Last week we began our look at the 3 Most Common Social Media Mistakes Jewelers Make with Mistake #1: Not Focusing Your Social Marketing on Business Objectives. This week we continue our discussion with the second biggest mistake jewelers make.
Mistake #2 – Trying to Market on too Many Channels
As jewelers we love shiny new objects! Unfortunately, with Social Media Marketing we need to avoid the Shiny New Object Syndrome, which of course is jumping on every shiny new object (social network) that comes along. We play for a while on Twitter and Facebook, then jump to YouTube, and Pinterest, and then have to try out Snap Chat and Instagram. Is it any wonder our Social Marketing is not effective, at least not as effective as it could be?
The mistake is that your presence on these networks is sporadic and doesn’t allow you to establish your brand and genuinely connect with users. You should not necessarily be sending the same message on Twitter as you would on e-mail or Facebook or Instagram. However, you do not have the time, the staff, nor the finances to interact on all of the social networks in a way that engages visitors and moves your jewelry store towards business objectives.
The best way to correct this mistake is to focus your digital marketing on one or at most two established social channels and spend your time and effort becoming leaders in your community on that channel. Once you have mastered a select group of channels, you may want to expand, or you may find that you can sustain your store’s presence on those one or two channels.
Social Media is indispensable in marketing a business in today’s world, and needs to be included in any company’s marketing plan along with more traditional media such as direct mail, radio, TV, print, billboards, etc. However, when you try to diversify Social Media across many social channels and maintain other traditional marketing, it becomes too large a task for small businesses such as independent jewelry stores. Instead of excelling on one or two social channels, they flounder on many and none become effective.
On which Social Media Channels should jewelers concentrate?
Listen to most so called Social Media experts within the jewelry industry and they will extoll the benefits of Pinterest as a marketing tool for jewelry stores. Yes, when they began they were the best visually friendly social channel, and Women Fashions was and still is one of the top viewed categories. This all contributed to Pinterest’s advantage to jewelers. However, other social channels’ drastic improvement in both photo and video presentation has lessened this advantage.
These so called experts view Pinterest’s 80 million users as an advantage to use it as a marketing tool. However, this number pales in comparison when you consider that during 2014 alone, Facebook had a net gain of 230 million new members. That’s nearly 3 times the total membership of Pinterest, and with 1.4 billion members, no other Social Channel comes close to the total reach of Facebook.
User activity on Pinterest peaked in March of 2014 and Pinterest has seen a steady decrease in the number of user visits per month as well as time spent by users on the network. With the decline in user activity, coupled with the increase of other networks like Facebook, Pinterest really is “So 2013”!
YouTube
YouTube, the once proud video hosting website owned by Google, changed the way we watch video. YouTube made it fashionable to watch video over the Internet rather than just on cable or satellite TV. Their record setting pace shattered network television’s dominance. More hours of video was uploaded to YouTube in one year than all four major television networks created in their combined history.
However, by the end of 2014 YouTube had become second fiddle as more videos were uploaded and viewed on Facebook. During 2015 Facebook has continued to distance itself from YouTube making it the premiere video hosting platform. By the end of March 2015 over four billion videos were viewed daily on Facebook up from three billion daily views just two months earlier.
Facebook is the granddaddy of all Social Media channels. If you haven’t yet determined it should be your primary social focus, consider these additional facts:
- Facebook is the primary traffic source on the Internet today. Facebook sends more traffic to websites than Google and all search engines combined!
- 72% of all online adult Americans are active on Facebook and 70% of them log-on at least daily to Facebook. The second largest Social Network has only 28% of online adult Americans active on their network.
- Facebook is the #1 most used Mobile App. People spend more time on their mobile devices on Facebook than any other activity, including phone calls, texting, and playing games!
- Facebook is committed to helping small and local businesses. Facebook has added many new features for local brick-n-mortar stores such as Local Awareness Ads and the newly redesigned Facebook Offers.
- Facebook targeting is second to none. Why waste your marketing time and money advertising to people who are not interested in your products and services? Facebook allows you to target Interest and Behaviors as well as Demographics.
- Facebook’s reach is still strong, in spite of news media’s headline hype! Organic reach impacts more potential customers than any other Social Channel, and paid reach is cheaper and more targeted than any online advertising platform.
You don’t have to dominate every social network to be successful marketing your jewelry store. Being a Social Media jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none produces mediocre results. Being average or worse at several things will rarely make you successful and Social Media is no different. Focus your efforts on Facebook and possibly one other network, and your concentrated work will show far greater results.
Next month we will look at Mistake #3 – Trying to market to everyone.
Brad Simon is co-owner of Internet 4 Jewelers and specializes in Social Media Marketing exclusively for retail jewelry stores. They are dedicated to making Social Media simple and affordable for every jeweler, and provide content packages for jewelry stores doing their own marketing, as well as affordable full-service Social Media management and Facebook Ad Campaign management. For more information contact Brad at 864-680-4416 or Brad@Internet4Jewelers.com or visit their website at www.Internet4Jewelers.com.
