Work Bench Con Follow Up
About us
The Barefoot forge is a blacksmithing collective led by Craig Cowan.
Based out of Pittsburgh PA, we have grown to be pittsburgh’s premier blacksmithing experience- hosting over 1,000 students a year through our shop for beginner classes! We offer a unique “Make Your Own Ring” experience which primarily attracts out of town guests from all over the world- our shop gets ALOT of visitors.
Current Social Media Content
We have a significant and rapidly growing social media presence with a fantastically engaged tribe. Our most engaged platforms are Instagram and Facebook, with audiences around 10,000 on each.
We’ve been working on posting more regular content and growing our Youtube channel as video content is my strongest skill set. I’m personable, hilarious, and informative- we’re going to showcase that on more and more video content this year.
Follow us online at:
Instagram @Thebarefootforge
Facebook
Youtube
To view our full Media Kit:
Giveaway!!!!
Thanks for reading this far, so we’re going to put some skin in the game. We specialize in stainless damascus steel wedding rings, and we’re going to give one away! You found this page as a result of a direct interaction at work bench con, or a direct share of an associate. This page isn’t listed and isn’t live on the website- so you’re a very special person to us….. want to win a ring?
This will be our smallest giveaway ever, your odds are REALLY good!
Please share this with your associates, help us grow, and lets talk- we want to work with you!
Content Strategy
The goal of our instagram and Facebook content strategy is to evenly distribute:
Current Shop Projects- pics and videos of what we’re working on
Finished Shop Projects- showcasing our rings, bottle openers, and special projects
Personable Content- insight into life such as VW Bus restorations, Travel, Bee Keeping, Farming, hiking, and camping. Showing more then just business is important and our Instagram stories in particular are a nicely curated balance of shop talk and Life. Everyone loves my 19 year old Cat Toby, bee keeping, and dedicated “Bus Night” restoring vintage VW’s every tuesday.
Classroom- we show off students in our weekly classes including forging bottle openers, introduction to welding, and making wedding rings. Examples of shop tips, organization and shop build out, and safety are paramount. We never post ANY content without proper PPOE, and take great pride in the safety protocols we’ve built into our shop.
Branded Content- We work hard to bring the best products to our tribe and love the companies we work with! Tool reviews and showcasing the products we actually use in our shop is one of our favorite ways to keep our audience engaged- and our affiliate marketing strategy has resulted in great and growing business for our sponsors.
What we’d like to do with our Partners:
Bringing branded content to our engaged audience both in person and online seems like the sector of our business with the most growth potential. With over 1,000 students a year appearing in person in our shop, we’ve pivoted our marketing strategy to include a “Follow Up” sheet for every class they take. This sheet contains pages of summaries of the information we mentioned in class, as well as affiliate marketing for the products we used in class. These links, as well as speciality blog posts such as “2019 Christmas gift guide for blacksmiths and makers” have resulted in direct sales conversions for our affiliates, as we have a very captive audience. In many instances, product placement in classes has proven to be a success- such as teaching every class with Isotunes headphones on and mentioning that they’ll receive a discount code and affiliate link in the follow up email, or welding classes taught on weld-tables.com tables with Lincoln Electric welders. We’d like to expand our tool reviews to tools not as commonly used exclusively by blacksmiths and add a creative twist- like using a leaf blower to remove bees from the hive for honey harvest, using our Milwaukee m12 stapler to screen in swarms of bees for safe relocation, showcasing hand tools and shop staples such as abrasives used in projects, and using epoxy to build a functional bottle opener. Maybe a Pocket hole project making a box that will soon be full of bees, maybe out of wood WAY nicer then the average pine box would be made- ya, that sounds great! CNC carving a set of knife scales and blade- making a wooden knife with a set of metal or epoxy scales- that sounds like tons of fun! How about a coffee table made of coffee, with hair pin legs made entirely out of TIG welded bundles of actual hair pins?
We have countless fun projects in mind, and we’d love to work with new brands and creatively incorporate new tools and products into our shop and our content.
One of the ways we’d like to grow is to include more affiliate marketing, giveaways to our tribe, and advertising within our shop space. Our students are looking to purchase tools and grow in their hobby- lets make sure the tools we suggest and the advertising they see in the shop are the tools we regularly use in the shop and tools that our partners want to sell.
Forging a Hammer Head Shark out of Hammer Heads- Video Here
Help Us Grow!
If you work with a brand that you think would be a good fit for us, please share this page with them! If you work for a brand that you think would be a good fit for us- reach out, let’s grow together!
If you’re a friend of ours, just keeping being a friend- friendship is more important than growth and we thank you for your support!