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The Sharing Economy – How To Find Colleagues Online
By DBL | April 8, 2013
Welcome to the eBayAnorak’s first guest poster Camilla Gilbro. Camilla is the community manager at iwoca. Since graduating from Copenhagen Business School, with a degree in business communication, Camilla has been working to make life easier for small and medium enterprise businesses by offering advice and sharing experiences via entrepreneur magazines and websites. She loves a good chat about anything, from business plans to social media. Today she talks about the more solitary side of online selling …
There are many advantages of being an online retailer. You build your own job, you can watch your business grow and well, you’re an entrepreneur. Which is pretty cool. The only downside there can be is that most online sellers are one their own. And sometimes that can get a bit lonely.
Luckily, there are plenty of places to look to for company, especially online. Here you can find lots of advice, share concerns (and sometimes anger), success stories and just be friendly. There are specific groups and forums for eBay sellers and broader forums for the wider e-commerce community. For that reason it’s a good idea to look around and maybe be a member of more than one forum.
LinkedIn has several groups. I am personally a member of eBay Sellers and eBay Sellers UK. I do enjoy the UK site more, because there are many country specific rules and you therefore feel more ‘at home’ in the UK group. While there aren’t a lot of posts in there all the time, LinkedIn has this great function where they send you an e-mail once in a while and inform you of what has been going on. You can also receive an e-mail whenever someone comments on a post you’re active in.
The Wholesale Forums
An obvious one is The Wholesale Forums. Here you have more than 100,000 retailers or wholesalers sharing information and questions. Lace, who works for TWF, is always very helpful and will do her best to make sure you get the right answers. And then of course there are all the very active members who are very helpful. The members discuss everything from design to finance and social media. Are you a member?
We recently started a Facebook group for Online Sellers in the UK. The group is only a few weeks old, but already has 150 members. The activity is mind-blowing, and this type of group works well if you need quick replies. There are a lot of experienced sellers and they tone is very informal and it’s an easy way to take part in a community without too much effort (since most people are on Facebook anyway).
Meetup
If you’re sick of being online, and simply just want to get out of the house, the UK online seller meetups have been happening since May 2012. At every meetup more people are showing up and enjoying a few talks from industry experts and some free drinks. It’s a great excuse to get out of the office and meet some fellow online sellers.
These are only a few of the groups and forums you can join and there is no longer any excuse not to interact a bit. Well, if you want to.
Topics: general eCommerce, Social Media | No Comments »