Ah, Labor Day, our farewell to summer. For some today may include a BBQ or perhaps one last visit to the pool. I’ve always seen this day as the pause before entering Fall, an opportunity to reflect on all the various activities we did over Summer, and usually find a project or two that I just never got around to. (I’m looking at you screen door that still needs to be painted).
Similarly, now that I’ve completed my First Giveaway this past Friday, the culmination of “Mugust,” a celebration of carrying my first non-paper product in my shop, I’m looking back at the whole experience and had a few learnings that I wanted to share.
Be Clear on Your Goal
Over a year-and-a-half ago, I started posting artwork every day. My goal at the time was to create a style for my art and get comfortable with sharing my work.
I figured if I wanted to get better at illustrating letters, then I best do it every single day. Additionally, I would only get more comfortable with sharing my work the more I did it, therefore, I decided to post my work every single day. (yeah, I’m a rip the band-aid off kinda gal)
By the end of the first year, I felt solid in both creating and sharing my work. So, my goal this year is to use social media to expand my audience & provide more value.
Therefore, when I started creating mugs, which immediately brought additional value to my shop, I wanted to see how I could maximize this new product as a way to expand my audience.
I set a specific number that I wanted to grow my audience to, which was approximately four times the size of my current audience. It was ambitious and I had basically 3-weeks to make it happen.
Ask For What You Want
In the first couple of weeks I had seen some growth in my audience, but it was starting to look like I was being way too optimistic in trying to grow my audience by four times.
At that point I was talking with a wise friend and shared where things were at. I told her what my current number was and also what my goal was. She then asked what I was going to do to reach that number, to which I replied:
“Change it to a smaller number?”
Not a proud moment, but I try my best to keep it real with you folks. Besides, I’m thinking that I’m not the only person to start out with a big goal, and along the way get a little discouraged and start adjusting the goal to match the current reality.
Fortunately, my friend had enough belief for the both of us and encouraged me to not give up, but instead to reach out to my audience for help.
I composed an email where I asked each person if they would be willing to ask at least 5 other people to sign up. I also included a sample message to keep it easy and remove possible obstacles.
This proved to be very effective because in a few days I doubled my current audience. What I learned was that people really do want to help and if you make a clear, simple ask chances are that most people will respond.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Leading up to the mugs being placed in the shop I thought I would be able to do posts throughout the entire month of August. However, I ran into some scheduling conflicts and the mugs were not ready on August 1st.
I had decided to do series of posts about mugs, but wasn’t sure what that would look like. Going back to the larger goal of bringing value, I decided that the series would highlight the mugs and potential uses for them (ironically, drinking coffee was not one of the posts).
By the time the products were ready and posted in the shop, it was August 13th. So, I decided to post every day for the remainder of the month and have the drawing be on 8/31, which is how “18 Uses for a Mug” was born.
Every day I created new artwork that highlighted a different use for a mug and then posted the artwork while sharing a link for people to signup.
I used the same format for both Facebook and Instagram; by the end of it I truly thought I sounded like a broken record.
However, the truth is that in the constant noise of social media, while I may feel like I’m saying the same thing over and over, I had no idea when or if someone would see my post.
Or if they saw a post, that they would read the copy. Or if they saw the post and read the copy that they may possibly have become distracted and/or weren’t in a place to take action and click on the link.
When you are wanting to get a message out, you need to get comfortable with repetition.
In 18 days, I didn’t have a single person say “Enough of these mug posts and talking about the LIVE DRAWING.” But I had many people say “Oh, I didn’t see the link” or “I meant to sign up, but forgot.”
In the end, I’m happy to say that I met my original goal (actually I ended up growing my audience by almost 450%!)
While I’m pleased with the outcome, there is still much to learn and more things to come. For example, we are already in process with our next product line, which you can see a sneak peek of in this video.
The shirts are not in the shop yet, but I think we can all agree that “Shirtember” is pretty much a given.
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