How will you use social media for your business in 2024?

[tranguyen]

Hey Seller Community 👋

It's freezing here this week in Dublin, which means I've been spending a lot of time huddling with my hot water bottle inside rather than braving the cold outdoors. And it inevitably means I spend a lot of time surfing Instagram and various social media channels for entertainment. 

The social media landscape has definitely changed a lot in the last couple of years, with new formats and even completely new platforms like TikTok or Threads. We'd love to learn:

How will you will social media for your business in 2024?

Is there a particular platform you will be focusing on? Do you have a strategy or how do you organize your content? Is it still a managable task or are you looking to hire outside help to manage social media for your business?

Looking forward to reading all your replies 📱

[MudFire_Deanna]

Lol - as a Gen-Xer I am resistant to social media change - I'd love to be inspired to produce more content for threads or TikTok - but how to get inspired to do it? 

I don't particularly use social media for entertainment either so I'm in the minority of the world in general. It is a strugggggllllleeeeee.

[maxpete]

Not going to lie, I am kind of jealous that you don't use social media for entertainment!

In terms of inspiration for content, I always go back to the advice of "create the content that you want to see and make." I use that a lot to help me craft posts and just ideas of how I want to show up on social. 

[MudFire_Deanna]

Lol I'm an analog character for sure - I use my phone for music, reading the news, and rarely know where it is. It is a great frustration to all those who know me. 

I think the problem is that I don't show up on social 🙂

[DLRosenberg]

Not showing up on social is a huge business issue. I am also GenX. We have the ability to reach people where in the past we'd have to pay for television advertising. I beat this drum a lot- but start watching YouTube video on how to get started on TikTok and Instagram. Threads is a huge creative community that would be n amazing place for you. I admittedly don't spend enough time on there.. 

[DLRosenberg]

My advice to everyone trying to get into TikTok more is to consume before you create. Spend time in there looking at creators like you.  What content inspires you- within your niche and outside it. Get an idea for what content is working.. what isn’t.. and then begin to post. Don’t worry about messing up. Experiment with it. 

[maxpete]

Smart! Also, big +1 to experimenting! 

[DLRosenberg]

You can't get attached to a style of content. It changes so so quickly. TikTok has been a HUGE game changer for us, driving an additional $79,000 in sales 4Q23 and $145k since we started in August. I get that for whatever reason social media can be a turn off for people that don't use it- but it is FREE! I literally don't understand why you don't want free attention for your business.

Even if you put out content and only 10 people see it.. that's 10 more people that know about you than when you started. 

[Lovewell]

@tranguyen We are team Instagram! Social media has been our main and most effective us of marketing for our business. 

We plan to do more collabs with our city's official instagram to get the word out. 

If you followers don't make actual customers that come in then it doesn't matter much. So we will be focusing on actual organic growth and asking how people have found out about us to see if social media is effective. 

That's what we've got! 

[maxpete]

This sounds like a great plan! Definitely agree about making sure your audience on social turns into customers as well! 

[isabelle]

Would love to see an instagram post you're most proud of @Lovewell 😘

[Lovewell]

Honestly not sure if I have a favorite! 
Usually when we do our year recap reels or I think at year two I made a reel of the first two years we’ve been open and those always get me in my feels.

[DLRosenberg]

We are focused on TikTok and Instagram. The content we create for both is different. Insta is where we hold our live author chats and live sales and TikTok we use for TikTok shop and education.  We are trying to pay more attention to YouTube shorts- repurposing our live author talks on Insta into short as well as long form content. We will be launching a podcast in 2 weeks so we are super excited for that as well. 

[maxpete]

Excited for the podcast!

[DLRosenberg]

We are too! launching 1/26 in all places podcasts are listened to or watched!

[JUYBoutique20]

Congrats on the podcast.  Make sure to come back here and share a link so we all can check it out.

[Bronze_Palms]

I am super excited to report that after [putting my blood, sweat, and tears into a recent] reel the business on Instagram is really growing followers and converting them into paying clients. We also added $$ behind it so we could reach a local audience. I will run that as an ad indefinitely because it is doing great.

I love that this piece of content did a great job of showing the brand's personality, all services, and adds a personalized touch,

Reel - https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2FxwwBv_io/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

[JUYBoutique20]

Congratulations on your Instagram growth.

[maxpete]

That's awesome! Nice work on converting followers into customers too!

[JUYBoutique20]

We're definitely going to step up our social media game this year.  I've ordered my backdrops for my pics and can't wait to start taking pics of myself and my daughter to upload on our pages.  I'm going to focus on FB, Instagram, and maybe TikTok....

[maxpete]

Excited to see the progress with this!