BLYTHEVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Being a small business owner is no easy feat, and in a town with a population the size of Blytheville’s it can be even more challenging to sustain a business and see steady growth.
A recent growth in social media marketing is changing the small business climate, however, giving owners new ways to connect with their customer base, the Blytheville Courier News reported (https://bit.ly/1sQZgOd ).
Social media marketing has become a major tool in the belts of both large and small businesses in the last decade, thanks in large part to Facebook, which launched in February of 2004. Since then, the social media giant has been joined by a number of other social media outlets including Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and others.
This growth spurt in social networking has not only allowed people from every corner of the world to connect with one another, but it also serves as a solid platform for business owners to increase their business’s visibility, connect with consumers firsthand and control their own content.
In Blytheville, three locally owned shops are taking full advantage of what social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have to offer them as business owners and are now reaping the rewards.
Me & My Sister/Merle Norman, owned and operated by sisters Lori Hixson and Leslie Wells, have been using Facebook to promote their shop since opening the doors four years ago. What started as an easy way to show people what was happening with the store has grown and is now responsible for roughly 50 percent of the shop’s business, according to the two sisters, who say they use the account to post a variety on new inventory that’s coming in as well as specials from time to time.
During these four years, Hixson and Wells have developed an almost formulaic approach to successfully utilizing social media to promote their business. Me & My Sister is active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and Wells said the three most important things they’ve learned to look at when using social media sites is timing, visibility and consistency.
“You can tell, you know, that if you post something for our group at certain times of the day it may get 100 views, but if you post another time, when more people are on Facebook, we may get thousands of views,” Hixson said.
“I posted a new t-shirt line that we’re carrying, and I told Lori I need to get these posted so as soon as schools out, you know, people will see,” Wells said. “And we probably sold 5 or 10 that day. We even had one girl who was like ’I saw these on Instagram’ and we were just like holy cow, did the school bell ring and the first thing she did was jump on Instagram? But that’s what they do now.”
“You have to know your customers, know your demographic,” Hixson added. “Younger groups lean more toward Instagram, because it’s so instant - right there. Then we have other customers who want to see everything through Facebook.”
Hixson and Wells also said using social media to advertise gives them the ability to reach people who might otherwise not walk in the store on their own - particularly people from out of town and even out of state. Me & My Sister’s Facebook page has just over 2,400 followers, which they said is incredible given the local population size.
“There are other stores that may have more followers, but they also do more online shopping and shipping,” Hixson said. “We do some of that, but what we really want is for people to get out and come to the store. We want them to have the local touch and feel, to come in and sit down and be here for the gift wrapping and everything — the whole experience.”
Wells said “sharing” is especially important when it comes to their page’s visibility and consistency. It’s not enough just to post regularly. According to Wells, for a post to be seen by the greatest number of people, it has to be shared by others.
“We were up here the other night and I did a sneak-peak for Christmas - like 13 pictures - and it’s been seen by 2,900 people. That’s because of people sharing,” Wells said.
While sharing posts about new trends or incoming items has helped Me & My Sister grow their business, that’s not the only way for retail stores to draw in customers.
That Bookstore in Blytheville has been a staple in the area for several decades. Even with the business’s established presence, owner and operator Chris Crawley said he still relies on social media to bring in new and existing customers, but not typically by posting about books.
While Crawley does use Facebook, as well as a few other social media sites from time to time, he rests most of his energy on Constant Contact, an online marketing company offering email marketing, social media marketing online survey, event marketing, digital storefronts and local deals tools, primarily to small businesses, nonprofit organizations and membership associations, to inform patrons about upcoming events. Crawley said his primary goal is to get people in the store, and sell them something after they’re there.
“I use Facebook primarily. I do have a Twitter account and I have a couple of other social media accounts, but I don’t really use those on a daily basis,” he said. “I check my Facebook page every day, and know I even have additional people on our team who check Facebook and manage updates as well. The biggest social media use for me though is my Constant Contact. I have roughly 2,000 names on there, but it’s expanding every day and I’m adding names every day, and that’s the principal way I use social media. I use it to let people know about upcoming events.”
While Crawley said he will use the TBIB Facebook page to promote upcoming author signings, he said he foregoes posting any products on the page. For his purposes, it works better to get customer in the store and be able to talk with them and help them find that perfect item.
“My goal is to get people in the store, because once they get in the store they have all of these options open to them,” he said. “A lot of what motivates people to buy is being here and seeing what we have. Some people do come in looking for a specific book, but a lot of people will come in and they ask ’What would you recommend?’ So getting them in the store gives me the opportunity to give them multiple options to choose from.”
Crawley said the store has doubled its contact list over the past 12 months, and added that he’s seen a marked upswing in customer interaction over social media.
“We’ve doubled our contact list in the last year, so I think it’s helped a great deal. And when you look at the number of people who are actually using Facebook, in particular, the number of comments, the inquiries, the requests, they come in much more consistently than they did without it,” Crawley said.
While TBIB and Me & My Sister use social media marketing to drive in their customer base, when their customers arrive at the store they typically know what to expect. But Mailboxes & Beyond owner Tobye McClanahan said she’s been using social media marketing to remind customers of all the services her mail and parcel store provides, and she’s made quite a name for herself in doing so.
“One of the ways social media works for me is that, because we do so many things, people forget what all we do,” she said. “It’s hard to market all of the services we provide in one print ad or one video ad or radio ad. So social media is a way for me to plant those seeds for all the different things that we do, and that really helps out.
“It’s a free outlet for advertising and it allows me just to drop in a line and maybe say, ’Hey, did you know we did 12 notaries last month?’ and then I may have someone come in to have something notarized just because they saw that post on Facebook.”
McClanahan agrees that consistency is one of the keys to success, saying “A tidbit out there everyday plants those seeds and it really adds up.”
She, like most other businesses, relies mostly on Facebook over sites such as Twitter or Tumblr. But McClanahan said using Facebook isn’t without its challenges.
“There are some challenges to getting people to see your business page in their feed because of the way the algorithms work, so it takes some cleverness sometimes,” she said. “We do a lot of Facebook only specials. We want people to not only like us, but continue to follow us and engage with us. The number of likes doesn’t mean as much as the number of people who interact with us, so we do a lot of ’Hey if you see this post come in the store and get your free gift,’ and all somebody has to do is come in a say they saw on Facebook that it’s Freebie Friday or whatever it is.”
McClanahan said she has just over 1,240 followers on Facebook, which she said is nothing short of incredible for her line of work. Mailboxes & Beyond has made a name for itself in the mail and parcel world thanks to McClanahan’s effective social media marketing strategies.
“I have a lot of other mail and parcel businesses that follow me just to see what I’m doing. There are people on there with 15 followers who live in a town with 50,000 people. So yeah, it works,” she said.
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Information from: Blytheville Courier News, https://www.couriernews.net
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