eCommerce Catalyst Course Part 8
Social Networking and Blogging = More Sales
Attention eCommerce storeowners! Stop avoiding social networks and blogs!
I’ve heard the excuses – social networks are for people not businesses or I don’t know how to talk about my business conversationally – and I say to you two things, first you’re wrong and second it’s not as hard as you think.
I’ll admit I put off getting involved with them at first too for those very reasons. But I just kept hearing about them. Everyday it was Twitter is great for branding or Facebook just got me another sale or my blog ranks better than my store now! I finally gave in and accepted that it was a real thing and it wasn’t going away.
That’s what you need to do. Embrace social networking and blogging for your business and you’ll begin to see the power of communicating with a focused network of people.
It’s very different from traditional types of marketing because these people WILL NOT put up with spam or constant sales offers. They don’t want to be sold to; they actually want to interact with you online. That’s why it’s so important to practice “Green Thumb” social marketing. You need to learn to speak conversationally about your business and engage people instead of just throwing links at them.
I suggest you go about it one of two ways. Speak as your business or speak as yourself about your business. This comes down to a personal choice. I find speaking as my business very limiting, but there are plenty of people out there doing just that with great results. 
I prefer speaking as myself. I talk about my stores and my life. I find it easier to connect with people that way.
Decide based on your favored (whatever feels the most natural) writing style. Whatever way you choose to go it’s going to take practice and diligence to get the flow. My rule for writing is if it feels forced as you write, it will come through in the post and end up being even less fun to read than it was to write. You’re not going to be able to get your thoughts out in 140 characters or less effortlessly at first but once you get the hang of it social networking can be a lot of fun as well as beneficial for your business.
My examples below are focused on blogging but they can easily be applied to your social networks, you just have to make them more succinct when posting them. If a new product or product line is received well on the blog I’ll promote it through some of my social marketing sites like Facebook. I’ve found it helps to have an indicator as to the interest in a product before promoting it socially. That crowd is more sensitive to advertising and will unfriend, unfollow, or otherwise block you if you send them things in which they have no interest. That’s one of the reasons I think blogs and social marketing go hand in hand.
Vary Your Posts
I don’t make all my posts sales offers. I break it up to make sure I have enough information and fun stuff to keep my readers interested and coming back. I suggest testing the ratio of sales to informational posts to see what your readers like the best. You should be able to tell based on your traffic and sales analytics.
Not enough eCommerce storeowners run specials or sales for their blog readers. “Blog reader specials” (this is my own made up term) are not advertised in the store, they are designed for blog readers only. This may sound silly but singling out a group of people and telling them they get something special because they do something not everyone else does makes them feel, well, special. And what’s better than making a potential customer feel good?
There are a lot of ways to go about this and as always testing is key. Your customers may not respond to the same things my customers do so experiment to see what gets you the best results. My two main tactics are a simple blog reader discount and a featured blog reader special product.
The blog reader discount is just a coupon code good for a percentage off any order. Since it’s a blanket discount for anything from the store I try to make sure customers know it. I’ll usually attach one of these to the end of regular posts; I don’t make special posts just for the open discount. I make it its own paragraph for separation from the body of the post and do not mention any products specifically in the offer text.
This is because I want my blog readers to know instantly that the discount is not tied to the products mentioned in the post but to all the products in the store. They may not be interested in the products the rest of the post talks about and I don’t want to lose them because I wasn’t clear enough about the nature of the discount.
The product special is basically the complete opposite of the blanket discount; it is a blog only discount on a single item or product line.
If my previous post was related to flintlock pistols my product special would feature one of my bestselling replica flintlocks. The post would describe the product a bit but put equal focus on the blog only nature of the special. I add a nice big picture of the product, another coupon code, and a link back to the product.
Before I run one of these I check stock with my vendor on the product I intend to promote, you don’t want to go all out on a product you have only a few of. I also make a unique coupon code for the product, for example if I was promoting my English Flintlock pistol I would make the code englishflintblog. I run these once or twice a month. They’re a great way to get product images on your blog, links to product pages on your site, and sales based on items of which you have a good amount of stock.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to blogging and social promotion. Test different types of posts, respond to your followers and subscribers; tend and grow your social networks with a Green Thumb and your store will begin to reap the rewards of your personal involvement with your customer base.
