068: Ask Sarah: How to Get People to Engage on Social Media - with the Crafty Lady Boutique

Have you ever felt like your efforts on social media are for nothing? It's easy to feel defeated when you don't have engagements on your post. As we continue this week with our Ask Sarah series, I'm giving Lexi some actionable steps to help her gain some traction. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. And now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today we've got another episode in the Ask Sarah series, and my guest today is Lexi from the Crafty Lady Boutique. And here's the, here's the deal, everybody listening today. She's got an audience, she's got a great product, but she's struggling with engagement. We're going to dive into that a little bit here in just a second on the podcast, but I want you to meet Lexi. Lexi, introduce yourself. Let's talk about your business. Tell them what you do.

Hi, my name's Lexi. I make bridal party gifts. We started out doing bridal party proposals and we moved into making more bride and bachelorette party stuff.

Okay, so let's go on this journey because your journey started a few years ago right after your own wedding. So let's go back and let's, let's start the journey and let's catch them up to where we're at now.

Okay, so I got married in 2017. and I couldn't find bridal party gifts that I wanted for my bridal party. So I pretty much made everything for my wedding, from the decor to the gifts to everything. And people were like, this stuff is good, this stuff is really good. So I was like, all right, well, maybe I'll— I opened an Etsy shop, and I quickly became one of the top 1% sellers on Etsy for the wedding industry in the world, which was awesome.

That's incredible.

Thank you. And then 2020 came and it didn't— that's when all the weddings stopped. And so my business took a nosedive, but I was doing more. I was a nurse for 10 years prior to starting my business, so I did, um, some nurse stuff since the nurses were still out there kicking butt. And then I, uh, did some mom stuff, so I have a little audience for that as well. But now I'm trying to get the bride stuff going again.

So weddings are going back in full, like people are starting to have the big ceremonies again. So you're like, okay, maybe this is the opportunity to get back into this. And I wanna talk about this for just a minute because you said, I, I'm in the top 1% in my category on, of all Etsy stores worldwide. And when I looked over at your website, I, I've been digging, been digging on your website, been digging on your Etsy shop, been digging on your social media, and I can absolutely see see why you're in that top 1%. So I want to give you just like some high fives and congratulations because you've got a great product. You've put together some amazing boxes, and I think you should be very, very proud of that. So now it's— we're back, we're in 2022, things are happening again. How do we go back and recapture that audience, and how do we build our business? Because it almost probably feels like you're starting from scratch again, right?

It does.

Okay, so let's talk about your question. Do you remember your question that you submitted to me? Yeah. Okay, tell everybody what your question was for me.

So I'm having trouble with getting people to be engaged on my lives and in my posts and things like that. And for some other companies and stuff that I follow and that I like to buy from too, they, they seem to have like a really good audience that, you know, engages with them during their videos and posts and things.

So you're just struggling with engagement, right?

Yeah.

I saw it too. When I went to your page, I saw, I'm like, there is nothing there. It is like crickets over there. And it, and I was amazed by it because I just told everybody you have a great product. And in turn you have great photography, you have great posting. And most people that tell me that I don't, I don't have any engagement, Sarah, I would tell them they're not consistent, but you have been consistent. And I saw that. So let's just give you a couple gold stars before we get started that you have a great product. You've produced a great product. You have great, great photos, great graphics, great videos. And so I want you to be proud of that and your consistency. Even though no one's showing up and engaging with you, you're still posting, you're still putting it out there. So that takes a lot. It takes a lot of grit to keep going when you feel like you're doing it for no reason. So I want to give you all the gold stars for that. So here's what I think, and, and we, we need to have a discussion about this. I'm wondering if the time When COVID hit until maybe recently, did you kind of go dark a little bit on your page? Did you stop posting as much as the weddings stopped happening? Did you lose some engagement over that time?

I didn't really start becoming super consistent until probably November, December, because it was— there was no market.

So were you having, were you having engagement before that, before you kind of— before COVID hit, were you having consistent engagement on your page?

Not for brides. I wasn't. It was always my friends and stuff that were always like pumping me up, but never really my outside people.

Okay. So we, we kind of struggled to even get some engagement, which is crazy to me because you have quite a few followers. And so here's what I'm thinking, and this is what I think we can do to change what you're doing because everything else you're doing right. So we just need to, we need people to come hang out with us. And I think what's happening right now is No one's seeing your stuff because if they saw your stuff, they would be engaging in your content. So we gotta get in front of the right people. And I think you just said it as well. Sometimes when we build businesses and we evolve, we have people that are not the right customer following us. So when people that are not the right person follow us, and because they're not the right person, they don't engage with our posts because it's not for them. That hurts us in the algorithm. So anytime people are like, follow me and I'll follow you, that's not a good thing to do. We need to make sure we have the right person. So my worry is we don't have necessarily the right person following us. So we've got to go find some more of those people. And I have a couple of ideas, but we also really— you talked about going live and I saw one live as I was scrolling through your April posts. And so I also want to give you a gold star for that because it's not easy doing a live, especially when no one's there. But here's what I want you to do. I want you to pick a day and a time to go live every single week. We have to build in some more of that consistency. You're doing great with your posting, but we need to build in more of that consistency. So somebody knows when to show up, you know, when we're just like, oh, I might go live here and I might go live here. And that's kind of how we are as creatives. We're just like fly by the seat of our pants most of the time. It doesn't— people don't know when to show up and hang out with you. And yes, there's probably going to be no one hanging out with you for a little while and you have to be okay with that. But one thing that I did once I got a consistent schedule and I said Friday morning, 9 AM, I'm going live every Friday. I want you to pick a day and time. Okay. First of all, then I want you to tease something that's going to be coming up. I saw you did a post before your live announcing you're going to do live, and that's great. Let's give them a hook. Maybe it's the monogram bride reveal. Maybe it's, I've got a new product and I can't wait to show you. Maybe it's some sort of sneak peek of what you're going to show them. When you go live. But let's create a little bit of tease as to what we're going to go live about so that, oh, I gotta go see what she's talking about. I gotta go figure out what's going on. And I want you to put that in a post, you know, the day before you go live. And I also want you to send it in an email inviting them to join you live at a certain time in a certain day. Those are two things that will help drive some traffic to your live. Number one, the other thing is I need your friends to show up. Let's call our friends, let's call our girlfriends and say, hey, I'm going live every Wednesday at 2 PM, can you show up? And send them a text, hey girls, I'm about to go live, can you show up for me today? And I want you to ask me about the upcoming Mother's Day box, I want you to ask me about what colors are best for spring weddings, I want you to ask me about, you know, give them some questions to feed to you. So then when you're live, instead of it feeling like a presentation that you're giving, right, it becomes a conversation. And when you start to have conversations with people that are watching, more people want to have those conversations with you. You might have viewers that are scared to say anything because no one's saying anything and you don't want to be the first one to say anything, right? Like I'm that, I'm that introvert, like not saying anything until anybody else says something. So that could be, that could create some engagement there. So get your friends on board. I did this for probably a month. I had 3 friends I would text every morning, every Friday morning before I go live. Hey, ask me about my earrings that I have on. Ask me what's in the next monogram box. Ask me, you know, what I'm doing for the weekend, just whatever it is, create some conversation. So it didn't feel like I was standing on stage giving a presentation to people that could care less. Right. Because that's probably what it feels like.

Yeah, it is.

Okay. So once you create some engagement, Now Facebook sees you having a conversation. They don't know that they're your friends. They could care less if they're your friends, but they're asking questions, they're engaging on your live. That's going to help push your live in front of more people, that engagement on that live. And I did notice your live in April had the most engagements on it from anything on your page. So I think that if you can get that consistency in, it's going to create momentum for your other posts. Then when you get done with your live, immediately, I want you to go in and type answers to their questions, even though you answered them live. Okay. Because again, this is another way that Facebook sees you engaging in conversations. That's what it wants. Not one-word answers, but back and forth conversations. And if you do that immediately after your live, it's also going to give it a little juice to push it out in front of more people. So make sure every time you go live, you turn the camera off, grab a drink, you sit down and answer any of those questions that you just answered on the live, but it's a different form of that, that conversation going back and forth. And then I have another, I have kind of another thought about just your posts. I think doing that with your lives is going to create some momentum on your page, but I also want you to give some of your posts a little bit, a little boost. So not necessarily a full-blown Facebook ad, but I want you to hit that boost button on like one of your graphics a week, like a really good one. Like, I don't— you just have some great graphics, like of your, you know, bridesmaid boxes and stuff like that. Like, I want you to pick one a week and I want you to put about $50 into that boost. And I want you to run a boost for 7 days. Um, so if you did this once a week, it's about $200 a month. And I want you to select 7 days. And I want you to also select people who like your page and their friends. So when you get to pick their audience, the audiences, it's people who already like your page and their friends. It'll show them to that, those people. Let's start with the people we have first. And I, if you can get those posts in front of more people, people that already like you, they're more likely to engage. And then remember engagements will create more engagements. So if we can just put a little budget behind getting in front of people, I just don't think people are seeing anything you're putting out there and that can be completely frustrating on your end because you're spending your time, effort, and energy to do it all. And then like, okay, crickets. And then you have like all these internal, I'm a failure. I can't do this. Yes. And you're telling yourself that every single day, probably. But what I'm trying to tell you is that you got good stuff. You got, you've got good product. I love, I love the concept. You've got great photos. You're being consistent. So I see it. We got, we got to let everybody else see it. And that's just the issue right now. And once you get a little momentum with the lives and the boost posts, you'll probably see organic engagement on all your other posts because it's work. It's working that juice back in and it's building that up. And I think the other part is the first thing that we talked about was that if you don't have the right customer in your audience, um, so we got to go find some more brides. So tell me what you have been doing to kind of find that ideal customer and get in front of them?

Okay, so I did 2 giveaways the last 2 months. I really honestly haven't been super consistent up until just the last 6 months, I'd say. So we're getting there. So we did a giveaway in February and then we did another giveaway in March. And now I'm trying to like pump the brakes on it just a hair to like not for them to expect giveaways all the time. So, but the first one did so well. I think I got almost 400 brides on my email list for that.

Whoop whoop.

That's awesome. Thanks. I was super excited about it. And then I was, you know, trying to figure out stuff with my website and my Facebook and all that. And I had to start a new pixel. I had to get a new pixel because it was not linking up to my website. So I think it was bogged down. Okay, so the, the second one I did was with the new Pixel, and I only got like 50 brides for that one.

And it might have been that it was just too soon from the February one. So I would tell you, let's not do more than one giveaway in a quarter, but if you can plan a quarterly giveaway, that would probably be best. So let's talk about those 400 brides that you got on your list. Did you invite them to like your social media? Did you encourage them? Okay, the other thing that I think you really need spend some time on is actively being in some of these bridal groups. Are you in any of those?

Yeah, I'm in a lot of bridal groups, but I don't really know what to say or do without sounding salesy.

Um, you could post your pictures all day long. So I would go in like, oh my gosh, I love Emily's colors for her wedding. Look at this cute bridal box that I made for her. Um, what, you know, what are the color— what are your colors? Or, you know, you could have conversations but show them a dang picture because those pictures are awesome. And any bride that's in that wedding planning stage, when they see that, they're gonna be like, oh, I gotta go find her. And then make sure, of course, your business is in your personal profile because they're gonna wanna find you. Um, but I think that you could just kind of share some pictures and don't do it so often, like not every day or anything like that, but I would be in a lot of different wedding planning bridal groups, those kinds of things. And I would pick one different group every day to go in and post something in, um, you know, about— maybe it's, do you know how to put a monogram together for, you know, your joint husband and wife style? Like, do you know what that looks like? Or, you know, give a tip, or just sharing a photo. Like, I love, you know, what so-and-so picked out for asking her bridesmaids, you know, or I love this, or I loved this, and just share some of your photos without saying I sell this. They're going to find you and they're going to know that you sell this when they find you, but I would just share it in an organic way. But when someone sees those pictures, they'll be like, oh, where'd you get that? And you're like, oh, I made that, you know.

Right. Yeah.

So that's, that's what I want you to do without being salesy, just being like excited. Being excited about what you're working on, and that's going to draw people to you. And you're going to have to consistently find new brides, right? Like, you're only a bride for so long, right? But when you're a new bride, you want your new initials on everything, so you have the ability to keep, keep them for a while. Um, I would definitely just get in the habit— that needs to be my daily routine— is to find new brides. Every single month. Like, what is your goal? I got 400 new emails in February, so how can I get in front of 400 new people every single month? And that's going to be working these groups, and Etsy is going to be perfect too. And I don't know all of the rules of Etsy, but I wonder if you could link your Facebook page in your description. Do they allow you to do that?

I put it in my thank you note when they order, and then it gets sent an email, so I I put my Facebook and my Instagram on there.

Okay. That's perfect. Do you also send like a little card in there? Okay. In their, in their purchase. Yeah, definitely do that because I think it's a great place for people to find those things, but you have ways of recapturing them. How does it feel about, how does it feel to do a live every week? Does that feel heavy?

It's getting better. It's getting easier, but it's still like, Sometimes I don't know what to talk about, only because it's hard because I'm talking to no one all the time.

Yeah, so just pick a topic, pick a topic for your lives. Maybe, you know, like you could probably go to Pinterest and start like Googling weddings and get a lot of ideas. Let's talk about, you know, if you're planning a wedding for the fall, let's talk about the perfect colors for a fall wedding. Let's talk about the perfect centerpieces for a fall wedding. Like just give them some knowledge It doesn't always have to be what you sell, but then also show them like, okay, if we're talking about fall colors, let me show you what I made in this color. I think it would be perfect, you know, for a bridal gift, or let's talk about, you know, where you went on your honeymoon. And these could be posts too. You could even just be making someone's bridesmaids boxes, go live making it. Like I'm, I'm working on an order today. She has 6 bridesmaids. This is what we're putting together. And then just kind of chat as you're working. And that might be easier too, because you're focused on making the things and not just like directly looking at the camera all the time, but engage with anyone that shows up and get someone to talk to you so that other people feel comfortable to talk to you. And you could be working on some of the orders as you're, as you're on a live video.

I've done that a couple of times. I did that on TikTok. Okay, so I have like 20,000 followers on TikTok, but they're all the wrong people, Sarah. They're all the wrong people because they thought I was a crafting place that they were going to learn from me and learn how to craft, and I'm like, uh, that's not what I'm doing here.

Okay, so people that are wanting to do the DIY are following you instead of, of the actual bride that wants the finished product, correct? Okay, so we need to, we need to do some different videos. We need to go into the wedding dress store and just take some quick videos of all the dresses, and we need to talk about different wedding setups, and we need to bring on a guest that knows wedding etiquette, and we need to be like the wedding educator versus the craft DIY educator. So how do we serve the people that are in our audience that we, that we want more of? And so that is, if I'm trying to put together my wedding, maybe I don't have a wedding planner, what are my top tips that I need to know? And so those would be great opt-ins for you as well. Um, they could be great, you know, blogs that you could write. They could be great content for your social media. Like, let's shift our mind to helping this new bride create her wedding of her dreams, which she doesn't have the ability to hire a wedding planner. And maybe even she does and she can still buy gifts from you. But how do we serve that audience? Because that's what will attract Pinterest, you know, the top whatever, top 5 things you need to know about your wedding venue. That's who you want to attract, right? Someone looking for that. So I think that should be the focus of your content going forward.

Okay, thank you. I've been kind of thinking that as well, so I'm glad that you like confirmed that for me.

Yeah, but let's, let's just review real quick. Every— you're doing everything right, okay? Give yourself some credit. We don't give ourselves enough credit sometimes because it's hard to feel like we're doing things right when we don't see the results. We want. So now it's just about honing into our niche, to our ideal customer, and making sure that we are providing engaging content and we are looking for that right person to engage with. And sometimes it takes a little bit of help. So those boosted posts are going to help you. Going live on a regular basis are going to help you and just getting your friends on board, friends, family, sister, whoever it is, um, to help create some engagement. So that we can fuel the Facebook beast. Like we need to put a little fuel on it to help it grow. And I think once you start to do this, you're going to get some traction. Everything's going to feel better for you. And then that subscriber number is going to go up. It's going to continue to grow. Keep doing your giveaways. Let's space them out a little bit. Let's do about one a quarter, but keep talking to that person. That feel, feel doable?

Oh yeah, it does.

Okay.

I was going to tell you my word of the year was traction. And you just said it.

Let's get some traction because you have everything in place that you need. We just need to get some traction with it and you're going to start to grow. Lexi, if we've got people listening today, they might be in the same situation. They feel like they're not getting engagement. What advice would you give them, you know, to keep going in their business?

Hard when there's— I mean, I have been Cricuts for almost 2 years now and it's super hard, but I'm not giving up. Like, I'm just never going to give up on my dream. This is what I want to do. I bought a little shop at 650 square feet and I'm not going to give it up. That's mine. So I'm not giving it up. If you're having troubles, then just don't give up. That's all, you know, just try something new.

That's shake things up a little bit. It always helps if you've been doing the same thing over and over again, think a little bit outside the box, shake things up and keep pushing forward because one day it's going to click and it's going to start to grow. And I'm really excited. Excited for you. If you are a bride or you know a bride-to-be coming up and you want to find Lexi— Lexi, where can they find you?

I'm at www.craftyladyboutique.com, and if you guys have questions, you can always just send me an email or whatever. It's right there on our page.

Awesome. I can't wait to see you grow, and we'll be back next week for another episode in the Ask Ask Sarah series. Thanks, Lexi.

Thank you, Sarah.

Bye. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.