5 Mistakes Most Businesses Make Using Facebook

My friend and college over at Uniquely UK, Erika (she who makes divine jewellery!) recently wrote a blog post about Getting Facebook Updates and it prompted me to think about how we use Facebook as small business owners and where we all typically go wrong.

Using Facebook as a promotional tool, a marketing tool is a new concept to a lot of us. Especially those who are used to traditional marketing methods, like advertising, direct marketing (leaflet drops), press releases and sponsored links. All of these cost money and for most small businesses out there, especially newly formed businesses with little or no capital backup, these are simply unattainable.

I recently shared a post whereby the 'payment' for some work was a quarter page advert in the Craftseller Magazine:

This advert would have cost me £250 plus VAT which is far more than I could afford for one month's worth of advertising, even in a great magazine like this.

So we are left with the ever popular 'free advertising' that can be done on social media sites like Facebook.

Here are 5 of the things that most business page owners will do on Facebook, why they're not good and what you can do instead:

1. Liking from a business page

A like from a business page doesn't count towards your total number of likes, as seen here:

Now while this isn't really a problem for the business page doing the 'liking' it will potentially bother the owner of the page you are liking. Whilst it isn't all about the 'likes' counter, it is important to most of us as a reflection of how many people potentially we can reach with our products and how many potential customers we have. You are much more likely to get a visit (and hopefully a 'like') in return if you like the fellow business page from your personal page and leave a comment such as "Just visiting your gorgeous page, love the XXX you make! Simmi from @Grace's Favours xxx"

2. Not posting often enough

In order to keep up interest in your page, you need to be posted content at least once a day in an ideal world. This is easy for some of us, who like me, are practically glued to their computer or smart phone... ahem... but for others, this poses a real time management issue.

Did you know you can schedule posts? It's really easy:

Write your post as normal and then click on the little clock icon in the bottom left hand corner of the box

Choose the date and time you want the post released and click 'Schedule'

Note: UTC means Coordinated Universal Time or as we more often know it, GMT - Greenwich Mean Time.

3. Just posting product links

One thing that puts me off quicker than anything else on any social media platform (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc) is when a business just posts links to it's new products and listings. Nothing else, no behind the screens tidbits, no work in progress photos, no chatty posts to help you get to know the person behind the business, just links to products.

If I come across a business doing this, I unfollow and unlike quickly. As a customer/potential customer you need to feel interested in the business page and engaged with them. The best pages for this are the ones who share a great mix of product photos and links, information about their workspace, or what they find hard to motivate themselves to do for their business or stories about disasters - everyone loves a good disaster - it's happened to us all, but we do like the reassurance that even the most organised, together of business owners don't get it right all the time!

4. Not interacting with networking pages

This is a debatable issue as some people get a lot more out of this practice than others. I have wasted many many hours (more than I care to admit!) on networking pages like UK Mums Who Make or I Run A Small Business trawling through posts, leaving comments with links to my products, posting about new products that I've made, etc BUT.... there are times when it's really worth putting up a post on a networking page. If you have a new product to shout about, especially one which is relevant to an upcoming event like Easter or St Patrick's Day, it can boost your reach enormously to interact with the appropriate networking pages.

If you are a new business, or just new to Facebook, it can definitely be worthwhile checking out some of these networking pages and seeing if your products are of interest to customers (a lot of customers do post on these pages when they're looking for something specific) and if they're sensibly priced, appealingly photographed, etc.

Last year, when I released my St Patrick's Day Cuddly Campervan I posted it to a couple of the different networking sites on Facebook and within 1 week it generated me 7 sales! (luckily I had some already made up!)

5. Paying to promote your page

This is another contentious issue. The 'reach' (the number of people who see your posts) is dropping and Facebook have admitted that this is because they want businesses to pay to 'promote their page' Most small businesses don't feel that this is fair and can't afford to. I was lucky enough to be given some advertising by Facebook and as it wasn't going to cost me anything, I did use it. My 'likes' went through the roof. But, although they were genuine people, they weren't really potential customers as most of them have never interacted with my page and have never made a purchase. This seems like a false economy to me. I would have been really put out if I'd paid for the advertising and got no sales as a result.


I hope this has been of some use to you, but if you do have any questions, please feel free to drop me a comment here or come and pester me on Facebook

How to Choose Where to Sell Online

What are my Options?

When I first started thinking about opening up Grace's Favours I wasn't sure where would be best to sell my products... initially I wasn't even sure if I should be thinking about online, craft fairs, in bricks & mortar shops or a combination of all of the above.

The first items I made & sold - a felt alphabet

Should I sell everywhere I can?

A lot of people suggested I sell on eBay, but that was never something I liked the idea of as to me eBay is about people wanting to buy stuff cheaply and quickly... neither of which was something I aspired to. I didn't want my items to be cheap enough to appeal to just anybody and the turnaround time & personalised nature meant making them to order as opposed to having a large stockpile was more likely to work for me.

Personalised stockings were my biggest seller in the run up to Christmas 2011

I found Etsy pretty quickly and decided immediately it was the venue I wanted to start out on, so I set up my shop. Although not terribly well known in this country, it was so big already in America, Australia and in other parts of Europe that I realised it wouldn't be long till it was as big here.

I then dithered about with applying to Not On The High Street (NOTHS), but I decided against as the joining fee is seriously high for a small business and I didn't think my photos were strong enough at the time (March 2012)

One of the early Campervan's I made & photographed

Then I came across a wonderful website called Swanky Maison which is a bit like NOTHS but not as large and with a much more realistic joining fee and commission structure, so I applied & was successful in joining this lovely site - here's my shop front:

My lovely Swanky Maison shop

A few months later I was approached by a new site that was opening up - Mady by Mums with Love and they were specifically interested in my Felt Baby Shoes:

And in the last week I have joined another new site, dedicated to upmarket children's items, who were also interested in my baby shoes, so I have now joined the lovely site Loubilou with more Felt Baby Shoes:

What are Bricks & Mortar Shops?

Bricks and mortar shops are your good, old fashioned real life shops. I have supplied two in the past year - one local to me, where I took in a sample of flower brooches and asked if they'd like to sell them (very nerve wracking experience!) and they said yes, which was lovely, but they didn't sell very fast - my local town isn't an area of much affluence and as a lot of my items are decorative, it's not the best area for my products.

I have also sent a large wholesale order to a shop in Scarborough, who found me through Etsy, they wanted a mountain of teddies and Campervans and these are selling quite well:

How about Craft Fairs?

I did try a couple of craft fairs during 2012 but it was the smaller and cheaper items that sold best, which aren't necessarily much quicker or easier to make than the bigger & more expensive items I sell, so I decided that craft fairs were probably not going to generate me enough money to make them worthwhile given the amount of work they are to get the stock levels up.

A Christmas Market I did, with my friend Pam trying to hide behind the fake fireplace!

Where to find Grace's Favours:

So you can currently find me at the following places, but be warned - this is an ever changing list!!

My Website - www.gracesfavours.co.uk
Etsy - www.gracesfavours.etsy.com
Swanky Maison - www.swankymaison.com/graces-favours
Made by Mums with Love - www.madebymumswithlove.com/seller-profile?vendor_id=100
Loubilou - http://www.loubilou.com/store/graces-favours
Facebook - www.facebook.com/gracesfavours
Brit Chic (Red Bus Only) - http://britchicuk.co.uk/red-london-bus-cuddly-toy.html

How to get started with your Google+ Business Page

I've just set up my Google+ Grace's Favours page and to be honest, I've found it a bit baffling, so I thought I would share my thoughts and do some research to see what other's suggest

In a lot of ways it's very much the same as setting up a business page on Facebook, once you've chosen the type of business that you are, you add profile pictures and some basic information. There's a very good explanation here on Craft Blog UK

Then you need to start getting your page known. I have found this bit harder on G+ than on Facebook as I rarely use G+ for personal socialising, so I don't have the same network on here as I do on FB to promote my new page.

So I started by searching on G+ for pages with the term 'handmade' that immedaitely yielded a number of results. So I followed a number of relevant looking pages and then had a peek at who's in their circles, which lead me to other pages.

However, I want to get my page seen by 'real' people, not just other similar business pages... I've not found any miracle ways to get this done, other than starting to use G+ a bit more frequently, link up with more people I know in real life and get them to do some promoting.

I have been toying with the idea of offering a giveaway but I'm wary of them as every man and his dog seem to run them and I think you probably need to have a relatively good fan base initially.

Good luck to anyone else setting up a page and I'll keep you posted about how I get on!