Using social media to grow your home baking business.

good evening everybody it is 7 30 and it is tuesday the 7th of december i'm coming to you a day early this week um because i'm going to be in london tomorrow all sort of businessy networky partying kind of thing so um i only realized that uh at the weekend and i thought oh hang on a minute i can't do waffle wednesday because i'm not gonna be here um so i thought i'd bring it forward to tuesday um and if no one can join me live that's fine i can always put it in the guide which i do anyway but four people are here fabulous four people are here if you are here please say hello i do like it when people say hello to me i'm not all knobby no mates you know i'm still suffering rather in my very opera diva dramatic kind of way um with a hello charlene hello lovely um so apologies in advance if i start to cough horrifically hi verity hi kim hi nicola oh people are here that's fabulous um yes i've got one of those coughs you know that it's sort of okay during the day and then you hit your pillow at night and it's going no no you must cough all night you must not get a wink of sleep you must cough and cough um so um so yes so i'm suffering a bit from that in the moment but i've got my tea so i'll be all right this evening and i've got my tissues and i think my cat is around somewhere so if suddenly we get launched out because the window sill is just there you see um so excuse me in advance if i get jumped on by a black cat anyway right what am i going to talk about this evening i'm not going to waffle on too much in case my voice completely disappears um i'm going to talk a little bit about um social media audiences hot branding ah yes yes i swear by honey verity yes but yeah hot brandy i might try that later i might still have a cough but i won't care as much will i thank you for that my lovely thank you um yes we're talking about social media this evening um what i'm going to tell you this evening are seven tips i do like doing numbers don't i ten tips or seven tips so seven tips um or things that you need to think about when you're sorting out your social media which are likely to help you grow your audience a bit more now i've also written a blog on this in fact i wrote it back in april but into the home baking business community group i think i've scheduled it for eight o'clock is a link to that blog so everything i'm telling you now will be written down in there so you'll be able to see that okey dokey um so what are the seven things that i've written down that i think are fairly important um number one now number one i'm always talking about this um it's knowing who your ideal client is now ideal client is a very big thing in business all the big um companies and corporations know exactly who their ideal clients are and in fact if you look on various websites like marks and spencers and you know all those types if you dig down deep enough into their websites you will find you know what their ideal clients are uh where they shop other than marks and spencers where they go on holiday what kind of families they have all those kind of things they know so that they pinpoint they can pinpoint where they advertise and how they advertise so you have to think a little bit about that you have to think about how you're presenting your um your goods and your products is the type of person that's going to buy it going to be seeing it um are you on the right platforms the social media platforms i just do instagram and facebook um on pinterest as well i do paint although that's slightly different kettle fish pinterest um i don't do tick-tock a because um i haven't got time to learn how to do it but for for another reason is my ideal client just isn't on tick tock um because i'm wedding cakes um you know i'm i'm talking sort of generally sort of two thirty ish old year old brides couples on the whole they're not on tick tock those people i found um so but they are on instagram and they most of them look on pinterest for ideas for wedding cakes as well so that's where i focus my attention um i try and do more instagram reels because reels are being very much promoted at the moment um so doing sort of live things particularly with your face as well we'll come on to that in a minute so think about who your ideal customer is and where they are looking for example this is a bit of a crass example but i've exaggerated it so for example if you specialized in um you know old-fashioned fruit cakes and your ideal client were generally the older generation you wouldn't for example spend a lot of your time on tick tock because they're not going to be anywhere near that place okay a bit of a crass example but hopefully you know gives you an idea of what i'm talking about only spend time on places where your audience are likely to be hear that as a helicopter outside how exciting um so that's the first thing you've got to think about you know are the people that buy your your your things your products are they um you know they are are they mums of small children um are they uh you know families that have lots you know big families with lots of birthdays what what kind of places are they gonna look for things are they gonna be you know when they're sitting down late at night and scrolling through where are they going to be are they going to be on instagram are they going to be on facebook are they going to be in facebook groups in local facebook groups is that where you're going to find them so think about where they are and you need to go to where they are because they're not going to come to you you can't tune in as what oh oh dear that's a shame never mind oh hi alex watch better soon oh never mind uh it'll be in the guide section for you so it'll be there for you to watch okay um so that's the first thing you need to think about the second thing i would say is don't sell in every single post that you post so you want to avoid just doing um here are my brownies they are five pounds for however many contact me here to buy every day do that every day and it becomes a bit of white noise for people first of all it's all very the same and secondly it means that they're they're not getting to know you there's a big thing in business about the no like and trust factor if people know you and feel that they like you they're more likely to trust you and people will buy from people that they trust okay it's you know you would buy from your friends wouldn't you if they had things for sale because you know them you generally like them generally your friends and hopefully your friends you trust them um so you've got to build up a presence on your social media where people can get to know you a little bit um so don't make every poster sale post you know talk about things that you're comfortable talking about you know it could be about your family it could be about pets pets is a brilliant one i talk about my cats all the time talk about you know going out for a walk look at the sky look at the you know it doesn't matter that it's not directly connected with your baking um that doesn't matter what what you are doing though is you're making a connection with your audience you know take i took a picture um the other day i was in a venue and they had a lovely christmas tree beautiful great big christmas tree and i just took a picture of that said look at this beautiful christmas tree and people were saying oh yes that's lovely oh i've got one similar or you know and people will engage with that kind of thing so think about the different things that you can you can talk about so think about know like and trust are people getting to know you do you respond to them when they engage with you come to that in a minute as well um and if you can um go direct you know with your face in reals and things even better i don't do that much i should do it more but i don't mainly because i look like this normally and it's you know um but you know if you can actually talk physically talk in a real or you know chat to your audience oh here you know here i am and i'm shopping today and look at all this and look at all that they will feel that they are you are talking to them and they will get to know you so it's really valuable thing to do on your social media and number three so i've got my notes up here which is why i'm looking here um number three uh post regularly or to be more accurate you need to say post consistently we all know about the you know the algorithms facebook and its pesky algorithms um facebook likes it and instagram too facebook perhaps more like it if you are consistent so if you are going to post every day post every day and and it facebook will then show it to more people if you're going to do a mad posting for two weeks and then not post anymore you know occasionally on a thursday or whatever then facebook go oh hang on a minute perhaps we won't show your things to everybody then okay whereas if for example you think every day i can't possibly do i could do perhaps one on a monday one on a thursday and one on a sunday but if you do that consistently then facebook like that they like the consistency of it so even if you aim for something like that it's better than doing going completely mad for two weeks and then doing nothing at all okay because it's all to do with the algorithm it's all to do with getting you seen all right um if you find that you you you know you you find it tricky to oh i haven't got any time this morning to to post anything i've got to get straight up and at it you know whatever think about having using a scheduler um i use facebook creator studio which links instagram and facebook um you have to tell your instagram account about your facebook and there's a way to link it all up i won't go into it now because mainly i can't remember and it'll take too long but there are ways of doing it if you get stuck asking the group because someone will help you but facebook creator studio is a way of like pre pre-scheduling things so if i know i've got a busy week you know like last week i had excuse me i had uh two quite big wedding cakes to do where i was having to do early mornings and i wasn't gonna have time to post anything so the couple of days before i just you know put up some posts and and timed them to to appear on thursday morning friday morning and saturday morning so you can do those kind of things in your you know your less busy times um i sometimes do it when i'm watching tv at night and i'll have my laptop laptop on my lap and i'll just sort of post while i'm watching tv it's quite relaxed doing it that way you know um so so try and get a schedule going and another way you can get yourself into some kind of routine and i'm going to share a screen now because i'm going to share something that i sent out to my email list which is the uh where is it there it is there it is the social media this is really basic um but if you can do something like this and just jot some notes down uh for each month it will really help you when i started doing this regularly it did not free up a lot of thinking time because i'd done all the thinking before and i didn't have to then do daily thinking if you like so one thing you can do here is you can so are you gonna have um a regular post that you do perhaps every week so uh you know top tip tuesday tell tell your audience about you know some baking wizardry that you do um i do a throwback thursday which is which is really easy because i just repurpose stuff i've already put up and that's another thing you can do repurpose old things because not everyone will have seen it we'll come to that in a minute um and then i've been doing for my wedding cake i've been doing my dictionary on monday so mondays would be my leading lady cakes dictionary day so if you have those regular things and at the beginning of the month you sort of plan out what you're going to put in those it saves an awful lot of time yeah half an hour or an hour doing that at the beginning of the month saves you an awful lot of thinking time during the month and then also on the social media planner i've put a section here which says this month's event so jot down things that are happening this month um i mean obviously december is christmas but are you doing a christmas fair so if you i don't know if you were doing a fair on the the 17th you'd want to you know by the 10th you'd want to start telling people exactly where it is and when it is and are you going and all that or what you know however much in advance um are there you know special you know those national awareness days um that you can mark uh we've just had i think national cookie day there's all sorts of national you know national brownie day there's national biscuit day there's national whatever day so if you can jot some of those down and make sure you get something in on those on those days that's even better and then the second half here is just to schedule which you can use to jot down um so yeah so the first of the months second to the month third of the month and so on um are you going to post something are you going to do real or something are you gonna post a story of something obviously you don't have to do all three and some of them you can it can be the same thing but made into you know the three things i often do reels and then repurpose them as stories that kind of thing um but just jot down here what it is you're gonna do okay so i know that if i'm making it doing a wedding cake for example on the sixth i know that i'll leave it a day but on the eighth i can then put up a picture of that wedding cake and do something you know um so that's what i'll program into my to my schedule i'll make sure that i've i've got room to post that and i have a picture ready to go okay so that i mean it's very basic but it it's amazing how much something like that will help get yourself organized and get you your brain in gear a little bit um if you don't sign up to my email um the link that's going out in the group at eight o'clock has a link for you to get that if you want it so you know just pop yourself on the list and you'll get one of those okay yes i love having things planned out in advance to verity yes absolutely it just makes you feel as if you're a bit more in control of things it's very easy in this business isn't it to feel like you're running around like a headless chicken and you're not in control of anything but if you can get that sorted out i mean i'm a big i've got a big wall chart here of all my weddings with dots on and things and i love that it just makes me feel like i'm organized and in control um so yes so so you know either sign up for mine or make your own get yourself organized there we are all right so that's where are we that was um on number three post regularly post consistently um my fourth tip of seven i did say seven didn't i yeah my fourth tip of seven this may sound obvious but make things look as good as you can obviously if you're doing a or this is me in my kitchen um then you don't you know you're just doing a me making things then you don't need to worry so much you know particularly and i've seen these and these work really well if something breaks or if you've dropped an egg or if something's you know gone over in the oven or something taking pictures of that and popping those up are brilliant people love those you get lots of engagement with those but when when you're talking about your your final product the one that you want your audience to imagine they're buying if you like you want it to look good so think about backgrounds think about lighting um think about you know so there's no shadows and then once you've taken the photo it's absolutely perfectly all right to edit it i'm not necessarily talking about you know photoshopping it and you know blotting out blemishes and things like that but just enhance the color perhaps pick up the exposure a little bit if it's a bit dark so that people can really see it okay and make it bigger you can you can use canva um to really tart it up i love canberra if you've not come across canva or you've got a treat in store you can you can get onto canva it doesn't have to cost you anything i pay something like 10 11 pounds a month i get the extras i get various bits um that you don't get if you just get the free one but the free one does allow you to put your photos up it allows you to put your logos on it allows you to do borders it allows you to do all sorts of things um and if you do some of those um it just sort of adds the sort of professional thing to your um your products when i put my wedding cakes on instagram what i generally do is put the cake in a border put my logo at the top leading lady cakes at the bottom and then in the background i put the cake um but i i fade it a little bit so you get the sort of a close-up of the cake in the background look on my instagram for leading lady cakes and you'll see how i do it um which works quite well because it looks quite eye-catching and it looks as if i've you know spent time thinking about it which i haven't spent as much time as perhaps it looks as if i have because i've got it down to a t now how i you know how i can do it um so think about what your products look like flat lays are really good if your products um you know are good for that and the flat lays where you have the camera above and you're looking down so if you're talking cookies and brownies and things you can you know lay your cookies and your brownies perhaps have a i don't know a wooden spoon or a something or other um to make it and and have it on a background perhaps even just a wooden table or a um you know a kitchen work top would be brilliant um so flat lays if you're not if you're not sure google baking flat lays and you'll see you'll see the idea they do look quite good and quite professional those okay um i know some people have uh photographic backgrounds i've got one it's enormous i have it on roll you can just use sort of a4 paper some people use sheets some people i saw someone in the group i can't remember who it was but they bought one of those christmas bags you know gift bags hello facebook user they bought one of those face um christmas gift bags and they'd use that as a background which is genius i think because those those big cardboard you know those cardboard paper bag things they they'll stand up as well so it's an ideal backdrop you know particularly for christmas things so think about how your photos look um number five oh yes number five uh particularly on instagram using hashtags now hashtags um yes yes kim kim you saw it too it did look good didn't it look very effective um so hashtags uh on instagram i believe you can have up to 30 hashtags so think about the ones that you're using um you can find google hashtag generators um and it'll ask you to put in what your you know what your post is about and it'll give you ideas for hashtags the other thing that you can do which i don't do enough and i should do more of is go to the instagram accounts that my ideal client will go to so for example for brides i need to go to you know wedding florist um accounts or venue accounts or things like hitched and bride book you know those directories and then see what kind of hashtags they are using because you want to get in on those those hashtags okay ideally you want to have and this is something i've been told so i take take it on good authority by instagram experts um that you want some hashtags that have large numbers of posts so when you put them up it'll say um you know 100k plus posts doesn't it so you want some of those and then you want some that are like 10 000 k plus posts uh a thousand so so mix them up the the amounts that you have um and also don't just copy and paste the same hashtags on each post try and mix them up instagram and well facebook facebook don't do really do the hashtags as much um but instagram anything that's just replicated instagram doesn't like it starts to think you're a you know you're a bot or spam so what i've done i've got an excel spreadsheet and i've got different sort of blocks of hashtags for slightly different things and i just copy and paste them so i haven't got to you know refine them every time i just think oh yeah that post needs those hashtags so i i just copy and paste them in which is quite useful so have them stored somewhere and then sort of refresh them every so often to put some new ones and different ones in okay what else oh yeah number six here we are nearly nearly at the end number six talked about algorithms a lot you've got to think about algorithms now unfortunately um if for example you've got 500 followers on your instagram and you post something there's nowhere near all your 500 followers are going to see that post sometimes you might only find that 10 of them see it sometimes you might find that 200 of them see it not all of your followers will see all of your posts all the time some of that depends on when you post so you've got to and here we come back to our ideal client again think about the times that your ideal client is scrolling on their phones okay if for example you're talking you know so my ideal client are often um people who work and brides particularly are honey and they will have a lunch time between sort of 12 and 1. so often i'll post things up so that it's on on their their scroll when they go on at lunchtime um if your ideal client has young children hopefully by nine o'clock they put them to bed and that's when they sit down and they start scrolling so post then i often post early in the morning to catch the you know the people that go to work they're up and they're having their breakfast and they're scrolling through as they're having their breakfast so think about when it is that your ideal client is actually scrolling through their phone okay um and also think about you know you post i post at seven in the morning anyone scrolling in the evening isn't going to see that post because it's gone it's gone up the scroll it's disappeared okay so if it's something really important that i want people to see i'll post it again in the evening um don't worry necessarily about posting the same thing a couple of times because the chances of the same people seeing that same thing um are very slim you'll you'll get more of your audience um in and looking um the more that you post and if you use a scheduler it's just easy just copy and paste what you've written for one and schedule it for another time so it's quite quite straightforward um so think about that that's quite important when you when you scroll and the fact that not everybody sees everything um and repurposing so i often um say my throwback thursday is wedding cakes that i've put on a couple of months before um so not everyone will have seen it and if people have seen it they'll go oh yeah i like that one that was nice on that one which is lovely you know um or blog posts i do lots of blogging i did lots of blog posts and i'll just put up oh you might have missed this blog post from last week uh what's the name of the schedule it's called facebook creator studio what i will do my lovely i'll just chop this down because i've got a brain like a sieve i will pop the link up in the group facebook creator studio yeah i'll pop it i'll pop it up in the group for you um so where was that yes so and algorithms and the other thing um with algorithms we come on to now mine my seventh handy tip um which is probably the most important one really and it's the call to action a call to action i when i first started on this social media lark whenever it was i had no idea what they were talking about when they said call to action basically a call to action is when you're basically telling the person reading it to do something so click on this link um is the sort of the basic one go to my website um and other ones you just want to get engagement on your post the more people that engage with your post the more the instagram or facebook or tick tock or whoever it is is going to then show it to other people okay that's the key so if you put a picture of your brownies up don't just put a picture of your brownies up and say i made some brownies you want to put a picture of your brownies up and say who loves brownies put an emoji in the comments or brownies or blondies and then do a little poll anything to get people you know talking on your your feed on your posts okay and similarly if someone does comment reply to their comment okay because that that people really like that if if you've commented on someone's um post and that person then replies even if it's just oh thank you that was really nice for you to say then you think oh they've actually read that that's really nice you know not just double not just double tapping we're not just talking hearts here we're talking actual you know writing a writing a little something um and that's another way to get followers actually if you um follow find out who your ideal client follows follow them make some really you know interesting comments on some posts um and you'll find your you'll get followers okay if you comment on so many a day a percentage of those will then follow you so that's a good way i'm i could talk for hours about that um and haven't got time now uh but that's basically a good way of doing it so the more you interact on instagram the more you um engage in other people's posts the more likely you are to then get more followers yourself okay so it's all to do with communicating and talking and engaging um if you're doing stories um that little poll thing um i've started doing that on fridays where i put two wedding cakes up um you know this one or that one you know and it's just simple because people can then just tap with their finger but they've engaged with it you know it's really simple so put up a brownie and a cookie you know what do you want today a brownie or a cookie what would you fancy today that kind of thing really really gets the the algorithm going um and it's good for you as well you know if you've seen that you know you've had 5 10 15 20 however many comments um on one of your posts do you think oh this is great you know doing well it's great for their confidence you know nothing worse than putting up a a post and you don't get one like and no one's commented on it and it like tumbleweed we all get those um but be persistent um my three words that i like the best determination perseverance and resilience if you can show all those three in your social media and just keep going at it and be consistent and engage and get people to engage then that way you'll get a bigger audience your audience will know like and trust you and they're more likely to buy from you or recommend you to others you know um you know obviously everyone that sees my instagram not everyone's gonna want a wedding cake by any means um but when they do want a wedding cake or they know someone who wants a wedding cake oh yeah go to leadingladycakes they'll see her on instagram you know um get you on it's a way to get your name out um you know bill yourself as i don't know the brownie lady or the cookie lady or whatever it is and get people to refer to you as that or you know get use your name your business name all the time so that people start to recognize you as the person who makes this that and the other and they can recommend you um and it all sort of spiders out you know someone who knows someone who knows someone will then recommend you um so that's the way to spread spread your word spread your good across so there we are i think i've covered everything i wanted to cover just oh yeah just just very quickly i've sort of alluded to this um but the number of followers you have isn't as important as the numbering gay of engaged followers you have um i've had a couple of emails in the last month or so from companies saying oh i can um do you want to buy some followers i can buy i can sell you a thousand followers and i'm thinking what on earth is the point of that absolutely no point at all um the number of followers you have is often what's known as the vanna vanity metric you know i've got a thousand followers look at me um but there's no point in having a thousand followers if none of those followers actually talk to you or engage in what you do um you know i'd rather have a hundred followers who talk all the time and engage and like and chat than have you know a thousand followers that did nothing at all that's pointless no point in having them so it's really your your job is to get all the followers that you have chatting and engaged um get them get them interested in what you do and get them engaged and that way it'll build the momentum in your your what you do in your business and your brand there we go so there we are so those are my seven tips on um social media you will find that in the blog post that i've put posted a link to in the group i will put this um in the guide section as well so you can look back on it if you wish to uh but thank you for joining me a day early oh good i'm glad it was helpful charlie i'm glad it was him um yes i'm now thinking it's wednesday and i'm very i'm easily confused at the best of times we know that but um but yes i hope that's been useful do let us know how it goes um you know try some things out try some things let us know in the group how things have gone it's all been so great thank you yes uh yeah do try things out and just let us know let us know in the group you know how things have gone um you know if anyone's got some brilliant ideas for for things that they post post them in the group um i might i might start doing that actually because i've got some um thank you nice to see your face all right my rather coldy face and with this sort of yucky eye infection as well which doesn't know um but um but yeah but he is what i was saying about you know actually seeing somebody and and you know if i just wrote all this in a post most most people in the group would go oh yeah all right but because i'm actually talking to you and sort of smiling and laughing and you know responding to what you're saying you're much more likely to take it on board so that's sort of a point point in case in point if you like so do that in your social media all right okey dokey and verity i will put the link for the facebook creator studio in the group all right then so have a lovely week next week i'm going to talk about um planning for 2022 uh which you might find useful so some ideas about how to sort of get an overview and to you know know where your business is going um using the planners that i've emailed out as well so that will be next week i will have a great day in london i'm going to have a great time i've got a new dress new shoes new handbag everything i've gone a bit mad i'll try and remember to take some photos and let you know how it goes but i'm very excited you see as you can see i don't get out much um but yes up the smoke for a party doesn't often happen to annie but there we go righty ho have a lovely week my lovelies um and i will see you next wednesday so we're back to wednesday next week all right then you take care and i'll see you soon alright bye

2022-01-23 13:33

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