Episode 63 || Social Strategies for the Holidays

[doug@ebay]

eBay for Business- Episode 63– Social Strategies for the Holidays

On this week’s episode, we focus on social strategies for the holidays. The Buzz covers topics of conversation in the Community and on social media. In the Main Story Tracey Lee Davis of Zing Pop Social Media shares her perspective on what does and doesn’t work when marketing and promoting your business on social media. On Inside eBay Social Media Coach Heidi Warnock tells us how the eBay Social Media team utilizes Facebook to provide information and responses to eBay sellers. Also, Liz Austin discusses how eBay uses social media with Melina Baxter, eBay’s Head of Content Strategy and Social Media. We’ll even answer a seller question! To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

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Internet Sales Tax Help (https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/taxes-import-charge...

Hosts

Griff, Alan Aisbitt, Liz Austin

Guests

Tracey Lee Davis (Zing Pop Social Media), Heidi Warnock (eBay Staff), Melina Baxter (eBay Staff)

Note: The term GCX is an acronym that refers to Global Customer Support.

What do you think about social media?

I love it and I hate it.

Same way I feel. Tell me why you love it.

I like following...

I'm nor really interested in that. Tell me why you hate it.

You never feel good after it. You never, especially on Instagram. You're looking at all these rich people and they're lovely lifestyles.

And their yachts.

You're always like, Oh...

They're Maseratis.

Yeah, exactly.

Their Rolexes.

Exactly.

But yeah, I don't think ever feel good after. Twitter, Twitter is good cause you get to follow journalists, people you like and you get some news and some crazy politicians are on there, you know, so you get to, you get to have a bit of fun. And I don't do Facebook anymore. I gave it up.

Yeah. I'm going to start my own social media.

What would it be called?

Antisocial media.

Griff Face?

No, no, it's back of the head book.

Talk to the hand book. Yeah. The only thing I use Facebook now is for business. Not so much for myself or my selling on eBay, but I love to find things to buy. So you know how people complain that Facebook's become a marketing channel for business?

Yes.

I'm fine with that.

You're okay with it?

I love it. I buy stuff.

Yeah.

It's how I discovered the company I buy my electric bikes from.

And you're right. I bought some shirts off a company on Instagram.

This is the last thing we should be talking about on an eBay podcast is about how we buy things on Facebook, but there's a point to this.

Yes.

Which is that if you do it right, if you're an eBay seller, you can get my eyeballs and my wallet open as well. Depending on how you use Facebook.

You can.

Cause I bought things on eBay that I've seen on Facebook as well.

Yeah, and it can be anywhere. It can be LinkedIn, it can be Twitter, it can be Instagram. You can do targeted posts or targeted stories and we're actually doing some advertisements for the podcast on Facebook.

I saw them too.

Yeah. I saw one on Instagram stories and I saw an Ad for the podcast.

I'm Alan.

And I'm Griff and This is the eBay For Business podcast. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow business, no matter if it's big or small on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this if you're counting, is episode 63. Alan, what is it all about this week?

This week it is all about social media.

The world's biggest time sink.

Yep. It can be. So don't spend your entire day on Facebook or Instagram, but those social media channels also provide an opportunity for an eBay seller to booth his or her business on eBay.

There are millions and millions of eyeballs on social media, so it only makes sense to try to capture their attention.

And their wallets.

Yeah, those wallets, but it's not so easy as just posting link after long to your listings on eBay. In fact, that's probably the least effective way of grabbing any wallet share. There are smart and effective practices for activating new buyers on social media.

And there are some not so smart or effective practices. And Alan, guess which ones you should adopt and which ones you should avoid?

See, you're more social media savvy than you thought. Griff.

I know and today we'll talk with a few experts on the topic. First, we're gonna welcome back, Tracey Lee Davis of Zing Pop Social Media. Those of you who attended eBay Open may have heard her panel discussion. She really amazing. And Tracey is going to share her perspective on what does and doesn't work when marketing and promoting one's business on social media.

And from the eBay side. eBay Social Media Coach, Heidi Warnock calls in from our Salt Lake city office. Heidi will tell us how the eBay Social Media Team utilizes Facebook to provide information on responses to eBay sellers.

And Liz is going to talk to eBay Social Team Member Molina Baxter. About what eBay is doing to capture buyers on eBay. And why is this of interest to sellers? Because those buyers then buy from our sellers. There's that end so much more Alan, but first, what's Buzzing in the eBay community?

Thank you Maestro. So Alan, what's The Buzz out there this week in community social and the news?

Well, Griff as always, let's start with community and social. You know, we get some recurring themes and if it pops up, we look into it.

Wait a minute, I bet it is. It. No, tell me It's not.

Yep. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Yeah. Internet sales tax.

Well, I'm shocked, shocked!

Shocked!

To hear that it's internet sales tax. You'd think it was a hot topic.

It's one of the hottest topics.

Yeah. So Alan, what's The Buzz on internet sales tax this week?

Discussions continued last week regarding internet sales tax. Buyers and sellers discussed eBay's role as a marketplace facilitator. And there was some confusion surrounding tax responsibilities for sellers. Many comments showed at salaries do not have a clear understanding of internet sales tax even after eBay staff have provided explanations.

Mmm. And you know, we have a page up on eBay and it should have a lot, if not all of the info you'll need. And we'll include that help page link in the episode transcript because once again, the URL goes on for several pages. Literally. It's just literally several pages, I mean it's a codex in and of itself.

Well, thank you. Thank you for putting it in the transcript and thanks for the clarification Griff.

It's my pleasure Alan. It can be confusing.

It can.

And maybe some of these sellers are just now hearing about it. So I want to make sure everyone is Up to date on one thing though. Okay, so there's the eBay end of collecting sales tax for your state. If you're on the list and then reimbursing it to your state without you having to do anything. You still may need to report those sales even though you don't have to pay the income tax on them. Where do you go to learn about that? If you're not familiar with your state's website for sales tax, you better get familiar quickly. You should already know it. If you're in business and you've been collecting sales tax for your state, for sales that you've made in the previous months and years. So just make sure you're following your state laws and regulations and you're still fulfilling them.

Very important. We'll continue to announce new States in the Community and point sellers to resources as they come up.

And I am absolutely certain we're going to touch on this topic, Internet sales tax again. We have a lot of acronyms at eBay.

Oh, we sure do Griff.

And internet sales tax at eBay. Behind the scenes, I'm going to open the kimono just a peek. Is I S T, BTW.

Thanks Griff. That makes sense. Seeing as those are the first letters.

Yeah. They're not always that easy too. I have to even ask them now and again, we're in a meeting and someone uses an acronym. Everyone is too afraid to raise their hand and say, what does that mean? And I have no fear and no shame anymore. So I just stand up and say, stop. What does PDQ mean? In eBay parlance?

I'll just make them up as well in our meetings.

And watch how people nod their heads and say, Oh yeah, the MXB right?

Yeah. The MXB is really taken off. Well. We recently had a policy update related to altered items and faulty returns. Beginning October 1st the option to issue a partial refund for faulty or altered items was extended to Top Rated sellers.

t's always interesting to see comments where sellers ask, why just Top Rated sellers eBay? It's an incentive to be honest. Plus, shouldn't you all want to be the best rated sellers you can be?

Partial refund protections were previously only for listings that offered free returns. Sellers are concerned about having to accept returns for items that cannot be resold, like used cosmetics and undergarments. What do you think Griff?

Well it's hard to use myself as an example, the only cosmetics I sell are colognes and my return rates are really low, but it will happen. That's the business you're going to be in. You have to build it into your business numbers so that you're mitigating the cost of accepting those returns. I guess you have to throw them away mostly. Right? Or donate them.

You could donate them. Yeah, give back. Give back to the community. Well, let's move on. There was some discussion regarding Best Offer as well. Buyers and sellers were discussing the unspoken etiquette of the Best Offer feature, focusing on how best to word offer messages, when to use auto accept and decline and how much of a discount is appropriate to request. So a common frustration raised by sellers is low ball offers. Sellers see these as insulting and a waste of their time. One buyer shared that an offer the sent was automatically declined, which left them feeling frustrated that offers were an option at all.

That's interesting.

Yeah. I know. I know your opinion on this. Are we going to get a Griff rant?

No, I'm going to avoid it and I'm just going to say, yeah, yeah wait. I can't avoid it. It's just coming out of me. I'm sorry. Really in the world we live in, you're finding low ball offers are insulting and a waste of time? You better rethink your priorities.

Some people do.

I get a low ball offers. And regardless of what I think, I always respond politely and professionally. I never say, are you kidding? Go away with that low ball offer! I'll say, no, I'm sorry. I can't accept this.

It's an opportunity too. Maybe you go down on a little bit and the buyer goes up a little bit and you meet somewhere in the middle?

Yeah. Don't think of it as a low ball. Think of it as a starting point.

Right.

And if you're not interested and you don't want to bargain, just you know, be polite and say well thank you for the offer, but I'm not accepting offers at this time.

Yeah. And last time I heard eBay had like 1.2 billion listings. So somewhere out there has found your listing amongst the 1.2 billions. Great. that number one, people are finding it.

I like how you think Alan.

Be thankful someone came along and actually sent you a message. Because buyers are people too and they're, they're spending their time contacting you. So this is an opportunity to try and snipe that sale.

That's right. Best offers are great for some, you know, but low ball offers, they're gonna come with the territory, with negotiations. You don't have to accept them. You can set an automatic decline. It's up to you as a seller. But if you really want to be all bent out of shape cause somebody sent you $5 offer for a $50 item, Mazel Tov.

Now it's time of the show where we admit a mistake.

Are you kidding? I never make them.

Yeah. Well I know you don't, but sometimes eBay does.

Okay. What happened?

We like to report the good and the bad news on be transparent.

Yeah we're working on it, but again, what happened?

Well there was a $10 selling promotion that was intended to be sent to buyers and sellers who hadn't sold in awhile and unfortunately that was incorrectly sent to a wider seller audience.

Sounds like someone flipped the wrong email switch.

It does. And where is that switch Griff?

Yeah. I'm not sure, but it might be lights out on the way out, so I don't know.

It's probably Doug.

Poor Doug. Switch is on the wall Doug.

Some sellers were able to activate this offer before the promotion was canceled and other sellers report confusion as the promotion no longer appeared in their accounts.

Grr!

So the Community Team work to get clarification confirming that those who are able to activate the promotion, would still receive the promised coupon.

Anything else, Alan?

Are you going to cover everything?

Every little thing.

Currently some sellers are talking about a issue with the new Item Specific rollout. There were some technical issues that are causing concern. We posted a Seller News Announcement and we are keeping the seller community Up to date with updates to that announcement. Just a reminder, you can get to that by going to ebay.com/announcements. That's where you find out all the latest and greatest news from eBay HQ.

Yeah, don't get it second hand.

No!

Go right to the source.

Go right to the source. Don't believe those groups that you're in. Come straight to eBay. We'll give it to you straight!

Thanks Alan.

That is all that fits this week.

That's what I was waiting for you to say.

Okay. Coming up next, we're going to talk about social media.

This week on the podcast we're talking about social media and how a seller can use it to help boost their business and promote their presence on eBay through the holidays of course, but all year round as well. Right now we're here and joined by Heidi Warnock. She's the Social Media Coach at eBay in salt Lake city and we're discussing how eBay uses social media for customer service and hopefully we can learn a few things from Heidi about how we as sellers can engage with our customers on social media as well. Welcome to the show, Heidi.

Thank you so much Griff. I'm excited to be here.

We're excited to have you. How long have you been with eBay?

I've been with eBay going on eight years now.

And what does a Social Media Coach do?

Our responsibilities are supporting the teammates that work on our social media pages. So those who are offering support through our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Who respond to you whenever you reach out with questions or concerns and making sure that we're providing quality service through our team.

Now you started out on the Community Team if I remember, is that correct?

I was one of the original teammates on the Community Team when we revamped our community a couple of years ago. So I did have the fun, exciting opportunity to experience that side of the world of social in our community that's housed on our board.

How does your role differ from when it was Community? Is it, is there a big difference?

There's definitely some crossover between the two worlds and there is some differences as well. Providing engagement on the Community boards was clarifying questions, you know, engaging with sellers on the day to day that are offering support to their peers within that channel. Social media has its own abilities and ways to branch out that you can use that maybe as different from community. So on social it's primarily customer support end to end experience being able to be the one stop shop for everything.

We still have a big customer support presence on our eBay community pages, but outside of that, what other resources do sellers have for customer service when it comes to needing help from eBay?

One of the biggest places I would encourage sellers to visit would be our eBay for business Facebook page. We have an entire team dedicated to answering questions, offering support, walking you through, whether it's a simple or complex question you might have about your business or even a specific transaction you might have with the buyer. We are here at 23 hours a day to help seven days a week.

In your experience, how has social media customer service different from email or telephone customer service?

One major difference that I would say would be sellers can use and leverage social media in a way that helps them manage their business better. If they have a customer service question for eBay for instance, they can send that to us through eBay for business on Facebook and then leave that question be while they can go and answer maybe other questions they've received from their buyers and their customers. And then we will be able to respond when we have the ability and then the seller can come back to that as soon as they're done shipping their items, they've returned from the post office or even adding more listings to their store.

One of the things that we notice about social, people tend to speak their minds. They tend to be very direct and abrupt. And I know it's human nature to respond in kind, but when a business like a seller on eBay has decided to use a social media channel like Facebook or Instagram or Twitter to engage with answer questions from or respond directly to their customer base, what are some of the things that they should keep in mind? We know those posts are out there for everyone to see.

That they are, definitely. The biggest things that sellers should be mindful of when engaging in a platform like social, Instagram, you know wherever you might have a presence is going to be your tone. Professionalism is very important but also conversational. You want to make sure that you're not going too formal like you would in a formal email type support system. You want to talk to people as if you're talking to them face to face, but also recognizing that you're the face of your business and broadcasting that for everybody to see. One thing that you can compare it to is through your feedback profile. When you're responding to feedback that you've received from buyers or customers of your own, you know, being mindful that future customers coming to your business, they're going to see how you're engaging and that could be a factor in whether or not that buyer decides to purchase from you.

The tone or the style may change for social media because it is more conversational, but that the underlying principle of staying professional, staying polite, staying calm, still come into play.

The way that I would explain it best would be if I was stopped at a grocery store wearing an eBay tee shirt and somebody had a question for me about eBay in general. I wouldn't go through the formalities of saying, thank you so much for stopping me today with your questions.

That would just sound bizarre. That would sound terribly bizarre. Right?

You want to talk to them like you're not best of friends, but also that they're not complete strangers. If that helps.

It's a middle ground that you have to find right there.

Yeah.

These are great tips. Do you have anything else you might want to add Heidi, while you have this chance to talk to sellers about using social media?

Leverage your resources. If social is new to you, make sure that you're doing the research and using it for your specific business and what your customers are going to need. Somebody selling used clothing versus new electronics. You're going to have a different outlook of what social means to you and how you can leverage that for your business.

Heidi, I want to thank you so much. I know you guys are really busy there on the social team in Salt Lake, so we'll let you get back to engaging with our customers. And I'm sure our sellers have learned something about how to engage with theirs. Thank you.

Thank you so much Griff. I appreciate it.

We've been speaking with Heidi Warnock. Heidi's been with eBay for quite a while. She was on the Community Team. Now she's on the Social Media Team specifically as a Social Media Coach, helping other eBay employees who engage with sellers on our social media channels. Do it in a way that's polite, professional, engaging and effective.

Up next Podcast Correspondent Liz Austin talks with Malina Baxter from the eBay Social Team about how eBay uses social media as a channel for capturing the eyeballs of buyers and hopefully their wallets.

I'm Liz Austin and today we're joined with Malina Baxter, Head Of Content Strategy and Global Social Media at eBay. Welcome to the podcast Malina.

Thanks Liz. So nice to be here.

This month we're talking about promotional strategies with our sellers and how they can help grow their business over holiday. As Head of eBay Social Media Team, we thought it'd be an awesome idea to get you in here to talk to us a bit about how eBay uses social media. Explain a bit about yourself and your role at eBay.

Sure. I have the lucky job of working on our eBay brand within our Global Social Channel. Anywhere you follow at eBay, across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, you name it. Our team helps develop all of the assets and the strategy to bring that to life. So I've been here for about a year, loved every moment of it and some of my favorite parts are when I've been able to get into the market and meet our sellers and interact with different people who are really representing what eBay's about on the ground and it's been a thrill to be here thus far.

How do we at eBay use social media to either attract new customers and or speak to existing customers?

Complicated and it's also really easy. When we are speaking on behalf of the brand, what we're doing in social media is talking to everybody, buyer, seller, new, old, lapsed, really engaged. Our task is to bring the brand to life and put messaging out there that we think is going to resonate most with our fans. And when I say that, I mean we're not going to talk about holiday decorations in the middle of summer. We're going to find out what people are really interested in talking about in a particular point in time and we will intersect that moment with an eBay specific point of view. A good example of that might be, I'm right now heading into the holidays. So we know the weather is changing. People are starting to decorate their homes differently, getting ready for Halloween, we want eBay to come to life in those moments in a way that is very, very relevant.

So if they are looking for holiday decorations, guess what? Here's a whole bunch of amazing holiday decor brought to you from eBay. We look to intersect where people are thinking, talking, shopping, and then we bring our message in right on top of that. And usually hopefully it's a very relevant message and something that they are interested in and engage with.

So we basically just want to show up in their conversation.

That's right! One of my favorite analogies is that if you walk into a Christmas party or holiday party and there's a group of people talking, it's super awkward when someone comes in and says, Hey, I want to sell you something. Nothing will stop a conversation faster. However, if you walk into a conversation and you take a pause and you listen a little bit, everyone happens to be talking about their new car. Guess what? I work at eBay. I have some amazing car parts that are available right now. It's also a great deal. Or it's a one of a kind. Whatever it is. If I bring my message in in a way that works with a conversation that's happening, it's the most relevant. And that will bring me into the conversation versus coming in from the left and saying like, Hey, have you guys tried a new Dyson hairdryer? It doesn't work when a conversation is different. So what we try to do is match our messages with where the conversation is, but also with a strategy. So we're not just kind of following the conversations, we're also trying to lead them. And sometimes we do that by listening at a higher level.

And we also know that our sellers have some incredible stories to tell, don't we? Stories about where they get their items from, stories about, you know, where they've sourced. Stories about how they've interacted with customers as well. So they're always amazing things for eBay to tell and insert those kind of examples into conversation as well.

I've had the opportunity to meet with a lot of our sellers and every time I hear every individual story, eBay becomes more alive to me. It becomes a living, breathing brand. We have the opportunity to be able to share those stories and our fans respond well to it, which I think is a phenomenal Testament to what eBay as a platform is all about.

Give us an example as part of a marketing campaign.

Getting into a little bit of how we build our strategy. There's a myriad of different inputs. So one of them is not only what are people talking about off our site, what is trending, but also what do we want to talk about as a business? There was a big opportunity with Star Wars, Triple Force Friday was happening. Disney was putting a lot of activation behind that. We had a phenomenal amount of merchandise and product to be able to deliver to our fans. Naturally, that's a moment in time. We'd sort of call that a cultural moment where we want to dive in. As a social team, We work very closely with our marketing partners and specifically the homepage to make sure we understand what the big business driver is and then we create a social campaign that brings people from social directly into the site. And we do that a lot of different ways. That actually brings me to how we use our different channels. There is very much a purpose behind each channel. We're very clear about how we use them. Facebook, for example, that's our largest platform. There it's all about engagement. We're really trying to put content out that gets the likes, that gets the shares, that gets the comments.

The reason why we want to do that is because the more relevant your brand shows up to the Facebook algorithm, the more likely you're going to get shown in the feed. And what we wanna do every day is if you follow eBay and you open your Facebook app, as we know you do multiple times a day that we show up in that conversation. So every time eBay swipes right by you, that's a moment in time where the brand has been able to exchange with the customer. Knowing that it's Triple Force Friday, that we have a lot of activation across Facebook. We want to show a whole bunch of really fun products to get people interested and they can click directly in to a wonderful site experience. So we make sure from social to the site, the experience is relatively seamless so that if you see a Jedi Knight that you just have to have and you click on it, we're going to bring you directly to that product so we don't lose you in that mix.

Talking about different channels and before you were talking about, we speak to all our customers, whether they're buyers, whether they're sellers, you know, whether they're a buyer of vintage items, whether they're a buyer of a Dyson hairdryer, how do we then use these different channels to speak to different audiences that eBay speaks to?

So Facebook is again our biggest Instagram. We actually use that channel specifically as an inspiration channel. So there what we do is we try to pick pieces or curate the feed to really inspire you. What we want you to do is we call it sort of thumb stopping content. We want to put in front of you the most amazing uniquely eBay things that make you stop and go, huh, I didn't know I needed a tortilla toaster. That's a thing!

Is that really a thing?

It really is.

Wow.

We put the content there and we listen. We listen and we respond. So there's constant optimization. As we put items up or posts up in our feed, we watch how many people are engaging, how many are sharing, what are they commenting, and we start to lean in more and more to what works and we pull off what doesn't. So if we know for example, items for the home seem to be trending, this is just an example, more than items for that seem for a younger audience, we'll start leaning away from the younger audience items and into the things that are working. We read the tea leaves, if you will. We watched the numbers and we lean into it. The other way we kind of speak or use the channels differently is we have a younger audience on eBay fashion handle, so they're, the messaging is much more targeted to a younger millennial, maybe a fashionista, so that content leans into that audience.

We also have channels like eBay For Business, for our sellers. The content there is meant to be much more about how to drive your business. Obviously as you all know and ensuring that there's a sense of community there. And we have our newsroom channels and that's where our PR and our news flows out. Each channel has a purpose and we make sure the audiences are pretty clean within the brand handles. Those are very much about inspiration, engagement and ideally sales. And it really is a test and learn isn't it? Because at these social media platforms are so dynamic and I don't know about you, but I definitely flip between Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes I get really frustrated with Facebook cause it's not serving up the right content. And then Instagram I get too sucked into it. And then I get really annoyed with myself.

I'm like, Oh, I need to spend less time on Instagram. I'm an addict.

It happens to the best of us.

I'm sure you as the Head of Social Media as well, like what is your preferred personal channel? I'm on Instagram probably most and specifically Instagram stories. So interestingly people now where they use it goes sort of top down. So like down the feed now there's this new trend of going left, right? So everyone's kind of, you go into stories and you just let them flow across. So if you know you weren't lazy enough to just use your thumb to go up and down your friend's lives, now you just press a button once and it just kind of streams across. So it's frightening how much you get pulled into it.

Totally.

But yeah, Instagram stories is probably where I spend the most amount of my time.

Have you ever woken up at nighttime? I'll often wake up and i have fallen asleep watching Instagram stories and I'll pick my phone back up and they are still going. They're still rolling.

Actually my favorite thing is when I get shipments to the office and I'm like, what did I buy? And then I open it. I'm like, well, this is definitely a late night Instagram purchase.

That's dangerous.

It is usually something super awkward like a bathing suit.

What successes are we having recently as we think about uniquely eBay's proposition? I know we talked about Star Wars. We're doing this awesome thing called Friday Drops.

Yes, we've had a lot of successes. Honestly, some of the places that I think are the most interesting to me, I'm number one. I'll start by saying we do have our Sunday series where we support our sellers spotlights, our sellers shorts and that's gotten great engagement. We love doing them, love having our sellers speak on behalf of the brand. It gets, it's an awesome way to kind of again add dimension. For us, We also have had tremendous success in two areas. One of them is when we dive into our site and find these uniquely eBay items, these things that are like what? The Death Star Fire pit and you know the amazing muscle car and those types of things. That really, again, get back to the core of what eBay is, those things resonate really well for us and we put those out the channels. I just love watching the engagement and often the nostalgia that comes with a post like that and people kind of connecting with it. We also work really closely with our site team and when we see that there are searches trending on eBay, so when people start searching for particular products, we'll pick that information up and we'll put that out onto social. So we'll say, Hey, this many people are searching for Yeezys for example right now they're trending and then we get that as a big traction as well. We obviously feature our deals where we can and where we should to make sure our fans know about all the great options on eBay. And the way we do that actually where we found quite a lot of success is using Instagram stories actually to drive into our deals because it's a one swipe up. So it's a very easy engagement for people. And the nice thing is that there's urgency to it. It's only a 24 hour channel. The content is up. They know they have to take action and it goes away. So when we have an action driver like a deal, and we put that in Instagram stories.

Yeah, it's like a unique bit of advice that we're giving to only those people that watch Instagram Stories.

You heard it here first!

Yeah. Nice. So what about as we think about engagement, I mean it's not just pushing out content, it's also about eBay engaging with those people on social media as well. So do you want to talk about how we do that? How much time we spend doing that?

We do it a couple of different ways. We do have a wonderful team. We are supported by GCX who when there are some big issues in social, and the one thing I will say is if you have a problem with a brand, the easiest place to go is not the 800 number, but they come to Facebook or Twitter or wherever it is and they blow you up, if you will. We have our GCX partners who are there to help take on some of the bigger issues, whether it's shipping problems, et cetera, things that aren't necessarily social centric but need to be dealt with. And then there's someone on my team who's dedicated to actual engagement in terms of relationship building. So when people have direct questions or you know, just making fun comments, tagging their friends, where we can we make sure to jump in and have an engagement with the brand. And what I love is when people usually quite surprised when an eBay brand responds to likes or comments on their picture. I would say do that when you can. It takes time to do it. Also historically is hard because once you've posted, it kind of goes down so you have to remember to go back. But as a small business, if I were kind of developing my relationships, I would make sure to pay attention to people who are commenting, liking and develop that relationship. If you want to them to support your business, then engage with them. It's about relationship building.

How will eBay be using social media for holiday? Can you give away any tidbits?

Well you will be seeing us a lot. Hopefully we will be showing up in your feeds a lot. We're going to be supporting all the major initiatives that our marketing partners and our merchant partners are business partners I think are the most important. Um, so we will be there but we're also gonna make sure that we put our special little social scent on it and one of the things that I think you can look forward to is obviously we're getting into the holidays and everyone's talking about gift-giving. We're working really closely with our team on building some gift guides that we think will will be really fun. Some that are the obvious ones and some that are a little bit quirkier that we think might get people a little interested. When I mentioned the uniquely eBay that really works well for us and the things that would make you go, wow, I can buy a Lamborghini or an Italian Villa. I mean some of these things are so kind of out of the world but are actually really interesting and make people stop and reconsider eBay again. We'll also serve up the things that are really important, whether it's accessories for your cell phone or you know, new tires for your car. Whatever is important to you, we will be supporting that. But look for that to come in a way that the customer is probably shopping. And right now it's, they're very much in a holiday mindset.

And then my final question as eBay Social Media Expert, two pieces of advice that you would give a seller who's looking to use social media for holiday.

Two pieces of advice. Well, I'm going to give maybe more. So couple bullets. Some of the things that I've learned, if you're creating a profile for your brand on any social channel, make sure in your profile to add a bio. So what are you about? What are you selling? What do you want people to know from a quick takeaway? Because when often when people are considering following you, they'll go to your site, they'll look at your top page and then they'll decide whether to engage. That being said, if it is a business page, make sure it's public. You want more people to be able to engage with you. So a public profile with a bio up on the top. The next thing I would say is it doesn't have to be a majority of your time, all of us have the habit of getting sucked into social media. We have an editorial calendar. So we've decided, for example, we post X amount of times a day. Here are the themes that we're going to do. If you can create that on a small way for your business, if you have new products coming in or things you want to talk about to help manage your business and your time, find days of the week that you do that.

And you'll be surprised that sometimes your followers will get used to seeing that. You know, if you have like a New Product Monday or whatever that is, and it's not to be too formulaic, but it's meant to help you manage your time and also create some sort of a franchise to make it easier to maintain. And my last little bit is engagement. So make sure to be authentically you. First of all, people don't want to follow another robot or another business. They want to follow a person. Make sure to have your own voice, engage, bring your personality through. So many people want to support and be engaged with the person behind the business. And I can't tell you how important it is to do that. So bring your voice forward and develop your community.

Thanks Malina. We've been speaking to Malina Baxter from eBay. Coming up next, an industry expert who will share advice for our sellers to help them maximize social media for their business this holiday.

It's time for The Main Story and today we're here with local Social Media Marketing Expert, Tracey Lee Davis and we're talking about some tips for sellers using social media during the holidays, but of course these are tips you could take throughout the year. Hi Tracy, welcome back.

Hello. Thanks so much for having me back.

Remind our listeners what it is you do.

Well, I am a Social Media Coach and an email Marketing Manager and I work with small business owners and help them navigate the exciting world of online marketing and have a lot of fun doing it.

What should sellers who are considering using or who already are using social media be thinking about at this time of year? This end of the year is always a huge source of revenue for retailers. It's so important to be thinking ahead about the different promotions that you want to be doing throughout the rest of the year.

I am a big proponent of email marketing for my clients in any part of the year and I understand that there are some restrictions.

Some guidelines, some guard rails. You're right.

That can make that a little bit more complicated for eBay sellers, but absolutely email is still a tool that I think people should be thinking about utilizing. But with that in mind, even if you do want to start working towards using email marketing for your business, the best place to start with that is social media. To not only be driving traffic to your eBay site, but to be working on adding people, building your list, having people opt in because that is always the best thing that you can do with your email marketing is have your list full of people who are literally saying, yes, I want you to send me an email.

Not just indifferent or people who are really aren't interested, but you want people who have an indicated interest. I know myself as a buyer, when I find a company that has a product I want, I gladly say, yes, send me the emails. I want to know when you have discount sales, blah, blah, blah. We have that on eBay. It's like we said, it's a little bit restricted, but you can, if you have a store, you can set up so that every week an email goes out to people who follow you on eBay. That means they've opted in and you can set up some of the parameters that email, it could be new listings or sales that you're having, but like I said, it's restricted only to once a week and eBay pretty much controls how that looks. But if I'm on social media as an eBay seller, the world is my oyster. I can do what I want.

Absolutely. So you can be utilizing your social media channels no matter what they are to drive people to sign up for your list. If you're using an outside tool, like Constant Contact, which is what I always recommend. I love it so much. Um, I am a certified solution provider for Constant Contact. I am perhaps a wee bit biased. Regardless of what email marketing tool you're utilizing, your social media can drive people to sign up for your list because these are already folks who are following you. They're already saying that they're interested in what you do and what you have to offer. So you might as well have another line to get in front of them, aside from just social media.

And if you're multichannel, if you're not just selling on one marketplace, this can be a great way of gaining those buyers as well.

Absolutely. Because you're never going to have, you know, 100% overlap between Facebook and Instagram, for example. All the followers you have on one platform, you're certainly going to have some overlap, but it's never going to be complete. And so you're always going to have on the different platforms that you're on, you're going to have different audiences and so you can work on driving all of those people into one place. Because something that you always want to think about is that with these social platforms, you're just borrowing space. You don't own it. You don't own the people who are following you. You don't have any way to reach them directly. If Facebook goes belly up tomorrow, probably not gonna happen, but Hey, you never know.

Remember Myspace.

Right? Absolutely. Oh, and Friendster.

I vaguely recall that.

With those platforms, you just always need to be thinking that you don't own them.

If something were to happen to those social platforms, you would lose all of your followers and then have no way to reach them. So working on building an email list is an awesome use of social media. And then also of course utilizing all of your different social channels to drive traffic back to your eBay store, to your different products and all of that good stuff. Absolutely you want to be doing.

You can use social media to get people to follow you or like you on eBay, provide that link. So then they're kind of signing up for your eBay email list, which again, you have some control over every week. You want to make sure the listings are fresh that are showing. It's a great way if you're using a promotional tool to indicate, Hey, I'm having a sale. But that's just for your eBay sales. So about social media in general and coming up to this time of year and we're talking to a seller who may have never used social media before. What's the first thing that they should do?

The thing that I always want to drive home to anyone, no matter what your skill level is, make sure your profile is set up fully and completely and accurately. You want people to interact with your posts but say they want to just see everything that you have to offer. If they go and look at your about section on Facebook for example, and your website isn't listed, you want them to just be able to see everything because unfortunately sometimes we're dealing with people who are not very savvy utilizing online tools. While it may seem really obvious to you how to get to your store and look at all of your listings, some people just may not understand how to do that or they get frustrated really quickly. And so if they can't get to the information that you want them to see easily, they may go somewhere else. So you want to make it ridiculously easy for people to see the different products that you have to sell. See specific products that you have to sell, make that ridiculously easy and have your social channels complete. And then once you have your nice complete profile on whatever platform you're using, you want to have, again, nice clear, easy to understand posts. If you are specifically trying to sell a particular product, that would be a situation where you want to link specifically to that particular product as opposed to your entire store. Maybe you're thinking, Oh well if I have just a link to my entire store on this post with this picture of this product, then people are gonna look and see other stuff that they want. But if for whatever reason they can't then easily find that product that they were really interested in, you may lose them. Being clear and consistent and making it so that people don't have to do extra clicks anywhere.

I utilize social media right now only as a buyer looking for stuff. I like different pages for different retailers that have stuff I like outside of eBay. And one of them is a well known shall be nameless company that always advertises with a picture and it'll be something I like or I'm interested in and when I click on it it just takes me through their whole show and I'm not going directly to the item and like you just said, they've lost me.

Yeah, it's frustrating.

If you're going to tease me with a piece of cake. Give me the piece of cake when I get to your shop.

Right. Don't make people beg for the cake.

Exactly. I like that. Put it on a tee shirt. Where should sellers go? Facebook, Instagram. Pinterest should be a focus on one or all of them? I know it's difficult to manage more than one.

My recommendation is to pick one platform, do a really great job with that one platform and then once you're comfortable, think about branching out. There are a couple of things that can determine what that first platform is that you start utilizing. One is your comfort level with the different platforms out there. If you are utilizing multiple platforms for your personal use and you're comfortable on all of them, that's awesome. I would say pick the platform that is most consistent with your target audience. You want to pick the platform where the people who you're trying to reach are more likely to hang out. If you are selling products that are targeting people who are 40 and up, you're probably going to have more success on Facebook. Whereas if you're targeting people who are younger than that, then Instagram is probably more applicable. If you have products that are more towards like maybe the bridal industry or home products, Pinterest might be a great source for you, so it all depends on where your audience is hanging out.

If you are not comfortable on a bunch of different platforms and social media seems overwhelming to you in general, then pick the platform that you are the most comfortable on and start there. Because the best platform for you is going to be the one that you feel the most successful on. And if it's a struggle, if it's frustrating for you to learn something new where you already know something else, go with that one.

Especially during the holidays where just running your businesses is full time so you don't want to take on an extra project. So Tracy, how has social media changed marketing over time? What do sellers have to keep in mind now when they're thinking about using it for marketing during the holidays?

Back in the day, before social media and email marketing became such a popular tool for marketing small businesses, people did things like radio ads and TV ads, a lot of direct mail, something called the phone book.

That style of marketing is you think about the traditional marketing funnel. You cast a really wide net, you reach a bunch of people in a specific geographical area. Typically, you know wherever that TV is broadcast, wherever that phone book is distributed. So you cast this wide net out to all of these people in this area. Some of those are going to be your target audience and some of them absolutely are not. And some of those people who are your target audience become prospects and then some of those will actually turn into paying clients. So that's the traditional marketing funnel. It can be very expensive and time consuming for businesses that are smaller and don't have huge budgets. Big corporations generally they can afford radio ads, TV ads, but the little guys, you know, we can't afford to do that on a regular basis. So it was really hard to compete in that landscape as a smaller business back before all of these cool internet tools came about. Now with social media, the cool thing is we start off with the people who we know and we are marketing to those folks who we already have a connection to. Then the people who we know who interact with us through our business on social media for example, they are helping to drive visibility for us because they are talking about our business interacting with our business and that helps their own networks find out about us. If somebody is selling a particular type of shoes or a handbag or some cool toys for the holidays that are maybe harder to come by and when someone buys that online and they get this great deal or they get this great find, they're probably going to be more likely to talk about that on social media because about 75% or more people utilize social media to help guide their shopping decisions, their purchases. And I can't think of how many times I have eaten at a restaurant or bought some clothes or even gone on a vacation because of something that I saw in social media. So for the sellers out there to be sharing these great finds and these great deals on their social channels will encourage their audience to interact with those posts, which will help those people in their networks learn about these products and then maybe get exposure to a new seller. Do not underestimate the value of an attentive audience.

If I've chosen the site or more sites, social media sites, what are some of the best practices I need to employ on each of those sites in order to gain maximum bang for my buck?

Each site has its own set of etiquette. If you're utilizing a scheduling tool like Hootsuite for example, and you go and make one post and you have that go out to all of your different social sites. If you have multiples, the post etiquette for Instagram is going to be different than your post etiquette for Facebook, which is going to be different than Twitter. So utilizing the proper etiquette for each platform and each post is really important. For example, on Twitter you only have 280 characters. That's obviously going to be different than if you have a longer description on Instagram or Facebook. On Instagram, you want to utilize hashtags, so if you are selling a Superman comic for example, then you'd want to use hashtags that are about Superman, that are about comics, all of those sorts of different things to help draw people in. But you don't want to use hashtags on Facebook. Because Facebook sees hashtags as a branding tool and generally businesses that are doing branding are big businesses that have big budgets and deep pockets that can actually diminish your reach on Facebook. Facebook has an excellent keyword search function, so you don't need to utilize hashtags on Facebook. Just put a good keyword rich description on your caption on Facebook and that's going to be totally sufficient for getting found utilizing search.

I didn't know this.

New information for you.

No hashtags on Facebook now, No more.

Yeah. Also with that in mind, if you are posting from Instagram to Facebook, even though Facebook owns Instagram, it's considered a third party app. So if you are posting onto Facebook utilizing a third party app, generally you can see the reach be diminished a little bit because Facebook wants you in Facebook, so don't use Hootsuite for Facebook. Don't use any other tool for scheduling onto Facebook. Schedule your posts on Facebook. Some people are utilizing third party apps and still seeing success, so always my recommendation is to test, do a post on Monday at 10 o'clock with your hashtags and then do the same or very similar posts the next week. Same time without those hashtags and see if there's a difference. When you're thinking about any best practices out there, you want to test for your own audience. Some of the sellers you've seen out there, what is it that they're doing well and are these practices that other sellers should follow and adopt?

Absolutely. So if all you're doing is posting your items for sale, that can be really boring. Certainly we go onto social media to learn about things to buy and experience and do, we get on social media to feel connected. To feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves, to be part of a community, to engage, to have conversations. Some of the sellers that are doing a really great job out there aren't just selling. They are inviting you into their world. They're showing you when they go on shopping trips, they're showing you when they get their orders in and they're unboxing, they're showing you all sorts of cool stories that some of the sellers who I follow that always are showing cool stuff, that Ralli Roots. Of course they always have fun adventures that they're showcasing so, and they're just such a fun couple. So you should definitely be following them if you're not.

Again, that's R.A. L. L I. R. O. O. T. S. We've had them on the podcast.

Yeah, they're great. And then another that you might consider following is Wade's Ventures. Both Ralli Roots and Wade's Ventures. They put out a ton of information on Instagram. They are on YouTube. They have a bunch of stuff out there that you absolutely can and should watch. And besides the eBay For Business podcast, you should absolutely check out the pure hustle podcast or e-comm 101. There are tons of sellers out there to follow and learn from. And a bunch of them share their knowledge and their wisdom and their mistakes from the past and what they've learned from them. So plenty of opportunities to learn. And then of course you want to follow eBay on social media. I think eBay might share some tips every once in awhile.

Well, I think so we share tips on our eBay For Business podcast page. Let's talk about the specific content. What's a basic content strategy sellers can use?

You want to have diverse types of content, so some people get into the habit of just they're sharing links or they're just sharing photos or they're, they get stuck in a rut, so to speak, on the type of content that they post. Just like I encourage you to do testing on the use of third party apps and hashtags. You want to test out what sort of content does the best for you. For example, on Facebook you can share photos, you can share links, you can share videos, you can do lives, you can do just plain text updates, news, all of those, you know, do every different type of media that you possibly can. Try that out for a month or two, rotating through the different types of content and then look at your analytics and see what sort of content resonates the most with your audience. In general, one of the best practices is to use video a lot. Something that I have found very interesting on my business page, when I am good about posting videos, they still don't do as well as photos. For my page, ZingPop social, I get more engagement on my photos than I do on my videos. Same thing on Instagram. You obviously don't have a whole lot of options on your main feed. You can do pictures or you can do videos, but you can see if pictures of your products, maybe word images or pictures of you, which ones of those do better. Maybe it would make more sense. Instead of doing a, you know, a really cool stylized picture of the product that you're selling. Maybe have it, you holding it instead. Shake things up and see what performed better so that you can get an idea of what your audience responds to. And then as far as the content of the content, I always like to, again, not be selling all the time. 50% of your posts should be just fun, engaging stuff, inspirational, motivational, silly cat videos, whatever it may be. 50% of the time you're just posting content to get your audience engaged, to get them to like you, to get them to look forward to your posts. You know, fun stuff or inspiring stuff. 50% of the time. 30% of the time you should be doing informational educational stuff. How to's, DIYs, how to use your products, product demonstrations, those sorts of things. So you're educating your audience. So that makes up 80% of what you're posting. Informational, fun, educational, motivational stuff 80% of the time. And that leaves you over with 20% to actually sell your products.

I like that percentage. It makes sense to me as a buyer.

Yeah, because I mean nobody gets on social media to be sold to.

Except me. That's the only reason I use it.

And of course there are some odd balls out there.

I am the king of the odd balls.

But obviously you want to be promoting your business, so don't forget about that 20%. W.e want to remember that we want to be connecting with people. And something that for me makes a lot of sense. If someone has a pair of shoes that I can get here or there and they're the same style and the same size and the same price, I'm probably going to buy from the place that I like better.

That word like is important, you want to be likable. That's the cool thing about social media. Traditional marketing was always one way. It's push out. You don't hear from the other customers unless they complain or they come into your store. Social media, it's all about engagement. It doesn't work otherwise. So the more you can get people engaging with your posts, regardless of what platform it's on, the more likely more people are going to see those posts. Because all of the algorithms are working towards putting relevant content in front of the viewers and relevant content is determined by a whole bunch of different things, but engagement is a big piece of that. If you don't have any engagement on your posts, you want to work towards building that up. Because that's going to get you your visibility.

500 followers who never really buy anything from you are not worth the 10 people who buy from you constantly.

That's right.

Even if you just had only 10 followers, but they were rabid customers. That's a great number.

Absolutely.

Tracy, I want to thank you for stopping by. It's always a pleasure.

Absolutely. I love coming in here.

And we'll check in with you after the holidays to find out how social media has worked for you and some other folks.

Fantastic.

Because you have to sell your business as well?

Indeed I do. We're going to give you a chance to do that right now.

Okay. Well you always are welcome to find me on any of my places on social media because I am all over the place, but pretty much zingpopsocial.com that's my website. You can get to all of my different social channels there, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they're all at ZingPop social and I do coaching sessions, so no matter where you are in the world, I'm really happy that I get to meet with a lot of eBay sellers that are all over the United States that I've met at, at eBay opens in the past and we just do virtual meetings and help them get everything taken care.

Sounds like an investment in a good thing.

Yes, it's a lot of fun too. I enjoy it.

We've been talking with Tracey Lee Davis, Zing Pop Social Media with some social media holiday tips for sellers that you can utilize during the holidays of course, but beyond.

And with that episode 63 comes to a close. What's up for a episode 64 next week, Alan?

Next week on episode 64 it's all about promotions that work. We'll talk with sellers who have created successful promotions and find out what made them tick.

Every week. We try to have on as many sellers as we can so we can't do this without you and I'm talking to you seller!

And you can be part of the show when you call us on 888-723-4630.

Let me repeat that. 888-723-4630. And you can call that number anytime of the day, any day of the week and you can leave a question or comment and if it's a appropriate we put it on the air.

Or if you prefer you can email your question or comment to us at podcast@ebay.com that is podcast@ebay.com.

And don't make me do the same weekly spiel. Go look up a local seller meetup in your area. What's a seller meetup you ask?

No one is asking.

I'm glad you asked.

All right?

Seller meetups are regularly occurring events hosted by a meetup organizer.

Who is usually an eBay seller. Usually and what happens at an eBay seller meet up Griff?

Well I was just going to tell them that. Alan, thanks. At seller meetups sellers share things.

Like what?

Oh, selling tips, drinks, nibbles, outrageous buyers stories, dreams, frustrations, inspirations, and even a little TMI sometimes.

I'm delighted.

Oh, you are delighted. Okay good.

Where do I go to find a meet open me locale?

Well, Alan, you can find any upcoming meetups in your locale on our specially Bay community page for meetups and that URL is really short. It's www.ebay.com/meetups.

Do we need to say www anymore?

Do you want to just say ebay.com/meetups?

It should work.

All right, www. I can't stop doing it. I just like doing the www part. ebay.com/meetups.

Don't forget to tune into our weekly live video stream on the eBay For Business Facebook page every Wednesday at 12:30 Pacific . Go to facebook.com/ebayforbusiness and right after the live stream, hop on over to the eBay community for our weekly chat. It starts Wednesday at 1:00 PM Pacific. Go to ebay.com/community chat and you'll find a chat right there in front of your face.

And that's it for our show this week. The eBay For Business Podcast is brought to you by the following team and community. Brian Burke. Special Correspondent, Jenn Deal. Associate Executive Segment Producer and on the road, Doug Smith. Marketing Strategist Liz Austin, my esteemed Cohost, Alan Aisbitt. Editor in Chief, Griff.

That's me! The eBay For Business podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

Yeah. Social media.

Never catch on.

I don't know.

How else would I see what my ex-girlfriend’s doing?

Do you really use it for that? No! They've all blocked me.

Wait a minute. All? How many are there?

Okay. I've lost count.

Spill the beans Alan. We're all dying to know.

I've lost count of them. I've lost count after 10.

There is one thing I hate about social media. There's one, one particular thing that drives me crazy.

Uh, people taking photographs of their dinner?

Yes. How did you know? That drives me crazy.

Good. I don't do it.

You know what it's done for me. It's actually I've lost weight cause I've lost my appetite. All I have to do is look at other people's dinners.

Oh yeah.

I mean they must think it looks good but it's terrible. It makes me terrible. Makes me want to up my chuck.

Yeah, and you'll see people at restaurants you see it all the time. The younger people , the waiter will come and put down like three or four dinners and then everyone takes out their phone and takes a photograph of their dinner.

It’s absurd!

This weird dystopian thing where people just aren't talking and they are just looking at their screens.

I was wondering if the intention is, see I'm eating this and you're not. Okay.

Oh great. Look how lucky I am. I am eating this! I am eating this chicken! I am so lucky. I'm getting my chicken.

I was thinking I would do a thing where I take pictures of empty plates with just a few crumbs left.

Or you with just like with a tissue like wiping and wiping something from your mouth. Like MMMM. That was good. I just finished another dinner. Bet you want to see what I ate. Come back in twenty-four hours.

Ahh. TMI!

[vintagemontage]

This is a great topic and a great blog, I am going to listen to it again.

[living-lotus]

Ditto to @vintagemontage  comment - this was a rich podcast for social media strategies - for any business on eBay or otherwise!  Thank you.