Blue Eyed Sun

Blue Eyed Sun - gorgeous greetings cards

The Greeting Card Project - February Review

TGCP - February Review

The Greeting Card Project has been a challenge to fit in this last month, with all of the trade shows I've been at and it being the busiest time of year at Blue Eyed Sun. Here's a quick update on what I've been up to on YouTube this February. Please click on the images to watch the videos.

I loved visiting Arrowsmiths in Broadstairs, Kent. It is an amazing shop which was a Chemist for the first sixty years of it's life after it opened 1911. It's been a gift shop ever since and the owner cleverly kept all the original fixtures. They make beautiful display cases for the goods on sale. They also have a wonderful selection of unusual cards. I learnt that the experience of shopping for cards is an important part of feeling connected with those that I'm buying them for.

Good cards for men are notoriously hard to find. I found myself going for humour cards in the end. I also got some lovely reactions from my recipients, which I was able to share in this video filmed at The Card Collection in Bath. I'm a little disappointed that this video hasn't had more views. The responses from my friends were really lovely.

This week I roped a load of card publishers at Spring Fair into sharing what they like to write in their Valentines cards as well as what messages they like to read in them. It's a fun episode and features a lovely independent gift shop in Birmingham called Smithsonia near the newly revamped New Street Station. Thanks to feedback from viewers I also start using a better pen.

We recently visited our Italian distributor at a Fiera Milano to support his official launch of Blue Eyed Sun cards in Italy. He has been having great success with a soft launch of our products there over the past few months. I picked up some useful marketing tips from him and hunt down three birthday cards for friends in Milan.

I've been soliciting a lot of brutally honest feedback from my different groups on social media. It's so useful to hear all of the ideas for improvements as well as the things people don't like. For example, one or two didn't like seeing me lick the envelopes of the cards, so I was able to drop these shots after week three. I'm also using better pens and am working on improving sound quality and overall presentation. All useful stuff and small things I could easily change.

Other suggestions included a short title sequence that explains what The Greeting Card Project is at the front of each video. I'm working on this and thinking about a logo which was also suggested. One of the most important things about this project is to try and get clear on what I am doing with it and why people should watch it. That is still evolving. I started it because I wanted to explore what cards really mean to us and how simply sending cards can affect our relationships and how we feel.

The second month of the channel had 1,127 views with viewers watching over 48 hours of The Greeting Card Project for an average of 2:32 per video. The channel gained 25 more subscribers,  31 shares and accumulated 47 likes. I also got my first dislike (thumb down), which is exciting because it means that it's not just friends and family watching now.

If you do watch and enjoy the videos please pop over to YouTube and subscribe as I need to get to 100 subscribers in order to get the specific URL for the project (at the moment it's just a random string of numbers). I'd also love it if you followed the project on my personal Twitter account @JeremyCorner

Read my January review of The Greeting Card Project

Why I started The Greeting Card Project

My first ever video for The Greeting Card Project