How you can use social media to drive sales and save the planet

Today we're in one of Bradford's Green street pioneers, Plant One On Me, and we're looking at how they've used social media to drive sales and help the planet. Plant One On Me is an independent shop and what they do is their aim is to be the go to for those living the sort of chaotic, noisy city life and who struggle to connect, I guess, with a sort of natural mental remedy, AKA nature. So what they have, if you have a look, is they've got a really lovely open space and they want it to feel very home from home and have plants that surround you as well as you can enjoy their menu. They've got a cafe and they want people to sort of listen to vinyl and just chill out in their really sort of relaxing place. Now this is the post that I wanted to show you guys. So this team has used social media to try and give a bit of a feel for their love of nature, which I think this image clearly does, and plants and how that connects with their in store experience. So they have to use social media to try and drive people in store because whilst you can buy online, in store is where obviously you know their heart is. They want people to connect with them. So what they did was they did this little post which showed some of their gorgeous plants and what they've done. As you can see, as I said, new plants have landed at the Half Moon and also a little packet of seeds are on the counter, free for you to take. So they've done showed off their gorgeous plants, showed off, you know, like some of the other products that you can get from it and the image, which is great. And then they've said they'll give away any, they'll give away free seeds for anyone coming in to purchase. So what this does is just a really great way to drive people from social media into your store rather than shopping online because you're giving them added value they wouldn't get on the website. And guess what the reason for doing that is so that you can upsell them. So whilst they buy this plant here, they might want one of these cards there, they might want another plant as well as then obviously then taking home seeds. And so it's all about the full experience and so why wouldn't you want to do that? So then they've also, by giving away the free seeds, they're helping Mother Nature along a little bit. So it feels very sort of ethical and I just think it fits in so, so well with their brand. So I think for me, any business can and should be doing something like this. If you want people to take a step from online to offline, you need to give them an experience. And to give them the experience, you need to show them that and you need to give them the added incentive. Now, ways that could have increased this would be to use hashtags. Use, you know, hashtag local garden center, hashtag plants, hashtag, I don't know, free seeds, hashtag, you know, again, because they're based in Yorkshire, hashtag Yorkshire, that. Those kind of local ones as well. Now, if I was plant one on me, one of the, one of the things I would want to do is monitor the competition and see how I perform next to them so that I can get really, really strategic with my social media. So what I could do is go to the maybe platform and go to the dashboard. Now on the dashbo, you've got all their contents. They can schedule in their content to make it easier for them. They can answer comments, anyone commenting on their posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, they can answer them really easily. Any mentions, anyone that's talked about them, they can go in and engage with. And then anyone who's talked about them previously, who's created posts, you would want to then go in and engage with those posts. It's just so, so clever. And then they connect up any ads that they decide to do. And then on the left, they would see their best post for that entire week and. And then they could compare it with anything. So it might be Adobe's, it might be a small independent garden center, it might be a local florist, but it's kind of just for them to get a bit of a feel for what's working for them and then what's working for the competitor or indeed someone they can take inspiration on or from. And then you can look at their content calendar. So theirs versus yours, or so yours versus theirs, you can look at all of their social stats, you can see where you are versus them, you can see what's working for them. So where the peaks and troughs are over the course of your week, you can see their most used hashtags. So it might be that you can borrow some of those, or you can look at your own and see which ones are working better. You can look at sentiment and then you can look at who's got influence in the conversation. So if, for example, it was a lot of local newspapers or local businesses and things that are influencing their conversation and there's none in yours, and you would want to be going and engaging with those as well, to let them know they've got alternative options and then, of course, what's being said about you. So these are all the key messages, all the key things that people are saying about them at that point, and. And then you can look at what people are saying about them as well. So if you've got any questions whatsoever, we love to help, so please just click on the little blue button.