Author: Vasim Samadji

The phrase of the year 2020 was “The New Normal”, which was thrown around in gay abandon to recall and describe everything that happened during the time we all stayed indoors to keep ourselves safe from the raging pandemic outside. For businesses, the “New Normal” was going digital overnight. Everyone, from your neighbourhood café to your favourite apparel store, from your milkman to your gym, started offering their “online services”.But many failed unfortunately or couldn’t keep up with the teething issues because they never followed a process and fulfilled the must haves for any business to start their online shop. If you’re among those who’re still contemplating on it, then this is going to provide you more clarity and a focus on getting your shop online.

Build the BRAND

Some of the wildly popular brands you see online today weren’t overnight superstars online. They worked on building their identity, a relatability with their name, logo and products and services to the target audience.

Why, you ask?

Because taking a relatively unknown brand online with nothing to recall, is like jumping into water without a life jacket. So before you take the plunge, ensure you have the following boxes ticked A brand name, something which signifies the philosophy or service it offers.

A logo, for people to recall and form a connect with it, wherever we see it. For example, all of us can recall the logos of Skullcandy headphones, Ray Ethnic apparels, and Café Coffee Day cafes.

Choose your platform

Once you’ve set up your brand, the next step is to find the right platform to sell your products and services. But before you make your final decision on which platform to go with, you must go through the essential features it offers and if it ticks all the boxes for your brand.

Your platform must work on all kinds of devices. We at Flora Fountain take a mobile-centric approach every time we build an e-commerce website for a

client because our studies and research have shown that people tend to shop and explore more while on the move, on their smartphones. Hence it is important that the platform is mobile and tablet friendly.

Secondly, the platform must be able to integrate the various payment gateways and processors without any hitch.

The platform must come with its own inventory management feature so that you don’t have to shuffle through multiple spreadsheets every day.

And lastly, it must be able to sync with the many social media stores like Facebook Shop, Instagram Shop and Google Business.

For first time businesses who may or may not have much knowledge about code, Shopify is the way to go, thanks to its easy to set up procedures.

If you’re looking to add a shop feature to your WordPress website, the go with the WooCommerce plugin. And for business that deal in large quantities of sales, BigCommerce is what we’d suggest.

Market your market

There is a popular saying in the Gujarati language, “Bole Tena Bor Vechay” which loosely translates to “The one who speaks, sells”. And it’s true, until and unless you tell people about your product, your services and where can they find them, nobody is going to know. Because, like we mentioned earlier, almost everyone is going digital and there are chances that 10 of your competitors are already vying for the same spot as you.

Once you’ve set up your online online shop, it is time to market your market. Now there are many ways to do it, traditional marketing like newspaper advertising and outdoor billboards being among them. But they require large marketing budgets too.

If you’re looking spend only a fraction of that budget, target social media, since you’re already digital now. Ensure your brand has a page on almost every social media platform, talking about your online marketplace, the products you sell, the offers you’re giving on them.

Identify platforms which have their own online shop extensions, like Instagram Shop, Facebook Shop, Google Business, and Pinterest Shop.

Build a social media strategy, which identifies your probable customer base, plan your promotional posts accordingly, reach out to social media users who even makes a visit your page to create a recall about your brand and it’s availability on the digital marketplace.

Get in-sync on social media stores

Nowadays major social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and even Pinterest have their own online store extensions. While it was initially created to help businesses with no website or experience in online marketplace management to sell their products and services on to people directly social media. Nowadays every major brand with their digital store or ecommerce website have their Facebook and Instagram Stores connected to each other.

When you sync your Facebook or Instagram Shop with your ecommerce website, every product picture you post online gets identified by the platform and it matches with product you’ve uploaded on your website. As a result it it not only showcases your product, but details of it and its prices too. With a single tap, the user can purchase it online, without even having to visiting your website.

In case you’re wondering how to set up and sync your store on Facebook or Instagram, check out this step by step procedure provided by Facebook themselves: Your Guide To Setting Up Shop.

Get analytical, track your progress

Any and every piece of data you could collect from your e-commerce platform and marketplace is gold and useful for you to understand the progress of your business online. Post building your online shop, kickstarting your social media campaigns and synchronising them to your social media stores, it is important that you track the statistics. The data that gets recorded are of the number of visits people make on your platform, the sales you make through it,

the kind of products/services they look at and the amount of time they spend on each of these pages. This helps you understand the consumer trend and if your marketing campaigns are performing at par with it. The one platform which is the most sought after when it comes to online business analytics and is available for free is Google Analytics.

In order to help you with the setting up of your Google Analytics for your website, here are two helpful links for you to which will guide you step by step.

Setting up Google Analytics on Shopify
Get started with Analytics, by Google

Now that you know the most important steps that need to be taken to make your ecommerce journey smooth and successful, it’s time you get started. And if you’re getting stuck somewhere, your friends at Flora Fountain are here to take you across the line. All you need to do is drop us a line here.

“Facebook is not the same anymore”, rued a young lad, probably in his early 20s, on his Twitter feed, as a part of his multiple-tweet rant about the 2.3 billion-strong social media giant, complaining that it is hiding his posts from his “audience” as it wants him to pay them money in form of ads to in order to reach out to them.

To be honest, when we saw this tweet, we did feel his pain a bit, because we too as digital marketers have felt the brunt of Facebook’s updated algorithm which ranked posts as per its quality and was strictly policing its over 4 billion posts daily. So, what to do? How do you reach out and engage with your audience that you painstakingly built for your business? Here’s 5 steps you as a small business can take to drive up the engagement on your Facebook page/s

Schedule/Plan Your Posts when your followers are online

No, we’re not gonna blabber about ‘marketing strategy’ here. All we want you to do is simply plan in advance. It’s not tough. The data is already there. Just use it to your benefit. Did you know, that most of your followers miss out on your posts, because you post them when they’re NOT online? So how do you know when they are online?

1. Click on Insights on your Facebook page
2. Click on Posts.

Now you’ll see a graph that shows the number of followers/fans that are online each hour, during each day. This way, you can make a decision to schedule a post at the time when the maximum number of your followers are online.

Go Live and interact once a while

Facebook Live is one of the most under-used and underrated features of the platform. Did you know, a Facebook Live has 35% higher reach compared to an uploaded static post? If you are wondering how and why, here’s the answer; It’s pure human psychology, FOMO.

We tend to hold on to something for a longer duration, when we know that it is going to be with us for a short time. Similarly, when your audience sees a POST from you, they’ll scroll through with the thought that it will remain on your wall anyway, and that they’ll check it out later. But when they see something LIVE, they’d stay for the entire duration because they DON’T WANNA MISS OUT.

Plus, Going Live means you’ll be engaging with followers in real time. We won’t shy away from saying this, but, Live gives your business a human touch on the internet. Because, after all, no one wants to interact with a machine.

Give preference to video clips and posts

Here’s a crazy fact for you, over 500 million users watch upto 100 million hours of video content DAILY on Facebook. There’s something about videos that get people hooked, every single time! While a good picture or well-designed artwork does grab attention, but because there’s too much of such content “dumped” on Facebook, people tend to scroll away.
An average user stays on your post for about 1.7 seconds. But when they come across a video and it starts playing instantly, they stop, look and if found interesting, might drop a reaction too.
So try posting more videos. No, not by copy-pasting a link, but uploading the video directly to the platform. And it works better when you give it a title and add a couple of keywords to it too.

Respond to queries, reviews and comments every day

Comments, queries, messages and reviews on your Facebook page is a user or follower interacting with your brand. And when you respond to them as a brand, it is equivalent of you respecting your customers.
When you reply to direct messages, your response time is displayed on the page. Always try to be on the “Very Responsive” side. When you reply to a comment on your post, it gets visible to multiple people from the friends’ list of the commenter. When you respond to queries and reviews, you learn a lot about your consumers’ behaviour and helps you curate content and services accordingly. Plus, its pure reputation management. The more responsive you are, the more people engage with the page and higher visibility you get.

Get active on Facebook Groups

Another underrated platform on Facebook is its groups. Where else can you find a whole bunch of people who share similar likes and interests? It is way better to engage and advertise your brand with groups having followers who have an interest in the kind of service you provide or product you sell.
For example, if you are a home-baker who wishes to sell cookies, then instead of blindly posting pictures of your wares on your wall, post them in groups that have people who love baked goods. Add a “Call To Action”, like a link to your website or phone number for them to get in touch with you.
Simply following these steps, you will see a decent jump in your engagement on Facebook, without spending a single penny on advertisements. After all, this is a SOCIAL NETWORKING platform!

Fun fact, over 40% of the people on the internet are active Instagram users. As of October 2019, India had the second-highest number of Instagram users numbering to 73 million active accounts. Every major brand or business is on Instagram today, promoting their products and services to millions of users every day, as each one of them is a potential paying customer. Instagram generates over 50 times more engagement with users compared to Facebook and Twitter. And the more you engage with people, the more your chances are of converting them into paying customers of your service/product.

But building a good base of genuine followers on Instagram can look like a daunting task. It does take a lot of work initially, but if you’re consistent and driven, it’ll be a piece of cake.

Here, we’re gonna tell you how to garner a decent followers’ base in a short period with these 10 steps.

1) Curated Content!

Instagram is like a digital glossy magazine that people love to browse through. The first impression that you leave on a viewer is extremely important. If you post beautiful looking pictures, catchy and relatable content regularly, not only will your existing followers engage more with it, it will start showing up on the search feeds of other users with similar interests too. It is advised that content has to be planned instead of posting them on the fly. Pick an eye-pleasing colour shade for your creatives, use only high definition pictures, and preferably with faces, as studies have shown that people engage more with your post when it has pictures of people and minimal text.

2) Hashtag Game Strong.

Hashtags play an important role in improving your visibility and reach on Instagram. Hashtags are topics tagged with a # which creates a searchable link and help you start a conversation or enter an existing one and engage with the people involved in it. The more people see your posts on their search feeds, the higher your chance of getting them to follow you. Instagram allows 30 hashtags per post, and you must pick the right ones for your posts. The first couple of them always has to be related to your brand/business names, so that identity of yours is eventually cemented with each post. You can use various free tools online like Inflact to generate hashtags for your posts based on the picture, keywords and URLs.

3) Connect and follow.

One of the best ways to get people’s attention to your business is to get into their notifications. Yes, over 55% of people check their notifications immediately when their phone/laptop chimes. And the way you can draw their attention to your brand is by following them and engaging with their posts. It’s simple, say you are a restaurant serving Mexican food, a simple search with #MexicanFoodLovers will throw up hundreds of posts of people who talk about it. Now all you’ve got to do is check out posts and profiles that have a decent engagement and following and follow them, like a few of their posts, drop a genuine comment. There’s a fair chance they’ll take note of you and follow you back.

4) Engage with followers

It is important that your followers feel like they matter to you. Not just by posting things that they like or can relate to, but by also engaging with them on a personal level on the public platform. Replying to comments, messages and shares is the best way to engage with your followers in the public view, as it not only gives you a loyal follower to the brand but inspires others who’re seeing this conversation to follow you too. Give witty replies to comments while plugging your brand with its hashtag, respond to queries in a short period, and share a couple of good reviews or appreciation posts on your feed by tagging the user. It improves your standing as a brand that’s loyal to its people.

5) Posting regularly.

Consistency is the key when it comes to being an active business/brand on social media. As we mentioned earlier, plan out your activity on social media in advance. It will not only help you post good content but also maintain a healthy engagement with your followers. If an account goes inactive for, say 10 days, it is very difficult to get back on the feeds of your followers. But when you post regularly, with the right hashtags, your posts keep showing up frequently on the search feeds of people with similar interests, thus pushing them to follow you.

6) Videos work the best.

Various studies on social media usage and engagement have shown that more than static posts, and pictures, videos get better engagement and people always prefer watching something play out on their screens rather than they read something on the posts. But we’d suggest keep it as real as possible. Because as we mentioned earlier if your content has too much graphics or text, there are more chances of it getting ignored. It’d be great if your clips are shot by professionals, but even amateur, mobile phone camera shots also garner a good response. Once you get a good followers base, going Live can also be a good option.

7) Posting at the right time.

Your posts could get maximum engagement when it gets posted at a time when maximum followers are online. And as your engagement improves, your posts get relayed to more on followers on a local and global scale, with higher chances of your brand getting more new followers. On your profile, you can study the analytics of your account, where they show during which hours were your Instagram followers mostly active. This will help you schedule your posts accordingly. This step might not guarantee you a barrage of followers immediately, but it helps you immensely in the long run.

8) Paid Promotions.

Instagram has an option to promote your post or page to a lot of people online, for a price. For brands that are new in the market and have a budget for marketing, they must earmark a share for promoting themselves on social media too. When you boost or promote any of your posts on Instagram, it lets you select your audience based on various demographic parameters like age, gender, income, interests, etc. and your goals for the promotions, as in reach, likes, followers and engagement. Once your promotion request is approved, the said post gets boosted and displayed on the timelines of non-followers who fall under the demography parameters you have chosen.

9) Tagging brands/influencers.

Yes, you read that right. Several accounts, brands and people on the ‘Gram command a massive following that sometimes runs into millions. They can make or break a business and basis of their influence. And getting positive engagement from them means you stand a sure shot chance of getting a small, but a considerable chunk of their followers too. If you’re a brand that sells readymade garments for young women. Post pictures of a person wearing clothes from your store and tag those brands. If you’re a cafe that serves excellent tea cakes, tag food bloggers and bakers. A like, a comment or a share from them means you’re reaching out to masses that follow them too.

10) Get active on Stories.

More than posts, stories grab maximum views on Instagram with both followers and non-followers. Stories have a lot of interesting add-ons like boomerangs, music, funky fonts, polls, AMAs, etc. that inspire people to engage with you. Stories can be the best engagement tools of all on Instagram and it can help you not only retain your followers but add many more too. Brands should share more stories than posts. Not all of them have to be pictures, mix and match. One day it can only boomerang, the next day can be only polls, one of the days can me Ask Me Anything or a chain of short clips about your business. Good stories get shared widely.

If you follow these 10 steps regularly, we can assure you that you will stack up a good number of followers within a month. But make sure that you do not break the cycle. Because then it becomes an uphill climb all over again.