Bloom Business Basics Bootcamp Week 6: Social Media

business basics bootcamp setting up your business social media Jun 24, 2020

We’re in week 6 of bootcamp, and hopefully you’ve picked up a few nuggets of wisdom about how you can get the nuts and bolts of your business set up. To review, we’ve covered how to decide if you can sell, pricing your products, naming your business, tracking your money, and accepting payments.

Now, let's talk about stirring up some excitement online!

Social media is a great way to get some quick and easy awareness of your business. E-V-E-R-Y-B-O-D-Y and their mother (literally) is on at least one social media platform, and chances are they have seen and purchased something after they saw a post.

The “Big 3” social media platforms that have the most users are:

Facebook, with 2.6 billion monthly active users
YouTube, with over 2 billion monthly active users
Instagram, with over 1 billion active monthly users

I’d be willing to bet that you have an account on at least ONE of these platforms, likely 2 or all 3. On each of these platforms, you can create a free business account for your handmade business.

If you haven’t already, it's time to start foraging out into the world of posting your creations for your audience to ooh and aah over.

The million dollar questions, though:

🤷🏻‍♀️ WHERE do you start?

🤷🏻‍♀️ WHERE do you spend your time?

🤷🏻‍♀️ WHERE do you put your efforts?

Here’s the truth of the matter: you can’t be everywhere all the time, ESPECIALLY when you are just starting out. 10+ years into this business and I still can only really manage 1, maybe 2 of these platforms with any regularity.

So how to decide?

You need to be showing up where your target audience is showing up.

How do you know where they are?

Well...you have to know WHO your perfect customer is and find out where they are spending time. Knowing your customer and speaking to that ONE person might sound counter-intuitive, but BELIEVE ME, this is an exercise that will open your eyes to the possibilities of working a niche and connecting on a level that brings you raving fans and loyal repeat buyers.

There are many schools of thought on this, but in my experience and in my observations of many other businesses, knowing who you are speaking to with your product and your marketing (i.e., your social media posts) and consistently showing up where THEY show up is sowing the seeds for long-term success.

Side note:If you haven’t identified this “perfect customer” yes, I’ve got a free 5 day challenge where you can start to dig deep into finding the people who will soak up every bit of crafty goodness that you create.

Now, back to social media.

If you have no idea where to start and no idea what to do, I recommend these steps:

Create a business account on each of the platforms that you would like to use (even if you aren’t going to use it yet) to make sure that your business name/account name is available. (If you don’t have a name set yet, you can check out this bootcamp post that talks all about naming your business).
Set up those account profiles with your name, logo, picture, website, etc….again, even if you don’t want to use them quite yet, you still want it to “look” like you if it gets found in a search
Choose ONE platform where you (personally) are showing up most consistently
Start posting on that platform at least once per day: this could be product photos, work-in-progress photos, memes that your audience finds funny, relevant news articles, etc.
Invite all of your friends on that platform to follow you (no shame in that game: no one loves you as much as friends and family so there’s nothing wrong with asking for some social media love!) and, if they want to go above and beyond, to share some of your posts
Repeat!