Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey. Seeing your excitement and love for what we do just feeds our love and excitement for what we do. We learned so much and we're really excited about the things we have in store for the future.
Most of your read the blog and our newsletter!
A few of you didn't know about the newsletter. It comes out every 2 weeks to every week, with all the newest news from Squshies, free downloads and fun animal news. If you are interested you can sign up here.
One of the big things that we learned is that learning about animals is important to so many of you (yay!) We used to do weekly Wildlife Wednesday posts, but they were very time consuming and didn't seem to generate a ton of interest. Looks like there was more interest than we realized.
Going into the holiday season Wildlife Wednesday posts aren't really feasible. We're going to think on how and what to do with them for the future. For the time being we've added a new section to the newsletter for nature news, where we're going to share links to some of our favorite animal news and links to info about cool animals we think you should know about.
You also had great suggestions for the newsletter freebies, like more complex coloring pages and more fun activities. We'll be working on including them in future newsletters.
Cake Troll!
So many of you have referred to yourself as a cake troll! I'm glad so many other people have an inner cake troll. What are your cake troll's names?
For those of you not familiar with the cake troll, someone made a joke about me and how I have an inner cake troll. So I named him Otis and made him a into Squshie.
**Pssst!** Don't tell Beauregrad, but Otis also got written in as favorite Squshie the most times!
Year Round Squshies
We were super happy to see that so many of you use your Squshies to decorate year round! We originally were thinking of ornaments just for the holidays but we keep up ours year round and we're glad to hear so many of you to too!
From a Friend or Family
So many of you who took the survey found out about the Squshie from a friend or family member. That's awesome! Word of mouth is so important to a small business like ours. Thank you so much for helping us spread the word about what we do! Your enthusiasm for the Squshies means the world to us =)
Website and Shop
Most or you know about our website and shop which is awesome! We've had a blog for a while, but late last year we made the move to combine our blog and shop all on one connected website. Our Etsy shop still exists, but the shop on our own website is now our main shop and focus. It will always be the best source for finding Squshies and with the biggest selection. Almost always when we run sales or coupons they only apply to our main shop.
Animal You Wish We Had
We got a bunch of great suggestions! Chimera, dolphin, mermaid, cheetah, capybara, slow loris, squid, and unicorn. Cheetah, capybara and dolphin are critters we have rough designs for. We're working on updating the look of the Squshies, so it might be a while before new animals show up but we've definitely made note of these suggestions!
Unicorn is one we do have though! This is Charlemagne and he's a nacho archaeologist.
One other thing I wanted to talk about in regard to the survey was Facebook.
I was really surprised to see Facebook as the social media most people follow Squshies on and regularly check. Facebook is personally my least favorite social media. I honestly only use my personal account so I can access the Squshies page.
I was so surprised by this answer because so few people see our Facebook posts! You may have heard this before, but if not, in the last few years Facebook added a feature where artists and businesses can pay boost their post. Ever since they added this feature posts by pages get seen less and less.
As the manager of my page, I get to see at the bottom of each post the total number of people who see each post. That number is pretty disheartening. There are over 800 people who have liked the Squshies Facebook page. Our posts usually get seen by about 50-100 people because I don't pay to boost them.
If you don't engage with a Facebook page on a frequent basis, Facebook starts to show you less and less of that page's posts. One way to make sure you see our posts is to comment, like or share them! That interaction tells FB you are interested in what we're posting and they'll keep showing them to you. It also really helps us out! The more a post gets interaction, the more FB let's it be seen.
Sharing, commenting and liking our posts on any social media platform is a great way to show your support so if we post something you like we really appreciate it when you let us know!
There are other options available in the Facebook setting to see our posts more easily. You can turn on notifications, so you get a notification when we post. You can also set our posts to see first so they'll appear at the top of your news feed.
If you've been having trouble seeing our updates on Facebook we hope this info helps!
There was so much wonderful stuff in the survey I hope I covered a lot of it in this post. We've got one more post coming that covers all the potential ideas we mentioned. If you have any questions though please let us know! In this blog post I answered all your questions for us from the survey.