Establish Your Online Presence with Social Media

There are a lot of options available online for businesses. Evaluating them all will take some time. You will need to consider which websites and social media platforms will work best for your business. It is essential to do the research to determine which ones you’ll require. 

Social Media

Not all businesses have social media, but as a crafter you should really consider setting up at least one social media account. Since social media is completely free to use, it’s a great idea to take advantage of it. The type of social media you set up will depend on a few things like what experience you have with it, if there is a way to sell your products on it and how many friends and followers you believe you can obtain. 

I recommend starting out with Facebook and Instagram. What’s great about the two is that you can actually link the businesses together and use Facebook’s Business Suite to manage your business presence in one location. You can check all your messages, schedule posts and see your engagement numbers on the dashboard. 

Facebook and Instagram both have their pros and cons. With Facebook, you can connect to the Marketplace to sell your craft items as well as set up a shop directly with your Facebook business page to sell your items. Instagram also offers a way to sell items in your own posts, and you can create shoppable Instagram posts. I feel like it’s a little confusing myself to sell products on Instagram, but I do feel like Instagram is a great way to connect with your customers on a more personal level. You can show off pictures, short video clips and create stories that engage your customers and you can also have everything post to your Facebook page straight from your Instagram account. 

If you have no experience with Instagram, set up a Facebook page first and learn how to use Instagram later. Facebook will provide you with more ways to sell your products, especially if you do not have your own website or e-commerce store available. 

Other social media accounts to consider creating for your crafting business include YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok. You may find other social media platforms that I haven’t mentioned to be beneficial to your business, but these are currently the top ones I personally recommend. If I had to recommend just one social media platform, I would still highly suggest Facebook over all the others. It allows you to not only make post updates and promote your products, but you can connect with your customers all while selling your craft items all in one location. 

How to Create a Facebook Page

For a more detailed article of setting up a Facebook page, check out this post over on HootSuite. HootSuite is perfect for any craft business who needs to manage all social media platforms under one roof, and they also provide great detailed articles. I will gloss over some of the setup steps in this post to help you get started with the basics.

You’ll need a personal Facebook account to create a Facebook page. This allows you to become an administrator to the page. Then you can go straight into the page creation area to start entering in as much information about your business as you can. You’ll put in information like your business name, business category, and your business description. Facebook also allows you to upload a profile and cover image. If you don’t have these available, you can upload them later. It’s really important to have your visuals ready to upload to social media because they are the first impression that customers will have about your business. Check out my blog posts on how to create a logo and how to develop a brand and slogan.

Facebook guides you through the process every step of the way, which is another reason why I recommend it over other social media platforms. You can take your time setting everything up, and you don’t have to share your page until you’re ready. It’s the perfect way to get your business online right away, and then all the other online platforms can come later. 

Once your Facebook page is ready to share with the world, invite your friends and family to like it. Encourage them to share your page with their friends so that you can build up a customer base. While you’re building your audience, be sure to keep exploring all the options available to you. There are a lot of options that you can play around with, and you can even learn more about your audience from the page insights section. Take your time to learn as much as you can about building a great Facebook business page, and provide as many details as you possibly can on it.

Explore Other Options

Social media isn’t the only place to sell your craft product online. I’ll be discussing other options in future blog posts like Etsy, creating your own website and Shopify.