Social Media – Finding the Right Networks
Not all social media sites and platforms are created equal, and each social channel won’t always work the same way in helping you reach your audience and sell your products.
For a product or service business, it’s fair to say that your potential customers will be on the following channels:
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Pinterest
However, using all the channels takes time and effort, sometimes for little reward, so it’s best to focus on the ones where you will see the most results.
Let’s take a look at each one:
Facebook is the leading social network, with 44.1 million active users in January 2018. Although there are a good number of users across all age ranges the main age group is between 25-34 year olds – 5.6 million women and 5.6 million men.
There are two sides to Facebook, a personal profile and a business profile:
• Personal profile
A personal profile is essentially a list of all friends and family, where photographs and personal updates are shared. But, it’s also a channel where people share things they have bought and a channel for you to promote your products to other personal profiles.
• Business profile
Your business page is a platform for you to promote and sell your products and services. Personal profiles (people/prospective customers) will ‘like’ your page. Your updates will go into the feed of these profiles. When someone takes-action on your business page it will appear in their personal feed, promoting you to their friends – so it extends the reach of your audience.
It’s important that you separate the two and keep them separate. You do not want to start bombarding your friends and family with your products and services, encouraging them to buy. If you do they could ‘unfollow’ you and your updates will not appear in their feed.
However, there are creative ways to get your friends and family to engage:
Sharing your business page posts to your personal page is good etiquette, if you position it correctly. Letting your friends and family know what you are doing, how successful you are, what products you have launched will not encourage ‘unfollows’, it will encourage ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ which organically spreads the word. Again, it goes back to building relationships, not selling – ultimately you will sell just by being you.
• Benefits of Facebook for business
A Facebook page has many potential benefits for your craft business. While some of these benefits are similar to having a website, it is a tool for you to reach your potential customers quickly and effectively for free.
• Share basic information about your business
Your Facebook page is a mini version of your website. Many home businesses start with a Facebook page before investing in a website as it serves the same purpose. It’s a place where you can show your business name, address and contact details, and briefly describe your products and services. You can also talk about your experience, or any other aspect of your business that is likely to attract other Facebook users and create interest in what you produce.
• Share pictures and videos from your business
As well as allowing you to post text, Facebook lets you upload pictures and videos. This can be a powerful way to communicate with customers and potential customers, allowing them to see your product or service without having to visit your premises or your home. Facebook Live is a relatively new feature where you can video yourself or something live from anywhere. Facebook loves video so the more of this content you can produce the better.
• Upload Photos
Create photo albums for different themes and upload as many photos of your products and services with as many details as you can:
• Talk to existing and potential customers
You can use Facebook to ‘talk’ to existing and potential customers by posting and receiving messages. Facebook should not be used aggressively to promote your products. You’ll have much greater success if you share information related to your business that is useful, helpful or interesting to others. This increases your credibility and promotes your business by building long-term relationships. You should also listen as much as you talk, engage in conversations. Keeping your name front of mind so when they are ready to buy they will buy from you.
• Provide customer support
Customers can post after-sales questions on your Facebook wall and messenger, and you can answer them. This is often more efficient than you answering phone calls, and, if posted on your wall, allows other customers to read common questions and answers without having to approach you individually. This normally takes place out of normal office hours though so strict opening hours and an automatic message reply on messenger is advisable.
• Raise brand awareness and promote positive word-of-mouth
You can increase your business’s profile on Facebook by encouraging existing and potential customers to click the ‘Like’ button on your Facebook page. Once they like your page, your customers will receive your updates on their wall, where their friends will also see them when they engage with you. This helps to build awareness of your business and to associate your friends with your brand. Customers can also post positive messages about your products or services, shared on their walls for all their friends to see.
• Facebook can steer traffic to your website
You can include a link to your website on your Facebook page. Many see this as one of the biggest benefits of Facebook – the extra traffic that it drives to their website. Visitors who come to the website from Facebook can be exposed to stronger marketing messages and, often, the option of buying products. If you do not have a website, you may have a selling page or an on-line shopping channel, where you can drive Facebook traffic to. Customers who come to your website from Facebook are more likely to buy from you, as they already know something about your business, and you, and were motivated to click the website link.
Targeted advertising
Facebook can analyse all the information that millions of users enter onto their profiles – their location, age, interests etc. As the owner of a business page, you can pay to use this information to deliver targeted advertising to the people that would buy your product.
You can boost a normal post, specifically to your potential customers that will appear in their feed. This post can encourage a ‘like’ for your business page or to encourage them to click through and take-action. You can decide the budget and length of the promotion. You can also stop and start the advertising.
• Reviews
Let your customers say how great you are. Encourage them to leave a review on your page to increase your rating: Again, when someone leaves a review, it tells their friends and spreads the word.
Twitter now has over 328 million active users and, due to its very public nature, Twitter’s most powerful use is connecting people from everywhere. The platform allows complete strangers to come together over common interests and ideas and to participate in conversations that range from the relatively mundane to the incredibly important.
Twitter is used for short regular updates – 280 characters. It has less of a community feel and the tone is very different. There is lots of ‘noise’ on Twitter, posts can be lost if not done correctly and need to be posted more frequently, and posted at the right time of the day when your followers are active. You can be more forward in your approach to selling, promoting new products and offers.
Depending on who your Twitter followers are and where they’re located, your best tweets may not even be seen if you’re tweeting them at a time when they’re not paying attention to their feeds. Experimenting with tweets at different times throughout the day and evening to see what results in the most interaction is key.
Hashtags
Twitter works by using hashtags, which help categorise tweets and make it easier for users to find and follow tweets according to a specific theme, marked by a hashtag – #. By using hashtags, you’re exposing yourself to a wider audience. Many people follow conversations using various hashtags, but may not be following you. So, it puts you in their sight. Hashtags are there to explain what your post is about so it’s easily searchable. One simple way to incorporate hashtags is by identifying popular events to which you can link your business in an authentic way. Remember, these can be every day, personal events like meals or commutes, as well as wider cultural events, like Valentine’s Day or Chinese New Year. Although you need to ensure that your post is relevant to the hashtag.
Retweets and replies
Retweeting relevant content and replying to Tweets are great ways to maintain a robust Twitter presence and to engage with others. Positive customer feedback, helpful articles, and messages that align with your business are all great to content to Retweet. When in doubt, remember this rule of thumb: your Retweets reflect on your business and should align with your purpose, values and product. People love to talk to businesses directly on Twitter. Be responsive to any questions, comments that come your way.
The length of a tweet
A concise Tweet makes an impact. Each Tweet should be focused on one specific message. You can include a link to your Facebook page, website or article if you have a longer message to convey.
Use visuals in your Tweets
Adding a bold image, video, or GIF to your Tweets adds a touch of personality and leads to higher Tweet engagement rates. In fact, people are three times more likely to engage with Tweets that contain videos and photos. You can even add up to four photos now on Twitter to convey a story.
Pinterest has over 70 million active users and is increasing. It has a visual approach to social media. Both individuals and businesses can use Pinterest for sharing images/photos known as ‘Pins.’ Pinterest is most suitable for businesses which rely heavily on visual media, such as those in the fashion, photography, design, craft and jewelry industries. It’s like a giant pin board! You create vision boards of your interests or the things that you like, make and sell. You can add photos and tutorials to each of the boards and keep adding as many ‘pins’ as you would like. Other users will then search for inspiration, find one of your pins and pin it to their board. They then begin to build many boards and lots of images of things that they like or would like to buy/make.
There are hundreds of thousands of different types of pins on Pinterest. These pins can be of the pinners own products that they are selling, or links off to different sites; website, an online shop or tutorials. In fact, tutorials, guides, and do-it-yourself pins have a 42% higher click rate compared with all other types of pins.
It is a very viral platform, 80% of all pins are re-pins as that is the aim – to get your pins re-pinned to another board. The search functionality on Pinterest is supported by category algorithms so it’s easy to find specific pins.
For example, imagine that you are a mum, who’s daughter will soon be celebrating her birthday. You have created a board to save your children’s party inspirations and are now searching for a cake design. You see one and re-pin it to your board. That pin has already been re-pinned 30 times. When someone else sees it on your board and like it, they re-pin it to their board too. This could go on and on across different users and different boards over the course of months, even years. So, the lifespan of a pin is huge. The lifespan of a tweet on Twitter and a post on Facebook is minutes.
Creating boards and pinning
Pinterest is used to plan. Boards are created by the users to be aspirational – weddings, do-it-yourself decorating, arts and crafts, and food recipes – all pins that can be re-pinned so many times over.
You can create as many boards as you would like. These could be by product or by theme but ensure the board names are based on your keywords, terms and phrases. Always think optimisation – the more you optimize the easier you will be found. Boards are searchable so don’t miss any opportunity to be found.
You then pin as many pins as you wish to each board. There is no time factor on Pinterest. You don’t have to worry who will see your pins and when they are online. Users will search for pins when they have an interest in something.
• Setting up your account
You set up your account like you would any other social media platform. Make sure that your biography tells users what you do and what you make – include keywords that are optimised for search. Give people the opportunity to see & understand your passions & interests — so it’s easy to follow & connect with you.
The great thing about Pinterest is that the pins are not treated as advertisements. The pins are treated as inspirational and hinged on the viral ability of photos. So, you can add as many of your new products as you wish and lead them off to your on-line shop, your Facebook page or your website – depending on where your potential customers can buy your products.
Did you know that 93% of active pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87% said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest?
Instagram is for creating and sharing photos and short videos. With more than 500 million people using Instagram every day and over 5 million businesses using Instagram to tell their stories visually, by using images to connect with their fans and build their brand. It’s a channel that cannot be ignored. It is the most popular channel for those selling products that can be showcased by using images.
It should be used to:
• Increase product sales
• Drive traffic to your website
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Identifying and establishing relationships with your audience.
Did you know that over 55 million images are posted each day!
• Create a profile
Your profile needs to describe who you are and what you do but in a creative way. Links to other sites can be included so the user can explore further.
Again, visually, this is so powerful as the user will click on the photo that interests them the most. Variation is key if you sell multiple products. Being visually orientated, Instagram is ideal for businesses in the fashion, food, travel, design, craft and technology industries. You can post creative snapshots and other illustrations showcasing your products, host photo contests, integrate promotional codes and run competition and polls. If you are new to Instagram it may be daunting to take photos every day. But once you get started with the basic principles you will see your success on this channel grow.
Unlike other networks, it must be used on a mobile device. You cannot upload photos from your desktop. But, as most people take photos with their mobile now, it makes it easier to have the app.
The process is very simple:
1. Upload the photo/image
2. Write a caption, including hashtags
3. Tag people/businesses
4. Add a location
5. Hit share
Your post will now appear in your follower’s feeds and anyone who is searching for your hashtags. Sporadically scrolling through Instagram, randomly liking a few photos, and posting family photos may work well for a personal account. But you need to have a more substantial plan for Instagram if you expect to see real results for your business.
• How often and when to post
It’s important to post regularly, but adding too many posts at one time will encourage followers to unfollow you. Testing posts at different times to see when your audience are online will tell you what time you should post each day.
• Content themes
Posting your products in themes is a good way to attract followers. Christmas, Valentines, Halloween – these are good themes as users will be looking for inspiration near to these dates.
Instagram is all about the visuals, so aim to build consistent images:
• Create visual consistency
They say that 60% of the top brands on Instagram use the same filter for every post. By using the same filters over and over, your style will become recognisable to your followers. Your goal is to get users to stop scrolling once they see your image and the ideal would be for them to engage with it by liking or commenting, the more instantly recognisable your photos are, the better.
• Create a branded hashtag
It’s popular to have a hashtag that is specific to you. This doesn’t mean simply using your company name as a hashtag, this is about creating a hashtag that showcases your brand and encourages followers to share photos when they click on that hashtag.
To summarise:
The right network will depend on your product and where your potential customers are. Where they are looking for information, where they are sharing information and where they are asking for advice. If you know your audience and your customer avatars, social media can be a very cost-effective way of reaching them.
