4 Things Etsy Can Teach You About Content Marketing

I have an unhealthy obsession with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. He just strikes me as the kind of person I want to be: cool, smart and can rock a pair of black frames like there’s no tomorrow.

So when I was Googling Adam to trawl through any interviews he had done, as I am wont to do when I develop a liking for a particular public figure, I came across a blog post on Etsy’s US site about Adam’s love for the brand. I noticed that not only was this an interview, but it was also a community discussion opening up Etsy fans to ask Savage questions. Even more interestingly, it doesn’t seem that the author of the post, Karen Brown, actually works for Etsy - rather she’s the creative director for the Centre of Ecoliteracy.

This, I thought, was pretty savvy marketing. On the one hand you’ve snagged an interview with a celebrity to essentially gush about your brand, and on the other you’ve got incredibly interesting people writing for your blog. That’s pretty impressive.

Get guest curators

I decided to dig a little deeper to see what Etsy was doing with its content. As a brand that caters to and celebrates individuality, Etsy reflects this really well with their guest curators - something that seemed to be a frequent occurrence in 2013 but has sadly fallen off the radar. Despite this, these posts often attracted over 100 comments each, so I can imagine the traffic was pretty high. Guests were a mix of bloggers, journalists, designers and artists - all people who fit in directly with the Etsy brand. Guest curation is such a simple idea, but if you get the right people then it can be totally effective. Each guest offers up a hand-picked selection of products, some lovely imagery and, importantly, a story of their own. Just look at this one by designer Sarah Olding, who begins with a bit of family history and how she fell in love with sewing. Bringing the human aspect to a brand is exactly why Etsy has garnered such a high reputation in the relatively short time it’s been around.

Tell your users’ stories

Something else that really stood out at me about the blog was the ‘Featured Shop’ series. This is a really nice way of handing the mic over to the users and getting them to talk about themselves. Again, this series gets a tonne of engagement with little effort from the brand’s part. Simple and effective.

Help your users

But, in my mind, the real genius of Etsy’s content marketing efforts is in the Seller Handbook. Herein lies a plethora of information specifically for sellers including marketing advice, inspiring workspaces, creating product shots and much more. It’s pretty much everything you would need if you were an Etsy seller and it’s vital information. If you give your users the tools to be better at what they do, then they’re more likely to stay with you.

Localise your content

What’s more is that Etsy has a different blog for multiple countries, which is a hell of a lot of effort but will totally be worth it for them. People are going to relate to content if it’s of relevance to their locality. People in the UK want to know what sellers in the UK are up to, etc. This is a great move to aid with brand loyalty the world over. So if your brand has multiple domains in different countries, it’s a fine idea to create a different blog for each of these.

Now, I wonder if Adam Savage is a fan of content marketing? Back to Google, I guess.