You can feel like you spend your entire life on social media. Either posting or trying think of inspiration of what to post that can be of interest to your followers. If you haven’t already read it I would recommend you read my blog post on Buffer.
Click here to read all about Buffer and how I use it https://claireyatfairycrafters.com/the-buffer-app-my-social-media-timesaver/
I find that content is much easier to come up with if you follow a schedule that is repeated. Now this is a bit of the case of do as I say not as I do. My Social media schedule for the shop is brilliant I follow the same process each week. My own craft accounts though need some work, my aim is to follow my own advice. To come up with a schedule that will make my own craft posts of a similar frequency and caliber.
My working week starts on a Tuesday so my Social media schedule also starts on a Tuesday. Each day of the week is allocated a specific topic. I find it is a lot quicker for me to find content when I stick to this post framework. So here goes my week and how I fill it:
Tenner Tuesday item from the shop by The Beautiful Things
Tenner Tuesday
Every Tuesday I post something from the shop that a customer can purchase for £10 or less. I try to spread these posts across all the crafters in the shop. For one, it shows the variety of stock available within the shop for customers. At the same time it gives all the crafters an extra publicity boost so they have a better chance of their stock being seen.
Windows Wednesday
Wednesday is the day in Woodhall Spa that a lot of the shops are either closed or half day closing so this is the day that I decided to change my windows in the shop. All the stock is removed from the windows and new stock is used to decorate the windows. Each Wednesday a new Crafter of the week is selected and their stock is heavily featured in the windows. To tie in with this on a Wednesday I post pictures of the newly decorated windows using any hashtags that are connected to my theme for that week to reach a wider audience.
Percy ‘s Pick Thursday
Before I opened the shop someone locally was giving away a little wooden stick man. I saw him and
a fun idea was created. I named him Percy and every Thursday I post a fun picture of Percy interacting with an item of stock in the shop. He has been hugging teddies, wearing jewellery and hiding in a lampshade. This makes some of the advertising of items a bit more fun and gets more interaction from followers as it is more fun.
Fiver Friday
It is a common belief among potential customers that anything handmade is going to be expensive, I have tried to show my followers that this isn’t always the case. I pick a small gift from around the shop that can be purchased for £5 or less. Many people are often looking for a small token gift either to bulk out a larger gift or as a Thank You. These are the sorts of gifts that I try to showcase on a Friday.
Saturday, Sunday and Monday
The Crafter of the Week that was selected on a Wednesday is given three days of showcasing across social media. I will select three different items of stock that show the range of products available from that crafter. I will also attempt to showcase how a crafters items can be customised so that a customer can have a truly unique and personalised gift.
This schedule has been fairly easy to stick to as there is such a range of stock and prices in the shop to pick from. However as a small sole crafter business it would be difficult to generate this amount of content for the same framework. Therefore what I suggest (and will look at creating for myself) is a framework with schedule that will fit with your business and stock.
I would look at assigning the following themes to a different day and try to stick to it:
- Completed orders sent out
- Work in progress
- Behind the scenes
- Inspiration
- New stock
- Flashback stock
So I would have to revisit this list as I would struggle to post regularly under these headings. It would probably work out better to have more themes and to cycle through them on a longer time frame. Maybe a ten day cycle would work better.
So hopefully I have inspired you with some ideas of how to keep your social media feeds regularly populated with updates for all your potential customers. If there are any other themes that could be added to this framework please let me know, lacking a bit in inspiration myself at the moment.
