Ep 303 || Creating Content for Social

[podcast_team]

eBay’s Blaine Dillard of the Seller Engagement Team visits the podcast this week to talk about how best to create social content for your business. Griff and Kayomi answer questions about taking Returns and Selling Limits.
Episode Links:
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Recurring Links:
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Kayomi: This week on the eBay for Business podcast

Blaine: It's like, here's an item. Here's me going buying that item because your audience wants to be along for their journey. They see that you're a real person. They see that there's a human behind your Instagram account, behind your eBay store. You build that trust there, and that trust, in my opinion, as a buyer and a seller on eBay, you're more likely to purchase from that person.

Kayomi: I’m Kayomi Kayoshi.

Griff: And I'm Griff, and this is the eBay for Business podcast, your source for the information and the inspiration that we hope can help you start, manage, and grow your business on the world's most powerful marketplace. Welcome everyone. This is episode three zero three. Kayomi, you're here. Yes?

Kayomi: Yes. I am.

Griff: Okay. Technically, you're probably in Hawaii already by the time this airs.

Kayomi: Japan.

Griff: I mean, sorry, Japan.

Kayomi: I think my mind is probably already over there.

Griff: Oh, dear. Well, let's see if we can focus on this one episode.

Kayomi: I'll do my best. I'm sure we'll be fine.

Griff: You picked a good time to go because it is kind of the summer doldrums. It's a typical retail season when things kind of slow down. You know how I know it that things slow down this time of year? Tell me about it. Well, I subscribe to a lot of retail sites and my email fills up starting in June, starts to fill up with an obscene amount of fifty percent off sales from all these websites, mostly clothing accessories, but also some housewares. I subscribe to a lot of these. I I like to see what's hip and what's trending. And then it when the back to school season comes, it starts to morph into something different and then holiday. But the sales that happen this time of year because of the slowdown, Well, we know Amazon has their Prime Days just finished and that's because they want to make up for that summer slowdown and that's what a lot of eBay sellers are thinking about as well. Yeah, it's important topic to keep on top of.

Kayomi: Oh, yeah. I always know I can gauge it. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, how many emails do I have? If I have more than a hundred in the beginning, I'm like, oh, there's a holiday coming up or there's something happening where I missed it because I'm suddenly getting all of these different marketing emails.

Griff: You know what I find frustrating? What? I get these emails. Right? And this doesn't happen with the when eBay sellers send me promotional emails, like, which they'll do, either their newsletter, they'll send an offer or coupon. By the time I get to the email and I go to the website looking for stuff mostly that I might be able to resell because it's a sale price, All the good stuff is gone by the time I get there. And if it's something I want for myself, my sizes are already sold out.

Kayomi: I do the worst thing. One of those people, I'll read a message. So if the subject line, if I'm interested in it, like forty percent off, I'm like, oh my gosh, let me check this out. And so I'll click it And then I'll say, okay. I need to save this for later. Exit out. And I'm like, okay. Like, I'll check back in after work or something. And then I completely forgot about it because it's marked as red, and I never go back to check it again. And so I miss out.

Griff: Yeah. You gotta strike while the iron's hot.

Kayomi: Oh, yeah.

Griff: You have to do your duty as a modern consumer and consume, consume, consume. Yeah. Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart.

Kayomi: Well, Griff who's our guest this week?

Griff: Our guest this week is our colleague, Blaine Dillard. He's from our team, the seller engagement team. So Blaine and I are going to be talking about social media and selling. And we haven't done this in a long time. So, he works on all of our social media efforts for seller engagement. He's got a really good perspective on what you should be doing if you want to create content for your business. So we're going to talk to him about that. In the meantime, do we have any news?

Kayomi: Why, yes. We do. We do have news this week. EBay Seller Capital has partnered with small business financing platform Liberus to provide sellers with new flexible financing options. With business cash advance provided by Liberus, you can easily and quickly apply for financing with minimal paperwork. In addition, you can receive funds from as little as five hundred dollars up to one million dollars within a short amount of time and make payments based on your sales. With a fixed fee and no interest, the total cost is clear from the start and won't change, giving you the peace of mind to make payments at a pace that matches your business needs. You can learn more on the eBay seller capital page at ebay dot com slash ebay seller capital, and that's with an a. You know, I've used in

Griff: the past, I've used these kind of finance not for a long time, but they were really helpful if I stumbled across a like a cache of inventory that I wanted to purchase that I didn't have all that cash ready. Of course, the caution here is to always understand that if you're going to finance your business, you do so it's a little bit of a risk. So take steps to protect yourself, make sure that what you're buying is resellable, don't use it on a whim and certainly don't use it for stuff that's not business related.

Kayomi: Exactly. Don't get in over your head.

Griff: Yeah. Well, we've rambled on enough. I think it's time for us to go talk to Blaine, and we'll see you in a few moments. We have a few questions to answer at at the end of the, the episode.

Kayomi: Yeah. See you for our q and a.

Griff: Here on the seller engagement team at eBay, of which I am proud to be a part of, we have lots and lots of talent. And one of the people we're about to meet has been on our team for a while, Blaine Dillard. Blaine, welcome to the podcast.

Blaine: Thank you for having me, Griff. Excited to be here with you all. My name is Blaine. I've been at eBay for about a year and a half. I support across all of our sellers, social media channels, and seller events. Most recently we launched eBay for sellers on Instagram. So all of that content you see, I create, but I also support a lot of our events, like eBay Open and our seller check ins. I do some of our seller favorites, like the swag, for example. I know our sellers love the swag. I love the swag too. I've been selling on eBay for about four years. I sold two items this week, which is pretty good for me. I got into selling by helping my friend go thrifting and selling what she found. And then I have a lot of miscellaneous items on my house and in my closet that I often sell. And then I also help my mom declutter.

Griff: Okay. So there's a lot to talk about here when we talk about social engagement, and I'm hoping you can lead us through some tips here. So what is the first tip that you have?

Blaine: So the first tip that I would have is just find what works best for your channel, for your account. Testing and learning is really the best approach here. You know, different forms of content, whether that is the content you're sharing, like static posts, reels, carousels, for example. Like, when we first started posting on Instagram, reels were super popular and now our channel is leaning more into carousels. So really just like experimenting with, like, different types of content to see what really resonates with your audience. Because a lot of, like, the messaging behind the content that you're sharing can really depend on that. On eBay for sellers, for instance, we share a lot of, like, heavy copies, a lot of words. And, you know, in, like, that fifteen to thirty seconds in that video, it can be hard to convey that message. So Curacao has really helped us out because you're able to, like, pause on the screen. You can get your message across all without having to replay it over and over and over again. And then just test and learn. Consistency is key. So continue posting. Don't stop. If you're seeing, like, lower engagement, you know, all channels have peaks and valleys. And keep in mind that social media is ever changing. So what worked for you at one point or for one person at one time, won't always be the case. So test, learn, and adapt your approach. And, you know, we're still in the process of testing and learning even on our end. So always changing growth.

Griff: You mentioned testing and learning. How if I'm a social media newbie and I'm just getting started, how do I know what the results of my test are? What are what's the data points I wanna look for to determine whether my particular tactics right now on social media are successful or not?

Blaine: I would say how many comments you're getting or people positively interacting with it, How many lines you're getting? Those are great starting points. Something that I always look into too, which I find really interesting is how many people are saving and how many people are sharing the content that we're creating. Because if I create a post and say it has and this is just for an example, five shares versus ten shares, like, like, what was the messaging difference? How did I share that content to our audience differently? So, like, if I did a Reel on top seven tips for selling on eBay versus a carousel and the carousel got more shares than the real. What was that? There's various things like the time of day. Was it even down to the color, for example. But really just, like, seeing what resonates, seeing what your audience is really leaning in towards and sharing within their community because that's, like, the best way, in my opinion, to gauge it. Because that shows it's resonating past casual viewing. The person wanted to save it and come back to it, or to share it to their fin to share their knowledge.

Griff: Okay. So I've done this first step, and I'm I'm getting started, and I've got some content up, and I'm testing it and learning and measuring it by likes and shares. Once I find out what's gonna work best for me, how do I build off of that?

Blaine: So I think there's a balance when it comes down to this, like, finding your content mix. Your content mix can include, like, various things. Like we said, carousels, wheels, and static images, which a static image is just that plain, like, one by one image, just an individual image, not multiple. And we like to share, like, a variety of these. Like I said, we lean into carousels. That's our top priority right now. Reels, I would say is number two and static is number three. So having all of these different forms of content in your feed is just a good mix to have just because you don't wanna share just carousels, just wheels, just static images. You wanna have a mix of it for your audience, just so it's not super repetitive, so it's different.

Griff: What about the content itself? For example, you have a specific audience that you wanna target in social media. What do you have in mind? For example, for the seller engagement team when you're creating content for Instagram or for Facebook?

Blaine: So when we create our content, what I do each month is we have, like, our seller topics. So we lean into community, we lean into education, and then I've been trying to incorporate more, like, one off things. Like, I don't know if anyone recently saw on our Instagram, but we did a post recently and it was that just sold feeling. And it was something that was like very lighthearted. We see so much content day to day. It's a lot to like digest. So just trying to like lighten it up some also because having all of our content be like very copy heavy or very heavy on, like, tips, tips, tips, or FAQs, sometimes that can be overwhelming. So just, like, trying to mix that up. So we lean into, like, the media and education, though, are our focus. And from there, I break down our pillars even more. So I have, like, our shipping topics, for example, customer service. Those are just some of the examples, tips for selling on eBay. Then from there, break it down even further. So like for shipping, I'll have like eBay labels, for example, and then EIS. And something that we see a lot as like our audience loves the EIS content.

Griff: And we should say here, EIS means eBay international shipping.

Blaine: Yes. I also look back and I know not everyone will have this, but I look back at our eBay for business, which was on Facebook. I look back on there and see what really performed best there and to take that over. And then from there, I'll then go to the shipping team and be like, Hey. Like, what do you have, like, for me to share? Like, is there anything that you would like me to promote? And then say you're an eBay seller starting your eBay, Instagram page, and you have, like, an audience. Leverage your audience and be like, what do you want to see? Because that's one of the best ways to really learn what your audience wants is asking them. I know sometimes in our story, we'll do open ended prompts and they'll be like, what do you wanna learn about? What do you wanna see more of? And something that we saw, when was this? I think it was in January or February. Our team went to the Seattle office and we did a behind the scenes there. So, like, showing you the inside of the office and stuff that you really can't see, like on ebay dot com, for example. So giving like a behind the scenes pull to, to like really build that community aspect, just because that's not content you'll be able to see on, like, the seller center or anything like that.

Griff: This is interesting how we create content for eBay sellers in our, social channels and make sure we get engagement.

Blaine: I'm not an expert in promoting my own eBay store on Instagram, for example. But I would say from what I've seen on Instagram from, the sellers pages that I have seen is the ones that have always stuck out to me is the pages that promote their items, but also add their personal touch on it. So you'll get a glimpse into their life and it won't just be like new product listing for each post, but it's ones that like have that personal touch. So then it's, oh, like I sell items, but also my life day to day as well. And I think really building on that, like, if you're promoting your items and like, say you go fifteen or go to the bins or anything like that, like, takes your audience with you because in my opinion, what audience is really like to see that personal approach. So then it, like, humanizes that account. So then it's not just, oh, here's a new item. Here's a new item. Here's a new item. It's like, here's an item. Here's me going and buying that item because your audience wants to be along for their journey. And once they're there for that journey, you'll build that trust. And then if they haven't bought from you and like, they're like, oh, like, should I buy from this person? They see that you're a real person. They see that there's a human behind your Instagram account, behind your eBay store. You build that trust there, and that trust, in my opinion, as a buyer and a seller on eBay, you're more likely to purchase from that person.

Griff: Yeah. And that's an that's an important point. Keep it human is what we like to think about, and just throwing listings onto social media is not gonna necessarily generate sales or interest or more importantly engagement. Exactly. It's not a push channel. It's a back and forth channel. Okay. So I've gotten to this point, and I'm pretty happy about what I'm getting in social engagement, metrics, and looks like I'm taking off. One of the things I'm noticing is that I don't have a background in design, so my content seems to be a little plain. What tools do you use when you're creating engagement posts for eBay's seller engagement team that you would recommend to other sellers as considerations for improving the look and feel of their posts?

Blaine: So I use a mix of tools. I use Canva, Figma, which is new to me, and then Adobe Creative Cloud. If I had to recommend just an individual tool, Canva is a great tool. It's free. It's online. There is a paid version, but I think the free version is great. It's really easy to create reels on too. When I was creating content for the first time for a channel, reels was the thing I was the most afraid to create just because it can be very intimidating, like being like, oh my gosh, how do I get fifteen to thirty seconds or however long you wanna get out of a reel? Canva makes it really easy, especially with the tech options. So if you're like wanna use a lot of like text on your reels, it's really great for that. It's very intuitive. I've done it on an iPad. I haven't done it on my phone, but you should be able to do it from your phone too, if you don't wanna pull a laptop or a computer. So I'd recommend Canva for beginners. There's a lot of great tutorials online too. I know myself, when I were starting out in Canva, I would go on Instagram and look at the reels and see all the tips, and you can learn so much from there.

Griff: Yeah. And we'll put a link to Canva so you can go directly to their website and see the different service levels they have. And, of course, they do have a free beginners level that you can test out and see if it works for you. Well, it's really great to have you on the podcast,

Blaine:, because we spend most of our time as team members on Zoom talking with one another. So it's great to have us on podcast so that we can actually introduce you to our community because you are behind so much of what our sellers actually see on social. I think it's nice to be able to put a face on who's creating and managing that content. So we thank you for coming on the podcast.

Blaine: Thank you for having me, Griff. And if anyone likes our content, it's me creating it. If anyone doesn't, Griff’s creating it. So go to him.

Griff: Gee, thanks for throwing me under the content bus. I really appreciate it. Oh, Blaine. Thanks again. Now get back to work creating content.

Blaine: Bye, everyone.

Griff: Blaine: Dillard works on our seller engagement team. He's, as you just heard, behind the creation and promotion and management of our content on social engagement, plus a lot more. He doesn't just do that. He does a lot more with our community, and we thank him for all his work.

Kayomi: You've got questions.

Griff: Well, we've got answers right here. We got a bucket of them. And this week, as usual, we have two questions to answer. So, Kayomi, would you read the first email?

Kayomi: As usual. I would love to, actually, Griff. This question was sent to podcast at ebay dot com by seller Amy. Hi. New seller here. February twenty twenty four. Wow. Very new. A buyer is requesting a return sixty days after a purchase due to flaws that I clearly disclosed in the pictures and descriptions. Per her message to me, it sounds like she did not look at all the pictures or read the description. She sent me an offer, and I accepted it. Who is to say she wore it on vacation and now wants to return it? So here's my dilemma. I hear stories all the time about buyers posting negative reviews, and I don't want this to happen to me. I don't pick up flawed items usually and totally miss this one, so no need to remind me of that. I've seen several YouTuber shows sold items with flaws, so I know it's done out there. However, I feel like I'm in the right in this case, and it's her problem that she did not look at all the pictures or read the description with the clearly stated flaws. Please provide guidance. Best regards, Amy.

Griff: Okay. So, common kind of question, but we haven't really answered one like this in a while. So without more detail, Amy, we'll assume that the request came through my messages and was outside your return window. Is that what happened? Please let us know. But before we even go any further, I have to say this first. We don't answer questions normally about feedback, but I will say this, stop worrying about feedback. Just stop it. You know that whole Bob Newhart routine he used to do on sketch comedy shows about as a therapist, he could get you to stop smoking and the therapy was stop it. Just stop it. Well, I know I sound harsh and I've been here forever talking about feedback, almost thirty years as it turns out. If somebody leaves you a negative feedback, big deal. Respond with a professional response, move on, it won't hurt your sales. No one keeps one hundred percent positive feedback all the time. That would be a utopia that doesn't exist. Some customers are just going to be unhappy. That being said, you're in a situation where you can avoid negative feedback. And the first thing is to not assume the buyer is returning an item that they've used, especially if the item was pre owned to begin with. So you won't know this. You can't know this at this point, so put it out of your mind. Now I can't really give you the right pathway if I don't have all the details. And sixty days after purchase to open a return request, it would have had to have been you had sixty day returns and it's right at sixty days or they're using an item not described. Whatever the reason at this point, if they've just sent you a my messages request, you can tell them, hey, you have to open it. They have to, in any case, you could try to open a return request. And if it doesn't work, you can say, I'm sorry, but this window has closed, and it's not possible to actually issue a return, and, let the cards fall where they may. But if they're able to open a return request for some reason, then just accept the return, take the return back, and when you get the item back, issue a refund. That's how it works on eBay. It's not the first time this is gonna happen to you. It will happen with other buyers. It's just

Kayomi: It's just part of selling.

Griff: And on eBay, that process is in place for the buyer and seller to get through the return request. They'll find that there's things like, if this is your first return, maybe it isn't. You can have a label provided to the buyer so they can print it out and then ship the item back to you. They'll have a certain amount of time to ship the item back, but don't worry about that. Just accept the return and move on. If it's in my messages and they're unable to open the return request because it is after the return window has closed, that's a little bit more difficult because now you don't have a mechanism for tracking that return back. Sometimes that send a refund link in your orders page in Seller Hub, it's still there for that item. And just say, yeah. I'm sorry. You know, I'm I I know I noted all the flaws and everything, but, you know, here, just keep the item. Here's your ten bucks. Move on. These are the different options.

Kayomi: Mhmm. And, Amy, one other thing you might wanna consider when selling in any venue on or offline. When a buyer wants to return an item, it isn't a question of whether or not the buyer is right or wrong. The buyer, for whatever reason, is not happy with the item. The worst possible thing to do in this situation is to adopt the position of I'm right and you're wrong. Returns are just part of the game, and eBay is no exception to that rule.

Griff: It's part of doing business, and they're unavoidable. The bottom line is if your buyer's not happy, don't lead them in that mindset. So my advice has always been accept returns and move on. Now, our second question this week is from eBay seller, Richard, who sent the following to podcasteBay dot com. And I know you talked to me before we started the recorder, and this has actually been popping up on the community board. So it's probably timely we address this question because it starts off, Hi, Kayomi and Griff. I started selling a couple years ago, and I've been listening to the podcast every week since then. Thank you for your insight and information. I think I started with something like two hundred and fifty items and a thousand dollar per month listing limit. I worked on listing an item a day, selling an item a day too or more or less, and recently became a top rated seller thanks to your inspiration. Now I see I have ten million items and a ten million dollar limit, and there's a link where I can request to list more. I'm happy to have the higher limits, although I'm wondering what's the reasoning behind such a huge increase when my selling history has been relatively unchanged. Any thoughts? Thanks again for the podcast. Keep up the good work, and I'd love to receive an eBay mug if they're still available. Aloha. He's from Hawaii.

Kayomi: Oh, very nice. Okay. Well, Richard, this was very funny. Thank you for submitting this. This was a great read. Without getting into the weeds as to why the astronomical new limits are there, we can tell you that selling limits were initially put in place a while back in order to help guardrail new sellers so they wouldn't get in over their heads with too many listings.

Griff: Yeah. And this was actually a really common problem, like, fifteen, twenty years ago.

Kayomi: And today with experienced sellers, that risk is very low. So the limits were quote unquote eliminated. I say that in quotes because the way our system is set up, there has to be some figure in the limits column. So we opted for the numbers ten million items and ten million dollars.

Griff: Right. And it's not to say you can't get there, Richard. We hope we're inspiring you to make that a goal. And, but although I look, realistically, a lot of the sellers, I think, who listen to our podcast probably will never reach those limits. There are sellers on eBay who sell in excess of ten million dollars on eBay, maybe not ten million listings, and those sellers are actually evaluated before their limits are increased. So if you were to get to ten million dollars or ten million items in sales, you would have to be assessed to be go beyond that. And, we'd love it if one of our listeners reached that stage.

Kayomi: Yeah. So, Richard, the sky's the limit.

Griff: Unfortunately it's not the limit on the podcast because that's all the questions we have for this week.

Kayomi: Yes. It is. And if you have a question about selling on the world's most powerful and sometimes a little overwhelming marketplace, why not ask us? You can call in your questions at eight eight eight seven two three four six three zero. Or if you prefer, you can always email us at podcast at ebay dot com. That is podcast at ebay dot com.

Griff: And it's time for this week's tip of the week. This is from seller Jackie. Not sure if other sellers will consider this tip, but here's what I do to put buyers at ease when they receive anything they bought from me. I use my stamps dot com account to purchase return labels for UPS, and I include them in the shipment with a note asking the buyer to keep the label and the packaging in case they need to return the item. It's a super convenience. My return rate hasn't changed, but my rate of left positive feedback has gone up. Apparently, it makes buyers happy. Signed, Jackie.

Kayomi: Great tip. And, of course, your weekly reminder, check the transcript for links referenced in the episode and check the eBay announcement board every day to stay up to date on eBay news, launches, and changes.

Griff: On our next episode, our co host, Georgia Mampanis, will return with eBay seller and manager of PA enthusiast events, Sarah Burgess. So she works for eBay and she sells on eBay, and it's gonna be part of our next seller spotlight segment. You won't wanna miss it.

Kayomi: And we'd like to again thank our guest this week from our seller engagement team, Blaine Dillard.

Griff: Well, that's all for this week, Kayomi. Georgea Mpampanis is our monthly cohost and guest coordinator.

Kayomi: And I'm your weekly cohost, Kayomi Kayoshi.

Griff: And I'm editor in chief and your host, Griff. And the eBay for business podcast is produced in house by the eBay for Business podcast staff and distributed by Quill and Cohost.