212 – Takeaways from Social Media Marketing World and What They Mean for Handmade Product Businesses

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 212 for most of

us, we don't need new followers.

We need to go deeper with the ones we already have.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun whether

you have an established business or looking to start one now

you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz on rapt helping you turn your

skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights.

Hi there Sue and thank you so much for joining me

on the show today.

I am recently back from social media marketing world and probably

no surprise to you.

The landscape continues to change.

There is a lot happening right now on the social media

front and I want to share with you the newest from

the experts because I've just heard everything and I also want

to transition it over to what that means to you for

your handmade product business.

But before we dive in,

I also want to make mention that I'm about a month

out from reopening the doors to my signature program called makers

MBA. If you're thinking about starting a business,

but you just quite haven't gotten yourself to take that action

yet because you're not sure exactly what to do or your

mind is getting in the way and playing games with you,

or you've started a business already and you're not seeing the

results that you had expected and you envisioned when you first

started thinking about your company,

then this is a class that you definitely want to get

into. So here's the link.

It's not open now as I said,

but you can get on the waiting list so that you'll

be notified when the course reopens for new students.

So that link is grab a pen and paper,

gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash masterclass.

So let's dive into the topic at hand,

which is the newest,

latest, and most important things to know about social media coming

up within the next year and specifically what it means for

handmade product businesses.

So as I'd mentioned,

I am just back from social media marketing world.

It's the largest conference of its kind held in San Diego.

Just to give you a little bit of a feel of,

you aren't familiar with it at all.

There were over 120 speakers,

anyone who is anybody in social media speaks at this event.

This year we had 6,000

attendees and the topics range from how to use the various

platforms, strategies,

implementation, all of that along with research about social media and

how businesses are using social media trends and then most importantly

changes that continue to come about and what those changes mean

to us.

Now if you follow me over on Instagram,

my handle is gift biz on wrapped.

By the way,

you might've seen a story that I put up a little

while ago with Michael Stelzner.

He is the one who puts on social media marketing world

and in his opening keynote he made a statement that everyone

like turned their heads to each other and had their eyes

wide open in question and exclamation,

I guess I would say.

what it looks like today.

Did you get that?

Did you react the same way?

how the platform looks today.

Pretty interesting isn't it?

Gives you pause,

makes you question and wonder what the heck I'm talking about.

Listen in.

So I returned from the event energized with not only the

hype and the excitement and the energy behind the event,

but invigorated by the opportunities mostly presented for us small businesses

and in particular product based businesses like ours.

You know,

we've heard so much gloom and doom in our industry,

even in the great economy,

we keep hearing brick and mortar is dead.

There's no way we can compete with Amazon on pricing and

delivery and the big brands have bumped us out and have

just made it too hard to compete and on and on

and on.

Right? You've heard all of it and I'm here to say

to you,

just stop listening.

What I heard over and over again at social media marketing

world is not only the way to keep current with what's

happening in social media now,

it's also the key to our small handmade businesses,

survival and dare I say,

potential for huge growth and huge growth in a way the

big brands will find it hard to deliver.

Okay. Now that might need a little bit of explanation.

How is it that we as smaller businesses can provide something

that big brands will struggle with?

Do you remember back when big brands so tightly controlled their

image on social media?

Do you remember when people started letting their employees post and

allowing people to talk about businesses and like the whole flood

gate opened and big brands,

I started to lose control about the talk and the speak

and the positioning behind their message.

They were so afraid of letting anybody talk without them controlling,

watching, signing off on what was being said,

that they were super late to the game today,

no longer do we trust brands that are polished and rigid

and so structured and calculating in their messages that they're giving

us. We love brands where we can see the raw and

the real where we can trust them because we're hearing from

employees or customers and they're not being paid to put out

these testimonials and ads.

We're just seeing it just live on a newsfeed in Facebook.

Again, I'll say they were so late to the game,

while smaller solo business owners like us,

we're able to adjust on a dime.

Large companies were years behind understanding,

much less allowing this behavior to happen.

We are at another juncture right here and as small business

owners, we have the ability to embrace and act upon what's

important. Now,

once again,

leaving the large corporate folks in the dust,

they have to analyze and review everything they have to get

approvals and then develop and document systems to implement.

They will still purchase a ticket on the slow train.

While we're already at our destination,

are you ready to know what you can do to take

advantage of the opportunities that sit right in front of us?

Here are the five things to understand an implement starting right

now. Number one,

your company brand must contain the element of you.

What I mean by this is showing up as the face

of the company you showing up as the face of the

company and interjecting your personality and style into your brand.

I know,

I know that's uncomfortable and probably makes you sweat a little

bit, but what we often do is study and try to

emulate a larger brand that's in our same industry because we

think that by doing what they're doing,

by representing our brand through imagery or messaging or something that

they are already doing,

you are also going to see the same success then that

the big brand sees.

But actually the opposite is true.

Have you ever seen somebody trying to copy somebody else?

It comes across looking fake and unbelievable.

And here's the truth.

Being a maker business,

your product is truly one of a kind.

So why would your company not be the same way?

You are not like any other company as an artist.

You're not like any other artist.

As a Baker,

you do things different than any other bakers and we want

to see and know you as the person behind the business.

So allow yourself to show obsessions that you have things that

are your favorites,

quirkiness how you run your company,

et cetera,

et cetera.

You may have heard this saying before,

when you attract the best meaning your very best customer because

they fallen in love with everything you stand for,

you then do repel the rest.

But who you have in your corner is your tribe.

That group of people who are the most loyal to you,

who love you,

who talk about your products to others and you stand behind

you and support you always,

and this doesn't mean just sharing what you are in relation

to your business.

It's also what you're about as a person.

To give you an example,

those of you who have been following this podcast for awhile,

no, I love candles.

What have I done?

Interjected a candle question in the beginning of every guest interview

if you followed me along and other places,

you know that I love the snow,

not necessarily the cold.

I love the snow.

I love the color yellow.

I've got two cute puppies,

I like to travel.

That all becomes part of my brand.

It's not just Sue the business owner and the podcaster and

the author.

You get to know all of me.

Some of you will love me and follow me and some

of you will say,

who's that girl talk in.

We're not interested and go away.

And you know what?

That's perfectly okay because the ones that are remaining are the

ones I wrap my arms around and learn about and serve.

And a level of trust has been developed because they either

just enjoy my style,

they somehow resonate with things that I love and they become

bonded with my brand.

Am I talking about you?

Are you part of my tribe?

If so,

thank you so much.

I appreciate you more than you know and this is exactly

what you can do with your company too.

So point number one,

your company brand must include you moving on to number two,

forget the masses one to one.

Communication matters the very most.

In the past we've always been worried about how many customers

can we get,

how do we attract the largest number of people that we

possibly can and so that they know about our business.

And really the way to gain traction,

and again I know that this is counter intuitive,

is to start talking to your customers and developing one on

one relationships.

Forget about the masses one to one matters most.

Let's talk about how you do this.

So at craft shows don't just go to a show and

think about how much product can I sell.

Like the whole success of the show is that you're walking

out with X number of dollars of product sold.

Invest in the transactions and the conversations that you have with

people. Really talk to them.

People who are just going after the dollars that they collect

from a craft show are missing out on such a huge

opportunity. Engage with your customers.

Ask them questions like,

how do you plan to use the product or would it

be helpful if these were in different sizes and if so,

what? Ask them if they're using the product for themselves or

they're giving it as a gift or ask them if they

have questions about the product or possibly they'll suggest new sense

or flavors that they'd like to say.

When you engage with a customer to this level,

not only is it a lot more fun to be working,

the craft shows it's gold and in terms of understanding what

you need to do to move forward,

to continue to resonate with your customers and grow your business

for the future.

They can guide you based on the answers to the questions

we were just talking about into what is best for future

product expansion or development.

You can also use some of the specific words that they

say to you in your copy,

so in your content for newsletters,

blog articles,

live video,

social media posts,

et cetera.

A little secret here is when you're using the words of

your customers,

they react by saying,

Oh my gosh,

that person gets me,

that person understands me and because of that of course I'm

going to be investing in using their products in a brick

and mortar shop.

When people are coming in,

get to know your customers,

particularly your regulars.

Welcome them into your shop by name,

suggest other items that based on what they've purchased last time

they might be interested in now take an interest in their

children or a celebration that you noticed on social media.

Now I know you pretty well and I am quite sure

that a lot of you who have physical shops are doing

this already.

It just nice to have a little reminder from time to

time. The big point here is people want to be recognized

and noticed and it's this one on one engagement that allows

you to do this on social media.

This means responding to individual comments and yes,

that does mean it takes some time to do that,

to respond and here's another tip.

When you respond.

That means not just pressing the like button or responding with

a little emoji or a single word.

Engagement should be at least four to six words for Facebook

to really recognize that you're engaging and talking with your customers,

which then influences the Facebook algorithm and lets you be seen

by more of your community.

But this is a deep topic for another podcast on Instagram.

Initiate a relationship through direct messages.

If someone is commenting on your post or comments to you

through a story,

start engagement with them,

some back and forth interaction.

And while this might seem like,

well you know Sue,

it's just one person.

One person develops into a deeper relationship,

they continue to spread the word and you develop additional relationships

with other people and your community starts to blossom before your

eyes. Keep this point number two,

close to heart and remember it every day.

Forget the masses.

It's one on one interaction that matters most,

and this actually leads into my point number three,

which is forget about vanity metrics.

It's fabulous that you have 25,000

people following your Facebook fan page.

How many of them are customers.

With the rise of social media,

we often boast how many followers we have on a page

or YouTube subscribers and it's so easy to be pushing and

pushing and spending dollars and time to increase those numbers,

but if you don't see a correlation of increased sales,

you're wasting a lot of effort.

Now stop and breathe.

Doesn't this sound great?

What I'm really telling you here is stop forcing numbers to

grow your vanity metrics and start just talking with people one

on one.

As I said,

this is an extension of point number two but with an

online focus,

it works just the same online as it does in person

one on one.

Relationships are key.

When people feel like you have recognized them,

they're going to spread the word and by all means,

don't be throwing dollars to buy likes.

Stop working so darn hard for these vanity numbers.

Forget about the social proof.

Do you want to be able to say that you have

1000 new likes or would you prefer to say you have

1000 more dollars in sales today?

For most of us.

We don't need new followers.

We need to go deeper with the ones we already have.

To illustrate this further,

I want you to think about a dinner party,

so you're hosting a party.

You invite 10 people and they show up at your house.

You welcome them in,

you give them a drink and they're sitting around getting to

know each other and enjoying themselves.

What do you do?

Hopefully your,

they're interacting with your guests and enjoying the whole scene.

You aren't out in the street with a big sign recruiting

more people to come into your party and then leaving your

guests there to fend for themselves.

That's similar to what we often do on social media.

We bring someone in,

kind of forget about them.

Go and grab more,

bring them in,

forget about them and more and more and on and on.

Instead of attracting our perfect customers and then engaging with them,

learning about them,

finding out how they feel about our products and what we

can do to serve them better and provide more of what

they want.

A really eyeopening fact came out of Shalene Johnson's mouth that

I really couldn't believe.

I almost don't even believe it right now,

but she swears it to be true.

If you don't know Shaleen,

she's a motivational speaker,

author, a health and lifestyle expert,

very, very,

very well known.

She has,

gosh, I don't even know,

hundreds of thousands of followers for sure.

So you'd think someone like her,

well, why does she need to engage?

But you know what?

She says that she engages and interacts with her community for

hours every single day for hours.

You guys.

Now, granted,

I don't think any of us who are smaller businesses have

the time to do that because we're doing other things within

our business.

But it brings home the truth to the fact that you

should be building into your day and intentionally finding time to

engage with your audience.

Chalene isn't the only one who's modeling this behavior.

Pat Flynn,

who is an icon in the podcasting and online course creation

arenas, selects three to five of his students every single month

and get on the phone with them,

asks them how things are going,

what their challenges are,

and find other ways that he can serve them.

What does that do?

First of all,

it shocks the people that he gets in touch with,

but then it also helps him provide more and more content

that's helpful for his audience so that they'll continue to follow

him and find value in the content that he brings forward.

And this is key because if he doesn't continue to provide

value, he's gonna lose portions of his audience.

It's very similar us as product based businesses.

If we don't continue to add to our lines,

show reasons why people should be continuing to purchase our product

with different ways you can use a product,

for example,

then the product starts to become stale and customers drop off.

Okay, I got a little bit off track here.

Let's get back on target in points two and three.

Both of them are talking about one-on-one interaction versus scaling and

trying to get in front of a million people.

There's a phrase that people talk about specially online,

but what they'll say is that a lot of these things

that you might do one on one don't scale.

In other words,

doing an individual direct message to somebody.

There's no way you could do that to everybody in your

community as you get bigger and bigger.

So people will say,

don't invest your time into things that don't scale.

The big news now is that that is getting retracted.

People are seeing that just as I've been talking about here,

these one on one interactions where you can't do it to

every single person on your list.

You can make an effort to interact with as many people

one on one as possible and it does scale.

When you redefine what scale means,

if scale means to you bringing in more business and more

customers, then it is scaling because more people are getting to

know you.

product versus finding 10 who will.

Okay, moving on to point number four,

get ready you guys.

I'm preparing myself to get a little bit of kickback from

you. We've seen this already trending,

but now more than ever,

point number four is video rules and live is even better.

Take a look at every single platform and you'll notice that

there is at least one and in many cases more areas

where you'll be able to do not just video but specifically

live. So you've got Facebook posts of course,

but then you have Facebook live.

You also on Instagram have stories and I TV,

the emphasis on video and particularly live is more prevalent now

than ever.

There is no more posting on your feed so that you

can automated through some type of scheduler.

Check it off your list and say,

okay, it's done.

Your posts need to serve your audience and be a value

because they address their needs.

So informative,

educational, entertaining,

and more specifically bringing your customers closer to you and developing

the one on one relationship and trust.

That's the overlying theme to all of these points here and

certainly the overlying theme to all of social media marketing world

this year.

Now there is good news to those of you who aren't

interested in talking and being on camera,

although I do feel that this is the best way for

you to develop a relationship with your customer so that they

see your face,

your uniqueness,

and your personality coming through face to face,

eyeball to eyeball,

through video.

There are also other ways and other things that you can

do live that might be a little more comfortable for you,

specially as you're just getting started.

Here's some ideas for you.

Have the camera pointing at a product while you talk about

it so they're still getting your voice,

but the camera is focused on something else.

This you could do for unboxing new products.

Let's say you got some brand new ingredients in that you

want to share,

making the product.

Everyone's so interested in behind the scenes and how things are

made, and that doesn't mean you give away all of your

secrets, but you give them a little bit of insight into

your product and how it comes to be the finished product

that they would buy.

You can do pictures of being at the farmer's market or

at a craft show,

interacting with customers,

networking at an event.

I did a lot through social media marketing,

world sharing and bringing to my audience.

Perhaps a lot of you've seen it,

some of the antiques that went on at the conference.

You could go online and talk about your thoughts on a

particular thing that's happening with the industry or something that's even

happening right in your community and you can involve your customers,

ask them questions that they can interact with you on through

Instagram stories.

For example,

you could take a picture of a product and then use

the stickers to get your audience to respond to whatever question

you're asking.

Have them help you make decisions on product names or what

the next color's going to be that you're going to bring

in for your candles.

Of course I have to say candles.

Ask them which shows they would like to see you at

or any other questions that you're sitting back at the shop

pondering and when you ask for feedback from a customer and

then you actually use their ideas,

they feel more valued,

they feel like they're part of the whole development process and

you've gained a customer for life.

Now you can also let another employee take the lead if

you are that adverse to going on camera.

The point is somebody should be doing live video.

A couple of tips here for you with regard to Instagram

stories. I would limit your story each day to somewhere between

five and nine clips,

Instagram stories that have 7,000

dashes across the top of the stories because there's one clip

after another after another after another and it goes on forever.

People just click out of,

nobody has time to look at stories that are that long

video on the Facebook newsfeed.

You have about three seconds to capture someone's attention,

for them to decide that they're going to watch more.

And most people are watching with the sound off.

So if you're doing Facebook video on the newsfeed,

make sure you have captions also so that people can watch

it when they aren't in a position to have access to

the audio.

Now when you get into the live platforms,

so Facebook live,

Instagram live,

Instagram, TV,

YouTube, et cetera,

those are the places where you can do long form video

up to an hour or more in length.

This emphasis on live is an effort for people to really

be able to get to know you in your pure,

raw and real form.

These videos are not overproduced,

they don't have overlays and all this crazy production stuff going

on with them.

And that's the whole point.

You're showing up as yourself,

you're sharing who you are,

who's behind the business,

things about your product and that why they work so well.

And finally I'm moving on to point number five and I

think this is going to be the scariest realization of all,

but if you really look back in history,

you'll see that this has been a long time in coming

and that is we no longer have control of our brand

or the messaging that goes out about us.

Our customers are now our marketing department.

They will now and forever more have control.

Mark Shaffer talks about this in his newly released book,

the marketing rebellion.

He talks about the fact that we aren't in charge anymore,

our customers are.

It has become our customers messages that hold more weight than

ours ever will now and in the future.

He goes on to mention that customer loyalty has gone by

the wayside.

There are way too many options and distractions.

Research has shown that about 13% of your customers are loyal

overall. Not only that,

but two thirds of marketing occurs without us.

People see your website or they're referred to your competitor instead

of you and you don't even know it.

The only way that we can take control of this seemingly

uncontrollable situation is to build real relationships with our tribe.

That means time in getting personal and being human.

Now here's the great news.

In all of that,

86 7% of customers are available and not loyal to anybody.

So that means that they can be attracted to you.

And the way you do this is through what we've been

talking about through all five of these points.

You do it through one on one relationship building activities.

Those things we've just been talking about.

And the best news of all is that most people and

probably your competitors,

won't take the actions to attract these people.

You can because you know better and you'll do better and

you will win big time.

To summarize again,

these five points,

number one,

your company brand must contain you.

Number two,

forget about mass marketing one on one matters most and towards

that end 0.3,

forget about vanity metrics.

million Facebook followers.

Number four,

let us see you video and live most specifically rules.

And finally your customers are your marketing department.

Find them through one on one connections,

hold them close,

make them feel special,

noticed and seen and you will be the big winner of

There you have it.

landscape continues to change and as savvy business owners we need

to change right along with it.

And the first thing is identifying what's different and secondly is

implementing it into our day to day activities.

Knowing about these five points is one thing,

but actually doing something about them to affect your business is

a completely separate thing.

So if you've been out and listening to this while you're

walking your dog or you're out at the gym,

I suggest that you go back and listen to this one

more time,

pen and paper in hand,

and then take the next step.

Think of how specifically you are going to take one or

two of these right away and do something different within your

business to affect change.

That's the way we grow and develop our companies.

And how our businesses stay relevant because we have to stay

up with the times up next week.

You guys another show,

I know you're gonna love,

it's another on air coaching call.

You've told me often how much you're enjoying these,

and I think because of your feedback,

I'm going to be putting out the word that I'm going

to be doing some additional coaching calls,

so stay tuned for information on that.

To be selected for an on air coaching call,

you need to be part of the breeze.

That's my private Facebook group gift biz breeze.

So if you're not already over there,

jump in and request to join.

That's a wrap and I look forward to us all being

together again next week.

Bye for now.

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