Day 15 - January Social Media Results

 If you don't like where you are, move. You are not a tree.

At the beginning of the month, I decided upon 4 social media marketing venues to grow my business - Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram.

I already had a Facebook fan page and an account on Pinterest, so those were the two I've concentrated on the most. Plus, I felt that they would give me the most exposure since they are good venues for my on-line jewelry business.

The results are a little surprising.

Facebook:

• I started the month with 628 fans. I now have 716 fans.
• I gained 58 new fans from my Facebook ad, which means I gained 30 fans directly from Etsy or Facebook friends/fans.
• I have been posting 1 post each weekday and people are starting to engage more often with my posts. That's important as my posts will be seen more often if there is more interactions. At this time, I'm not comfortable posting more than once a day. That just seems spammy to me. :-)
• Here is one interesting statistic: The post that had the biggest reach by far, was my post showing my YouTube video. I've heard that facebook prioritizes posts with video and images, so this tells me that it's worth my time to create more videos.
• Etsy stats show 21 visits to my shop this month directly from Facebook. 
• Google Analytics shows 81 visits to my shop.

Pinterest:

• I started the month with 46 pins and 22 followers on my Theresa Rose Designs board. I now have 64 pins and 27 followers.
• I started the month with 12 pins and 16 followers on my Wedding Jewelry board. I now have 13 pins and 21 followers.
• I've been pinning 4-5 pins every weekday, with only 1 or 2 of those pins relating directly to my jewelry.
• Here's my surprising statistic: I've received more visits to my shop from Pinterest than from Facebook. Etsy stats show 46 visits to my shop from Pinterest. That's double than from Facebook!
• Google Analytics shows 123 visits to my shop. That's 50% more than Facebook.
• Pinterest was my #1 social media referral, according to Google Analytics.

YouTube and Instagram:

• I've just begun posting to Instagram and YouTube, so I don't have any interesting information from these two venues yet.
• I will say that I'm not sold on Instagram. I've read about people having a lot of success with this application, but I haven't fallen in love with it. 

So, this first month's results show me that Pinterest is a very worthwhile venue to pursue. I plan on stepping it up a bit next month and we'll see if my results improve even more.

I'm looking forward to February!

Day 11 - January Goal Check up and Final Facebook Ad Results

Instead of thinking outside the box, get rid of the box.

-Deepak Chopra

There are a little less than 2 weeks left in January, so I thought it would be a good idea to review my goals for this month and see if I'm on target and what I need to work on for the next week. January is really about setting up the foundation for success in my business this year. Developing good work habits and scheduling consistent marketing/sales tasks were the main focuses for me this month. While I was working full-time along with running my jewelry business, I didn't set strict measurable goals for myself because it was always easy to fall back on the 'real' job. I made goals in my head, but didn't write them down - if they went by the wayside, no one knew (except me and I wasn't telling anyone!).

The goals I set for January were:

• Sales goal of 50% more than last January.
• Right now I'm on target with my sales goals. I'm seeing a definite increase from last year!
• Design and list 15 new products.
• I've listed 10 new products this month so far. I'm well on track to meeting this goal.
• Start an Instagram account by mid-month and start posting pictures.
• My account is created and a few pictures have been posted. I'm not posting every day, but with Instagram, less is better than too often. I'm going to go easy on myself with this social media venue.
• Post 4-5 pins on Pinterest each day (only 1 per day for jewelry).
• Except for the weekends, I've been fairly consistent with this one. I enjoy Pinterest and I'm definitely starting to see an increase in followers and re-pins. I'm also seeing traffic from Pinterest to my Etsy site.
• Create YouTube channel and have 2 videos up by end of month.
• My channel is created. I expect to create my first video this week.
• Update my website with new pictures and new font. Update list of stores carrying my products.
• Still on the list.  :-)
• Meet with someone new every week. The idea is to facilitate new business contacts and generate business either in the short term or long term.
• In the first 2 weeks, I met with two people. One resulted in a great wholesale order. The other was a meeting with a fellow Wink member about showcasing my jewelry at some of her events. 
• I still need to mark my calendar this month with 2 more meetings.
• Post to my Facebook page every day and run 2 ads by the end of the month.
• I haven't been posting on weekends, so I need to step it up on this goal.
• I've decided not to run 2 ads this month. The first ad did well for the first week and then dropped down to almost nothing the last 3 days. 
• I ended up with 58 new likes (53 in the first 7 days).
• I had a budget of $20.00 and spent $14.80.
• Since the number of likes dwindled down in the last week, that tells me that there is no need to run ads frequently at this point. In February I plan on trying the 'Boost Post' feature to see how that goes. 
• To see my post about the facebook ad I ran: Day 7 - Facebook Ads

All in all, I feel good about my progress. Most of my goals for this month are the type that won't show results in the short term but are designed to create a stronger brand presence for me in the long term.

Day 8 - Facebook Ad Results, 1 Week Later

I was out of town for the first half of this week, so I haven't kept up on my goals. While I started feeling a bit guilty yesterday, I also realized that this is the reason I'm in business for myself. If I want to take off for the day or a couple of days, I can. I don't need to ask for time-off from work. I don't worry about vacation days. I have no one to answer to but myself!

As I mentioned in my last post, I started running a  Facebook ad on Friday. It's been running almost a full week and here are the results so far.

By Saturday morning, I was able to see that ad #2 was getting a lot more views and clicks than ad #1, so I went ahead and suspended ad #1 and let my $2.00 a day budget be spent entirely for ad #2.

When I started the ad campaign I had 637 likes. I've received 53 new likes this week directly from the ad.

Here's the breakdown:
Friday:             6 likes
Saturday:       10 likes
Sunday:           9 likes
Monday:          4 likes
Tuesday:        10 likes
Wednesday:     9 likes
Thursday:        5 likes (by noon today)

During that time, I had 62 clicks on the ad. So, of those 62 clicks, 53 resulted in likes. That seems to be a good ratio.

By the time this ad campaign is finished running, I will have spent $20.00 and if the rest of the days produce the same results, I should have gained approximately 100 new fans.

What I like about running the ad is that all of these new likes came from people who happened to see the ad and liked what they saw enough to like the page, and hopefully, purchase from my shop. My sales have been very good this week, although I am not sure if any came from facebook.

I will report the end results next week.

Day 7 - Facebook Ads

The things you are passionate about are not random. They are your calling.

Fabienne Fredrickson

I'm really excited about today's post because I feel like I'm finally taking real action for growing my business. The first week has mostly been about goal making, planning, and laying some groundwork. Now I am getting into taking on tasks that I hope will show me some measurable results.

Yesterday I set up a Facebook Ad. It will start running Friday evening at 5:00 pm and run through the next weekend (until Sunday, January 19th at 5:00 pm). I have committed to $2.00 per day, so it'll be interesting to see how long my ad runs each day and how many likes I receive. I promise to report my results.

I created two ads. I'm not sure how it works, but I think Facebook will run them simultaneously. If one ad is producing better results, I can stop the less performing one.

Here are the ads:

I've also included the target demographic information I selected.

I currently have 637 fans. So, we'll see if these ads produce new fans!