Searching for the best recipe for ecommerce social media success? Watch experts from Volusion and Simply measured as they share a how-to guide for creating a comprehensive social media strategy to increase sales conversions for your online business. You'll learn about utilizing unique channels and campaigns, tracking your store's progress, blending social media into your marketing mix and much more!
How to Create a Custom Social Media Plan That Converts - [Mikkayla Casey] Welcome to "Creating an Ecommerce Social Media Strategy that Converts." Today's agenda is you'll meet your hosts, we'll go over why social media works so well for ecommerce, how to conduct your own social media audit, how to execute your social strategy effectively, what to look for when measuring success, and then we'll close with an open Q&A with our panel. - [Alison Garrison] We'll also tell you how to qualify to win a free social media audit from our team. So we hope you'll stay with us to the very end. - [Mikkayla Casey] Throughout the webinar, you can tweet us comments and questions at #SellMoreOnline, or simply submit your questions through the webinar software. - [Alison Garrison] We plan to answer as many questions as we can today, but if we don't get to your questions, we will be posting all of our answers in a follow-up blog in about a week's time. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. Okay. So let's get started. Hi, my name is Mikkayla Casey. I'm a proud supporter of small, medium, and local businesses. I've been managing social media and SEO campaigns at Volusion for close to a year. One of my favorite pieces of social media marketing is the ability to have real-time engagement with your audience, especially via Twitter, my favorite social network. If you like Twitter as much as I do, be sure to follow me. Any of these blue links you see in this webinar won't be clickable during the webinar. We will send all attendees these slides and all the resources we reference throughout the presentation. - [Alison Garrison] Hello, everybody. My name is Alison Garrison, and I lead the SEO, Social Media and Marketing Consulting teams here at Volusion. My core background is in SEO and branding, but I've really enjoyed exploring the social media landscape in the last few years. I particularly love it because it pairs so well with SEO and it allows for intense target marketing, which really makes it cost effective. I personally am most active on Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, and if you're active on LinkedIn, I would love to connect. I'm also very excited to introduce our social guest, Ron Schott from Simply Measured. Ron is a well-known expert in the social media realm, and we're so grateful he was available to carve out some time for today's webinar. Welcome, Ron. - [Ron Schott] Thanks, Alison. Hi, everybody. I'm Ron Schott. I'm the Director of Professional Services at Simply Measured. Simply Measured is the leading social analytics tool for marketers, which is really cool for me because I've actually spent most of my time before I came into the SaaS world as a digital marketer, working with brands like Microsoft, Adidas and Kia. Most of my time in that space has been spent on helping them perfect their social marketing strategy and analytics. I'm active everywhere. But if you want to interact, go ahead and hit me up on @RonSchott on Twitter. - [Alison Garrison] And while the likes of Adidas might be a bit aspirational for us, there is a lot we can learn from how they strategically engage their market. All right. Let's start off by identifying why social media is so great for ecommerce. Dan Levy puts this perfectly. "This isn't social marketing or digital marketing. This is marketing. This is where many of your current and potential customers come every day." It's important to recognize that social media is in fact marketing, and done correctly it leads to sales. Maybe three or four years ago, I had a real hard time convincing merchants that social media was worth their time and effort, but today we have very clear data showing that it absolutely is. - [Mikkayla Casey] Right. And with the average user spending nearly two hours every day on various social platforms, it's a space you need to occupy. But there are other reasons it pairs so well with ecommerce. - [Alison Garrison] First and foremost, it just makes financial sense. Social media is very cost-effective. It may be the most cost-effective marketing channel out there at present. It has lower click costs, and we're talking pennies per click, and very large reach. Along with cost benefit, social media has superior targeting. People provide a lot of personal data to their social channels without blinking an eye, which means you can specifically identify who you want to message and who it's displayed to. This includes not only demographics, but their personal interests, life events, job title, location. It's crazy how targeted you can become. If I wanted, I could target a 30-year old female insurance professional in the Seattle area who enjoys kickboxing. It's wild, particularly with Facebook. - [Mikkayla Casey] Once you've built a solid engaged audience, you can leverage it. After all, birds of a feather flock together. People happily share with each other in social media environments. What's also key is that you can use tools like Simply Measured to better understand your audience and target similar people. This can help you increase the size of your audience across networks. - [Ron Schott] Yeah. That's actually an area we spend a lot of time working on with our clients. As you mentioned, targeting in the social space is incredibly granular. You think of all the data you get through Facebook and Twitter and places like that. And it's not just helpful for advertising and delivery of ads, but it actually helps you understand your audiences a lot better. So if you really think about it, if you know what your audiences are talking about, you know who they are, you know what they're doing in the space, you can actually craft better content, whether that's organic or paid and create better experiences with them. That means they're going to be more likely to convert, more likely to do the things you want them to do in the social space. - [Alison Garrison] Social media really facilitates that personal connection, and Ron makes a critical point here. Content that connects with your audience is more likely to convert and be shared. That's because social media is, for the most part, fairly democratized, meaning your audience can share and grow your following for you, which levels the playing field a bit. Even small and medium businesses can compete with very large, entrenched brands here. True, you'll need to invest a bit in Facebook ads, that's a given. But really, the greatest costs are going to be your time and creative energy. - [Mikkayla Casey] We've seen original content from small businesses go viral with very little investment. But even if you don't have that viral piece, you can build a large, engaged following surprisingly fast. - [Alison Garrison] And your audience will grow exponentially. The growth feeds itself over time. Effective social media will create brand ambassadors, and these folks will actually be part of your marketing team. When your audience begins to grow itself organically, that's a very powerful thing. Last but not least, we encourage all of our merchants to think of social media as a business tool. Social media allows you to monitor and research your audience, which helps you frame your branding and messaging. It allows you to respond to customers in near real time, which resolves problems quickly and turns detractors into brand enthusiasts. And as you begin to build your community on social networks, you can amplify your messaging and even position your brand as a thought leader in the industry. - [Mikkayla Casey] Social media also enhances your brand strategy. It can give your brand life and personality, which creates affinity with your audience and leads to brand loyalty. - [Ron Schott] Yeah. That's definitely true. If you look at these companies that actually let their brand personality really shine through, whether that's in the B2C or B2B space, you'll actually see brands that are driving incremental increases in that brand awareness and that brand affinity. My favorite brand to talk about here is actually GE, a brand that you're not going to see a lot of stuff from that you would ever buy as a consumer. But they do a great job of kind of living what they are as a brand and using that on networks like Instagram and Pinterest, places where you wouldn't necessarily think you'd see it. - [Alison Garrison] Along with increasing your brand power, social media can also boost SEO, something that's really near and dear to my heart, by impacting what I like to call the SEO trinity -- authority, trust and relevance. A strong, active audience will signal authority and trust to the search engines while your shared content can boost your relevancy and result in natural backlinks to the website, all SEO goals. - [Mikkayla Casey] In fact, social media is the number one way people discover your content, making it an essential part of your SEO strategy. - [Alison Garrison] And while all these benefits are very compelling, we are in the business of making money here. So it would be remiss not to highlight that social media can drive sales, lots of sales, up 26% year over year and still growing, with ecommerce orders from social growing more than 200% year over year, and 74% of consumers report that social media influences their day-to-day purchasing habits. - [Mikkayla Casey] This can be from a variety of things. It could be from an ad that they saw, a review from their friend or favorite blogger, or from a well-designed pin on Pinterest. - [Alison Garrison] And if you're not sure where to start, Facebook is almost always a given for ecommerce. It's still one of the largest and easiest platforms to get your product in front of your audience. 38% of Facebook users purchase a product after liking or sharing it, and 47% of Americans say that Facebook influences their purchasing decisions. - [Mikkayla Casey] And Facebook's retargeting efforts can also help increase conversions for your store. - [Alison Garrison] That's something that I've been very impressed with. Facebook ads have really great results. After Facebook, I almost always recommend Pinterest. Since it's visually-driven, it's just a great platform for products. People literally use this platform as a shopping channel. I know I do. It's one of my favorites. Here's a quick screenshot of my feed. As you can see, I use it for recipes, home décor, style, clothing, travel, you name it. I actually get frustrated when I find something on Pinterest and I'm not able to buy it. Currently, Pinterest users skew female heavily, but male usage is on the rise. We're seeing more of this represented in like men's fashion pins, fitness pins, and automotive pins. - [Mikkayla Casey] Pinterest also offers Rich Pins, which allow you to include important information directly on the pin. Though they can be a bit more time consuming, any of the six types of Rich Pins can help increase engagement with your pins. - [Ron Schott] Especially since Pinterest just launched a new Buy It button actually. So that just happened, Mikkayla, which is really great, talking about rich pins. But that Buy It button actually gives you the chance to buy stuff right inside the Pinterest application. Whether that's on your phone or whether it's in the browser, users are in that experience, deep inside looking through all that stuff that they love, and they can actually buy things right there with one click. So that's going to be pretty big to see how that really affects sales. - [Alison Garrison] And I have yet to personally use the Buy It button because literally it launched last week, I think, but considering how much time I spend on Pinterest -- this is Alison talking -- it's probably just a question of time. It can take some time for new features like this to really resonate and be adopted, but time will tell. So yes, social media makes business sense for ecommerce. We've established this. But you have to be smart about how you use it. That's why you need to start with a social media audit. - [Mikkayla Casey] Before you go embarking on any social media efforts, we recommend getting the lay of the land so that you can measure your success correctly while also finding areas for where you can make your mark. Some social media audits are very thorough, but at the very least they should include defining your audience, understanding your competitive landscape and finding the right channels to focus your efforts on. So let's get started by asking, "Who is my audience?" Describe the person who would be purchasing your products. What do they look like? What motivates them? Is it a happily married mother of three who's concerned about the environment, or is it a millennial on the go looking for convenience? You'll want to cover both the demographics and psychographics of your audience. - [Alison Garrison] Demographics are essentially factual characteristics, like age, gender, marital status, whereas psychographics are their interests, opinions, and activities. You put these together and you'll get a better understanding of what makes your audience tick. - [Ron Schott] You know, one of the great things about social, and I kind of touched on it earlier, is that there's a ton of data at your fingertips when it comes to understanding your audience and how they behave. So not only can you gain information about the people who already follow your brands or follow competitors of your brands -- you can get that demo info, you can get info about where they are and things like that -- you can also dig deeper and get engagement data and start learning about what they like, what they talk about, what are they saying about things that are relevant to your brand. Those can really give you a great idea about who these people really are and what they're doing online. - [Alison Garrison] I agree with that. Bridging these kind of data sets can be super powerful when it comes to messaging and framing your brand. To help find out what your audience looks like, start with your intuition. Do a quick gut check. I think you know your current client base better than anyone else. Next, you can check something like Google Analytics, which is free and will provide you insights into the current visitors to your website, including things like age, gender, interests. In full disclosure, honestly, some of these interests are fairly generic, like "likes to watch TV," but some of the interests may surprise you and help influence your strategy. - [Mikkayla Casey] And then you can also look into Facebook Insights, which will provide similar demographic information, while Pinterest and Twitter also have analytics tools that can help and all these tools are free. - [Ron Schott] And if you ever want to go deeper, you can use different tools, some of which aren't free, but some of which are as well to really help you dig down into those engagement metrics I mentioned earlier, so seeing what type of content people like. Ultimately that makes your marketing more impactful and more efficient. If you can spend more time focusing on stuff that's going to drive impact and drive conversions rather than stuff that maybe won't, you're actually doing your work smarter, not just harder. - [Alison Garrison] Yeah. Mikkayla, Ron and I will talk a little bit more about these metrics in the last part of the webinar. We also recommend that you revisit this sort of information fairly regularly. This isn't a one-time spot check because new insights will come up over time. - [Mikkayla Casey] So after researching your audience, you can create a persona. You might have one very clear persona or multiple, maybe even five or six. This will be dependent on why people are purchasing your product, as different personas will have different motivations. Having a solid persona in place really helps you target your messaging and create a social media strategy that appeals to the right people. - [Alison Garrison] So, in this example, we have Leah and Sara. Leah is a 30-something mother looking for summer activities for her kids. Sara, on the other hand, is a young elementary school teacher. She's on a tight budget and she's looking for class project material. They're both interested in my art supplies, but they have very different motivations for buying these products, which means I need to target them with slightly different messaging in both my posts and my advertising. Sometimes there will be a little overlap, but often more personalized messaging will appeal more greatly. So a great thing about social media is that it's very easy to conduct A/B testing to measure your ad's performance and determine which messaging is working best with your audiences. - [Mikkayla Casey] And once you know who you are talking to, you'll better understand what makes them tick, and that really is the key to a successful social media strategy. You want to not only know what their motivation is to purchase, but also the thing that triggers an emotional response. - [Alison Garrison] So on this slide, we have a list of a few popular segments, sort of high-level segments. These are followed with things that are known to sort of appeal to that genre. These emotional triggers will lead to engagement, sharing, and ultimately it will create a connection with your brand. - [Ron Schott] I just want to tell a quick story here just about a client of mine. If you know me, you know that I love pancakes. So I'm going to talk about IHOP for a second. But they were a client of mine back in the day. They really defaulted to talking to people on social who they knew were already coming to IHOP, who they knew was their core audience, semi-older people, people in their 40s and 50s who would come in and have breakfast or come in and have dinner and things like that. But after digging into their audiences a little bit more, we actually started finding that they had this very, very vocal audience on social. We're talking college kids. So these are kids that were coming to IHOP late at night because IHOP was open 24 hours in some cases in some cities. The content that they were posting and the content that they liked in general is kind of more irreverent, fun, and timely. So that actually helped us really shift how we were talking as IHOP. During the day, IHOP eventually started moving to a Facebook-focused content strategy, where they were giving deal content and stuff to that older crowd, the older people who were using Facebook still. And then at night, they would shift over and start using Twitter and Instagram to post photos and more timely, fun content for those younger kids who were there at IHOP at night. It actually turned out really well for them. - [Alison Garrison] I know Mikkayla and I were inspecting their Instagram yesterday, and there were actually people proposing for prom on Instagram and whatnot. It was really, really fun and engaging. - [Mikkayla Casey] This goes to show how looking at your data may help better inform your strategy. When a post is very successful, you should reflect on what that emotional spark was and consider a way to replicate that emotional connection or positive acknowledgement. We'll show you how to identify successful posts in the last part of the webinar, Measuring Success. Okay. So next we need to decide where your audience is most active. For those who don't know which network they should be on, reflect on the client personas you've created. Where are your clients active? Chances are it includes Facebook, but Pinterest and Twitter are popular options too. Do not overlook industry-specific networks like Houzz or Dogster. At the end of the day, don't spread yourself out too thin. It's better to be very effective on one channel than ineffective on five. - [Ron Schott] I definitely agree there. I come from a data company. So I'm always pushing customers to look at their data to help them kind of really figure out what they should be doing here. I think it's really important to look, find your customers, figure out where they're at, look at competitors or companies with similar verticals and deep dive into those audiences. So before you really jump in there, you want to make sure you're taking some data into account. To go back to my IHOP example, IHOP knew that it would hit that older Facebook crowd, those people who are on Facebook who were their normal customers. But by digging into that younger crowd, they started to find those new channels where they should be focusing more time. They actually split their budgets and split their teams to make that happen. - [Mikkayla Casey] So after you figure out the channels that you want to occupy, we suggest researching who influences your audience. We find that influencers are an underutilized opportunity in ecommerce. - [Alison Garrison] Ask yourself: Who does your audience listen to? Look for folks who are talking about your industry or brand or competitor's brand and move on to following industry-relevant bloggers, journalists, anyone with a high-profile social media account in your realm. Next, make plans to engage and contact your influencers. Thanks to social media, striking up a conversation is so much easier than it was 10 years ago. - [Mikkayla Casey] You should be sure to follow your chosen influencers on any network that they're active on. You can try to contact them via several ways. You can reach out via tweet, send them a message on Facebook, or the old-fashioned way of email. So relationships shouldn't be one-sided. You need to offer value. This brings to mind a merchant I work with that sells Indian ghee butter, a popular item for those living a paleo lifestyle. They worked with paleo blogs to offer coupons to their readers. If you've chosen to reach out to a blogger with a large reader base, consider offering them products for use in a giveaway as an exchange for a product write-up, or choose to provide them with product for themselves. Including special coupon codes or offers for their readers can also be a great way to create buzz about your product. - [Alison Garrison] And if you're a little stumped about who to reach out to, you can always ask your audience. For Mikkayla's example with the ghee butter and the paleo crowd, you could post, "What are some paleo blogs that you're following right now?" - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. - [Alison Garrison] All right. And just to give you an idea of what constitutes an influencer, in the SEO world, this gentleman, Rand Fishkin, is a bit of a celebrity as far as SEO celebrities can go. As you can see, Rand is very active on Twitter. He has a quarter of a million Twitter followers, mostly SEO, so very targeted, probably some digital marketing folks in there too. So what a great place to get a shout-out if you want SEO folks to use your product or service, like BuzzSumo here, which I wasn't really familiar with BuzzSumo. I may have heard their name in passing. But now that I saw this tweet, I understand they are a content marketing tool, which is something I might want to explore in the future. - [Mikkayla Casey] So one of my personal favorite parts of an audit is checking in on your competitors. Begin on Facebook and while you're looking at how active they are on Facebook, add them to your pages to watch list to easily track their progress. Facebook will also allow you to keep an eye on up to five pages. Follow your competitors' pages and check back often. Check the other networks that you're wanting to be active on and see how often your competitors are tweeting, what they're pinning and their following to followers ratio. It doesn't hurt to see who exactly your competitors are following or who's following them. It's a quick and easy peek into their audience. You might find that some of your competitors are active throughout the day on several networks, while others post occasionally about a new product or a sale. - [Ron Schott] You can even go a little bit deeper here. You can start looking at those things I was talking about earlier, engagement metrics. So are people liking, commenting, sharing? Those can actually really help you get a good idea for what type of content is resonating with your audiences. You can use those performance benchmarks from your competitors as well as your past performance benchmarks to help create goals for yourself going forward so you know what growth and what success will really look like. - [Alison Garrison] When it comes to benchmarking, don't forget the more aspirational brands either. One of our colleagues recently took on a client who's selling what we would call geeky jewelry, jewelry that celebrates the nerd lifestyle and science and things like that, fun things. As part of our competitive research, we looked at a company called ThinkGeek, which is very well-known in the sector. It's not a direct competitor per se, but they are active, they talk to a similar audience, and they are totally getting social media right. So if you look here, they have about a million likes. They post regularly without being over the top or overkill. Their tone is funny, approachable, and smart, something that really appeals to their audience. We can certainly mimic some of these content types for our new client. I would probably even like this page and share some of their more successful posts with our audience. To give you some examples, here are some non-sales, non-promotional related posts that they have. These are purely brand-oriented and intended to engage and entertain their audience. These quirky, fun posts elicit tons of likes and shares, and they also allow the audience to step in and make a witty comment here or there or tag their friends, like Racquel does here. Again, on the right, we have the Baby Godzilla Lizard post, which I love. We've got tons of engagements, lots of likes and shares. The brand ambassadors are making comments here and sharing their funny take on the situation. Likewise, here are some product-related posts. These are trying to sell directly. Still their personality shines through. They engage their community, and the brand ambassadors are sending these products to their friends. - [Mikkayla Casey] It's true. Competitors can be a great source for social media strategy inspiration. - [Alison Garrison] And with Father's Day just around the corner, I guess it's the 21st, I'm going to need to get this Pacard tie for my dad because that would be an amazing Father's Day gift because he is a "Star Trek" fan. - [Mikkayla Casey] That's awesome. So once your audit is done, you're ready to move forward with your campaign. But where exactly do you begin? - [Alison Garrison] So we mentioned that social media is a powerful tool for branding, but before we delve into talking about brand voice, we wanted to share this insight with everybody. - [Mikkayla Casey] The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you're not a brand, you're a commodity. Then price is everything, and the low-cost producer is the only winner. - [Alison Garrison] It's sad but true. If you don't want to be treated like a commodity in the marketplace, you need to establish and build your brand. - [Mikkayla Casey] Your strategy starts with your brand voice, which will help set you apart from your competitors. Based on your research in client persona development, define who your brand is or should be. If your company was a person, describe that person. For example, if we were talking about Apple, Apple could be described as stylish, innovative, easy going, casual, and cool. He's the approachable, cool guy. - [Alison Garrison] Another example of a brand that sort of nails their brand voice is Weight Watchers. Their brand in empowering, empathetic and dependable, similar to something like your best friend, which totally resonates with their audience. You also want to find that voice that speaks to your community. - [Mikkayla Casey] Once you define your voice, be consistent with that voice across all your channels, but tailor your message to the channel's format. For instance, Sigma Beauty does a good job of this. Here we have a Facebook post, Instagram post and tweet from Sigma Beauty that are all pictures of their products. - [Alison Garrison] Their branding and voice are consistent, but the content is specific to the channel it appears on. Next up, profile optimization. Okay, I learned about this from you, Mikkayla. But now I know how important profile optimization is, which, as an SEO, totally makes sense to me. - [Mikkayla Casey] Yes. And just like with SEO, an optimized profile can make your profile more discoverable. And really, it's one of the easiest ways for a company to look unpolished and miss out on branding opportunities is when their profiles aren't optimized correctly. So you'll want to make sure that your bios or About Us sections are filled out thoroughly with a keyword-savvy description. Be sure to include your contact information too. - [Alison Garrison] Now, those keywords will make it so people can discover you through search, but don't go crazy. Don't go bananas. Keywords need to be present, but not oppressive. Too many keywords will read poorly and hurt your branding, and as with SEO, you should always incorporate keywords naturally. - [Mikkayla Casey] Correct. And if you're optimizing on Twitter or Instagram, you should consider adding your brand's hashtag to your bio. We've conducted audits for clients that weren't capitalizing on their brand hashtag, but their customers were using it anyway. So once we went in and re-optimized their profiles, we saw an increase in followers as well as happy customers using their hashtag. It's also important to make sure that your images are formatted correctly. Each network has different requirements for the image sizes. There are several helpful tools online that can easily resize your images for you quickly and easily. Our team likes to use PicMonkey. So next up, establishing a budget. To get your content and products in front of the right people, it's going to take some resources, mainly time, human capital, and ad spend. - [Alison Garrison] In my opinion, the real cost of social media is human capital, mainly time and creativity. Ad spend and reporting tools are fairly low in comparison. - [Mikkayla Casey] That's very true. So when establishing an ad budget, start by asking yourself, "What's the goal of this network's campaign?" Is it to increase the amount of fans you have so your messaging has greater reach and increasing your brand exposure? Or maybe you want to increase the clicks back to your website. Or maybe it's to entice someone to come back and purchase a product after they left your website without purchasing. The more ambitious our objectives, the more time it will take to achieve them. - [Ron Schott] You know, that's actually something we work with our customers on a ton is really helping them get an idea for what they need people-wise, technology-wise, things like that to actually get their program up and running. A really good way to do that is after you kind of plan out how much time you think you might need to do the outbound part of your marketing, you can also look at analytics and look at just numbers and volume to actually get an idea for how many opportunities are out there for you to engage with, whether that's questions coming in about your brand or whether that's situations or conversations that you may be able to artfully insert yourself into to talk about your brand a little more in the space. But once you add those numbers to that baseline, it gives you an idea about what the full marketing potential and program look like, and you can kind of backtrack from there and figure out how many people you need to do it. - [Alison Garrison] I totally agree. Simply put, you are going to need to take an honest assessment of what you can invest in this marketing channel as far as time goes. How much of your time are you realistically willing to commit? If you don't have time, can you make this a specific employee's responsibility? Would you consider hiring an employee, maybe a full-time person or part-time or even an intern? Does outsourcing to an agency make more financial sense? If you do decide to manage your own social media or you have a single person on your team doing it, you need to consider tools like Hootsuite and Simply Measured to help your efficiencies in data collection. - [Mikkayla Casey] And when it comes to your ad budget, Facebook will remain to be one of the easiest and most user-friendly networks to run ads on. Just about everybody is there, which is great. Unfortunately, in the past year, Facebook has made it harder for a business to get their content in front of their audience for free. - [Alison Garrison] Yeah. That means you're probably not going to show up naturally in your audience's feed unless you pay to boost your post up. - [Mikkayla Casey] Yep. And all the original content that you put blood, sweat and tears into creating may only be seen by a handful of people if you don't boost it. By boosting a post, you'll be able to get your content in front of more eyes, and you'll have the option to specify who should see your content. Is it your fans? Your fans and their friends? Or would you prefer to get it in front of the eyes that may not have heard about your brand, but fall into specific demographics? - [Ron Schott] So pay to play is definitely a part of the game now. I actually spent a lot of time working in the paid social space. But that doesn't mean you can skimp on content. Content still has to be great. In fact, I personally think content has to be better than it's ever been before. If you think about it this way, you're competing in this hyper-filtered feed where people are looking at things from their friends, they have personal connections to all of that stuff. You're actually trying to cut through that in this mass, great, great stream of content that they're seeing from all their friends. So if you think about it, you need great content to cut through. Bad content with a big ad spend is actually probably more detrimental when you're thinking about your brand than putting organic content out there and not even putting money behind it or, more likely and preferred, putting great content out there with ad spend behind it. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. Generally, Facebook ads are less expensive than advertising on Google or Bing. But if you're just starting out, consider starting with $300 a month. With $10 a day, you'll be able to run multiple campaigns. As your audience grows, you can increase your monthly budget. So if you're looking to spend your money on other networks, consider trying Pinterest or Twitter. Pinterest has a few options when it comes to advertising on their website. It can be more expensive than Facebook, but when done correctly it does work. Your options include promoted pins and, like Ron mentioned, the recently released Buy It button that came out last week. At this time, Pinterest's advertising options are only available to those in the U.S. and they do require getting on a waiting list. We've seen some of our clients get approved in as little as a couple of days and others in two weeks. - [Alison Garrison] Honestly, I love Pinterest because you don't have to pay to see results on it. Right now Pinterest advertising is a little on the pricy side. This could change in the future. You might have to pay to play here as well. But today, you shouldn't feel obligated to pay to advertise on Pinterest. I personally purchase off Pinterest all the time, and it's not because of promoted pins and I haven't even seen the Buy It button yet. It's not that that's driving it. It's just because I like what I see and it's a visually-driven network. And I'm not just buying clothes and shoes. I bought my backyard furniture on Pinterest, which was a very expensive day of pinning for me. - [Mikkayla Casey] That's because pins can drive more revenue. Also, consider using Twitter ads. They can be a great option if your audience is there, but they do have a higher cost-per-click than Facebook. But they can still be cheaper than traditional advertising costs, pay per click or shopping fees. If you find that your audience is active on the network or that your competitor is active and has a large audience, consider these Twitter ads. Again, you don't have to advertise on Twitter to be successful. It's just an extra option. You'll also be able to select who you want to see your content by associating your ads with certain keywords and basic demographic information. Options include tweet engagement, website clicks or conversions. Say you're an app developer. You could runs ads for getting your app installed, growing your community by increasing the amount of followers you have and finding leads on Twitter. - [Alison Garrison] I actually know that Mikkayla once ordered a pizza because of a Twitter ad. - [Mikkayla Casey] Yeah, guilty. And I'm not sorry about it. - [Alison Garrison] So we have our personas in place, our competitive research, our brand voice mapped out, and our budget squared away. Now we need a content calendar. - [Mikkayla Casey] If you want to have an active presence on social media without having to stay logged in or spend hours a day monitoring your networks, a content calendar will be your friend. I'm a huge fan of them, as they help you work smarter and not harder. You can set up your content calendar every week, or if you'd like to plan even further ahead, choose to set it up for the month. When it comes to the holidays, you might want to plan a little further out. - [Alison Garrison] And we're actually going to be doing another webinar on planning out your holiday social media strategy. That will be in early September So tune in for that. - [Mikkayla Casey] Start building your audience now. The holidays can and will creep up on you. So begin plugging in information on your calendar to highlight when you'll be posting original content, like blog posts, giveaways, product highlights, or any promotions that you may be running. For instance, you might have a flash sale on a specific product every Friday. If that's on your calendar, you'll be able to plan ahead, instead of scrambling Thursday afternoon or Friday morning to get a quality post created. - [Alison Garrison] Like we've previously mentioned, we're fans of working smarter, not harder. So once you have a calendar mapped out, you might consider using an automated posting tool to keep you organized and, let's face it, sane. It will prevent you from spending all day on your social media so you can also focus on running your business. Facebook does allow you to schedule posts directly on the platform, but if you prefer a more integrated system, you can keep everything in one spot and schedule on an all-inclusive platform, like Hootsuite or Buffer. TweetDeck is specific to Twitter and will let you schedule tweets in advance. So if Twitter is critical to your strategy, that might be worth looking at too. Other helpful tools include Google Analytics. But keep in mind, Google Analytics info, their data is specific to your website. So to understand what's happening on the social media channels, you'll need to check the analytics provided by each channel, which honestly, can be a huge time suck, rather cumbersome. Remember, that intern I mentioned earlier, you might just outsource it to them and make them do this part for you. Or you can invest in a more robust tool that aggregates everything like Simply Measured. This aggregated data will make your life much easier. I really do think Simply Measured allows you to delve into performance much more deeply. - [Ron Schott] Thanks for the shout-out there, Alison. If you aren't blessed with interns who can do all the work, Simply Measured, as Alison mentioned, we focus purely on reports for the social space. So we actually have reports that cover Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, Vine, Tumblr. What am I missing? And Google Analytics. We actually are bringing Google Analytics in to help you match it up with that social data to help you get a better full funnel look at what's going on. We also look at things like keywords, hashtags, and influencers across those channels. You can really in one stop seriously get all of your social analytics in one place. - [Alison Garrison] And the kind of insights you can glean from this aggregated data is really priceless, in my opinion. It saves you time. It helps you make data driven decisions regarding your strategy, and that's something we're all very passionate about here. So now that you have your calendar in place, you need to craft messaging that encourages customer engagement. I grabbed this post on the left. It's from Anthropologie. It came through this weekend. I don't really Instagram, full disclosure. But to win this shopping spree, I just might. This is a post I would happily engage with. - [Mikkayla Casey] Encouraging customer engagement might feel weird at first, but with time, I promise, it's going to get easier, and often your audience is eager to engage. Happy customers will double as brand ambassadors. Choose to run giveaways. Highlight your customers' best use of your products. This includes retweeting them or reposting their Instagram photo of them raving about your product, or comment on their posts they've left on any of your networks. We live in a world where social gratification means a lot, and it's an easy way to make someone stay. When a brand takes the time to respond to someone online, it often amplifies how well a person thinks of that brand. - [Alison Garrison] Other easy engagement tactics include creating a custom hashtag. If your product is an original, you can allow customers to brag about it easily with these custom hashtags. - [Mikkayla Casey] I always think about one of my personal favorites, which is KettlePizza. They have a custom hashtag that their customers created for them. That engagement is really cool. - [Alison Garrison] And Mikkayla has now talked about pizza twice in the webinar. - [Mikkayla Casey] It won't be the last. - [Alison Garrison] Our team, everybody knows, Mikkayla loves pizza, which is a great thing. Also, if all else fails, ask questions. For KettlePizza, for example, we could ask, "What kind of toppings are you going to put on your pizza this weekend?" And folks like Mikkayla would happily engage with that. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. And in case you're wondering, it's jalapenos and bacon. - [Alison Garrison] Yeah. - [Mikkayla Casey] So we keep mentioning original content and with good reason. Original content has the power to go viral. It requires just two things -- creativity and an audience eager to share the message. - [Alison Garrison] I always think back to Dollar Shave Club here at the top right of this slide. That video, it kind of made their business. It's an extreme example, but a clever meme or fun photo could have some of that same viral energy and generate a lot of brand awareness for you. - [Mikkayla Casey] Generally, images and videos will perform best, but all original content reinforces your brand. This can include how one can style your accessories when they're on the go or in a series of outfit of the day posts. Or it can include videos on how to create the perfect pizza using your brand's latest grilling gadget. - [Alison Garrison] So these posts will reinforce your brand personality, and then you can use evergreen content that can be repurposed on multiple channels. Just so we're clear, evergreen content never ceases to be relevant, meaning it drives traffic continually and the message doesn't cease to matter. For example, as the mother of a one-year old, infant teething resources are highly relevant to my interests right now. So here we have, in the lower right-hand corner, a blog article on that topic. Please save me from infant teething. So I would read this article. Maybe I'll re-pin it or pin it to one of my boards so I can reference it later. If I'm really impressed with this content from this blogger, I can easily like them on Facebook so that I get notices on future blogs. These social widgets make it really easy to do that. You'll see the social widgets on the left and in the top right there. - [Mikkayla Casey] And this type of always relevant content can be repurposed over and over again as it never ceases providing value. - [Alison Garrison] And last, here at the bottom of this slide, we have a bullet that has a few free resources for creating original content easily. These links will be clickable when we send you the slides and recorded video. - [Mikkayla Casey] All right. So what exactly does good social media look like? It entails original content, like we see here with this video. It has consistency as well as nice images. - [Alison Garrison] And it's more pizza. All right, so KettlePizza does great use of boards here. This is on Pinterest. This pizza recipe board is sure to delight their current followers and attract new ones who may eventually decide to purchase their product. - [Mikkayla Casey] And here on Twitter, we have more original content, great images, and their branding is consistent. - [Alison Garrison] And likewise for Instagram, KettlePizza nails it by reposting images of their happy customers as well as pictures from their team. All right. Coming up we've got some do and don't slides that we're going to breeze through pretty quickly here. But we are, just to remind you, having open Q&A at the end shortly. So be sure to jot down any questions you might have that come up here. So let's start with some general guidelines for social media in general. So add social sharing buttons to your store template, blog and product pages. Be sure to optimize your profiles and include links back to your website. Put links in your email marketing back to your social profiles. Format images correctly. We bring this up repeatedly because it's important. You need to format the to the network they're on, and PicMonkey makes this really easy to do. Create unique, one-of-a-kind visuals and offer valuable content that is highly shareable. All of that should be unique. Follow / like relevant brands and groups, but pace yourself. If you do too much, sometimes the channels will eject you because they'll think you're a robot. Reshare content based on social trends. Promote your blog regularly. Know the right times of day to post for your audience and tailor your messaging to the network it appears on. Here are our don'ts. This is a favorite recommendation of mine. Don't go bananas. Don't go bananas on sales stuff and don't go bananas on any one tactic. It's good to space out and try different tactics there. Don't be one-sided. Reply to comments. Like and follow other folks. Retweet. Repin. Don't forget to give credit when credit is due. If you reference an influencer, call them out. Chances are they'll give you some social media love on their channels. Don't post personal information unless, of course, it's highly relevant or you're part of the brand. And don't engage too often. - [Mikkayla Casey] So for Facebook, we recommend with any of your posts to keep the 80/20 rule in mind. Keep it 80% social. Try not to go above 20% of sales-related posts. Be timely with your responses for people that send you messages or post on your profile. Do keep your posts short and sweet. Don't be afraid to use images and gifs. We recommend paying Facebook by boosting your posts or using Facebook advertising. Remember to share posts that have garnered a lot of interaction already that are relevant to your brand. - [Alison Garrison] And if you can recall ThinkGeek from an earlier slide, I might repost one of the "Total Recall" posts. It had a lot of traction. So it's got proven success with a similar audience. - [Mikkayla Casey] As far as Facebook don'ts, we recommend not ignoring your audience or being too lengthy with your posts. Don't clutter up people's feeds by posting too regularly. Nobody wants to see a post from your brand every hour on the hour. Don't miss out on trending topics and don't forget to format your images correctly. - [Alison Garrison] For Pinterest, be sure to verify your website. Come up with catchy, keyword-optimized names for your boards and choose really impactful covers for them. Add a location if it's relevant. Link pins back to a highly relevant page to what the pin is referencing. Comment on other pins and even comment on your own. We find that longer comments and descriptions get noticed in the feeds. Use high quality images. Post many products once you've built a following, but again pace yourself. No one wants to see a thousand of your products just cluttering up their feed all at once. And then the don'ts. Don't only pin your products. You need to diversify. Don't pin random, uninteresting things. But don't miss out on popular topics that might not be super relevant to your product, but they are relevant to your audience's interests. Don't forget to ask your Facebook and Twitter followers who you should follow on Pinterest, and don't go hashtag mad because they don't even matter on Pinterest. They don't register. - [Mikkayla Casey] So as far as my favorite social network, what you should be doing is including keywords in your bio for discoverability. You should be trying to look for opportunities for true human engagement. That Search button on Twitter can be your best friend. Remember to use images wherever you can. These do get noticed more, just like on Facebook. We recommend keeping it short. Shorter posts tend to perform better. If you don't keep it short, Twitter will cut you off after 140 characters. We recommend looking for influencers and interacting with them. Again, remember to format your images correctly. As far as what you shouldn't be doing on Twitter is obsessing over your follower count. Though followers are important, we don't think that it's something that you should stress out about. Don't thank every single follower, it's a bit spammy. If I had to do that for all my clients, I'd probably spend a few hours a day on that alone. Don't send automated responses. They're very 2011. Don't overuse the hashtag. We recommend keeping it to three or less per tweet. Don't forget to customize your Twitter background and cover photos since it's a great opportunity to get your brand out there. And don't start a tweet with the @someone unless you only want them or the people that are following both of you to see it. - [Alison Garrison] All right. So we don't have time here today to go over every social media platform out there. For ecommerce, we really see the bulk of sales conversion coming from Facebook and Pinterest and for some industries, Polyvore here. But it's important to note a group of increasingly popular channels. So we've got Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Polyvore, Snapchat and Vine. As your business grows, you may want to keep your strategy growing, and these channels are worth keeping an eye on. They might resonate with your audience. - [Ron Schott] Totally. I'm going to be the numbers guy again and say it's all right to test and learn on these new networks just to give your team an idea if these channels are going to be viable for you in the future. Look for things like is your audience there. Try to get a number around what that audience or total addressable market on that network looks like for you. Are they engaging with stuff? Get some data there on the competitors or brands in the similar space. And then before you do that, go ahead and time bound that test and learn period. Say you're going to do it for a week or you're going to do it for a month and use that to help extrapolate out and look at what the time commitment and possible benefits of going onto these networks might be for you. - [Alison Garrison] Awesome. And that's really the name of the game with much of digital marketing. It's test, measure, and modify. - [Mikkayla Casey] All right. So let's talk about measuring success. How do you know if your campaign is performing? - [Alison Garrison] As I've mentioned, digital marketing, it's all about reviewing your progress, reflecting on the data, and adjusting your strategies accordingly. With social media, this typically revolves around identifying the posts that work best and replicating that energy that they had. You can find ways to evoke that same reaction. Likewise, you can can identify underperforming posts and weed those out and learn from those mistakes. - [Mikkayla Casey] So of course revenue is going to be important to any business. But there are other objectives to social media that are worthy of tracking. - [Alison Garrison] Like boosting SEO. You can track your link profile, and, organic performance as well. So if you have a solid social media strategy in place, you'll likely see growth in your branded and direct traffic as well. There's also a branding value to simply being part of the conversation and keeping your brand top of mind. We'll also want to talk about actual metrics you can track, these quantifiable numbers. - [Mikkayla Casey] So let's get started with the obvious. Start by tracking your own channel's data, monitoring your likes, shares, comments, follows, and clicks on ads. - [Alison Garrison] And this is sort of Ron's area of expertise. So I'm going to let him talk a little bit about how you can use social analytics to drive your strategy. - [Ron Schott] Totally. This is, like I said, an area that's very near and dear to my heart. We think of analytics in two places in what we like to call the social marketing process or plan, if you will. The first is in that plan stage. That's where you can analyze the market. You can do a lot of the things we were talking about where you're finding your audiences, you're defining your strategy, you're getting deep into what your competitors are doing. Then you go out there and you do this stuff. You create awesome content. You publish it. You monitor and respond. You're talking with customers daily, sending them through your funnel. On the back end, the measurement. That's where we're talking about looking at performance, seeing how campaigns and programs are doing, and then optimizing based off those, making your tactics better and more impactful. And to go a little bit deeper into that, I kind of talked about audiences a lot today because audiences, in my mind, are incredibly important in the social space. Conversations are another area on that plan side where you can get deep there. You can go look at keywords, look at words that people are using around products like yours or even with your brand. That helps you get an idea for brand sentiment or a share of voice, things like that. Look at your competitors. The metrics on that side are going to be very similar to what you're going to be looking at on your measure side, so actions, engagement actions, like likes, comments, shares, retweets, clicks, favorites, things like that across all the channels where you're actually working. And then when you get to the measure side, brand activities are really the first bucket that we break things down with our customers. That is how many times are you posting, what are you posting, what type of content are you posting. That gives you an idea about content effectiveness when you start laddering up to these different measurement techniques. So when you take those brand activities, add on audience engagement, you can then start to say, "All right, if we're posting photos with dogs in them, they are four times more likely to drive engagement, drive click-through, drive conversion and drive larger basket size than if we post photos with cats in them," or something like that. You can start to get down to those granular levels of measurement and start making some real business impact. The last one on the back end is, "What are these things actually doing for us?" At the end of the day, that's where we're connecting things like social metrics with Google Analytics or with whatever type of onsite metrics you're bringing in and actually looking at that business impact. At the end of the day, that's where you're going to make or break your programs is how are you actually driving business impact. - [Alison Garrison] And that's great. What we're really in the business of is making sales when it comes to ecommerce. So it's also good to pop into Google Analytics and better understand which channels are driving visits and revenue to your site. So in this example, we have a spike on May 4th here and on the 31st here and a prolonged period of greater traffic here. This is around May 12th. So what I would want to do, looking at these metrics and considering the business success that these drove, I'd want to drill down and see (a) what channels are driving these spikes, and then (b) I want to look back at the posts on those channels that drove the traffic and the revenue. I'd want to reflect on those posts, what made them so successful, and try to tap into that energy in future posts. - [Mikkayla Casey] And while you're looking at your Google Analytics, don't forget to have a look at assisted conversions as well. These are conversions that happen after social media interaction. Social media wasn't the last channel to send the converting traffic over, but it did help close the deal. - [Alison Garrison] While these may not identify the posts that sort of drove the success, they will help you understand the overall value that your social media is driving. All right. So now we're going to pause very briefly to gather together your questions. We've already got them going up on the whiteboard here. Please sit tight. If you get restless, feel free to tweet or post to Facebook your favorite takeaway from today's webinar with the hashtag #SellMoreOnline and that will enter you for a chance to win a free social media audit from our social media team. - [Mikkayla Casey] All right. And we're back. - [Alison Garrison] Okay. So this is Alison. I'm going to be reading the questions. Since Mikkayla and Ron are really social media gurus, they'll probably do most of the answering. I might pipe in when it's SEO relevant because that's my thing. All right. So the first question, We're in a crowded industry, home décor. We also have a limited budget. Which networks and tactics would work best for us?" - [Mikkayla Casey] I'm going to go ahead and get this one started. So if you're into home décor, the first three networks that I'm thinking of are Pinterest, Houzz, and actually let's push it up to four because I'm tossed between number three, Polyvore or Facebook. You're going to want to put up a lot of pictures of your products, how people can use them. Home décor is huge on Pinterest. I recently decorated my entire house because of Pinterest. All of these options don't require a monetary budget. They are just going to require time. - [Alison Garrison] Ron, do you have anything to add there? I think Pinterest. - [Ron Schott] I'd agree there. Knowing you have probably limited time and limited budget, being able to use the imagery from one photo shoot to be able to populate through to those different sites, I think, could really help you with your reach and frequency. - [Alison Garrison] And maybe as you grow your brand, perhaps Instagram would be a future, an aspirational place to start playing. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. As far as the tactics go, if you're going to start on Pinterest, start laying out your boards on different rooms, dream kitchens, dream bathrooms, great looking backyards, patios to summer grill on, things of that sort, and then start searching for those in the home industry to follow and start repinning some of their products. - [Alison Garrison] You might even explore your audience and see what their tastes are, because I know, for instance, I moved to a new house recently and I did a lot of mid-century modern-type searches. So maybe there's an opportunity there as far as keyword targeting goes. Okay. Let's do this other one. "Do you have to worry about competitors stealing your followers? How do you protect yourself?" - [Mikkayla Casey] So as far as competitors, we talked about the research and looking at your competitors' followers and their audience. One of my favorite things to do and can often be one of the fastest things to find who to follow on networks is to pop into Twitter and see who's following your brand. I'll take a look at someone's bio, and if I see relevant keywords or they could fit into my client's demographics, then I'm giving them a follow and I'm running down that list to see if these people are going to follow back and, at the end, check out any of our clients. There's not really a huge way of being able to protect yourself. Just as you're able to look at your competitors' information, they can look at yours as well. - [Alison Garrison] I do think this is easier said than done. But the best protection is doing it better, offering better content, offering more fun, entertaining things when appropriate, that sort of thing. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. - [Ron Schott] I'd agree with that. I was going to say the best way to keep your customers in any business or in any line of advertising is to have the better product and have a better relationship with them. I'm a very nervous person. So I'm always thinking that our customers are going to get stolen. So if you kind of approach each action that you take on social with the fact that you're trying to keep them as engaged as possible and a fan of your brand, then I think you should be okay. - [Alison Garrison] Love it. Okay. So next question, "When do you use the hashtag and the @ indicator?" Is it an indicator? - [Mikkayla Casey] It's an at sign. - [Alison Garrison] At sign, there you go. You can tell I'm not really on Twitter. - [Mikkayla Casey] So the hashtag can be very helpful on both Twitter and Instagram. The hashtag, you use it for whatever you're wanting to talk about, not specifically, but in the realm of it. For instance, we're using one today for #SellMoreOnline. We could tag social media. In the instance of KettlePizza, you're using the #KettlePizza to discuss their products, and it allows you to see what other people are discussing in regards to that specific topic. For the at sign, that's when you want to mention a brand or someone on Twitter or Instagram so they can get a notification that you've mentioned them. - [Alison Garrison] And, "I cannot get people to converse with us on social media. Any ideas?" - [Mikkayla Casey] Ron, do you want to get this one kicked off? - [Ron Schott] Yeah. I guess... - [Alison Garrison] It's pretty open-ended. - [Ron Schott] It's a very open-ended question, which I like because I guess that means there's no wrong answer. This person didn't tell us what industry they were in, but you may be dealing with a problem where there's either a low audience in those spaces or you need to do some more research about where your audience actually is. So I'd say maybe take a step back, do some research, try to find out where you think the people that buy your products are, think about what they do, think about what type of people they are and start looking for those conversations. And from there you can kind of edge out and start driving and engaging in conversations that are about your space, about the space where your products or services are. From there, you can kind of start making those connections, talking with those people, slowly building that audience and building that back and forth communication between you and your customers. - [Mikkayla Casey] Absolutely. I think one of the easiest ways, of course, it's often easier said than done, to get people to converse with you is better quality content. It could be a nice visual image that you've created with tools such as Recite or Canva or pictures that your clients have sent in of them being, I guess, happy customers and brand ambassadors using your products. - [Alison Garrison] You may or may not agree with this, but I'm going to throw it out there. I think sometimes appealing to the ego subtly can be a big motivator for people. So if you can find interesting ways of having them sort of pull out their creativity and get their two cents, I think that's powerful. I've seen it work with my feed. - [Mikkayla Casey] Correct. We have clients that we've been able to get high engagement rates when we post their product and we ask their fans, "If you had the chance to win whatever our product may be, where would you take it with you? Would you take it traveling? Would you use it around the house?" whatever it may be. Posts like that have seen higher engagement rates than just blank statements. - [Alison Garrison] And you know, just to add this, I know we're pushing engagement. There are times when no engagement is, I guess, the status quo. I think of myself on Pinterest. I'm very active on Pinterest, but I'm what you would call a selfish pinner. I'm not pinning to network really. I'm pinning to influence my purchasing decisions. I know I'm also a lurker on Reddit. I never comment on Reddit, but I lurk. - [Mikkayla Casey] I think several of us are lurkers on Reddit. - [Alison Garrison] So we're running a little out of time. Do you want to do one more, or should we wrap? One more. Okay. Great. "What are some creative ways to build a following?" That's a hard one. - [Mikkayla Casey] Yeah. There are so many options. Depending on the network that you're going to focus your efforts on, if it's going to be Twitter, pop in again, look at your competitors to see who's following them. Use the search tool on Twitter. Say you sell hunting products. Start searching for people that enjoy hunting on Twitter. If it's for Facebook and you're wanting to figure out which pages you should engage with, pop into your competitor's page and go look at the pages that they've liked. So if you go in and like those same pages or the ones that are relevant to you, you'll begin to get a feed where you can grab content easily to share with your followers. - [Alison Garrison] I also am a firm believer that data can spur creativity. In and of itself, data is pretty hard, fixed numbers. But if you review data and kind of get an idea of what makes your target audience tick, it will spur creative ideas. Or if it doesn't for you, you could find somebody on your team where it gets their creative spark going. - [Ron Schott] I'd also say using real life connections. So if you're a brick and mortar store, if you have a brick and mortar aspect to your business, actually engaging with the people that come into your store or business and getting them to follow you and building your audiences that way and also using your connections. So if there are brands that people either use your product or service with that you know who those people are, you can reach out to them and ask them to potentially ask that their followers engage with your brand or follow your brand as well, and you can pay the customer back as you start growing. - [Alison Garrison] All right. I think we are now officially out of time. Please keep tweeting and posting to Facebook your favorite takeaway from today's webinar with the hashtag #SellMoreOnline, and that will give you a chance to win a free social media audit. We'll be accepting applicants for the next 24 hours or so. I hope you all learned a lot today and it helps build your business. We really appreciate your time, and we know you're super busy. Speaking of super busy, many thanks to our special guest, Ron. Thank you Ron. - [Ron Schott] Thanks for having me. - [Alison Garrison] Thank you. If you're in the market for a social media reporting tool, you've got to take a look at Simply Measured. It's the gold standard. And if you want to learn more about social media services here at Volusion, please do reach out. We've got a nice solid team of really brilliant people like Mikkayla here. But that's the webinar. Thank you so much for your time and happy selling, everybody. Here are some answers to some of the most asked questions during the webinar:
General Social Media Questions Once a social media presence is established, how much time per day is recommended to tend to your social media strategy? The answer will depend on your industry and competitors, as well as your fans. Once you’ve built up a following, you can likely devote 10-15 minutes a day to keeping up your social media presence and see success. If you have more time, that’s even better!
What are some ways to build a social media following? Here are a few of our tried-and-true methods for building your following:
Run ads targeted to your audience. Facebook ads are an especially great way to target the highly specific user base of your choice
Cater your ads to any promotions you’re running
Use giveaways and/or fun contests to generate excitement
Cross-promote across all of your channels (email, other social networks, website, etc.) so that existing fans on one channel will be able to follow you on others
Try to engage with industry-relevant influencers or people who have a large following on social media networks; conversations with these people will often get noticed, and influencers can also become your best brand evangelizers
Is it considered underhanded to follow your competitors’ followers just out of the blue? It seems unethical and somewhat "guerrilla-like" to go out and follow my competitor's followers. It’s a common practice in social media marketing to follow your competitors’ followers. Doing so helps you get to know your audience better, and it has the added benefit of getting additional followers if people follow you back. Since Twitter followers are public, we wouldn’t call it unethical to use that information to your advantage. Just be sure to provide them with value so they’ll feel like following you was a good decision.
How can I figure out the right time to post to my audience? Facebook Insights, as well as the analytics platforms on other networks, is a great resource for this. You can test posting at different days and times to see when you get more engagement, and refine your strategy as you get more information. Another option is to use a service like Post Planner , which can help you optimize the timing of your posts.
What steps should you take when planning a giveaway that relies on users posting their own original content? Any tips for making this kind of campaign a success? This can be a fun, successful strategy if you have an engaged audience. Take the following steps to maximize the campaign’s impact:
Think about which networks you want to use. Instagram an especially good platform for this, since the audience is comprised of users who continually generate their own content
Make sure that what you’re giving away is a good exchange for the time invested
Create a contest-specific hashtag so that participants can promote the hashtag while allowing people to see and enjoy what others have contributed
Can you speak about the importance of reviews/ratings on ecommerce and social? I have heard they are not as important as they used to be. Ratings and reviews are still important. Recent research has shown that 84% of millennials and 70% of baby boomers say user reviews are an important part of their purchasing decisions. Ratings and reviews may not directly help you reach a new audience, but they can help you convert customers who hit your website or social platform.
In ecommerce, people don’t have the same ability to learn about and test a product that they would have in a physical store, so reviews can help customers determine whether the product is right for them. You’ll also have the added benefit of possibly cutting down on returns because shoppers will be armed with more information about the product before they purchase.
If you’re interested in setting up a review feature in your ecommerce shop as well as Schema markup that can help your website reviews stand out in the search results, Volusion makes it easy. Read up on how to set up your reviews here .
I already have a personal Instagram account and am having difficulty creating another one for my business. It only allows you to create one on your phone. Do you know how to do that? Log out of Instagram on your phone (from your profile, click on the settings cog, scroll to the bottom and click “Log Out”). Once logged out, you will be able to select “Sign Up” to create a new account. Use a different email, preferably a business email, when creating your new account.
I was going to set up the detailed demographic reporting on GA, but was concerned about changing my privacy policy. Is there any way to get demographics while managing my customers' privacy? Volusion has a built-in default privacy policy page for all Volusion stores. Although we haven’t encountered any problems in the past using Volusion’s default privacy policy page and enabling demographic reporting in Google Analytics, you will need to make a few adjustments to the default privacy policy page.
These changes will more closely follow Google’s guidelines for privacy policy pages for merchants using demographic reporting as well as remarketing ads.
I've got over 6,000 likes in a sport decal business and I cannot get people to converse. I have tons of pics, sales, etc. How do I get people engaged? A great method to get people talking on social media is the same method to get people talking in a face-to-face conversation: Ask them questions! What is their favorite sports team? Between two products, which do they prefer? What are their thoughts on a recent relevant news story or sports celebrity? Ask all types of questions to keep things interesting, and don’t forget to respond to them to keep the conversation going.
Any thoughts about YouTube? Recently been working with YouTube creators - thoughts, ideas? YouTube videos are an excellent strategy. Videos - how-tos, product information, or just-for-fun videos that relate to what you sell - drive engagement and open the pathway to conversions. Consider that a recent marketing study revealed an increase of nearly 50% in conversions among an audience who had watched product or service videos to inform their buying decisions.
Videos are also great in their multi-use capabilities; not only can you upload them directly to YouTube, but you can also embed them on your site (where they will provide helpful information and increase Time on Site, an important metric for SEO) and share them across your social media channels. Additionally, YouTube SEO is an area where there is still a lot of opportunity to make a mark. A well-optimized video on YouTube can push the video to page one of YouTube’s search results, where it can then get discovered by an audience who may not know about your website or product/service yet. If you provide a call-to-action and a link to your site in the video’s description, you’ll find yourself serving a larger funnel of engaged customers.
Do service business do better on one form of social media over another? Service businesses can find a lot of success with social media, and many of the best practices that apply to ecommerce businesses can apply to service businesses as well.
Our three favorite social networks for service businesses are:
Our product is in a niche market that only sells items once a year. How do you keep social media relevant in the off-season? Try posting about things that are relevant but not related to your products. You can also ask your customers what they would like to see for the next season. Even in an off-season, you should keep a conversation going with your customers to keep your brand fresh and in their minds.
If I do post on social media, would non-relevant posts be considered junk posts and hurt our strategy? It depends on what you mean by non-relevant. If you’re posting links to dog care blogs on your social media page for a children’s clothing store, then yes, it would be considered junk posting. However, don’t get tricked into thinking that if a post isn’t actively selling your products it’s irrelevant. If you sell children’s clothing, not every post has to be about your store. Instead, you could post about fun activities to do with your children this summer, and it would be good for building your presence on social media.
B2B Social Media Questions How is B2B different for social media? LinkedIn is a good place to start for B2B companies! Follow brand ambassadors and industry groups on this network and post articles, white papers, etc. that show thought leadership from your page.
Getting Social Media Assistance I’d like to hire a dedicated resource to do my Social Media. What are the key requirements for the role?
First and foremost, they should be passionate about using social media! Ideally they will have run social accounts in the past but if you’re looking for an intern or new talent, make sure they’re at least managing their own personal accounts successfully.
They should understand your brand well and share your enthusiasm for your products
They should be a strong communicator, with an ability to adapt their voice to the one you’d like to use for your brand
They should have innovative ideas -- ask them what these ideas are!
They should keep up with trends and be able to post about them when relevant to your brand
Are there any Volusion partners that you recommend for "done for you" social media management? Or is this something Volusion provides? Thanks for asking! We do offer a social media package where our social media specialists will handle your social media management. You can read more about those packages here , or call our representatives at 1-888-750-3996.
Facebook Specific Do you have to start a Facebook page under your personal Facebook page? Yes, you have to have a personal Facebook page to create a business page. Check out HubSpot’s resource for creating a Facebook business page here: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5492/How-to-Create-a-Facebook-Business-Page-in-5-Simple-Steps-With-Video.aspx
What is the most important to look at on Facebook to show success? # of shares, # of comments, # of likes? One of the best ways to drive yourself crazy with social media marketing is to obsess over specific metrics like the number of Likes on your page or the number of comments you earned on a post you thought was great. Try taking a broader view of your Facebook Insights. Has your overall engagement increased over time? Are you beginning to see more value in engagement - comments that provide insight about customer demographics and preferences, website clicks that lead to conversions, etc.? These are the kinds of improvements you should be looking out for. While it’s great to have an enthusiastic fan base, you should also make sure your posts are leading to sales.
Should we link our website to create a "Facebook" store? Absolutely!
Are the Follow and Like buttons different for business pages? I see some pages that have a like and a follow button. There is no Follow button for business pages. The Follow button is reserved for personal pages.
How much should I expect to pay daily for an ad on Facebook? We recommend a daily budget of at least $10 for your campaign. A single ad may cost you less than that, and it would be a good idea to test a couple of ads against each other to see which one performs better.
What about posting links to my website or FB page to Facebook groups? Some Facebook groups allow commercial posts. If I sold auto racing products, what are your views about posting to FB Groups about cars, auto racing, etc.? You should treat Facebook posts the same way you would treat posts on a forum or someone else’s blog - it’s okay to promote your products, but make sure that your comment adds some value for the reader. If you’re simply blasting social networks (or forums or blog comments) with sales pitches that don’t contribute to the conversation, your posts will be seen as spam. However, commenting with a link to your site or a particular product in a conversational, natural way can be a great way to demonstrate your authority and build relationships with new customers.
What if you run a company that Facebook considers controversial, and when you boost your Facebook post they message you back that it's been rejected? How do you recommend we get our audience to view the content? Engage in Facebook groups dedicated to your industry. Boost informational posts that aren’t directly related to controversial topics or products so you can build your audience, and then post engaging content so it will have higher visibility within your audience.
Facebook does not allow ads for weapons, but my website sells sporting goods, including guns. What do you recommend for marketing strategies if Facebook ads are not an option? Reach your customers through ads that are not gun-related, then let them know through your regular posts that you also sell guns. You can also try different online marketing strategies, such as SEO.
I’m in the flashlight industry. How can I make our products not boring and engage with customers on Facebook? Focus more on the reasons to use your products. Perhaps your customers need those flashlights for camping trips, and you can talk about camping. Telling a story is a great way to get an emotional connection, so consider how your flashlights play a part in their lives. Get creative!
Pinterest Specific Can you link Pinterest to your store? Yes! Here’s Pinterest’s resource to understand how: https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/confirm-your-website
I've been on the Pinterest promoted pins waiting list for a few months now. Should I just give up? We know it can be frustrating to wait for something like this, but since Pinterest promoted pins aren’t required for success on the network at this time, it won’t hurt your business to wait until you’re approved. Keep building your audience, and you’ll be in a great position once you’re approved for promoted pins.
Does printer/copier consumables fit for Pinterest? It depends on the type of content you’ll be producing for Pinterest and the niche your business fits into. For example, if you’re producing a lot of great and interesting infographics related to your industry, you may find a lot of success on Pinterest. If you’re only posting links to product pages with ink and toner, Pinterest is probably not the right network for you. Additionally, think about your target customer. Are they using Pinterest? If they’re not, your efforts would be better used elsewhere.
If I sell note cards, should I add other people's gift pins to my boards? Absolutely! Pinterest is a great way to showcase the different ways potential customers can use your products. Try pinning a photo of a creative use of a note card - you might inspire someone in your network to buy from your store and get creative themselves.
Industry Oriented Questions MULTI MARKET We have a very wide range of customers. Being in the Equine business (aka horses), we deal with everyone from teens to retired riders. What is a good way to be able to reach that large span of Customers? How can you productively target such a wide span? Targeted Facebook ads are a great way to reach different groups of customers from the same business page. Facebook allows you to create highly specific audiences for each of your ads, so you can run several at the same time, targeted at very different groups of customers, and test which audience blocks are worth spending your ad budget on.
NICHE We sell products relating to Pageant Supplies and Awards. We have already started using Facebook, but what suggestions would you have for this very niche market? Pinterest would be a great way to engage your customers, since it is a very visual platform. You can post fun, interesting pageant-related photos, inspiration and fashion ideas. Since your Facebook page is already established, try running targeted Facebook Ads to reach the people who are interested in this market.
I sell urine odor control products for pets. Really. So how can that work on Facebook? While at first glance this may seem like a difficult industry to promote on social media, you actually have a great topic to build a community around: pets. People love animals, and they love talking about their pets on Facebook. So, post a lot about pets, pet care, etc. As you build an engaged audience, then help them solve a problem all pet owners face: accidents inside the house. Don’t go overboard with promotional posts, but if you build a community that pet lovers enjoy, they’ll be receptive to a promotional post about your products once a month or every few weeks.
We sell custom knives. What would be the best way to boost our sales? Consider the reasons why people purchase custom knives. Perhaps they’re buying your products for groom’s gifts or as a birthday present. Your audience will engage with stories, so find the stories and help your audience find opportunities to purchase more custom knives.
BEAUTY & HEALTH I’m in the high-end professional skin care industry. What are the best social platforms and your suggestions for this industry? Any influencers that are popular? The beauty industry can expand beyond traditional platforms to the following:
Additionally, the following traditional platforms will be great for your industry:
Check out Topsy to identify and learn more about influencers in your industry.
I'm in a healthcare industry (nutritional supplements). We sell only to practitioners. Should I try to get in an existing target audience group or create a closed group from my company with relevant educational content as well as product promotion? You can do both!
STYLE ORIENTED For women’s clothing, where I can advertise? Facebook and Pinterest would be great options for you. Polyvore is an excellent choice too if you have images that are high-quality enough to compete in that space.
FOOD We are a long time specialty food retail store, in business 60 years. Started selling limited products online 4 years ago with minimal advertising/marketing. Looking to sell more now. What are the best avenues to explore to generate more sales? Look into Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram to appeal to visually-oriented, enthusiastic “foodies” who will share your passion for specialty food.
SERVICE / VENUE We run a horse-drawn carriage service for special events (weddings, birthdays etc) - After Facebook where do we go? Pinterest would be a great place to start! There are a lot of women planning their fairytale wedding on Pinterest, and your business can fit into that perfectly.
We own and operate a wedding venue in Georgia. We were recently ranked the #3 venue that will WOW your guests onlyinourstate.com. How can I take advantage of this on Social media channels? Try using this distinction as a way to gain trust with your social media followers - announce it on social media, then put in the “About Us” sections where appropriate. You could also incorporate this into your cover image if it makes sense for your brand. Additionally, since you run a local business, you should be on Yelp so people can find you when they search for wedding venues in your town. This distinction would also work great in the “About Us” section on your Yelp page.
