Material Retail Dumps

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Material Retail Dumps podcast. If you've listened to us before, thanks so much for coming back. If it's your first time listening, welcome Material Retail Dumps is a short form podcast with briefly valuable content for independent retailers. As business owners, we don't have time for a 30 minute lesson with a ton of banter. We get straight to the meat of the topic and aim to give you actionable information and will help you optimize your retail operation and make more money every day. Welcome to Material Retail Dumps, episode 20. Can't Believe We're Up to the 20th episode. Thanks everybody for listening, and I hope you're, uh, getting a little bit of value out of these podcasts. This episode's gonna be about social media. We're gonna talk about three different ideas and ways to execute them and how they'll benefit your business. So hope you enjoy.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, let's jump right in. So everybody knows that social media is extremely important. It's a great way to brand your business, a great way to find new customers. It's just where everybody is right now. Whether it's someone on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Pinterest, most people with smartphones use social media. Most people with smartphones use social media a lot. You know, there's all these studies out there that say people are spending three, four hours a day on social media. So it's critical that your business is on social media cuz at the end of the day, that is where your customers are, their eyeballs are there, they're consuming information, and if you're not there, your competitors are there. So, social media is a really, really big game. There's billions and billions of dollars behind it. Businesses and, and people of all types on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It's not only for businesses, um, it's also for, you know, sharing things with your friends and family. But business does play a huge role on social media. So the first thing we're gonna talk about is using social media as an outlet for your business to show what it's got. Um, so this is the most basic form of social media marketing and something that I think every single business needs to do on multiple channels. So this includes, you know, setting up your profile, making sure everything's accurate, um, and then also, you know, posting on these platforms on a regular basis. So whether that's once a week, twice a week, three times a week, four times a week on each platform, you gotta do it. You gotta always have new things. You gotta always have new posts and it'll benefit your business. That's really gonna help with just giving your customers a reminder that you're there.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
And also new customers don't really know yet. It'll, it'll show them a little bit about your business and, you know, there is that social proof and that trust factor there. So obviously a business with no social media presence is a weird business, right? Who wants to shop there. But if you're a business and you have a really pretty social media profiles, um, customers are gonna be more likely to engage with their brand. So that's just like a really basic way to look at it. Uh, it's really cheap to do, doesn't really cost much. It's a little bit of time and, um, you'll gain a little bit of, uh, of an advantage and you'll definitely gain a positive roi. Uh, the second thing we're gonna talk about is getting a little bit deeper and it's really a way to just take social media to the next level a little bit.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Um, basically we're gonna focus on two things. Number one, it's interacting with customers and, and getting customers to interact with you on social media. And number two, it's kind of staying on with the trends in social media at that time. So firstly, you know, getting customers to interact with you is extremely important. Why? Because when a customer interacts with your business, someone from that person's network will see that comment and then they're more likely to find your business. So the more you're interacting with customers and, and the more customers are interacting with you on social media, the better it is. So like their pictures, comment on them, answer every comment, answer their dms, things like that. Just be active. Um, the second thing is just staying on trend with what's going on in social media. So that really means like, what is everybody doing on social media?

Speaker 1 (03:34):
What is everybody following on social media? And you know, like these days it's a lot of these TikTok songs and things like that. So just making sure that you're always kind of on the trend, um, is super important because people, you know, are are following different things at all different times and you wanna make sure that you're kind of catching your interest at that time. So these days, again, a lot of people are doing these TikTok videos and also a lot of Instagram reels. If you're not posting any Instagram reels, you know, you're definitely gonna fall behind. Now this second way that we just spoke about, that's, that's great for getting yourself to a little bit of a second level. You start to bring in a little bit of new business from social media. And again, it's still really, really cheap to do. It'll take a little bit more effort cuz you gotta really pay attention to what's going on in social media.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
And you also need to, you know, interact with customers on those platforms. So again, this goes for all platforms, but each one has their own hot trends. So you wanna make sure you're with it on the platforms that you're posting on. Now, the third thing I wanna talk about is really taking social media to another level. And it's really where you can start growing your business through social media and really getting new customers to discover you and eventually shop with you. And that is leveraging small to medium influencers. So what does that mean? It really, you know, at its most basic level means we really want to get social media influencers posting your store or brand or or your business. And basically the reason why we want do that is because these people have followings and people, you know, trust their opinion online. And if they see their favorite influencer posted something, they'll look at it.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
So, you know, that doesn't mean that you have to go after Kim Kardashian or someone with a million followers or 5 million followers or even 500,000 followers. What it means is you need to find people with that have influence over your target audience. So it could mean a local mommy blogger, uh, it could mean a couple of, you know, some people in college who have, you know, 15,000 followers each, you know, just at that point between like really popular and social media versus going all that influencer. Um, and you wanna find a lot of those people. And the best way to do it is to send them some free stuff, reach out to them via DM and just, it's a numbers game. So if you're gonna reach out to 50 of these small influence influencers, maybe 25 of them are interested in partnering your brand and maybe 15 of them are willing to do it for like a gift card or just, you know, free items or something like that, and it doesn't cost you much to send them a

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Pretty pretty package with the item that they wanna see, they'll take a cute video, they'll post it, then you can repost it and you know, it just, it really, really helps, uh, a with your own content because you'll be able to post that content so it look more professional. But b and more importantly, customers will find you, you know, potential customers will find you, that influencers, followers will look at your page and if you're not getting people to post for you, you're gonna have much fewer eyeballs on you. So again, it's all in numbers game. Um, just to recap, number one, you wanna have your own profiles up and running. Number two, you wanna be interacting with your customers and also you wanna keep up with the trends on that social media platform. And number three, you wanna go after different influencers in your market and get them to post on your behalf. And that will cost a little bit of time and or money, but it's definitely worth it. So thanks so much guys. Looking forward to the next episode.