The 1^st Annual Conference for Creative Entrepreneurs is being held in Seattle from August 13-15, 2010.  This event is organized by several community leaders from the creative world!

The Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs (CCE) is three days of seminars, interactive discussions and hands-on workshops. More importantly, the CCE is a special community event that will allow you to…

• Learn It
• Make It
• Live It

Additional information is available at the CCE website.  The organizers have gathered the industry’s leading authorities to share their experience and understanding on the various aspects of creative businesses offline and online.  This conference will help you get you armed with great information so you can build your business for long term success.

This event is the brainchild of the organizers of Urban Craft Uprising and Bazaar Bizarre craft fairs.  They have hosted great events in the past that showcase a variety of artists who make wonderful work in jewelry, art, craft, soaps, printing, paper products and many more.

In this conference some of the speakers include Danielle Maveal of Etsy, Garth Johnson of Extreme Craft, Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood of Craft Sanity, Cathie Filian TV host, Becky Stern of Craftzine, Marci Rae McDade of Fiberarts and many many more.  This event will be a wonderful event to learn, network and build a great community.

And...Meylah will be participating as one of the sponsors of the event.  We will have a booth set up to demo our platform, answer your questions and share with you how Meylah’s solution can help you build your business for long term success.

So, come join us...we'll see ya there!

With so many artists and creative businesses online, it can seem impossible to stand out from the crowd – especially if you are just getting started.

Before you spend thousands of dollars on advertising or try to cold call people in the hope of generating interest, take a moment to understand how the influencers in your field are using technology now.

Analytics, brand monitoring tools, and news feeds give business owners the power to filter the information they regularly see including blog posts and other mentions of their companies.

These tools are time savers for businesses and are free and widely available, which means most smart businesses are using them to monitor their online reputations. What does this mean to you? It means you can take advantage of technology to get your brand in front of the most influential people in your area of interest.

Here are 3 highly effective (and free) ways to use technology to get noticed:

1. Brand Monitoring: A Two Way Street

An article, interview, review, or mention of an important contact on your blog is not just a gesture of good will, it will also help you appear in their brand monitoring alerts. Most established companies use press clipping services and Google Alerts to monitor their brands online. These services look for mentions of a person or company's name. Guess what? If you mention them and link back you will show up on their alert and even in their site analytics tools as a referring site.

2. Become A News Maker

Content is a hot topic in marketing right now. Even as technology platforms evolve, one thing is clear: quality, valuable content will always draw a crowd. Regularly write press releases about what's happening in your business. Instead of just asking other sites to link to you, try offering to write articles for industry specific news/content sites and industry publications (yes, that's right – it's not all about content on your site anymore. Expand your reach by writing for other sites). Become a subject matter expert on sites like suite101.com, DivineCaroline, examiner.com, About.com. Participate in any interview that is requested of you and make sure be active in media outlets like HARO to be available to any journalist seeking information about your area of interest. The more you do this, the more you will find people seeking YOU out.

3. Get Active in Industry Groups and Blogs

Making a point to give rich, authentic, and thoughtful feedback on well-read blogs and forums in your industry is not only good for your brand reputation, it can also boost traffic and help your reputation with search engines. If you are a blogger, you know most comments that come through are spam. Insightful comments will get noticed and can help develop relationships that lead to business growth. This is also true when interacting in business groups on LinkedIn.

Bonus Tip: Be Consistent

As tempting as it is to treat everything like a project and be done with it when you are busy running your business, these strategies are intended to help you build a brand awareness over time. Consistent effort here is key - taking even 15 minutes a day to focus on these simple online brand building strategies will have a positive impact and grow over time.

Molly Fisher has more than 10 years experience building brands and social networks for leading companies such as Schooldude.com and Burt's Bees as well as several other clients. She currently runs Craft Ideas Weekly Facebook Community, the Craft Ideas Weekly Blog, and works as an eCommerce and Social Marketing Consultant in Chapel Hill, NC.

Main photo courtesy of Maschinenraum.