If you use social media to market your handmade products, you know that trying to keep up with what works on social media is a bit like chasing a moving target!
And I frequently hear questions like
What’s working on social media in 2024?
and
Am I wasting time doing stuff that’s not working?
Today we’re going to dive into what things you can STOP doing on social media, plus the one thing you must START doing!
So, ready? Let’s dive in.
The first thing I want to talk about is obsessing over hashtags. Now I’m certainly not saying that there isn’t a place for hashtags . . . but they are definitely not worth using on many social media sites.
For example, on Facebook or on Pinterest, hashtags are going to lead you absolutely nowhere, they are just not a thing on those two platforms. But even on Instagram, that used to be big on the hashtag front, hashtags are just not that important anymore.
I see too many people saying things like “I don’t understand, I’ve really researched my hashtags and I’m using them a lot, but I’m not getting reach, I’m not getting engagement, what’s going on??” . . . or they might ask “is buying hashtag packs and paying $20 for 100 Hashtags worth doing?”
And honestly… it’s not how Instagram works these days.
It used to be a place where you were served posts from the people that you were following, and hashtags used to be really helpful because they were a way of searching for content on the platform.
But this has changed, and now we’re seeing search features within the app that makes finding content easy and possible, even if you don’t use hashtags. These search features are making hashtags more and more irrelevant.
I’m not saying you should stop using them entirely, but I also don’t want you to obsess over them and think that they’re this magic feature where if you get your hashtags right you’re going to suddenly reach 1,000s people with your post — because it’s just not the case anymore.
And your time is better spent on creating engaging content instead.
Next I want to talk about some “hacks” that used to work to increase your followers and increase your site standing – but in truth are passé and very “2010” if I’m honest, but I still see people doing these things.
THIS FREE PLANNER WILL HELP YOU CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN FOR YOUR HANDMADE SHOP. KNOW WHAT TO POST, WHEN TO POST IT, AND WHAT TOOLS TO USE!
The first one is the old “follow me and I’ll follow you.” I see this a lot in Facebook groups, people saying “Put your link below and let’s all follow each other!” That’s great if what you want is to build a network of people who support you and you’re genuinely interested in following those people but it’s going to do NOTHING for your strategy and growth. You want followers who are your target customers and who will engage with your content, not followers for followers.
Another one is an engagement pod, where a group of you agree to always engage with each others’ posts with comments and likes to try and trick the algorithm into thinking that it is an engaging post so the post will be boosted to other people. This is again very 2010 — it’s not going to work. The social media algorithms are all way too clever for this and it is a waste of time. You want REAL – not fabricated – engagement.
Next is buying followers, which I think may be the best way to waste money on social media!
I know that it feels good to see your follower count grow, but when you buy followers you don’t know what followers you’re getting — they aren’t going to be followers who are actually interested in your products, so it’s not going to help you build engagement and customers and get sales.
My advice is if something sounds a little too hacky – as in sounds too good to be true – it’s not going to help you. It might have worked for two hot seconds in 2014, but social media today is much smarter so don’t waste your time on these hacky tactics!
The third thing I want to talk about is blaming “the algorithm” for your problems.
I know social media algorithms can be frustrating — one day something works, the next day it doesn’t, it’s enough to make any of us want to scream!
But you have to stop blaming the algorithm of whatever platform you’re on for your lack of reach and engagement – the algorithm is not against you, I promise. And if your posts are not getting the reach and engagement that they deserve, it’s probably because you’re still building up your account OR you don’t have the right strategy.
If you’re only using organic strategies (so NO paid ads), at the beginning your account grows slowly but surely, and as you continue posting good content and getting more engagement then it starts to grow exponentially. So if you just got started, slow organic growth is normal.
And if you’ve been consistently at it for a few months, and it’s still not changing or evolving in the right way, then you have to blame your strategy — because all the algorithms want is for people to stay on the platform. And for that to happen, people have to engage with your content. And if your content is simply not engaging enough for your potential followers and audience, then your lack of growth is from that – it’s not from the algorithm. I know – ouch, right? But I want to be totally honest with you – brutal but honest 😍!
As I always say, we have to focus on what you CAN control and that’s your content and strategy, NOT the algorithm. A good content strategy, I promise you, is 100% algorithm-proof.
Another thing I see quite often is people using many different social media and posting the same thing on each one . . so they’re essentially repurposing the exact same content, for example, on Facebook and on Instagram, and hoping to get similar results on both.
I do not recommend doing this, because in reality there are little quirks and different personalities to each social media. Instead, pick your favorite one and go hard on it, they’re all a bit different so it’s better to really nail the tone and vibe for ONE platform and take time there to engage with your followers versus hoping that one strategy will work on all the platforms and keeping your posts “generic” for that reason.
The fifth thing you should stop doing on social media is posting just to post.
You don’t want to be posting something that’s not going to get people engaged, as in get people to talk. And by this, I mean having conversations with you, or with their friends, in the comments.
Let’s talk a bit more about the specifics of starting conversations between you and potential followers or customers. If someone for example comments on one of your posts, you don’t want to post a reply that’s generic and doesn’t encourage FURTHER conversation, like “Thank you!”, you want to be creating conversations.
So by this, I mean keeping the conversation going by asking another question, or just starting a conversation with the person who commented.
You also want to be sure you are posting content and captions that are going to be interesting to the people that you’re talking to. If you’re posting about something that’s completely unrelated to what your ideal customer is interested in or likes, they’re not going to engage. It sounds obvious but I see this mistake being made every day! So don’t dismiss it thinking “well of course, Deb! I only post stuff that’s relevant” – have a look at your last couple of months of posts and ask yourself… am I posting anything that’s just not that relevant to my potential customers?
You really have to focus on posting things that will prompt that engagement, that response; something that will interrupt their scrolling and make them stop to engage.
So focus on quality, and what I mean by that is you need to focus on quality of posts over quantity of posts. If you post a bunch of posts every day but they aren’t prompting engagement or they aren’t about what your ideal customer is interested in, you really aren’t doing any good, it just accumulates on your account as content that’s not engaging and the algorithm picks up on that. You are much better to have fewer posts that are encouraging engagement and appealing to your followers.
Another thing I see too often is people who think that their feed and their social accounts are 100% about their business and products.
If you think your feed is all about your business, it’s not only ineffective, but it’s actually quite hard from a content perspective because at some point you’re going to run out of ways to talk about your products or come up with another caption about your business.
As a rule of thumb, you really only want to talk about your business and products 20-30% of the time. The rest of the time you want to be creating content that your ideal customers are interested in — you’re making your entire feed about them and the things that they are interested in — essentially building a community on your feed that is all about what all your customers care about and the similarities that they all share.
For example, if you sell kids’ toys you obviously are going to have some photos of your toys and talk about your products, and when you have promotions you’ll be talking about that too, and the call to action will be to get people to go and buy your products or check out this new product or that promotion – that stuff will be about 30% of your posts.
But the rest of the time, you really just want to engage and make sure that your followers feel seen and feel like you really “get” them; that this account is actually more about them than it is about you. So you’re going to have quotes and funny memes about parenting or motherhood or fatherhood or whatever your audience will identify with.
So now that I’ve told you everything NOT to do on social media in 2024, I want to tell you the thing you MUST be doing, which is to be sure to consider shareability when creating your posts because that is the new “word of mouth.”
We talked earlier about back in the 2010s when hashtags were big and you were able to reach a lot of people using them. But there are too many people on all of those platforms now and hashtags are not really working — what IS working is word of mouth via social media.
Social media word of mouth is what you do when you’re sitting on your couch at night, kind of semi-watching Netflix but also semi-scrolling on your phone, and you’re coming across all these interesting videos, funny or engaging quotes, memes or funny reels, essentially something that you think is interesting or funny — and you share it with your friends in your DMs.
So maybe you share that with your husband who’s on the other end of the couch doing the same thing that you are, or you share it with a couple of your best friends — this is the new word of mouth.
We recommend content to our friends by sharing stuff that we find on social media that we think they will like.
And this sharing is how you’re going to get other people to find your social media account because you are going to post content that your followers will want to share with their friends, who will share it with their friends, etc etc, and your following slowly builds up!
I’m not saying this is the only way to build your account, but it is becoming a really important part — so you can’t forget about creating content that’s really shareable.
If we go back to our kids’ toys example, you know the kids’ toy market includes a lot of mums and dads. So you could post some inspirational quotes that are about fatherhood or funny quotes about motherhood, and when I’m on my couch and I’m scrolling because my kid is finally in bed and I’ve got an hour to myself before it’s time for me to go to bed, I will see your funny quote about motherhood that I feel like I can totally relate to — and I know my friend Sophie is going to totally relate to it too so I’m going to share it with her. And then Sophie is going to go and check out your account, and she may share the quote with a few of her friends.
So it’s about creating content that your ideal customers and potential followers look at and laugh at because it’s funny to them or they may read it and think YES I can totally relate to that!
If you’d like some help crafting posts and captions and more generally creating a social media strategy that is going to help you not only get engagement, but most importantly make SALES of your products, then check out my article about selling handmade on social media where I’ll share my best tips to sell successfully on social media without feeling like a pushy sleezeball.
Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!
you might also like…
If you want to be found in search results on Etsy, you need to optimize your product listing for SEO. And if you want to
There has been a lot of talk in the Etsy community — and I mean A LOT of talk — about Etsy’s payment account reserve
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a HUGE advocate for using email marketing to grow and scale your handmade business. But you may
grab this free
social media planner
Invaluable insights, thanks Deb. I feel much less like a headless chicken now when it comes to approaching Instagram. No longer researching hashtags is saving me so much time!
Glad to hear that it was helpful for you, Kate!