Week 16 | Post B

Let's wrap up the semester of learning about social media for businesses!

Over the past few months my business social media efforts have ticked up a bit and I've investigated some new content ideas (such as Throwback Thursday, workshop photos, and more).  I also looked into the less obvious methods of social media in blogging and email newsletters.  I've also gained some new followers outside of other students in the class, which always makes me happy.  One company whose glass I use (Oceanside Glasstile) actually followed me back on Instagram and shared one of my pieces in their story.  For someone running with some talented artists that was certainly a highlight brought about with some extra social media effort!  Unfortunately my interaction outside of likes remains a bit stale, so I'll have to put some more trial and error into figuring that out.

Going into this class I was already familiar and comfortable with the popular social media platforms, and I'm leaving it with a bit more knowledge about the business side of things.  I'm glad that I took this class alongside the intro to marketing class, as it helped me to understand what drives people to make the purchasing decisions they do and also how to better understand those groups of people.  That has helped me to refine my markets and clearly define my targets as other stained glass artists looking for good patterns as well as non-artists looking to purchase finished stained glass pieces.  By clearly defining and separating those groups I can market to them on social media more effectively.

In all of this my viewpoint of social media hasn't changed - I've always considered it a good way to keep up with the people and businesses that I care about.  I do have to admit that I've always been reserved on it though - I don't like "feeding the metrics" and being seen as a product and to then start looking at how to create ads to target my markets felt a little weird.  I try to not let onto Facebook too much about what I'm into, but it figures it out anyway.  But, there is that adage that if you aren't giving a company money then you ARE the product!  And that's social media :)

I feel that I have a better understanding of the different platforms for social media, as well as the more DIY approaches such as email marketing and blogging.  I feel like I better understand their strengths and weaknesses and how each caters to a different type of company.  I do, however, need to do more work into learning how to drive engagement and attracting new followers and business.  Over the past few months I've been watching the social media of successful business friends as well as that of the company I'm contracting for right now (we have a contractor handling social media in his spare time) and seeing what works and what doesn't.  I'm learning to pay attention to post content, timing, and photos/videos used to see what works.

For now I feel that continuing to use Facebook and Instagram for my business are the best strategy for the reasons I explained in my previous post.  However, that's not to say that I won't try new things in the future.  I think that developing an email newsletter would be a fun adventure when I "retire into" my business.  That taps into my love of teaching, career as a graphic designer, and can help build the stained glass pattern side of my business.  I could supplement this with a blog if I'm able to dream up enough content to keep it fresh.

While I've mentioned in a few of my blog posts that I've had to drastically scale back my stained glass business due to now having to run my nephew's Covid distance learning as well as work an honest work week in a VERY distracting home office, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to ramp it up again soon.  And, what better way to do that than with social media :)