What are some ideas for keeping fans engaged and coming back to your Etsy social media channels for more? Put yourself in the shoes of one of your fans. That should be easy to do, as you are also a fan of the subject matter in your shop. Otherwise you would not be selling what you sell, right?
Of course, one of the main reasons that we started our social media pages for Etsy is to sell our items. But, we have to be careful about how we offer items to fans. We cannot cram the items down their throats. We cannot keep posting simple ads over and over again. So, how do we get people to buy our goods, without making them uncomfortable?
As part of our discussion on branding, we talked about the importance of treating people like friends and not sales targets. This is even more important on Etsy social media sites, as people already see tons of spam ads each day. They do not want to see more in their favorite hang-out area.
Etsy provides very easy avenues for sharing new item listings with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. There is nothing wrong with sharing several of your new items on your pages. BUT, make them personal. Post a comment under each one on Facebook, or send a second tweet on Twitter. For example, “Hello friends! Here is the newest addition to your shop name. We got the inspiration for the item from blah, blah, blah…” – you get the point. Don’t just spam your peeps.
We are going to talk about the specifics of each social media site in this chapter, but here are some general ideas for posts that will keep fans engaged. Keep your posts as diverse as possible, while staying focused on your subject matter.
The goal is to promote your products and shop to people without them realizing it.
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Visit your social media sites and page down through old posts. You want variety. You also want to visually stimulate your followers with original and/or vibrant photos. We want people to come back to our sites because they have developed a relationship with us and other fans on the site. When you look at your prior posts, do you feel like you are valued as a person and not just a sales target?
Again, you want your social media pages to be part of your Etsy shop’s brand. The best way to accomplish the visual correlation is to have the same designer create all of your headers. I used Fiverr.com and paid $20 to have the same graphic designer make my Etsy shop header design and then use that same image by resizing it for my Pinterest photo and Facebook and Twitter business page headers.
Make sure that you use create a business page for each of the “Big 3” using your Etsy shop name (or as close to it as you can, if somebody else is already using your shop name). You should launch social media business pages on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter immediately after you build your shop and have a small inventory of items listed. All of your business pages should look and feel like your Etsy shop. Cross promote your business pages by posting links on the other pages. For instance, announce your new Twitter business page on Facebook and provide a link. “We’d love to see you on our new Twitter page! Please Follow us on Twitter by visiting us at (your Twitter URL here).”
You should also be consistent with how you interact with your customers. Use the same enthusiastic language that you use in your shop, in item descriptions and inside product packages on your social media pages. Use the same lingo and keep the same tone across all of your social media outlets.
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