Growing Your Mosaics Business With Facebook

Facebook has assembled what is almost certainly the largest gathering of people in the history of earth. Even better, many of them are potential buyers of your mosaics, or classes, or whatever your business sells. And probably best of all, their interests are identifiable so you can target those more likely to buy what you sell. So what you need to bring to the table is a social media marketing program that can get results. This is what it takes to build an in-house social media marketing program.

There are some things you should know and have before you begin marketing in ernest on Facebook. The things to know include:

• some of the demographic and psychographic characteristics of your target audience i.e. age, gender, location, and interests for a starter
• you can have both a personal page (profile) and a company page (page)
• everything you post will not be seen by all of your connections
• you can and should post multiple times per day

The things you should have include:

• a website that is ecommerce enabled so buyers never have to wait to make a purchase
• a blog on your website that helps your target customers achieve their objectives
• an image production capability that includes both video and still photos
• an operating plan that uses all of your projects and classes as a new online promotional opportunity

Now for the 5 things that should be a part of your social media marketing program (Facebook and other social media platforms):

First, there must be content on the company website. It is usually contained in the blog, but there is no rule that says it must be. The content has to be relevant to the your target market and most of all it has to be about them, their needs, not yours. If your company sells classes, the content should include mosaic techniques that inform and inspire people who want to make mosaics. If you specialize in kitchens and baths maybe the content is about interior design and includes more than mosaics. Your customer has many facets in their life and if the content is for them it may work if the content addresses other facets.

The content can be original or curated. The best results will come from a blend. Build a content machine and if you would like to curate content we have, ask us. The objectives of the content are to help the consumer, build your visibility and credibility and to get people to visit your website.

Second, the content has to be promoted to an audience who will hear your story. I've seen artists that have diligently posted to their social media pages, but to audiences of just a few. The content can be compelling, but the smaller the audience, the less the traffic to the website will be. Getting 1% of a thousand to visit the website is better than getting 10% of 50.

Every social media marketing program must have continuous and focused effort on building audience. It may be the most difficult activity in social media marketing. I recommend against using ads to get "likes." Our experience has been that you get ghosts at best and more likely, ghosts that are out of the target market. A good way on Facebook to build an audience is to participate in groups that contain people who are potential customers.

Third, the audience must be converted to fans who tell your story for you. These are people that have experienced exceptional customer service and have been engaged by your company's content.

Fourth, promotion of content that drives traffic to the company website must be frequent. Content that is image based will be far more successful. A blend of three objectives are all that should be pursued; 1) help people solve their problem with what you know, 2) drive traffic to your website, and 3) get shared by your audience to their friends. If it is good enough to get shared it will also build top-of-mind awareness.

Fifth, it must be managed, which means that someone must be responsible for setting objectives, collecting and analyzing metrics, and adjusting the efforts to achieve desired outputs. Metrics for the four required processes could include the number of blog posts per month, number of social media posts per month, audience additions (likes, followers, newsletter subscribers), website traffic from Facebook, etc.

All of this is a good starting place. Do it well and consistently and it will drive sales.