir Rooshanak argues that it might with brands like Coke and Pepsi lining up to sponsor SCVNGR and Foursquare respectively. This, he argues, is much different than the two big brands merely both having a presence on Facebook. What do you think? How much important is location-based social media to your small business and will major corporate branding effect how or if you use the service. UPrinting.com

10 tools to manage online presence. Ryan Hanley, an insurance broker from Albany, is quick to point out he’s not a social media expert, but we think his list of tools for building brand online are really worth a look. As Ryan points out, there are tons of tools available to create your online presence and the key is to select the right ones for you. RyanHanley.com

Community Building

Are you building community or just adding followers? Could “less followers” be the new “more followers?” If this doesn’t make sense to you, perhaps your goals in social media aren’t quite what they should be. This wake up call to social media marketers looks at the truth behind what constitutes success in the social media sphere, and how to create connections the old fashioned way…one relationship at a time. SocialMouth

Do you respond? If not, be aware there may be a price to pay. The fact is that social media is social and when you behave in a less than social manner you are making a definite statement about your brand. Imagine if you never answered phone calls, or didn’t talk to someone when they came to your office to see you. Jason Kienbaum has some further thoughts on the repercussions of being unresponsive in social media. Business Done Now

Your Message

Why context not content is king. If social media networking success isn’t just about the sheer number of followers you can amass, it may be time to look at some other myths out there about building a brand on the social Web. Take the argument that “content is king”, as an example. But as Ivan Walsh points out, content if unrelated to your readers and what they might be searching for, is useless. Bloggertone

A strategy for building content that works. If the key to great social media branding is creating content that suits your customer’s or viewer’s needs, than the system by which you develop that content is also important. Enter John Jantsch’s suggestions for creating a “content lead generation system” as an important step toward creating and sharing not just any content but the content that really matters. Duct Tape Marketing

Strategy

Do you have a strategy for your social media branding? If so, what is it and how does it apply to targeting the audience and customers you’re after? Ann Evanston suggests an approach that builds networks, adds value, and creates your brand in the social media space. Ignore strategy at your own peril. Take a conscious look at how to use social media to build the brand you want. Warrior Prenuer

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Social Brading Basics

Simple, free and only takes a few seconds.

Viral marketing on Facebook is one of the most effective ways to brand your company and get more sales. There are a few techniques that I have stumbled upon over the years that I would like to share with you. All these ideas are free and take up very little time. Consider them to be my secret pack of tricks and tips for Facebook. If you have done research on running ads on Facebook, I am sure what you read was either negative or people saying its just not worth it. When compared to some of the free techniques I have come up with, you can decide whats most effective for your brand.

One tip out of many is the usage of the Facebook photo tag feature.

By tagging your fans who are wearing your brands shirt, any one who sees the picture will be drawn towards that selection and be more inclined to go further onto the clothing lines page. In past experiences, people start commenting on the picture, announcing what size they want and even reposting it to their friends. The whole point of Facebook is that you can market from the inside out. This simple tagging feature allows you to enter in your own name if you want people to add you vs your brand, or you can type in your clothing lines website like the picture shown below. It is likely that your Facebook group gets viewed less then the members in it. By doing this simple tagging it gives everyone that looks at the picture a reminder of what brand they are wearing and where to get it. It will also give you an idea of other peoples reaction to your shirt. Encourage people who make purchases to put up a picture of them sporting it. The first thing that people do on Facebook is skim through all the photos, use that to your advantage.

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Viral Marketing On Facebook 101

I was reading Cashflow Quadrant and I thought a lot of clothing companies could benefit from this information. The cash flow Quadrant has 4 sections. The left side is an Employee and Self-employed and the right side is a Business owner and Investor. So many clothing companies with me included are actually just self employed and true businesses.

The following is an excerpt from the book

“Can you personally make a better hamburger then McDonald’s?”

So far 100% of the people I have talked with have talked with about their new idea have said “yes”. They can all prepare, cook, and serve a better quality hamburger then McDonald’s.

At this point , I ask them the next question: “Can you personally build a better business system than McDonald’s?

Some people see the difference immediately, and some do not. And I would say the difference is whether the person is fixated on the left side of the Quadrant, which is focused on the idea of the better burger, or on the right side of the quadrant, which is focused on the system of business.

I do my best to explain that there are a lot of entreprenuers out there offering far superior products or services than are offered by the mega-rich multinational corporations, just as there are billions of people who can make a better burger than McDonald’s But only McDonald’s has the system that has served billions of burgers.

-Robert Kiyosaki “Cashflow Quadrant”

This quote really opened my eyes that the product isn’t the only thing to worry about and I need to focus on creating a strong system for my clothing company to succeed. It’s not all about the product and the sooner you understand that and work on all the other areas of your business the sooner you will succeed.

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It’s not just about the product

By Bo Mekavibul for iamthetrend.com

This is the first in a series of articles that will delve into one concept or theory in the field of psychology and explore the ways in which it applies to your business. Because the knowledge that we have gained from psychology is based on general human behavior, it may be applied to the population at large and used to better your company and the relationships with your customers.

One of the most well-known theories of psychology is that of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning applies to the process of learning and describes how reinforcement or punishment modifies an individual’s behavior. A behavior increases in frequency if the outcome of performing this behavior is positive, a reinforcement. In the same fashion, a behavior occurs less often if the result is negative, a punishment. Now this all may seem like common sense, yet there are still companies that provide subpar goods and/or customer service. For example, if someone purchases a t-shirt from your online store, only to receive it and see that the design is unintentionally off-center and the seams have fallen out, they will regret their decision to buy from your company. These defects in the shirt can be seen as a punishment, since the individual spent his or her money and basically traded it for something that was simply not worth it. Likewise, if a customer comes to your company with important concerns and your customer department staff member is rude and unhelpful, he or she will feel a sense of bitterness and frustration (I am quite positive everyone reading this article knows exactly what I’m talking about). Before you know it, these customers will no longer want to have anything to do with your company because they fear the disappointment of losing their time, their money, and even their spirit when they rely on your company.

On the other hand, if you and your company go above and beyond with your products and customer service, you will see much better results with your business! Receiving a t-shirt that you’ve purchased and having it be what you expected for it to be is good, but opening up a package and seeing that the contents are 10 times better than you predicted is even better. Although you may have spent a good amount of money on this product, you may end up feeling rewarded because you got more for your money than what you had anticipated. We all know this feeling. This rewarding feeling as a consequence of purchasing from your company is a reason for consumers to want to stick with your company to fulfill their need for the type of product that you offer, whatever the product may be.

Not giving customers what they truly deserve for their money’s worth is a big no-no. If you punish your customers with bad products and services, they will indubitably shop elsewhere, especially if their first purchase from your store or their first time contacting your customer service representative has left them with a second-rate product and/or negative emotions. As consumers, we like getting what we pay for and having our purchases meet or exceed our expectations. No one likes to be let down. Treat your customers as though you are building a relationship with them. You cannot build a relationship if you do not put in the effort to earn the other party’s trust and respect. Since you are building a symbiotic relationship with each consumer, your company benefits from having customers purchase your goods, and your customers benefit from receiving products that fulfill their needs. Do what it takes to please each and every one of your customers, because these relationships need to be mutual and reciprocal if you want your customers to keep coming back for more.

In short, you should always focus on your customers and their needs in order to reward them for taking an interest in your company. This reward is a reinforcement that will help you secure a community of consumers. More consumers means more business, and more business means more profits. Never forget that by rewarding your customers, you, in turn, are rewarding yourself.

Make sure to check out iamthetrend.com for weekly articles and features! Also if you like this

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Operant Conditioning: What is it and How Does it Apply to My Business?

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Selling With Social Media

originally posted on tee biz

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5000 Twitter Friends in 90 Days

Tim Toomey from Assault Blog and Assault Shirts talks about how to get SEO results without spending a lot of money.

He gives some great tips for keyword strategies, blog strategies and coding strategies.

That video was done for watchteev.com

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SEO for Apparel and T-Shirt Companies

My Name is Ray, I am currently a college design student at Parsons School of Design in New York City. I run, designs, and own Lowdtown Friends & Freaks, and writes articles for the Lowdtown Blog.

Intro – The Marketing Misconception:

So probably the greatest misconception when it comes to marketing is that advertising makes a brand successful. That statement is completely FALSE! It’s not the advertising that makes a brand famous; it’s the products and branding. Of course, you may have heard a few cases where people got lucky because someone saw Justin Timberlake wearing their shirt, but more times than not, advertising is used for different means. Advertising and marketing a brand is what maintains a brand’s success, it never creates it. Advertising and marketing should be used to supplement your brand. So before reading this article, remove that from your head. Without a great product you’ll never be truly successful regardless of your marketing.

I’m assuming that most of you indie brands out there don’t have your own brick and mortar shop, so I’m mostly going to be covering online advertising.

Online Advertising Techniques

I think a good practice in terms of web branding is to have your own domain and website. So even if you have a bigcartel which would probably be something like i.e. lowdtown.bigcartel.com; you should still have a main site called i.e. www.lowdtown.com for the sake of marketing. Hosting and domain names are so cheap nowadays, that it’s stupid not to have a website. And even if you don’t plan to get a website just yet, you should at least buy the domain name and park it. That way, no one can steal your perfect little domain name. I think GoDaddy has deals for like $10.00/year (and they have some damn good advertising).

Your website is going to be your main engine for marketing, so you have to consider many things.

The most important aspect is probably it’s SEO ranking. SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is a whole science on its own but here are a few tips to help get you started.

Good SEO means to be easily searchable through sites like Google and Yahoo and such, so if you have a high pagerank, you will be more likely to be listed favorably, so when someone searches for “graphic t-shirts shop” or something like that, it is more that someone will click on your store’s link.

SEO tips:

1. Have descriptive titles.
a. Often times sites like Google will index your website based on your websites title. So if someone is searching for Lowdtown, my website lowdtown.com is much more likely to show up if the title is “Lowdtown Friends & Freaks Shop” rather than something vague like “Homepage.”

2. Make your site easily crawlable (aka Have a clear navigation)
a. So basically what all these search websites do is use these little virtual robots that go through all the websites over the net and crawl through all your pages. If your navigation is clear and goes where they need to go, you won’t really have a problem.
b. One thing to note is that the robots cannot crawl through flash-based navigations (yet?), so try to steer clear of that. If your pages cannot be crawled, your pages will not be indexed.

3. Have a lot of updating content.
a. The search engine robots will keep returning to your website if you have a lot of updated content. That’s why blogs are so fantastic. If you have a lot of well-written relevant content, the search engines will love you. Ultimately, search engine’s really just want to display good content, so don’t worry too much about keywords and update your site with good relavant content.
b. One thing to note about keywords is not to overload your content with keywords. Don’t be stupid with sentences like: “Hi, I own Lowdtown clothing, and I love clothing, and clothing, is awesome clothing.” Search engine robots know when you’re trying to cheat the system; they’re smarter than that! (Shit, I shouldn’t have done that, haha.)

4. Have good links.
a. So when it comes to your search engine ranking, having good links to your site are really important. For example, if my blog was linked by a very popular and important t-shirt website, my page rank would go up.
b. Conversely, if I were linked by twenty of my friends’ blogs, my page rank wouldn’t really be affected. Unless of course, one of my good buddies was Pharell and he linked me to his Billionaire Boys Club blog, haha.

5. Don’t freak out over metadata.
a. There’s been some debate over this, but most professionals say that your meta keywords and meta descriptions don’t really affect too much in terms of page rank.
b. It never hurts to add them just in case though. Some professionals also say that other search engines, with the exception of Google, do use the keywords, so you might bring in traffic from other search engines that you’ve never even heard of!

So after you’ve optimized your website, don’t forget to actually submit your websites to the actual search engines. There are plenty of free services out there, but I don’t really want to name names. Just look up “free search engine submission” on Google or something. Just keep in mind that a lot of these search engine submissions will send you a lot of spam and stuff, so be wary of that.

More tips:

- Another good tip is to submit your website to t-shirt directories. I haven’t really seen a major flow of traffic from any of these sites, but it’s still a good idea to do so. Sites like T-shirt Countdown has shown pretty good traffic though. Also, PleaseDressMe is getting quite the following and it may be worth your time to submit your t-shirts.

- This won’t necessarily increase your visitors, but an extremely good practice is to sign up with Google Analytics and track your visitors. Google Analytics is a really powerful tool, and you can see where your visitors came from, what pages they viewed, and even how long they stay on the site. Google Analytics will give you a good idea of how strong or weak your pages are.

- Another great tool from Google is Google Webmaster Tools. If you sign up for this (free) tool you can track what people are searching to get to your site. For example, I learned that in February 2009, I was position 87 on Google for the keywords “shat bricks”. Haha, sweet! I’m finally reaching the “shat bricks” community!

- Try to upload and consistently update your sitemap. The sitemaps are basically a clue to the search engines that you’ve updated your website, so if you have constantly updating sitemaps, more pages will be indexed. Lucky for this blog, which runs on WordPress, there’s a handy little plug-in that automatically updates its XML sitemap.

- To try to get relative visitors to your website, try to submit to relevant forums. For example, if you have a punk clothing company, maybe go on punk music forums. But don’t rub your clothing company in their faces, just be subtle, maybe put it in your forum signature or something.

- On the same note, if there’s some blogs you like try contacting them and see if they can review you. You might strike a better audience when you contact a different kind of blog, not just t-shirt blogs. Going back to the same example, if you follow a popular punk rock blog, and get featured on it, you might receive better exposure and returns than you would on the t-shirt blogs that are already filled with tons of other t-shirt designs.

- However, if you do want to get reviewed by a blog, the best way besides asking them nicely is usually to actually send them your product. People are a lot more generous when you’re generous to them.

Some other ways to market your brand:

I have never personally worked with any print or television media, but it might be something that interests you. Note that it is far more expensive than most web-based advertising, so if you’re planning on these mediums, you have to have the money to do so.

- If you live in a friendly neighborhood, a fun idea for some attention may be to contact the local newspaper to try to get an article about your brand. I mean, people have a lot of pride in their community, so it might be exciting to hear that little Ray Masaki is starting a clothing company with some potential. The plus side is that it’s free and there’s no harm in trying. If you don’t get the article, big deal, it’s not like you lost anything.

- More risky ventures include: television ads, magazine ads, billboards, etc. These are most likely not very appropriate for little indie brands like you and me, but hey, if you have the money it may be worth it. Unfortunately, I have no experience whatsoever in these fields, so I have no idea what kind of returns you get for these kind of advertisements. If you want to take the plunge, just do your research. The unfortunate thing about print and television advertisements is that you can’t really track where your visitors are coming from unlike web advertisements. However, if you see a sudden peak in your visitors after you started your print campaign, you can infer that it was the advertisement.

Well I think that’s pretty much it for today, I hope that helped! I am certainly no master of SEO or marketing, but this should at least get you on your way. The thing is, there are so many great books out there that teach you how to properly brand and market your company, so go to your local library or something. Seriously, I went through a binge of books on internet marketing a week before the launch. It really gets quite addicting, and it’s always a good thing to learn things on your own!

Just a quick note; this may or may not be the last Starting A Clothing Company article. If you want more, leave a comment and tell me what you want me to cover. I think I covered a pretty good breadth, so I wouldn’t mind ending with this one. Let me know!

Other news:

On a completely irrelevant note, I just wanted to mention that I became a television star yesterday! Talk about TV advertising, I became a sensation yesterday. I went to the taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and I was on there for a total of TWO SECONDS. Woo! And I was wearing my shirt too, yes!

Check out the pics below, I’m so proud. Haha, I got to high five Jimmy Fallon and I shook Justin Timberlake’s hand! If I were a girl I would’ve fainted! Haha, have a good one guys!

*Sorry for the crappy screenshots off of Hulu

Look Back:

Strange Look of Confusion:

Post High Five with Jimmy Fallon:

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How to advertise and market your clothing line

One of the major things that has helped me with my t-shirt brand, Assault, since it’s inception in late February of last year was optimizing my site for Google and other search engines. I’ve worked as a SEO consultant and developer the past 7 or 8 years for various companies, and our list of clients contain some of the biggest names and brands in the world.

I’m not going to add to the gigantic list of of great SEO resources and basic SEO 101 strategies that you can easily find all over the web. Instead, I’m going to go over a few secrets that I have developed specifically for my online store, Assault Apparel, that will help those of you who are like me and don’t have any sort of money to use for marketing and PPC like some of the other t-shirt shops around town.

Think like a robot – Link Text, Title Text, Content Keywords, Landing Pages

Assault's URL structure with CSS disabled

A search engine spider uses a lot of information about your site to determine your search engine rankings. Using links with system text pertaining to your search term is a big factor. Using landing pages with specific keywords in your page title, as well as throughout the text in your actual page is another thing that gives you proper keyword density pertaining to the page titles.

Disable your sites’ stylesheet to get an idea of what a search engine is seeing when it comes to your page. The link text and text position on the site is very important. Be sure to have your links near the very top of the page, and to carve out your sites’ links by putting rel=”nofollow” on your anchor tags associated with pages you do not want spidered. This cuts down on the number of links on the page, thus giving you more weight on your pertinent links.

My links to the right all use the word t-shirts as well as link to my landing pages with the same keywords sprinkled throughout the content. I would say that about 2% of your pages content should contain your keywords. Anymore than 2% is overkill.

Think like a human – Keyword Choices

One of the most important tools I have used to determine naming conventions for my pages, shirts, and images is the Google Keyword Tool. Everyone uses this tool, and everyone who’s good at SEO is following the standards as laid out by Google in their SEO Starter Guide pdf, but what most places aren’t doing is choosing the high volume search keywords that aren’t being target by everyone.

For example, you’re never going to show up in the first 10 results for the keyword t-shirts, or tshirts, or even shirts. If you’re just starting out, there’s no point in trying to compete for this word. It’s already dominated. The words you should be trying to get in the top ten for, are other searches with the word, “t-shirt” in them. Assault‘s top keywords besides searches related to “Assault” are things like

• zombie t-shirt
• band apparel
• graphic t-shirts
• skull t-shirts
• rocker apparel
• chicago t-shirts
• band shirts

You get the idea. These are the keywords you need to use throughout your internal and external links to your pages as well as your actual physical file names. The way you work your way in the top ten is to carve out your niche in other t-shirt related searches and over time you will finally begin to sneak into the top results for other one word searches. Currently we’re between 5 and 9 for the keyword “Assault“, and we never even used to get into the top ten.

Register your brand with local search results

We registered our business as a local business with Google and we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic from “chicago t-shirts” related searches. This is what gets you in the local results up near the top of the search results page.

Link backs are incredibly important to move your site up

The number one thing that determines your page rank on search results is link backs. (This isn’t a proven fact, but we’ve seen our best results from a precision link back campaign) This means if you want to get in the top results for t-shirt related searches, you need to start exchanging links with popular websites, and sites that show up in the search results for t-shirt searches.

A couple of my tips/tricks to get high quality link backs

• Start an Ebay Blog. There aren’t any rel=”nofollow” on your links back to your own site. This is the best quality link juice you can get
• Flickr Photos with links back to your site. This also gets you top quality linkback text to your specific site
• Provide the exact linkback text to your link exchange partners so that it uses proper link text pertaining to your site.
• Forum links – participate in relevant forums and generally your links will not have the rel=”nofollow” on them.
• Start a Public Facebook Fan page. These are showing up in search results now as well.

Myths and irrelevant techniques

While everything I’ve said are examples of things that have worked for me, I should precede all of these things with this statement:

Google’s search algorithm is constantly changing. Last year it changed over 300 times, and no one is 100% sure exactly how it works. Don’t fall for the companies out there selling expensive “black magic” to get your site in top results. Most SEO boutiques are full of shit. I’ve done SEO campaigns for small and big time clients, and independent SEO boutiques trying to scam business off of them gave our SEO work an F grade… no joke. Be wary of SEO marketing companies. There are about 50 techniques, and everyone is doing them. Any SEO company is probably on the verge of spamming if they’re overpromising results.

Google, Search Engine Watch, and the Search Engine Round Table are about the only 3 places I really trust.

Google does not use meta keywords, some search engines do, but I wouldn’t waste too much time on this.

Loading up 30 character file names and 40 word alt descriptions on images is a waste of time and resources. “SEO Experts” like Acronym may tell you to do this, but the time wasted doing this could be used somewhere else and you may get flagged as trying to game Google. While it is important to use alt tags, and to name images appropriately, overdoing this by using 40 word alt tags, and 30+ character names for your images is a bit of a waste of time and you run the risk of being flagged as loading your image and alt tags.

Don’t use hidden text to fool Google. They’ll find out and you’ll get penalized.

Make an XML sitemap and submit it to Google, and update it constantly.

Don’t overdo keywords in the title. Be specific, but don’t be a total spammer.

Use Google Analytics, and setup E-Commerce tracking. You’ll be amazed at the value of the information you get from this tool. I get 70% of my sales from organic search results, and plenty of that comes from Google Image search related to finding my product images with quality names and alt tags. Like I mentioned before, it’s important to use proper, specific names, but overdoing file names and alt tags is a unneccesary.

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SEO – Secrets the high priced consultants aren’t telling you