Home Furnishings Retailers do Social Media
So you’ve got your retail business up and running and you need to start getting your name “out there.” How can Home Furnishings retailers do social media? Perhaps, shape a social presence and build brand recognition? Or maybe you’ve been needing to brush up on some social media tactics.
As furniture retailers, advertising your store and brands is key to letting the world know what you do. When more people learn about what they can benefit or gain from your business, they start engaging; and thus, the buyer’s journey begins.
All social media is not created equal
There are tons of paid avenues you can take to increase the digital presence of your store, your design business, or even your manufacturing collections. In one of our recent blogs, we talked about the popularity of local store reviews being a huge factor in that presence. But you want to make sure you’re taking the appropriate, most effective approach for your retail store. Social media platforms have been essential—actually, mandatory—for marketing to home furnishings customers. In fact, Emarketer studies show that 50% of retail marketers used social media for advertising in 2016. And the best part is it’s free…for the most part.
With that being said, let’s start with choosing the best channel(s) where Home Furnishings retailers do social media.
Snapchat
If you’re wanting to target millennials, you’re going to need a Snapchat account. Forbes reported 60% of Snapchat users in the US are under the age of 24. Not only that, but over 100 million of them are watching 30 minutes of content. Every. Day.
Let’s say you’re looking to reach out to a larger and more diverse demographic. Maybe your store needs a great place for long-form content and multimedia, Facebook could be of value. Per day, 44% of users are checking their Facebook feed. This is a great option for B2C companies in the home furnishings industry. What’s even more powerful about the largest social media platform in the world? Reviews. Facebook reviews are some of the most sought after review sources in the industry. Outside of Google reviews, Facebook reviews for furniture retailers are great for reputation management and local search optimization. MicroD has recently added a new solution to help you collect more Facebook reviews. Learn more.
Instagram isn’t necessarily a go-to channel for direct response advertising, but they’re working on improving CTAs on the platform. Although, it is a “fun and quirky way to share” company culture and design inspiration through a series of pictures.
Visually share and discover photos, recipes, ideas, you name it, by pinning images or videos to themed boards. Pinterest is a GREAT way to show the “real life inspiration” behind some of the products on your showroom floor. Pro tip: link your product to the pin and drive inspired furniture shoppers back to your site!
“Discover what’s happening right now” by browsing through hundreds of #hashtags and trending conversations. Twitter can increase your impact by regularly tweeting with followers.
As the third most used social platform among business owners, it can never hurt to create a LinkedIn page. It is reported to be the #1 most important social platform for B2B marketers.
Blogs
Company blogs can be beneficial for generating an audience. Blogs can also be integrated to all other social media and to your website. When we talk about “good SEO juice”, blogs are the easiest way to begin accumulating regular traffic to your site and encourage industry leaders to repost your blogs—driving high-quality links to your site and improving domain authority (more on that in a future blog).
Just because there is a variety of social media channels available, does not mean you need a profile for every single one. Choose those that better suit your business.
Now that you’ve got your social platforms picked out and set up, you’re probably asking yourself “what should I be posting? Does anyone need to be tagged? How often do I post?” No worries, MicroD is going to help answer all those questions.
What to Post
The power of social media can be heavily influenced by the engagement of readers and followers. Assure the content that is being created and written is original and appealing. Try putting some time into getting to know your audience. Otherwise, valuable time will be wasted on meaningless posts and you may end up losing contact rather than acquiring interest and support.
Also, make certain to relate posts to your nature of your furniture business. Be creative and don’t be afraid to think out of the box. Home Furnishings retailers do social media better than anyone because of the incredible potential. You want to stand out, make your business known. Remember the goal is to promote yourself and build a larger audience to draw in customers.
Who to Mention
We’ll keep this short and simple: If posting anything related to a person or company, give credit where credit is due.
For retailers: mention your manufacturers! When you’re having a promotion for certain brands in your store, mentioning the manufacturer to promote. Mentioning well-established organizations improves the confidence your customer has in the post/information. You’re also able to increase the reach of your post from mentions.
For manufacturers: mention your partners, vendors, and/or retailers!
When to Post
Don’t go overboard with publishing all over social media. And don’t get into the habit of spamming and swamping everyone’s timelines and feeds with links to your site 24/7.
Revive Social provided the following table for the best times to post on social media:
Creating a schedule of when to post can take up a lot more time that you’d expect. Thankfully there are plenty of social media tools to make it easy to let Home Furnishings retailers do social media. Consider Hootsuite, Buffer or AgoraPulse, just to name a few.
The great thing about these sites is they provide analytics to track how many likes, clicks, mentions, or comments you’re gathering. If you prefer not to automate posts, choose the best times for your business based on the analytics reports each tool offers.
Home Furnishings Retailers do Social Media isn’t always easy. But that’s why MicroD is here to help. We’ve launched a program to help retailers and manufacturers in the home furnishings industry. Need help giving your website a new look or starting the right way to handle social media? Email [email protected] or click here to see how MicroD can help!
