What Social Media Has Taught Me As a Business Owner
Social media has its place and it’s totally worthy of driving traffic. That being said, over the years social media has taught me a lot about what to expect from it and how it will help me or hurt me as a business owner and my own personal sanity.
I hear the question a lot: how long did it take you to gain your audience/following?
When I get that question I sigh. I want to always preface it that this is not a one solution fits all situation. Especially with the ever changing landscape of social media.
And, what happens to me as a business owner may not happen for you. We need to get that number out of our heads. We need to stop worrying about follower counts.
Follower Counts Are Just a Number
Follower counts are just a number. It’s honestly not something to measure anything by if you ask me.
However, if you had asked me that four years ago I would have answered that differently. And, if you’re just starting out as a business owner you’re probably focusing on that number. I get it. You have validation and I don’t criticize you for it. At all. We have to start somewhere!
How Facebook Built My Photography Business
For those new to following me, years ago I ran a little photography studio in St. Louis, Missouri. I focused mostly on high school seniors. It was my passion. I loved every minute of it.
I also was so lucky at the time because Facebook worked for business owners. There wasn’t an algorithm that only got you in front of a small percentage of your audience. And, back then, teenagers were on Facebook.
I could tag a kid with sneak peeks of their pictures and then the bookings would roll in. Their friends were seeing them.
That’s not how it works anymore. The algorithm started changing things, and honestly, teens aren’t on Facebook anymore. When that happened I noticed it was harder to find new clients.
Does Follower Count Really Matter?
In this day and age that damn algorithm is annoying as hell, am I right?
I was following just over 800 people or so on Instagram, and the other day I was looking through that set of people I followed. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a post from probably 90% of those people.
So, my question is, does follower count really matter if you’re not seeing anything from those followers or who you follow?
I don’t believe so.
Gary V said that follower count only matters if that number engages with you. And, I KNOW that with having over 31K followers on IG and an average of about 150 likes on one post and maybe one or two comments it definitely doesn’t matter. That’s less than 1% of my followers. WHAT?
He said, “Reach does not equal value and follower count doesn’t mean people are listening. We need to stop focusing on optimizing the number of views and instead concentrate on making each one of those viewers care about your brand. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the only way you’ll drive results to your end goal.”
Let’s face it, I don’t have any interest in a platform that doesn’t bring me results. I no longer even have a desire to engage or even look through my IG feed anymore.
And, that’s okay! No one is telling you that you have to try try try while getting nowhere, and keep doing it.
What Numbers to Pay Attention To
I have been studying my Google Analytics for some time now and on average I see a 3% referral rate from Instagram to my website.
While Pinterest drives over 65% of my traffic.
These are the numbers you need to be paying attention to and focusing on to grow your business.
And, this is the same for my other accounts on IG for my other businesses.
What Social Networks Should I Be Using?
Hubspot wrote an article on which social networks you should be focusing on for your business.
My business has always been visual. Hubspot states that Instagram and Pinterest are the two platforms that are considered visual. But between Instagram and Pinterest, Pinterest is the proven winner clearly from my Google Analytics results.
When I look at my Instagram stats, my top performing IG posts are the short videos I was testing when I was also testing Tik Tok in 2020.
And, as we all know during the great Pandemic Quarantine of 2020 Tik Tok saw a HUGE increase in popularity. So that would make sense.
People want shorter videos with some value.
Then, I have to ask myself how much time do I REALLY want to devote to videos like that. Which brings me to my other source of traffic.
Should I Be On YouTube
I love telling this story, because it goes back to that original question of “how long did it take you to grow your following.”
So, sit down, grab some coffee and let me repeat my story again:
Back in 2015 I was dabbling in traditional brush pen lettering and when I got my iPad Pro in November of that year I started making SVG files from my lettering for crafters to use with their Cricut and Silhouette cutters.
It was a good income but I felt lost still. Like it wasn’t enough and I was going to have to find work to supplement my income.
I was already starting to post tutorials on my blog about lettering and did that for a year – the same things I was turning into SVG files.
I made a conscious decision to try to give away something MAJOR that would drive traffic to me.
My free iPad Lettering course was born. Or the idea, at least. I created the free workshop and I was going to put it on YouTube. For all the world to see at no cost to them. I mean, at least I might get my YouTube subscriber count up and make some ad revenue.
This is when I chose to make a $20 workbook with lettering guides that you could use as a companion to the workshop. It wasn’t a requirement for the workshop to have. But I wanted to find a way to make money to cover the time I put into everything.
And, if you know me, I’m a HUGE fan of passive income. You know, create something digital once and keep on selling it.
So, in January of 2018, I launched the course. I put the workbook in my shop and I was giving away my Durango Procreate brush.
My email subscriber count grew and my sales blew my mind.
It worked. And, still does to this day. Here we are in 2021 and it still sells.
Video sells products. People want to see how things are done.
I went from an email subscriber list of like 100 to over 60K.
Which brings me to the number that does matter.
Your Email List
This is the only subscriber count I care about. These are the people I reach on the weekly. Whether they follow me on social media or not.
It’s the list that I own.
As we all know from recent political events in the US, any social network can kick you off it. You agree to terms of use when you sign up. Violate them in any way and you’re gone. Just like that.
If you do get kicked off of Etsy, YouTube, Instagram, then how do you let your audience know how to find you?
Your email list.
You’re about 6X more likely to get a click through to your product through email than with Twitter.
Your conversion rate is always much higher. There are no algorithms blocking you. It’s personal. You’re sending an email to that person.
Consistently sending emails, like four times a month gets you a higher conversion too. More people are likely to open those emails.
Will everyone on your list open your email? No. But that’s okay. That conversion number is higher than social media that it doesn’t really matter.
Just like social media, email needs to be personal and consistent.
And, if people unsubscribe, that’s okay too. In fact, I welcome it! You want people that want to hear from you anyway!
I use FloDesk for my emails – and it’s not as advanced as some marketing platforms, but it’s cost effective. Click here to save 50% on your subscription*. I use the annual plan and it’s just $209 for the entire year (I was paying like $3K a year for Convertkit at the time – you read that right!)
But you need a strategy before you start collecting emails. And, this post doesn’t really have time for that (maybe a later post). Just know that it’s better.
What I’ve Learned for Myself About Social Media
I’ve learned to ask myself what do I have time for and what do I want to make time for when it comes to social media?
Based on my analytics I really just want to focus on Pinterest and YouTube at this time.
I have hired social media managers to handle my Facebook and Instagram and the engagement rates didn’t increase. So why pay someone to manage those with no real results?
I can nurture two items that free up more time where I can focus more on creating.
With Pinterest I use a social media manager and we use Tailwind to schedule my posts. It’s automated once a week. Boom. Done.
YouTube still makes me money (traffic drivers and ad revenue) but I saw a huge drop in traffic in 2020. This could have been partly to the fact that we were doing 3 videos a week. Too much. I heard that their algorithm doesn’t like that anyway.
I’ve scaled back to about 3 or 4 a month for 2021 depending on how many weeks we have in a month.
YouTube videos are long and with Tik Tok and Insta Reels being popular in short format, I think people just don’t want to watch YouTube video.
I won’t give it up, but I won’t be killing myself to do all of those videos every week.
It makes me want to do more with Tik Tok, but honestly, those short format videos can be even more stressful to produce. I haven’t quite made a decision here. I know they are more popular on my Instagram Reels (in my feed – not Stories) and will keep that in mind.
With Instagram I have no intention of killing it off but I made a decision to unfollow everyone but my team. I mean, I’m not seeing your posts anyway! Instead if I want to look through IG for anything I can use hashtags and I can follow those. It’s okay if that makes you mad and you want to unfollow me. It’s nothing personal.
I’m not on IG that much anyway. It may look like it as we post every day. But that’s thanks to the Later app to schedule*my Instagram posts each week. Once a week and I walk away. I can look at comments on that app and reply. I don’t get on Instagram to even look at my feed anymore. Unless you’re a dollhouse builder and then I’m over on my dollhouse account I have drooling over that stuff.
I turned off messages on Instagram too. I have to admit, I loathe DMs. Like, loathe them. I get asked questions that too often require way too detailed of an answer and my thumbs aren’t meant for that. So they go unanswered and it stresses me. And, honestly, most of those answers are on my website. I don’t feel bad turning them off. I thought I would but it’s one less thing I have to deal with.
My Advice to You
Pick two social networks (I know Pinterest is a search engine, but it does fall into this category in most reports and studies I find) and focus on them hardcore for about six months.
Don’t stress over letting things go. It’s fine.
Be consistent with them so you can get some good analytics to review. These platforms will have analytics.
And, engage. That’s the only way to make your own account grow. Engage with others and they will eventually engage with you. I’m sure if I put more strategy into Instagram with engagement I could see conversions, but I’m tapped out.
If you have a website, install Google Analytics and check on it. See what’s working.
Learn how email marketing can help you. Go to Pinterest and search it. So many good articles. Like I said, I might do one later here if you want.
Make adjustments based on these things. Nurture your email list.
Honestly, there is no right or wrong thing for you until you try it and have measurable results.
Remember, what works for one person may not fit for you. You have to experiment and be patient. If businesses were instantly successful overnight more people would be doing it, right?
Finally, stop worrying about follower count and worry about engagement. You have more important things to do anyway, like be amazingly creative!
Oh – and if you didn’t catch that above, I started doing this in 2015, and you can see my follower count now (not that big of a jump in about 5 years) so don’t sweat the small stuff.
Do you like this post?
Leave me a comment. I’m considering doing a monthly Business with Holly post to help creatives out in their journey. Your engagement will help me determine if I should spend time there (yeah, ask question and surveys too, like this – don’t waste your time on things people don’t care about).
Tell me what helped you in this article. Also, tell me what topics you would love me to cover in this topic as well!
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Thanks so much for this post! Ironically I saw it on instagram and clicked through. I also run a graphics business and I’ve been really struggling with the idea of social media and what I’m supposed to be doing with it. Hearing your thoughts helps me to consider my own. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Yeah, I knew I would still get some hits from IG so I just schedule it for there anyway. Just try and run tests. It’s really the only way to know!
Such a good post! This is just what I’ve been thinking about the last couple of weeks. I think I will focus more on my blog posts and start with e-mails. Checked out my Analytics the other day and realized that I get twice as much readers from Facebook (wich I honestly doesnt like and there is only dubbleposts from IG) than IG (wich I like better) but mostly of them comes from organic search on Google. I’d love to read more of these ”business” posts 🙂
Blog posts are sooo good for SEO! I highly recommend it. So many great keywords and things that you put in and the spiders crawl all out there on the interwebs and BOOM, traffic. It’s amazing!
Hi Holly. I like this post a lot. It is true about the followers numbers. I made a lot of sales on Instagram but also a lot with referals to people that dont follow me. When I learn this I stop focus on numbers. I am new to this, only in Instagram about 6 months but I feel that I am been sucessfull in this time. Now I am looking to engage more with audience. Also I would like a blog post about email list, I think this and pinterest would be my next step. Also I am here from Instagram!!!😂
Thanks so much for the advice Holly, it’s most appreciated!
Yes, please create more. This is helpful. I don’t mind social media but it can be overwhelming. I’ve moved to creating and scheduling all my content once a week. Eventually I want to do it monthly.
Ooh yeah, Batch creating! I love this – a good topic to cover too!
Thanks Holly. I’ve been stressing over all the social media channels and trying to focus more. I do monthly webinars (I teach various photography post-processing techniques/textures/software) and do a blog 3x a week. I have a pretty loyal following but know I need to grow for more sales (my own textures and eBooks). I feel like I’m on the brink of something great this year! Thanks!!
Yeah, don’t kill yourself putting out too much content. I mean, I get it as first, but try to find ways to maximize one piece of content to work for you. Like a video on YouTube, a post on your blog, a quick reel or two on IG or Tik Tok, and a freebie to go with it. You’ll find that will benefit you so much and your SEO will be totally working for you too!
Thank you! Very interesting and different take on social media usage! As a creator part time, it’s very important that I focus my energy where it matters and will make the largest impact with the least effort. I tried to set up google analytics but I need to read more or watch some videos because I don’t think I did it right. I would love more post about SEO, I feel like I’m still missing something there.
Thanks so much for posting this I found it really interesting and would love to hear more:)
Thanks for this post, Holly. I appreciate your frankness addressing social media. It was informative and also realistic, which seems to be hard to come by regarding the social media world. Would love to hear more from you regarding email! Thanks for all that you share with us!
Stay tuned this Friday!
This is fantastic! I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if you did Biz stuff! Thanks for all you do
You’re welcome. New one coming Friday!
Holly, I love your honesty and this post! So real. I have been following you for years, not since the photography but before svgs when you were doing branding. I know you had to take a break due to personal reasons and (see, I am a true blue follower) I have missed getting my blogging updates from you. About 2 weeks ago I came across your new site when I was doing homework on lettering, procreate and grids and I was so thrilled, made my day, week even! At the time you were doing branding I was selling party printables and favors but that all went down with this pandemic as no one is hosting parties or have the need for favors anymore, not to mention you can’t even find hand sanitizers which were my number 1 favor so, I too have had to recreate my business which means I love this post more.
I actually have a big following on my old Pinterest Board but I wanted to start a new one for my new shop even though I still have one board on the old Pinterest account with the new shop items. It’s been about a month since I started the new Pinterest account and to be honest I haven’t had one single person come to the new board but my old one I have had a ton of traffic. I know it took me years to get that much traffic so I never wanted to let it go. I have never really done much with IG even though a friend of mine gets all of her business from there. I also find Facebook to be a pain bc you have to edit each post and shop pictures to fit their format for a post and that is just too much work.
I would though love to get your insight on these subjects: Ipad Pro pros and cons as a graphic artist- (and yes, I read all about your tool and subscription recommendations on your site which are very helpful) but I almost recently bit the bullet and purchased one but then I realized I wouldn’t have my two monitor set up which I can’t live without so now I am back to rethinking is it worth the $.
What other selling platforms do you use that you can recommend that don’t have a ton of fees and headaches to deal with and if you have ever use a print service for your products that does it all for you with your designs.
Glad you found something creative that you love and excited to see that you have a team too! You always seem to be one step ahead of the market – I just don’t know you get all the homework etc done! So impressed as always! Keep being real!
Thank you so much for this post! It helped me a lot and would love reading more posts like this 🤗