If you spend a lot of time on social media but are not getting much or anything
at all in return, it's only natural to ask yourself:
is promoting my shop on social media even worth it,
or is it just a total waste of time? Let's look into it.
Hi, I'm Deb and I'm the founder of Tizzit.co,
a site dedicated to helping makers and handmade shop owners start and grow
successful handmade businesses.
Over the years I've worked with hundreds of handmade sellers and heard over and
over again: "Deb, social media is simply not working for me.
I spend a lot of time on it. I'm posting regularly,
I'm doing all of the things I'm meant to be doing,
but I'm not getting anything in return.
I'm not getting traffic and I'm certainly not getting sales.
My mom from time to time, comments on and likes my pictures,
but she's clearly not my ideal customer. Am I losing my time?
That's why we need to have an honest conversation about this because I don't
want you to be losing your time on social media, but the truth is you might be.
Social media
can be a very powerful way to get traffic and engage with your followers and
customers and create this sense of community,
which is really the best way to get repeat sales and to get word of mouth
referrals.
But it's only worth your time if you're laser focused on what you want to get
from it and if you're using it very strategically. If you don't, then yes,
social media is an absolute waste of time and not only a waste of time but a big
waste of time because it is also an absolute time suck and very time consuming.
So here are a couple of questions to help you maybe rethink the way you're using
social media so that you can make sure that you're not wasting your time on it
and that you're actually using it strategically. The first question is:
are you trying to grow more than one social media platform at a time?
If you are,
then you're probably wasting time on at least one or more of them because you're
so much better off focusing on a single one.
If you do too much and you're trying to be on Facebook and on Instagram and on
this and that,
you're spreading yourself thin and you're not actually making good use of your
time because what that does is it means that you're really splitting your time
between all those different platforms and you don't have time to actually dive
deep into the strategy of each platform and engage on the community of each
platform.
You're just sort of being average everywhere and you're not really growing any
of them or definitely not quick enough. You're much better off saying: "hey,
you know what?
I'm not going to look at Facebook" or "I'm not going to look at Instagram" and
just pick the one that you want to focus on.
So if you want to focus on Instagram, it's okay.
Just focus on that until you can grow it to a certain number of followers.
Once you feel like you've got a bit of a rhythm and a bit of a routine going on
with it, then add another platform to your social media arsenal if you want.
But really doing too much is a waste of time.
The beauty is that you can just say:
"I'm not going to do Facebook anymore" or "I'm not going to do Instagram
anymore". That's all that time saved that you used to spend that platform.
Even if you were to spend half that time on the one platform you want to focus
on instead, you'll be much more efficient with it.
The second question you want to ask yourself is:
are you strategically writing posts and captions that not only showcase your
products and your brand - because of course you need to be sharing things about
your products and your brand - but also,
and most importantly that are entertaining,
inspiring and engaging. You want to engage with your followers.
If you're only posting about you and your products,
you have to reconsider and start thinking,
"how can I start conversation with people on that platform?
How can I start a community and engage with my followers and potential
customers?" You need to build a relationship with your followers.
If you're not thinking this way and you're just thinking about pushing your
product and only posting pictures of a new product with a caption like, "Hey,
new product in stock,
click here to buy" then you are wasting your time because people don't go on
social media to buy stuff. Of course some of them do and that's a great thing,
but it's a small percentage.
Most of us go on social media because we're bored at the bus stop or we just
finished work and we're tired and we're just on the sofa and we want to cruise
for 15 minutes or we're at lunch break and we just have 15 minutes to kill and
we want to be inspired, we want laugh, we want to be entertained.
So really ask yourself,
"what do my followers and potential customers want to see on social media and
how can I give that to them?" Now if you're watching this thinking "Deb,
I have no idea how to do that. I have no idea how to entertain and engage.
I know how to make my products, but I don't know how to do that".
Then I would recommend you watch another video I've made.
It's a bit of a longer video but it's really worth it because it's more of a
workshop where we really go through examples of other handmade sellers that are
doing that well to give you examples and inspiration so that you can understand
how you can use that in your own business and start making social media work for
you so that it's not such a waste of time anymore. I hope this helped.
I will make sure to put the link to this video that I just mentioned below this
one and I really think it's a really helpful video,
so make sure to make the time to actually watch it and implement what you learn
in it.
I'm sure this will really help you to go from "my social media sucks and I hate
doing it because it's not doing much for me" to finally seeing results.
I'll also put a link below this video to my free resource library for makers and
handmade shop owners, full of guides,
workbooks and checklists to help you grow your handmade shop.
If you like this video, don't forget to hit subscribe.
I release a new video every Tuesday with the goal to help you start and grow a
successful handmade business. See you next Tuesday. Bye Bye.