5 Fundamentals of Social Media

For small businesses

What’s it for?

1. To help new customers find out about your brand. This could be by happening upon your stream or it could be because you reached out to them directly.
2. To keep past customers engaged with your brand and encourage them to buy again (and to tell their friends about you)
3. Professional networking. This could mean building relationships with wholesalers/magazines/bloggers/events organizers or connecting with fellow artists/designers/curators/makers to learn from one another, cross-promote or collaborate on projects.

Getting started

When you’re first getting started on social media, think of it as if you have just moved to a new city and you’re trying to make new friends. Maybe you already know a couple of people there — start with them, strengthen those connections and see if you can expand them. After that you have to find people who share similar interests to you so you’d look for meetup groups, classes, clubs etc.. You can find all that on social media too.

Who is it for?

You have to tailor your social media channels to your audience. It’s important to know exactly what kind of person is most likely to buy your product so you can post for them. Do they want you to make them laugh? Or do they want to learn something interesting about the world? Do they just want to see pretty pictures? Maybe they want to be inspired to cook/host a party/dress better/try out new makeup or hairstyles/go traveling. Perhaps they have an alternative style or lifestyle and they want to know someone else gets it.

Be real

Everything has to be genuine. People expect a large brand to behave like a faceless large brand, so they can get away with it, but what people really want is a human connection to the person they buy from. You can set boundaries on how personal you’ll go when sharing but you can’t fake it. Don’t pretend to be into something you’re not, find a genuine overlap of interests between you and your target market and focus your energy there. For a handmade product, a great place to start is usually with behind-the-scenes images showing your crafting process.

What to post?

You are providing a service. If you’re already a well established brand then that service may simply be allowing people to keep up to date with your latest products. However, it’s more likely that you need to provide a regular stream of entertainment and occasionally remind people that you also have products to sell.