The Hidden Costs of a Blog/IG Hop

A look under the hood of an accepted model of promotion in the craft biz

The blog or Instagram hop is a common vehicle for advertising a new fabric line or product in the quilting industry. The idea is that you get a dozen fellow industry professionals to make something and write about it on their blogs/IG feeds and set up a schedule (the “hop”) for potential customers to follow.

Let’s talk about the different roles and responsibilities in a hop, and for the sake of simplicity in this example, let’s agree that Instagram hop or loop can be substituted for blog hop (though they usually happen in a faster sequence) and that we’re illustrating our point with a fabric launch.

The actors in this play are the Designer, the Manufacturer, the Industry Colleague/Helper, and the Reader/Hop Follower.

The Designer

The Designer has a shiny new fabric line and needs to help the manufacturer sell it. They are responsible for generating some buzz, and they do that with the help of friends and colleagues in the industry. If they choose their dozen Influencers wisely, the product is shown to a dozen different audiences (that don’t overlap much with theirs) thereby getting a greater reach of eyeballs on the new fabric line. This is all about casting a wide enough net to capture new people, while creating a repetition that entices you to buy (common marketing theory says you need to see something at least a half-dozen times before you’re likely to buy it). It’s important to note here that the Designer is usually contractually obligated to do this type of marketing.*

The Manufacturer

These are the people who produce the product. Their major sales reach is through their sales reps to stores, and through supporting the Designer’s marketing effort by suppling fabric to the Influencers, and often to a lucky Follower or two in the hop. In this scenario, the Manufacturer makes the lion’s share of the profit on the fabric line (shop owners make more, presuming they don't have to discount the fabric - but they are not in play in this example).

The Industry Influencer - a fellow Professional/Blogger/Helper

The Influencer make things out of the fabric to show different ways it can be used. They usually use their own patterns to showcase the fabric in the hopes of sales, and hope that they will capture some new Followers as they “hop” through the blogs/IG feeds. Another Influencer goal is to increase their own website traffic as this pleases the internet bots, who may bestow better search rankings. A Influencer’s participation in a hop is often a significant time investment, which I will illustrate further below.

The Reader/Hop Follower

The Follower of a hop gets to see a lot of different ways the fabric can be used. They also get to see the patterns of a dozen different designers, and might find some new ones to follow. The Follower gets a chance to win some fabric during the hop, or for completing the steps of an Instagram loop - this is the MAJOR factor for a Follower’s participation… chasing the freebie. Everyone else in the game knows this carrot must be dangled to get the engagement. And the Designer, Manufacturer, and fellow Industry Professional/Influencer all hope the Follower gets excited enough about the fabric to ask their local shop or favorite online retailer to order it, not to mention buy a pattern or two from us.

An Example

A couple years ago, I was asked to help in the hop for Sew Good, the first fabric line by Deborah Fisher of Fish Museum + Circus. Deborah is a ceramicist who makes the highly coveted Thingimals, whimsical ceramic pincushions and other sewing notions. I would say she was known primarily for the ceramics before this fabric line came out (she just released her fifth line at time of writing). Our job as Influencers was to get her more visible to fabric-oriented people.

I also want to note that Deborah is a cherished colleague in this industry, and she knows I’m writing about this :-)

Each Influencer was given fabric, a date to post, and some instructions for several Instagram posts and a loop. We had about six months to work on our projects.

Deborah’s followers (at the time) were there for the ceramics, so her hop needed to reach more people who show up for fabric. I need to point out here that Deborah not only designed the fabrics for Sew Good, but she designed a lot of lovely patterns to go with it too. These tie-ins are also often contractually obliged.*

Exposure!

Like a lot of things in the quilting industry, this is a gig that gambles on the right kind of exposure as payment. And as I hope you all know by now from following me, my opinion of exposure as a form of payment is pretty low. I subscribe to the idea that people should get paid in a currency that they can use at the grocery store.

That said, my choice to participate was based on these factors:

• Deborah is a friend and I like showing up for my friends and promoting their work (happy heart, nurtured friendship, potential return of similar favor at some point)

• I get to showcase one of my own patterns (potential sales)

• The IG hop puts me in front of people who might not yet know me (potential new followers, which might turn into potential long-term customers).

• Time available to make a project (if I do this, what am not getting to - and is that worth more in potential earnings?)

• Size of project based on time available (bigger projects need more time and more $$ investment as I pay long-arm artists to quilt my quilts)

Time is always the most precious and limited resource a biz owner has, so I chose a pillow as a project (I made two) . But the most heavily weighted factor, for me, is that I wanted to support Deborah.

My Experience

I had about 20 hours total in the project, including (indoor) photography, social media (extra posts pre-hop to whip up interest, including videos, which I pay to have edited), coordination, etc. Had this been a quilt, it would have been closer to 30 hours, and would have involved getting friends to help with outdoor “lifestyle” photography. Note that outdoor photos require my availability, that of at least one pal, and a sunny afternoon in Portland, OR - an often rare trifecta of organizational synchronicity.

So, the IG hop went off - a feat of coordination of a dozen Influencers in different time zones - whew.

The business analytics tell the story that I grabbed a handful of new IG followers, less than a dozen pattern sales, and no noticeable bump in distributor or wholesale orders for the pattern. The cost of acquiring those few followers was 20 hours of my time, and the sales came nowhere close to offsetting the price I put on my time.

The engagement with my IG posts wasn’t out of the ordinary… the posts got hopped and commented per the rules for winning the fabric bundle prize but I didn’t gain significant followers from the exercise.

I might also add that I have a mostly rebellious and haphazard relationship with IG, choosing to post what I feel like when ever I feel like it, so my all important 9-Grid (the view of your profile + the first 9 images on a phone) has little curation or coherent visual harmony. Perhaps that's a factor, but not one I'm prepared to slave over my phone to change.

TBH, this is pretty much the result I expected, and let me also note that this was a couple years ago, before IG distorted the algorithm to the point of futility for anyone not following the TikTok model.

Today, I would expect even less.

Going Forward

These days, if asked, I would turn down a hop, and offer instead to feature the designer and their product in my newsletter. I might spend an hour mocking up a couple of my patterns digitally to show some potential uses (and maybe grab some pattern sales there), but I wouldn't burn my time sewing anything because the cost to me is too high. I also know that my subscribers read and interact with the content of my newsletters, so I would get more eyeballs on the product (like 100x more) than any other platform's algorithm currently allows - a huge win for the person I'm trying to help.

Using my newsletter also allows me to avoid the freebie culture that is deeply embedded in the craft industries (and yes, I have way more to say about said culture, but not today). Suffice to say I can't pay my bills with the fleeting attention of someone looking for a freebie, so I choose to use my time differently.

How Can We Change This?

I will admit to wanting different solutions for this problem, but not knowing the best way to get it. I hope you'll chime in with thoughts in the comments.

Mine, thus far are:

• Fabric companies paying advertising fees to advertise the fabric. This transfers the cost of advertising from bloggers to fabric company - in other industries Influencers get paid

• Fabric companies paying designers to make things from the fabric. This compensates for time spent making the samples - again, in other industries Influencers get paid

• Taking free patterns and free fabrics out of all promotional equations. This reduces "freebie hopping" and re-educates buyers to reduce expectation of free, hopefully increasing sales

* Something to consider if you are negotiating a fabric design contract