With the increasing digitalization of our world, using social media to sell is a vital skill for anyone in sales. This is a lesson I learned last year with the start of two small businesses I was involved with: Braided Joy and Love Leather Co. When used effectively, social media helped to boost the sales of both businesses.
Last year, I opened my first Etsy shop, Braided Joy. Overall, this has been a really insightful experience, particularly when it comes to selling. I had to navigate selling products to people without ever meeting them, or even talking directly to them. Instead of face-to-face communication, I had to learn how to use social media to sell products.
The biggest challenge I experienced with Braided Joy and selling on social media is being patient. It takes time to grow on social media, especially doing so naturally. While ‘going viral’ is becoming increasingly more common, especially with TikTok’s current algorithm, it still doesn’t happen overnight in the majority of cases. It takes time for different platforms to really begin recommending your content to your niche, ultimately resulting in sales. It is important to post consistently and have patience with your growth. Using these techniques, I was able to grow on Instagram and TikTok, resulting in sales to total strangers within the first month of business.
I had a very different social media experience marketing my Etsy shop compared to Love Leather Co., a E-commerce store I helped to run for my E-commerce class last semester. Marketing for Braided Joy (my Etsy shop) proved to be easier because I was already familiar with the platforms most commonly used by my target market. I spend an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through Instagram and TikTok, so it was easy to begin creating content for those platforms. However, our target customer for Love Leather Co. used primarily Facebook, a platform I didn’t even have an account on before we started marketing for Love Leather Co. It was a lot more difficult and time consuming to make content and overcome the learning curve of navigating a new social media platform. However, with a quick Google search, I was able to find countless YouTube videos small business owners had posted explaining how they used different social media, including Facebook. These videos helped point me in the right direction, and explained the type and frequency of content to post. As a result, by the end of the semester, the majority of our sales were coming from Facebook.
Regardless of which social media platform you use, becoming an online salesperson is beneficial to your business. The role of the online salesperson will only become more relevant as technology progresses and people continue to spend more time online.
Josh Elverson 
Aliyah Shelatz
This is a very thoughtful post here. I think people can believe that selling online, on social media platforms isn’t that hard and anyone can do it in a few minutes and become skilled. The reality is there is a lot of learning critiquing, planning and effort that can go into even just one post or ad. Something as simple as when you want your ads shown, or when you want to post is a very important decision. Great job!
You make a good point that selling on social media takes time. Although organic growth requires patience, it can result in passionate customers. It takes strategy as well. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok’s algorithms are all different. A post that succeeds on Instagram might do poorly on TikTok. Besides social media, another emerging method of online selling is Zoom. Before, professionals used to travel to their customers. Today, however, it is far more convenient to meet on Zoom. Overall, great job with your post!