Week 16 | Post A

At the end of this course it's now time to ponder how to move forward with my social media strategy for my stained glass company.  After the research of the past few months, it's clear that Facebook and Instagram are the best social media platforms for me to use.  My reasoning for this is as follows:

• Both platforms support images and short videos well.
• Facebook is favored by an older demographic, which constitutes most of the stained glass artists today who might be interested in my patterns.
• Instagram is favored by a younger demographic that may be interested in my more modern pieces and is also home to younger stained glass artists (who may be interested in my patterns), however some of the older demographic is migrating to Instagram.
• Instagram offers good reach for new followers by way of hashtags.

In the future, I might also investigate using ads on either platform.  Email distributions or a blog might also be something to explore in the future, but not until I have the content to support them.

As for my favorite platform - I feel that Instagram is the most effective because of its better organic reach, but I really dislike not being able to post from a computer like I can with Facebook (typing hashtags is annoying).  Facebook is wildly convenient to use, but it doesn't have the reach that Instagram does.

Ideally, if I were looking to transition into making stained glass full time I should be posting at least daily about works in progress, finished pics, tips, and more to draw that interest and to keep my metrics saying that I'm interesting and worth showing to potential new followers.  However, since this is a side hobby I don't want to overpromote - posting weekly about what I'm working on and my finished pieces should be a good start and then I can adjust from there.

My goal is to post weekly over the next month on Instagram and Facebook, on Monday afternoons (since I do most of my stained glass work on the weekends).  The actual posting takes only moments, but I'll need to plan about 4 hours each weekend to work up a new stained glass pattern, post it to Etsy, and then make an example of the piece to show on social media as well as to list for sale.  Right now I am not trying to grow my business due to my time available, but I would certainly be ok with more pattern sales since they do not require additional time.