We want to hear from you! How do you share your store, listings, and affiliate links on social media? Your experiences can help our community thrive.
What strategies have you found effective for promoting your products?
Are there specific platforms that work better for you?
Have you encountered any challenges when sharing links? What was the fix?
Let’s share tips, tricks, and solutions. Comment below with your insights and let’s learn from each other. Your input could inspire someone else to take their sales to the next level!
Make sure you have a business page set up, don’t use your personal page. If you want it to be a real business, you cannot depend on friend’s and family’s business. If they want to follow your business page they will.
Facebook is always changing their algorithm. I used to get good results from sharing a link in the post itself, but at some point FB started severely limiting views on posts with links. Now it is better to share a link in the comments, and let them know the link is in the comments.
On Instagram, using Linktree is a good way to have all your website and marketplace links on your profile.
People like to know there’s a real person behind the product. I myself am a bit camera shy, but showing behind-the-scenes, in-process, and what’s going on in my life (nothing TOO personal) often gets more likes than a straight product shot. So a mix of both is important.
I try to do social media but my success rate is negligible.
I post 3 or 4 products a week on my main Facebook page which connects to my business page. Then I post to Instagram. I use a bunch of hash tags.
I’ve been on Instagram for ~5 months, and my only followers are my sister, my sister-in-law, 2 nieces, 2 high school friends, 2 other artists from my FB friends, and several guys whom I figure to be catfishing so I ignore them. Basically, no one new who found me through my numerous hash tags or my beautiful product photography. The spammers don’t count as people.
As Rino said, create a business page. Once you’ve done that, here’s what I’ve found to work:
Rule number 1 for social media (IMHO) is it has to be fresh. If you set up a page and visitors see it hasn’t been updated in months, they’ll question the viability of your company. I have a reminder set for every Thursday morning prompting me to go post something (my customers tend to do their shopping on Sundays and Mondays, so this gets the post out there in time for it to be discovered).
I think it helps to mix in the occasional random post so that not all posts are pushing product; the random post is usually something funny or informative about the industry I’m in.
Also important is to be FAST in replying to comments (it’s actually a metric in Facebook).
Always be polite and understanding and NEVER be combative. If the comment is vulgar or off-topic, delete it; otherwise, engage with the person and remember that there will be others reading the exchange to gather information.
Videos are very effective in getting people to engage; CapCut is an easy-to-use video editing tool; try to keep videos to 30 seconds or less (shorter is usually better but not if it ruins the message you’re trying to convey).
Most people will view your video on their phone, so it works best to create it in profile (vertical) as opposed to landscape (horizontal).
When using images, try not to clutter them with a lot of text; put any lengthy text in the post’s text field.
You will likely have to spend money to get eyeballs and boosting your post (you should see a “Boost” button anytime you post) is a relatively cheap and effective way to get them. Even a dollar a day is better than nothing.
Make sure that you set your account to a business account.
Promote your Insta account to your followers on your Facebook (business) Page and include it on your shop profiles and business/thank you cards.
Make a photo carousel into a short video. IG will bug you to do thus, actually. But for some reason the little videos draw folks in, even if it’s basically just a slide show.
Do a hands-only video of a handmade work in progress. It doesn’t have to be more than 15 seconds or be fancy–but show the craft. Or a view of raw materials/supplies. OR (and I’m very sorry, but it works) a “pack an order with me” video.
Post at least 3x/week, and try to make some posts Instagram-only. Especially the little videos/slide shows.
Encourage actual customers to follow and comment, especially if they see their item featured.
On IG, you’re not trying to advertise to shoppers (even though you are)–you’re trying to build followers and reach. So like IRL, where you hear “no” for 90% of sales asks, 90% of your IG followers will not be shoppers…but 10% might be.
Honestly, IG is where you can relax a bit, nerd out, amd show off.
Since I work full time, I neither have the time or desire to promote on SM anymore, and even when I did, I wasn’t drowning in sales lol. I think IG and FB are a hot mess, honestly. Pinterest is more of a search engine but you still have to pin constantly.
I harbor no doubt that our friends @Rino, @meredithbead, @SellerFeller, & @papy (along with our friend @Dreamscape-Studio) are all speaking of the need to separate personal accounts from business accounts when using SocMed for promoting one’s business.
On Instagram for newer accounts it’s evidently “professional” account (rather than “business”). Whatever it’s called, you get more features and tools than with a personal account.
Screenshot from a personal NOT professional account:
On FB, I have a personal account and a business account. The same products are shown on both, but the business account is biz only.
I spent the last 5 minutes trying to figure out how to do that — or for that matter, which type of account I have. I signed up on Instagram as Meredithbead, my biz name, but I have no idea if it’s actually a business account.
Thanks! I finally found it and switched to business. Not sure what difference it will make as I thought it was business before and I probably won’t do anything different. Whatever, it’s done
What strategies have you found effective for promoting your products?
NOTE: My images are from the mobile app. If you’re using a browser and/or desktop, your view might be slightly different.