Friday 4/29 - Chatapalooza Chat - Creative Teams

[MJAJmom]

It's a week long series of chats! Join me on Friday 4/29 at 8pm CT for a chat about Creative Teams.

You can post questions here before the chat to make sure we cover them. I'll also be posting some information about Creative Teams before the chat. Then post chat notes after we're done.

Hope you can join us!

[MJAJmom]

Here’s a few questions to think about before our chat tonight... I will also post a full writeup of our chat details tonight. See you then!

- If I were to offer you a job where you must work 3-8 hours a week with many requirements and deadlines but only get paid $4/week, would you take it?
- Do you think you are a good sales person?
- How would you describe yourself? Are you organized, responsible, self motivated, a good team player?
- What’s your scrapping style? Is is artistic or traditional? Do you use lots of white space or fill the layout with lots of photos? Are you cluster crazy or a more clean and simple scrapper?
- Go look at your layout gallery right now. What layouts are you most proud of? How do you think your scrapping capabilities have improved over time?
- What kind of social media do you participate in? Do you have a blog, are you on Facebook, do you Twitter?
- What forums are you active in? How many galleries are you posting layouts to?
- What are your current time commitments? Are you working full time, do you have a new baby? Can you take on another job right now?
- Who are your favorite designers? What specifically do you like about their kits?
- Does the thought of being on a Creative Team excite you or terrify you?

************************************************** *****

We had a great chat about Creative Teams, here’s a summary of what was discussed....

I tossed out the question "Would you take a job that requires 3-8 hours/week but only pays $4/week?" Most would probably answer no to that question, but it would really depend upon if you loved the work or not. It was a question to get you thinking that a Creative Team is just like a job where you are working for a designer each week and getting paid by getting a free kit (about $4-5).

What is a Creative Team? Basically, a CT is the sales force for a designer. Keep in mind that digital scrapbooking is a business and designers sell their kits to make money. Money to pay bills and stuff. So they need some helpers to advertise their business and promote their kits so more people will notice them and buy them. Sure, Creative Teams are lots of fun, they foster great friendships and enhance your scrapping skills, but always remember that it’s a “job” and you are a “sales person” so it’s important to take your responsibilities seriously. Commitments may be for 3-6 months, a guest spot for 1 month/quarter or you’re on the team indefinitely. Some teams start off with a small set of 2-4 friends to get their business started, then the teams may blossom into more segmented business groups like Layout teams, Hybrid teams, and Promo/Enabling teams as the designers business increases (this can be up to 15-18 people). There’s typically a CT Manager that serves as the team’s organizer. And usually there’s a private forum to download the kits, post your layouts, communicate responsibilities and chat about upcoming events. Just seeing the kit image may not be enough to entice you to buy the kit. Seeing the kit used in several different layouts shows off how the kit can be used and will spark your imagination about how you can you use it. Seeing the layouts may be the reason you decide to purchase that kit. So having several people making layouts is a good way to promote sales.

What are the responsibilities? First you need to be responsible and keep up with all the new release dates and task deadlines. You’ll create 1-2 layouts per kit and possibly some kind of freebie (quick page, frame, word art, paper stack, etc). There’s anywhere from 2-5 kits per month. Stuff will be released to you anywhere from 4-10 days prior to announcement day. You’ll advertise the new releases, sales and other designer events on your blog, Facebook and Twitter. You’ll post those layouts to anywhere from 2-4 scrap galleries. Then communicate the new releases and sales in any appropriate forums. Wherever possible, use their kits in forum challenges. Some designers have a separate CT blog that you may be asked to write up a blog post for or even a newsletter. Since all sales are cyber sales over the web, it's all about advertising and how much traffic you can generate to your site.

How does a designer pick their team? Designers will advertise their CT call and ask for applications. This may be a call for layout artist, hybrid artist, promo teams, guest spots and even a one kit call. You’ll be asked to provide a bio about yourself, why you want to be on their team and what makes you unique, what creative teams you are already on, a link to your best gallery, your blog and usernames, what forums you participate on and maybe a few other tidbits of information. Designers will browse through all your information, look at your blog and layouts to see if you are a match for their team. Does your style match the designer style requirements? Are you an experienced scrapper or a beginner, are you active in their forum, have you bought any of their kits, what kind of layouts have you created with their kits? After they’ve made their selections, you’ll receive an email if you’ve made the team or not. Try not to be too disappointed if you don’t make it, there’s always next time!!

Who should you apply for? Start first by doing some research about different stores/forums and designers. Start with one forum and check out all their designers. Browse through each designer’s store and what kinds of kits, template, alphas, and other packs they sell. Do you like their style? Are there some kits that you’d love to buy and scrap right now? Then put them on your “wish list”. If you don’t like their stuff, move on. You need to really like the designer’s kits because you’ll be doing a lot of scrapping with them, so don’t apply for a CT call unless you love their stuff. Check out the forums for any upcoming CT calls. They are announced all the time. Find their blogs and ‘follow’ them so you’ll know right away when they post their call. The call may only be open a few days or for 1-2 weeks. Check out the designer’s existing CT gals and view their layouts and blogs. Are you a good fit with these gals?

How can you prepare yourself? First get some of the basics set up. If you’re going to be a “sales person”, then you need to have all your sales tools up and ready to go! First you need a blog. Blogger and Word Press are 2 popular blog hosting services to check out. Figure out a name for yourself and create your blog background and header, maybe even a blinkie. Next, get your galleries in order. Which forum gallery has the best and most complete set of your layouts? If there’s a favorite few designers you like, get involved in the stores they sell at, participate in some forum challenges. If you were asked to provide a sample of your best work, which 1-2 layouts would that be? Buy some of their kits and start scrapping with them to see if you like what they offer. Facebook and Twitter are becoming a new way to sell and advertise, set up accounts with both. You’ll need an image hosting site like PhotoBucket to host all your blog images and layouts. You’ll also need a downloading service like 4Shared, MediaFire, Box.net to store your zip files for downloading freebies and such. Some sites offer free services but may have limited capabilities, some offer fee-based services with extended capabilities, so check them all out. It’s a good thing to start investigating all this now while you have some free time instead of doing it all the day you get accepted on a team.

What do I blog about if I’m not on a CT? First of all, it’s helpful to have this all set up before you start a CT role. There’s lots to set up and figure out with blogging. Blogging is just talking to people, so you can start by posting your layouts. Talk about upcoming trips and family plans. Chat about upcoming Mousescrapper events like the 2 year birthday celebration. Show off the layouts you made for challenges and promote upcoming challenges. A designer is going to look at your blog and see if you’re doing any advertising, what you’re talking about.

Why do designers give away freebies and contests with free kits? Freebies generate lots of traffic to your website and more traffic means more potential sales. There are several freebie search engines that pick up the freebies that thousands of visitors see. Freebies are a sweet little teaser that might get you excited to buy the kit. Contests where kits are given away is just another advertising promotion to generate interest.

What are the negatives? Not much, but the biggest thing is managing your time commitments. You do have weekly responsibilities and that means you will have to fit these into your normal routines. You may be given a kit to scrap that doesn’t quite fit you (a fishing kit but you’ve never fished before), so then you have to think outside the box to make a layout. You do need to be organized and meet deadlines.

Whew, that's a mouthful!! If you have any other questions, feel free to post them here or PM me

[scrappinnewbie]

I am looking forward to this chat. We are all sick, but hoping by Friday we are better. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for putting this topic together for us.

[tinkerbell7678]

Looking forward to it!! Thanks for hosting this chat!

[roxana]

How fun Linda! I´ll be there!!!

[CoralTurtle]

Oh, I hope there will be a transcript or something--I really wanted to listen in on this one, but I might not be able to. What a great topic!

[MJAJmom]

Originally Posted by CoralTurtle

Oh, I hope there will be a transcript or something--I really wanted to listen in on this one, but I might not be able to. What a great topic!

Yes I will post a full write up of our chat details!

I have also posted some quick questions to think about before our chat in post #2

[MJAJmom]

Great chat last night ladies, thanks to all that came to listen. Hopefully you got a new perspective of a Creative Team. In post #2 there's a full summary of what we chatted about with lots of information to read. Check it out.

[Hpgirl]

Thanks for posting the write-up, Linda! It was very helpful to read.

[This Dixie Pixie]

That was a wonderful chat last night Linda - and a great write-up in Post 2!

I just remembered an awesome blog that people should be reading. It has great tips for scrapping - techniques and tutorials. It also has some great posts about CTing:

Applying: CT Application Tips

Once you are on a team: Being a Better CT Member

I took that post about being a better CT member to heart. I'm a permanent member on 3 individual designer CTs as well as 1 store CT. The store CT is a HUGE commitment because there's 18 designers that I CT for there. Not all the same week, but I have to choose at least 1 designer per week to enable, plus I'm expected to host challenges on their forum and I'm supposed to leave comments in their gallery. In addition to that, as you know, I also host challenges here. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming because I can have 4 or 5 LOs due and be hosting 3 challenges some weeks. In order to keep everything straight, I have an online organizer (if you are looking for one, I use Cozi. It's free.). I program it with everything I need to do, from when blog posts need to be scheduled to when a LO is due to when a chat or SS is being held, and I schedule reminders before the event so I can double check that I am ready. I have organized my CT folder on my computer into sub folders so that each designer is separate and I move LOs from "New LOs" to "Enabled LOs" as I complete each one. My photobucket account is set up the same way - my CT album is subdivided into Designer sub-albums so that I don't get anything mixed up.

Something I'd like to add to Linda's great info about preparing before you apply to CT is to look for "open" galleries. What that means is a gallery that allows linking to any designer's store. MouseScrappers is an open gallery which is awesome , so is MeSoScrappy, but there are quite a few others out there. An example of a "closed" gallery would be ScrapMatters, Digi Scraps Drive In, Ginger Scraps (there's lots more). You can still post your LOs at most closed galleries but you cannot link to the kit unless the designer sells in that gallery's store. If you can post a link directly to your designer's store in your credits, rather than only being allowed to post the kit name and designer's name, chances are better that you will sell a kit for your designer. People will see your LO, think "hm, I really like that (element, paper, template, whatever) and click on the link. Sometimes it's hard to google a designer and a specific kit and people give up and move on. Obviously designers like it when you can link to their store. So if you find open galleries, start posting there. Get comfortable with the community. Some designers sell in multiple stores and will require you to post in the galleries at all those stores. But like Linda said, have a gallery that shows your best work so that you can showcase your best stuff in your application to the designer that you want to CT for.