Episode 95 || Traffic Month: Social Media

[podcast_team]

This week, week three of Traffic Month, we explore how Social Media plays a big part in driving buyers to eBay, both from the eBay end and from seller’s social media. We’ll hear first from eBay employee Audrey Tracy who will outline how eBay uses Social Media and then we’ll talk to eBay seller Kathy Terrill who shares her professional advice for sellers who want to use Social Media to drive buyers to their specific listings.

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Episode 94 Links
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Social Bakers blog
Kathy Terrill’s Web Site
Kathy’s Social Media Cheat Sheet

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Hosts:
Griff, Brian Burke

Guests:
Audrey Tracy (eBay staff), Kathy Terrill (eBay Seller Guest)

Transcript:

This week on the eBay for Business Podcast:

"With nearly 13 million followers, eBay, social channels really give us extraordinary access to shoppers interested in our brand at a very low cost. And right now people are spending hours and hours on social. And I would argue even more so because they're kind of cooped up at home due to the COVID."

" Take a few minutes and think about who is shopping with you. What demographic are you appealing to? Even if you're a variety seller, think about where are the majority of my sales? Are the majority of my sales in women's clothing or kids' toys or collectibles. Where am I making the most money?"

I'm Brian Burke.

And I'm Griff And this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and the inspiration. You need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 95.

And this is week three of our month long Traffic Series on the podcast. This week, we'll delve into the importance of social media and how if used properly, it can really boost your buyer traffic to eBay.

And to your listings!

And your listings.

Now, before we jump into our first segment, Hey, Brian, how are things in our Los Gatos this week?

Los Gatos. I'm not in Los Gatos. I'm on the other side of the tracks in San Jose.

Oh, I thought that was Los Gatos.

No, I'm right on the border, but I'm in San Jose.

I'm a proud San Jose’n.

Okay. So how are things in that Southern right next to Los Gatos part of San Jose?

Wonderful. Still working from home, getting a much better appreciation for what our sellers do on a daily basis, working from home and seeing their family on a regular basis. And I delve outside once in a while, cause I am across the street from a park, as you know.

Yes, I saw there was a beautiful park.

I actually have cleaned up our backyard and set out all the patio furniture, something I haven't done since November of 2018, I put the covers on everything and shut everything down. And I never opened it up for last year, but I did open it up for this year and I'm spending more time outside and it's just glorious. And I appreciate that because from what I'm reading, I think we're going to be inside for a lot longer.

Well, what, at least through August for us, right?

Uh, well, into September. But they're saying that a second wave coming for some, some of us like in the risk groups, which I am in now, because as you know, I'm a senior citizen, very elderly.

You don't act it.

I know. Anyway, it'll give me a chance to get to my profit piles, which are all over the garage and they're calling my name and I got to get it listed on eBay. Well, normally I'd love to shoot the breeze with you on our first segment of the day, but I gotta tell you we've got two really meaty segments this week. We got to get started.

That's good, we should get started. First up our newest correspondent, Kirsty Dunn talks with Audrey Tracy eBay Content Strategist on how eBay uses social media to drive buyers to eBay.

I'm Kirsty Dunn. I'm the new Seller Social Marketing Manager here at eBay. A little about me. I've been at eBay for five years now in both Australia and the U S and I've worked in comms for 13 years. It's a pleasure to join this series and to join the Seller Team. As you know, the month of June is Traffic Month. Throughout the month we're hosting segments to help you learn about how you can drive traffic to the site and to your listings. We're now in our third week and today I'll be chatting about all things, social media marketing, and how sellers can leverage social media to better connect with buyers. I'm joined by our old friend, Audrey Tracy, she's our Social Content Strategist and Editorial Planner, and has a wealth of social market and knowledge. Welcome back, Audrey.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so glad to be back on the podcast and congratulations to Kirsty and the new role.

Thank you very much, Audrey, happy to be working together. Audrey really keen, to get a bit of an outline on how eBay uses social channels and what is the general day look like for you in your world.

With nearly 13 million followers, eBay, social channels really give us extraordinary access to shoppers interested in our brand at a very low cost. Let's talk about some interesting statistics on how consumers use social, and this is not just eBay buyers, but the world in general, buyers in general. 74% of people trust social media to guide purchasing decisions. 60% of users learn about new products via Instagram, 55% of all users due research on social, like perhaps visiting a brands page to understand more about the brand or the, or the item, the product. And right now people are spending hours and hours on social media. And I would argue even more so because they're kind of cooped up at home due to the COVID. We are seeing lots of traffic on our social channels, and I'm sure other brands are as well. On our consumer facing channels, that includes Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There's many different things we do to connect with our buyers to drive traffic to the site. So these include a couple of different kinds of content buckets. Number one is deals offering seasonal sales, like maybe a 4th of July sale, a Memorial day sale. Those messages are really around value, typically around good deals, good discounts. And then they also highlight eBay's breadth of inventory. We have one and a half billion listings on eBay. So you can imagine what sort of breadth we have there. Another bucket of content is seller storytelling. So eBay is really blessed to have so many amazing sellers and buyers really actually like to see the sellers behind the product. So we do a lot of seller storytelling to kind of inspire and motivate our buyers to learn more about our sellers. And then finally profiling unique eBay finds. And this kind of helps us foster community within our social channels. We like to highlight what we call uniquely eBay inventory. Interesting, rare, weird, wonderful items on eBay. And those really get our social fans talking when we publish that kind of content. We use a mix of organic and paid social to drive traffic and results for our marketing efforts.

Could you tell us just a little bit more about the difference between organic and paid social? Like how do we use them? Is it best to use them in tandem? Do you use them separately? Do you use them together?

First let's define our terms. Organic social means unpaid free social, right. So think of your personal Facebook or Instagram page, those are probably organic in that they're free. In your personal life you probably don't do a whole lot of paid. Paid social media means you're putting money behind your posts. You're buying advertising on one of these channels to make sure that your message is showing up to the appropriate audience. So we use organic and paid social ads for two primary reasons, organic to kind of target broad audiences with more general promotional or marketing messages. So you can think of that as eBay, putting a post up about our Memorial day sale in our Facebook page, that's untargeted, we want everyone to know about our Memorial sale. And then in paid, we use that to target specific customers who have shown interest in specific items or categories. What's great about paid is there are many, many more targeting options. So you can get really specific about who sees your message. Andrea, last week talked about the luxury watch buyer. We do a little bit of luxury watch content in our organic, but really where you're going to find those luxury watch buyers. The really niche-y audience that you're looking for is primarily through a paid tactic and each has its own benefits, right? So organic helps drive engagement and awareness at no cost, but sometimes it's harder to cut through, the message is difficult to cut through because imagine how much content is out there in the social media world. So we try to be very thoughtful about what is going to cut through when we think about a post. And then paid is great for acquisition and growth. Inspiration happens on social as you know, and paid can kind of get that buyer to be not only inspired, but move them over to the kind of conversion part of the marketing funnel and get them to transact on eBay. We also find great success with paid when retargeting customers. So we do like to follow you around the internet and offer you ads to things that you may have indicated interest in earlier. So if you're a seller and you're new to social, you want to get started with social. I would get started with organic, start building up your page, start building up your following and then test out paid. And you can do that either by creating a brand new ad within the I'm talking about Facebook here within the Facebook platform, this also applies to Instagram, or you can simply take an organic post that you've already created and do what's called boosting it. You can boost that post. And I recommend that you kind of start small, invest, you know, maybe 20 bucks and an ad set, a start and end date, and then go back and look at your learnings and kind of just start to build some learnings and some insights about what your content does, how it performs and how you can optimize it for the next post. I think that's really interesting.

I think a lot of people wouldn't realize, especially for paid that you can start with such a small amount. Some people might think it's a big barrier to entry.

I also want to say, you know, there's, there's a lot of best practices around how to use organic and paid, but honestly there's no like set rules, right? If you're a small business owner selling on eBay, no one is going to present you with a blueprint that says, you know, four posts a day about this specific topic will drive the best results. There's no formula to it. It's a matter of getting into the channels, testing and learning, figuring out, you know, what's the right content. What's the right cadence. How often should you publish that sort of thing?

Let's talk about social media trends. So it seems like there's always something new. There's always a new platform. That's literally going viral or new ways of working with influencers. Can you just tell us a little bit about the trends that you're seeing currently and what we might be doing in that space?

Certainly. So shopping and shoppable content on the social channels is one of the biggest trends. That's obviously relevant to eBay. If you're thinking about it from a small business point of view, I would really recommend that you use something like Curalate or Link Tree. This is specifically for Instagram, although we use Curalate on Facebook as well. And this, what that does is it creates some shoppable content. So if you think about your Instagram feed, those tend to be static images, or maybe it's a video, but you can't click through, right? Something like Link Tree or Curalate what it does is it basically sucks up the images from your Instagram page and creates a page that is full of links. And that will drive back to your eBay page. Shoppable content is huge right now. And I would recommend if you're doing social media to promote your eBay business, that you look into something like that. Obviously everyone's talking about TikTok right now. TikTok is exploding. We're looking at how we might tap into that for both buyer and seller messages. That's I can't quite announce a launch yet, but just keep an eye on eBay on TikTok that's all I'll say.

Very exciting.

Yeah. And then influencer marketing is always changing. As you know, that's a very dynamic field. eBay works with both top tier influencers to build awareness and loyalty, and then influencers at the more kind of micro level that are optimized for click-throughs for specific items or maybe categories. Like you can think of, I'm just making this up. But like in the influencer world, we might want somebody who's known for giving great advice about deals. We might leverage them to talk about eBay in general, how great eBay is, how many deals you can get on eBay. But then we might use somebody like a DIY influencer to talk specifically about the tools category as an example.

Yeah, the pandemic COVID is obviously made everyone have to adjust either their business operations or their marketing efforts to stay in touch with their customers. Everyone's had to move online.

Small businesses are finding great success with utilizing social media. How can our sellers use social media to drive traffic right now?

Yeah. So I've seen a couple of things going on. Number one, I'm seeing a lot of local businesses in my area, adjust their business model. I'm thinking about restaurants and things like that. So they don't necessarily apply to eBay per se, but I am fascinated on how small business owners are so adept and adaptable to find new audiences and new customers in the time of COVID. But then we've also seen that with online businesses as well. So according to a recent Facebook report, 51% of small businesses report increasing online interactions with their clients either by bringing their business online, using digital payments or by increasing their social media presence. So I think savvy small business owners, even if they're running an online store and maybe their business model hasn't been terribly impacted are realizing that the pandemic has had a big impact on consumer behavior. And they are looking more and more to online and especially social to market their businesses. We also know that consumers have a lot of time right now. We're kind of looking for information, calming ourselves down about this pandemic. And we've been turning to a lot of online content. I know my personal consumption has gone way up. I don't know if you saw the meme that was like, here's some helpful tips to get through the pandemic. And it was like, tip number one, wake up. Tip number two from 9:00 AM to 2:00 AM, just stare at your phone all day. Like that's what people are doing.

And buying lots of things. Exactly. So if you want to take advantage of all this while folks are online, you don't necessarily need a lot of money or a lot of resources to start social media marketing, it's free and kind of accessible to everyone. You're probably doing social media in your personal life. Just flip that on that side and start marketing your business through social media. And when you think about the customer journey, like where does social media fall within your marketing mix? Social media marketing is really great to get what we call further up the funnel. So if you think about the marketing funnel with awareness at the very top and conversion at the very bottom, social is a great way to drive things like awareness and consideration for your business. And the great thing about social media is you do it yourself, right? You don't have to hire an agency. You can begin creating content right now and start thinking about what your audience wants to hear from you, how often, et cetera.

It could be probably quite daunting maybe for some of our sellers to start out. We've obviously taken years and years to build our loyal following of 13 million across all of our social channels. I think for some of the small businesses that could be overwhelming and daunting. So how easy is it to start and what's the first thing that they should do?

We find that at least on the eBay side, we're very strategic about who our audiences are and our channels. The Facebook audience tends to be a little bit older, tends to be like Gen X and older. The Instagram audience tends to be a little younger, I would say Gen X and Millennials. They tend to be a little more into trends and pop culture. And then Twitter shows a wide range of demographics. But that to me is more about the format of the channel, right? Twitter is really great for breaking news. What's happening now, if I was a small business owner on eBay and I wanted to promote my business through social media marketing, I would probably pick Instagram and Facebook first over Twitter. Twitter to me is a little more news and information versus sales.

Yeah. I think Facebook and Instagram lends itself to kind of consumerism more generally. And you know, Instagram is really great for product. If you're selling products, Instagram is great. And a couple of tips there, think about your Instagram page and how that gallery or grid of images lays out when I'm looking at your page and be thoughtful about how those photos kind of sit well with each other. Instagram stories are great as well. You'll find particularly on the way that eBay uses Instagram is we're really precious about our feed. Meaning our what goes in the gallery or grid view. In other words, we're very thoughtful and judicious about what we put on our in feed content, but Instagram stories, as you may know, only last 24 hours and they are a vertical orientation and we can do a lot more messaging there. So that is where we put kind of our, for lack of a better term, kind of our ephemeral messages around, you know, here's a sale or here's a great deal, or here's a great discount. Those sort of, kind of direct more call to action. Content goes into our Instagram stories. And once you get to 10,000 followers, you can do a swipe up on your Instagram story, which will lead directly to your product. I've definitely swiped up a lot the past few months.

I have a bunch of tips here on how to start out with social media. The first one is set your goals up front. What do you want to accomplish with your marketing? Is it to market your products to more buyers, increased traffic, increased loyalty? Think about what you're really trying to solve for set up your accounts and pick your handles. And when we say handles, we mean what name appears on your social channels? It makes sense to keep the same as your eBay seller name. That way you've got consistent branding across all of your channels. But if that isn't available, add it like an introductory phrase or maybe an underscore. So if my name is ebayaudrey, all one word on eBay, and that is not available on Instagram. You might think about eBay underscore Audrey, something like that. So that you're really close and people understand that those two handles are associated with each other. Keep up on your posting best practices and tools. There's a ton of content and resources out there. I personally like the Social Bakers Blog. I find that content really great when it comes to just being aware of best practices, new features, et cetera. socialbakers.com/blog. Socialbakers.com/blog. Build up your followers, follow your friends and your competitors. Friends, I don't recommend buying fans. When you buy fans, that tends to be a low value fan. You want somebody who is genuinely interested in your brand and has come to your page to consume your content. And if you buy fans, that tends to be a low quality fan that doesn't engage with you. That's not there for the right reasons. So don't even bother.

That's not going to be valuable to you at all.

Yeah, exactly. So shape your content for engagement and pay attention to what's working and what isn't. This is kind of an old social media trick is to ask your followers a question. Maybe you put up the same pair of socks and one has cheese burgers on it and the other one has Elmo. And you ask your fans to vote for which sock would they, would they sport. You know, that kind of thing, just to get some engagement going, because especially on Facebook engagement drives reach, right? So if you post something and it doesn't get a whole lot of engagement, it's not going to get a whole lot of reach., But if you put something up and it gets a ton of engagement, Facebook rewards that behavior by showing it to more people. So you want to keep that in mind, as you think about Facebook's algorithm. And then also of course, look at your, like, there is a difference when you're looking at your page and you're kind of trying to figure out what works versus looking at your analytics tools. So Instagram, Twitter, Facebook all have analytics tools on the backend where you could really be scientific about what's working. And what's not. Obviously this goes without saying investing great photos. Social is very visual. So make sure that you have great photos. And I want to share a couple more tips on photos in just a second. Always link back to your eBay store in listings. Sometimes the URL for your view item page is very long. So use a Bitly to make that more concise. Use ads to increase your reach. Going back to what I just said about boosting posts. Typically what we'd like to do is we put a post out there. We give it maybe 12/24 hours to get some kind of organic engagement. And if we find that that is doing really well, we'll put some money behind it. So that might be a strategy for you as a small business owner.

And then lastly have fun with it. I know it seems like a lot to create content and you know, do this every day, but it's worth it. This is part of your marketing mix. Treat this as something that's relevant and important for your company. Think of it as an investment in your business and use a free publishing tool like Hootsuite to plan out and schedule your content in advance. You know, instead of feeling like you have to, Oh my gosh, look at my Facebook page every day. Oh my God! You can create the content, schedule it out so that you're not constantly working on content. Okay. Sorry. Last tip. Many tips, so many tips. Another one is brand consistency, right? So make sure that your brand shows up consistently across both your eBay store and your social media channels, and then find the right hashtags that are appropriate for your content, you know, hashtags bring in traffic. So be sure to use your hashtags strategically. And then there's also a couple of things from eBay that you might want to consider using. We have a bunch of fun GIFs. Gifys at gify.com/ebay. We've also got Instagram stickers or when you're creating a story on Instagram, just search for eBay in the sticker section and all kinds of fun stuff pops up for both buyers and sellers. And then there's also a hashtag that we use for eBay finds. Typically we use this for showcasing. This is user generated content. We go on and search the internet for hashtag eBay finds. And we repost some of the great stories. So buyers will often like, you know, find this rare, unique, wonderful thing that they found on eBay. Take a picture of it, tag it with eBay finds. And then we go out there and find that content and reshare it because as you know, unique, interesting stuff is kind of the backbone of eBay.

Totally. And I guess sellers could even use that as well. Like if we have a lot of sellers who can buy on eBay or buy elsewhere and have found something amazing and they're selling it then back on eBay. I think they could probably utilize that, that eBay finds a hashtag to try and get in with a chance of being shared on some of our core channels.

Exactly, exactly. One more thing I want to talk about, and that is one of the most fun parts of my job is actually curating the eBay site, looking for truly unique and interesting items that you can't find anywhere. Internally, we call that kind of content uniquely eBay. If you're a seller on eBay and you are interested in like, how does eBay feature my items in their social content? Let me give you a few tips on this. I can't guarantee that you'll be featured in our, in our channels obviously, but let's increase the likely.

Let's give it our best shot.

Exactly. Let's increase the likelihood of that. Number one is to have unique inventory, but have multiple quantities, right? We are probably not going to want to drive traffic to a one of a kind item because we're concerned that it might sell out early, right? And then that would lead to a bad experience. The exception for that of course, is eBay Motors. We find a ton of amazing, interesting cars and vehicles and boats and whatnot on eBay Motors. Those actually tend to perform really well for us. And so in that area, we're not afraid to put up a one of a kind item. Photos, photos, photos. I can't say enough about photos when it comes to curating merchandise on eBay, we take photos directly from the listing. So number one, make sure you have high res images, do all of your photos of best practices that you would do for your listing but I would add a few more. Number one or number or I don't know, number 47 on this list of tips, give us some good options in terms of photo orientation. Oftentimes we'll need a square, a portrait, and maybe even a landscape of those images. It all depends on the social channels and the format, right? Like Instagram stories are vertical. Facebook can be horizontal or square, so can Twitter. So just think about the orientation of the photo. And then also if you do lifestyle imagery, which we actually like quite a bit, I know that's not an official eBay photo best practice, but if you happen to have lifestyle imagery, make sure that all the details look great. There's kind of a running joke on my team because there's an item, sorry that we'd like to feature and they do lifestyle images and they have a hand model, but the woman's nails are all janky. And so we have, my team has to Photoshop this person's fingernails, right? To make sure that they're the hand model is decent. The item is awesome. It gets us tons of engagement, but that distracting fingernail.

Think about the whole picture.

Exactly. Think about some art direction. Okay. That's it for all my tips.

That is a lot, but very useful and you are the expert. You, you know, these things and I think there's going to be some really super useful things for our sellers. I know you touched on the GIFYs and the Instagram stickers. There's also a whole bunch of awesome new illustrations for Zoom and Facebook that are going to be available to sellers. So for next week, be sure to check out the Seller Center social media section to access all of these resources and we'll make sure that all of the links are there for you. So we've already talked about the importance of a great picture and obviously a picture tells a thousand words, but video content also leads the way when it comes to social media. So one example that springs to mind for me is one of our Austin sellers, Love Studio Ceramics. They use Instagram stories to bring buyers behind the scenes, to the operations, and they even show making the mugs that they sell and things like that. So could you tell me more about the types of stories that our sellers are or could tell on video?

I think video is a great way to connect with your buyers and video tends to perform better than static images in social channels with a few exceptions, but in general, that's true. It really gives you the opportunity to tell more about yourself and kind of reinforce your brand. In terms of types of content for video, you might think about these. Number one is a check in like our biweekly Marnie Mondays, that your team's doing. “How to” videos. This could be either like, I'm just making this up, how to build a bench. And then you're featuring, you're using a specific drill that you sell to, to make the bench, right? You can do how to make the bench, or you can do a product demonstration on how to use the drill. Right? There's a couple angles there. People love behind the scenes content. So, you know, walking through your store, walking through your process, if you're a maker like the ceramicist, you just mentioned, you know, show your process, show how you make things. Maybe the behind the scenes is, you know, if you're really well known for your packaging because you sell vintage china or something, and you really want to show off how you package the items so that you can build trust with your buyer there. Another idea is launching new products. If you've got a brand new product line, you might want to talk about that and then profiling unique inventory or backstories for specific inventory. So if you've got some rare, interesting, wonderful, unique thing, tell the backstory on it. Where did it come from? How old is it? Where has it been? That sort of thing.

You touched on photos and there being different formats of photos, but there's also different formats of videos as well. So can you just walk us through some of those different video formats and maybe some best practices that you might have gleaned?

Happy to. As, you know, you can shoot vertically or horizontally or even square with videos. So just be sure that whatever content you're creating, you've got the right specs for the channel that you're going to be in. In general long form content is best for YouTube. Everyone's got a very short attention span these days. Long form means up to about five minutes. I think three to five minutes is probably optimal. On YouTube be sure to use your keywords so that you'll show up in search and always link back to your eBay store. Switching over to Facebook and Instagram stories. Like I mentioned, Instagram stories are vertical and each segment is maximum 15 seconds long. So you might want to plan out your story so that you're hitting a key message within each 15 second segment, or you can let Instagram story chop up your longer video. So your 45 second video into three fifteens, but I think it's really more kind of planful and thoughtful to do those 15 second segments. While live streaming is fun and exciting, I don't know if I would start off with that for video for kind of a small business owner. I really recommend that you start with recorded video to give you more control and get some learnings on what works, what doesn't, how does your storytelling kind of layout? And then if you're bold enough to do live broadcast, then go for it. Whatever kind of video you do, be an art director. And what I mean by that is look at your shot, make sure your background is not too cluttered. Make sure your shirt doesn't clash with your background, make sure the angle is great, you know, or you shoot shooting up and you've got some double chins you want to avoid? Make sure that angle is complementary to your face. Just be really thoughtful about what your shot looks like and how you're presenting yourself to the world.

Yeah, I think, I think we've covered some mammoth tips. I think this is probably a bumper segment for our sellers but I think there's some really useful tips there. Thank you very much for coming back on the podcast and obviously helping our sellers understand the social media market a little bit more. Most importantly, walking them through some of the best ways that they can take advantage of social media. So thank you Audrey.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm so glad to be back on the podcast. It's great. And it's always exciting to talk about something so powerful that connects eBay sellers with so many shoppers. So I'm happy, happy to advise.

Thank you. I know I want to thank our sellers for tuning into the third episode of our month long Traffic Month Series. We've heard some very, very, very useful and valuable insights from Audrey in this bumper segment. And we're hoping that you've gleaned something useful to boost your marketing efforts. Next week, we're talking about the eBay Partner Network and how sellers can use affiliate links to make money from driving traffic. And we're also taking questions on the community and we'll be covering those at the end of the month. So be sure to head to community.ebay.com and find the traffic month banner and it will take you to where you need to go. So thank you and take care.

Keeping up with our theme for this the third week of our Traffic Month Series we're talking this week about social media. Both how, as you've just heard, eBay drives traffic through social media to get buyers to eBay. And also now how sellers can actually use social media on their own to help get traffic right to their own listings and to help us out today. We're joined by Kathy Terrill. Kathy Terrill is the owner of the I love to be selling.com website. She has a company called eBay Sales and Social Media Consulting and we're going to talk about that at the end. So stay tuned through the whole interview because she's got a free tip sheet to send to you. Kathy, welcome to the show.

Thanks Griff. Good to be with you, waving from New York city!

Kathy lives and works in New York city in Manhattan, right in the thick of it. Hey, how are things going right now for you during the pandemic? I know New York was hit so hard.

It really was Griff because I'm like you, I've got a heart for small business, which is one of the many reasons I love eBay. We're really starting to open up this week after things being very, very, very down. I'm seeing a lot of, especially a lot of the smaller businesses, you know, it is curbside pickup, which I think most businesses in the United States are, but we weren't even allowed to do that for quite some time. So it's great to see that, see people out and about with their masks on. Here in New York city, there's pretty much no store where you can gain entrance without a mask, lots of masks, which people are buying off of eBay because it's become a fashion statement. It's fun to see, you know, everybody expressing themselves. So thank you. And the weather's nice too, which certainly helps. That's great to see the sun and just see people out and about.

Just a side note. What I've decided to do is I'm going to look for a place where I can send a photo of my lower face, smiling, and then have that made into a mask. Because I hate, I spend my whole life smiling at people and now I can't because you can only do so much with expressive eyebrows. And sometimes it looks more like shock than a smile.

It's true and recognizing friends actually is so hard. To give a quick anecdote before we get to social media traffic, an eBay seller friend made me a homemade mask with the eBay logo on it. Somehow she had eBay fabric. I don't know where she got it. And so I got this wonderful gift in the mail. I have an eBay logo mask if I want to wear that as I'm out and about.

I'm jealous. Kathy, this month Traffic Month, it's all about driving buyer traffic to eBay and this week is about social media. Do you include social media as a marketing or traffic driver tool in your business coaching curriculum for the or consulting company?

I do. I've got a membership group, Social Media Insider, and I would say 90% of it is coaching on how to use the different social media platforms effectively, specifically for eBay sellers. And then I do have some information in my free groups, eBay stores, nothing but eBay stores on Facebook and eBay selling basics, nothing but selling basics on Facebook and my Facebook business page, I love to be selling. The big thing for eBay sellers using social media is, you know this Griff, most sellers except for my very, very, very large sellers are solopreneurs. You know, they may have like one or two family members working with them. They might have a bit of help with a virtual assistant, but pretty much it's just them. So my first thing when I'm working with sellers for social media is to really think through how much time do you have every week to put on social media? And to be honest, you know, it's like listing, you can say, Oh yeah, I'm going to do a hundred listings a day, but how much time do you have, right? Do you have 30 minutes a week? Do you have an hour a week? Do you have several 15 minute chunks? Because you really need to think through how much time you have to dedicate to it. So that's always your first choice is how much time from my week can I put to this and be realistic about that?

Yeah, that's a very important consideration. I know that if you're eager to get started, either in a new business or a new strategy for your business, you can over commit beyond your capabilities and that can end up derailing the whole project.

Exactly. And it's just like listing. So let's say I am somebody, and let's say I have half an hour, a week to dedicate to social media or an hour a week. For somebody that really only has like 30 minutes a week, which is the case for many sellers what I really counsel people to do is rather than be all over the place with a little bit here and a little bit there, is pick one that you think is going to be most effective for your business. Whether that's Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest, and really focus on that. Very much like listing on eBay, you might sell a variety, but okay, right now this is what I'm going to focus on for my eBay business. You know, really writing a great listing or really getting my pictures better. Same thing with social media. What do I really want to focus on? Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or perhaps another site that I think is good for me. And then really focus there, get the posts up regularly, really learn that platform. Like what does Facebook like? What does Instagram like? Do it. And then a few minutes a week to look at your analytics. Cause like anything you want to see, is it working right? Are people clicking it? Are they looking at whatever I'm posting?

How does a seller know which one of these social media platforms will work best for them? Is it by category? For example, is Facebook more ideal for specific categories and maybe Instagram or Pinterest are better for other categories?

It is a really good question to be thinking about Griff. So first of all, what you do want to do is take a few minutes and think about who is shopping with you. What demographic are you appealing to? Even if you're a variety seller, think about where are the majority of my sales? Are the majority of my sales in like women's clothing or kids' toys or collectibles? You know, where is the majority of my sales coming from? And it may not be the amount of listings. It may be dollars. Like where am I making the most money? I know you used to sell a lot of men's shirts. So let's say I'm selling men's shirts. And let's say, my demographic then would be men, let's say like 35 to 55. So men 35 to 55, where are these men living? Most likely a demographic like that would be on Facebook. Instagram tends to skew younger. And Pinterest tends to be very female. Not that there aren't men on Pinterest. Cause there are, and there's a lot more gentlemen joining up on Pinterest, but I would be looking more at Facebook. If I have younger, I'm doing a lot of, X-Box a lot of that kind of stuff. If I'm doing a lot of sneakers then I might be taking a look at Instagram. If I do a lot of female items or a lot of collectibles, then I might want to be taking a look at Instagram or Pinterest. So again, it's thinking about where do you make the most money? And then where did those people live and then focusing on that social media.

I wouldn't want to waste a lot of time trying to post to all three, it's too much time.

Again for people that like my very large sellers that I work with, some of them might even have a social media team. Like eBay has a social media team. They have vast departments of people that are looking at the different social media. Is to look at what is going to work for you. And then some people perhaps because of the variety they sell, they do want to be on more than one platform. Then you would look at, well, what's going to be best on that. Do I need to hire somebody? You know, some people enlist their teenagers. It's like, I want you to be posting my stuff on Instagram for me is, think about how you are going to do it, but to start to focus on one. Cause you know what Griff, you want to set yourself up for success. Again, like we were saying, if you go, Oh, I'm going to do Pinterest and Facebook and Instagram and then what happens is two weeks later, you're not doing anything.

I noticed in your platform list that you don't include YouTube. Is YouTube not worth consideration as a marketing channel and if not, why?

I think YouTube is great for certain categories. There are a lot of YouTubers that are like, they do haul shows where they're showing off what they bought to people. Some are giving tips. Some are just showing like, Oh, I went to my local Goodwill. This is what I got. And I've heard anecdotally from the haul shows some of those sellers will actually sell the items they're showing off because people will go, they'll watch YouTube. They'll go, Oh, what a cool shirt or t-shirt. I want that, Rally Roots, cause I've met them when I was down at the UpFront in Tampa and I was chatting with them and definitely they said, you know, they've shown stuff in the haul and then one of their followers, cause they have a lot of followers will go in and buy it. That may happen. The thing is YouTube is quite a bit of work because you're going to have to be putting up the videos regularly. And there is optimization with YouTube that you'll need to do, plus you're going to need to work on getting followers. You've got to look at, is this worth it? I think for somebody that's very unique collectibles and I'm going to, I'm going to single out two people cause I know you know them and love them too , Bill and Maida Webster.

Oh yeah. They have some of the coolest games and toys vintage from the fifties and sixties. And they might even have something like a vintage Jack in the box. Where you want to see the Jack in a box open and perhaps it plays music. Perhaps they have vintage music boxes and you want to play the music for people to hear something like that can be great on YouTube because you're selling really wonderful vintage collectibles, your vintage collectibles, make noise or move. And you're going to get followers for that. Like, Oh, I can't wait to see what Maida is putting up this week. Let me see what new toy she's got. And yes, there's a good chance those people will shop for you. But for your normal variety seller and I think for most niches like let's say I sell a lot of sneakers. I don't think YouTube again for the amount of work it is, is going to get you the traction that like an Instagram post would get you or a Facebook post. And then one more thing. Cause I know you've been advocating for this for years and so have I, with some sites you can very easily link a video to your host. eBay does not have that ability for now. You can embed YouTube and honestly just Google there's several ways to do it. But you can, if you do want to put a video in your listing, there is a way to embed it from YouTube. So again, back to the Webster's cause they're a great example. I have all these wonderful vintage music boxes. I do want to do videos of them. Yes. You're going to want to put it on YouTube first because you're going to need the code from YouTube and then you would be putting that into your eBay listing.

And you can also put those videos into other social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

Yeah, exactly.

How does, if I've chosen, I'm a seller, I've chosen the platform I'm going to use. I've got a strategy, a lot of it you week we keep seeing gaining traction. Do I just put up stuff and expect that buyers are going to find it or are there things I can do on a specific platform, whether that's hashtags or whatever, to help or boosting the post to drive people to it so that I get more folks liking my page or my Pinterest or Instagram? You know, I feel like I'm, I don't want to be just like this outpost in the middle of the desert, pushing out content and there's hardly anyone seeing it.

Exactly. The first thing is you're going to pick your platform. You mentioned Pinterest, so we'll choose Pinterest. So you're on Pinterest. The first thing is you've got to look at again, remembering who are my people? What is my demographic? Who am I trying to appeal to? So the first thing you're going to want to do is to get followers. So that way you are not the person in the desert crying out in the wilderness. I always, I always think of the song Is anybody there? Doesn't anybody care? Sort of crying out, Like where is everybody? So then you think about it. So let's say, let's say I'm a women's clothing seller. And let's say my items are moderately priced. So for Pinterest and you think about, well, what would my people be interested in? Are they interested in healthy snacks for their kids? Are they interested in meals in 30 minutes? Are they interested perhaps in makeup tips or hairstyling tips? And you're going to want to create some Pinterest boards that appeal to that social content. And I always say, it's social media. It's not selling media. And a lot of times as sellers, we forget that because like, exactly, we're like just buy my stuff, right? Just buy it!

Right, why should I?

It's about relationships. And I always say, if you think about dating, it's about getting to know each other and friendship. It's getting to know each other. So you go, okay, well what would my people be interested in? Start to build content around that in addition to putting up your products, because of course you are a seller, but you want to mix it. You don't want it to be all just your clothing or your sneakers or your hats or your vases or your home decor, whatever it is. It's social that it would appeal to the person and your product because rarely will people follow you just for the product, unless it's super, super, super in demand or super, super, super good prices. You know, like an Apple watch for $10, but then Apple is going to wonder where on earth you've got it. And you're going to run into other problems. What's going to draw them in and then go, Oh yeah, here's this cool recipe. Here's this healthy snack. And Oh, by the way, here's this cute little blouse that just came in.

You start a conversation as opposed to a transaction.

Exactly. It is a conversation. And that's really how, if you think about how much retail has changed, because we've both been selling for a while. Three or four years ago, five years ago, it was very transactional in retail. Now very much it is a relationship. Even if people come in and it's like, you know, they're not messaging you, they're not chatting with you, but they're getting relationship from you from your social posts, going wow, That’s a great idea. Oh, look at the blouse. Okay. They click it and you've got them onto eBay. They are looking at your listing and then they buy it.

That's right. Yeah. Hey, I believe you wanted to ask our listeners a question Kathy, as it pertains to your own consultation course, here's your chance to ask that question and to tell people where they can send you their answers.

Oh, of course. So if you have questions for me, you can email me at kathy@ilovetobeselling.com. And if you click my website, you'll see a contact me button. I've got a great cheat sheet for you. It's called the Essential Social Media cheat Sheet. It's on my website. Again. Just go to, Ilovetobeselling.com. You'll see a tab, free tips. Just click it. It's got information for you on Facebook. Like how do I write a great Facebook post? Instagram. What are people looking for on Instagram? Pinterest again, because every single platform is very different. I always say it's like France, Germany, Italy. It's all Western Europe, but it's all different. And you can print it out. I don't know about you Griff, I like to see things in writing in front of me cause then I can follow it when I'm doing the post, but grab the Essential Social Media Cheat Sheet and you'll have lots of great tips to help you with your eBay listings.

Again, that's Ilovetobesselling.com. You can find that Essential Social Media Cheat Sheet under the tab for free tips on Kathy's website.Kathy, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time during your shelter in place there in New York city to talk to us about social media. I actually learned some things today and I think our sellers did too.

Brian we have a special eBay stores promotion to mention.

Yes we do. As an extra thank you for powering America right now, for those of you who already receive shipping supply coupons, as part of your store subscription, we have sent extra ones. We know you are shipping record volumes, so we wanted to give you the supplies to cover those sales.

Oh good. So tell us what those codes are Brian.

So there are three different codes. So if you've got a basic store basis, store subscribers should use thankstoyou. And it's all one word it's thankstoyou. Premium store subscribers, thanksalot. And anchor stores subscribers, thanksaton.

Okay, great. That makes sense. We'll put those codes in the episode transcript as well. So again, it's thankstoyou, thanksalot and thanksaton. I would have said thanks a bunch. Thanks bunches!

That would have been good.

So we'll put them in the transcript as well.

We will.

Hey Griff, No questions from sellers this week?

Actually we have a few, but we're going to have to save them for next week. What with Audrey and Kathy, Terrill's very full segments there really wasn't any time left for questions.

Sometimes that happens, but it's nice that we have some backup questions for next week.

Next week, for sure. But we should still do our regular beg just in case.

Not that we really need to beg for questions.

Actually we do.

That's true. We do. So don't wait for Griff to start pleading for them.

It's unseemly.

It is. If you have a selling or business question for us here at eBay, don't delay. Don't dismay. Call us today at (888) 723-4630.

Was that (888) 723-4630? I thought so. You heard the man call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week. Leave a question or a comment and we just might put it on the air.

Maybe you're shy.

A wilting flower.

Right? Maybe you don't want to call.

You never call, you never write. That's fine. That's okay. I'll just sit here in the dark. Completely surrounded by none of your calls.

Passive aggressive, much Griff?

Don't you worry about your old friend Griff. He's fine. Fine I tell you.

Just ignore him.

If you can.

What's a podcast without a little drama.

That's melodrama to you.

I'll stop talking. You can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com.

And don't forget about your daily podcast to do list.

Is it daily or weekly?

Well, no, you should do this every day.

Oh, that's true, you should.

We are weekly. The podcast checklist is daily.

Yes, that makes sense.

Okay, so, so go ahead, Brian.

I will check the announcement board for up to date Seller News.

Shelter in place got you down? Go out to that garage, go down into that basement and start picking through that death pile and get that stuff listed. Pronto.

That's a new one.

Yeah. You gotta keep them on their toes. They get bored by the same old boiler plate every week.

Don't I know it. And finally check out the transcript for this and all episodes for followup on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.

Yeah. On our next episode, we'll tackle the last topic of the Traffic Month and that's the eBay Partner Network. We're going to talk to Michael Lil. He's the Director of the Bay Partner Network or otherwise known as EPN. We're going to talk about the program itself, how it works for sellers and a special new feature of the program that will make you sit up and say, What did he say about final value fees?

I'm excited to hear that one next week.

You see, you sat up.

We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. eBay Content Strategist, Audrey Tracy, and eBay Seller, Kathy Terrill, and a big welcome to our newest Podcast Correspondent Kirsty Dunn.

The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.