Read an interesting comment on a SubReddit about social media marketing: nobody scrolls to learn. They scroll to feel.
I am not shy to admit, I suck at marketing! I'm a pretty good potter and a fine educator, but I think I'm too wonky and in-the-weeds to shine at marketing. Like, I love to talk about process! (WANNA HEAR SOME MORE ABOUT BURNER VALVES?? Didn't think so 😄) You know who likes to hear about process? Other potters! You know who has the least money or need for handmade pottery? You guessed it: other potters! (OH HAI OTHER POTTERS! Glad to see you here) What can I say? That's my authentic self. If people scrolled to learn, I'd be a champion at social media. And if "ifs & buts" were candy & nuts, we'd all have a very merry Christmas.
Also, most people hate being sold-to. They want to be entertained & engaged. If they buy from you, they want it to be their idea.
So, if people scroll to feel, what might we try to make them feel? Curiosity, wonder, amusement. In this vein - not that I recommend doing it on purpose! - stories of minor studio disasters get a lot of sympathy engagement. My recent burner difficulties were too technical to be interesting to most people (except maybe you guys!) but I know of a potter who deliberately topples boards full of freshly thrown pots, because his audience responds. I would not do that, for all the reasons, not the least because it's the very definition of inauthentic. It works for him, though: he gets thousands of comments on those posts.
I need to learn this skill better, so after the pottery tour, I plan to sign up for a Social Media Marketing course through Coursera. I'd have to choose a free one, obvs; if I were making enough money to pay tuition I wouldn't need the course in the first place. Have any of you done one of these? What did you think?
Also, I'd love to hear about your approaches to social media marketing, your successes and, if you want to share, your failures. I mostly use Instagram and Facebook, have just started on Bluesky, and of course you've heard me mention Patreon. I guess Blogger counts, too? Those all seem to require different approaches. TikTok is right out, for me: all content creation is work but videos are a shit ton of work & I just don't have the time or tbh the sparkling personality for that. I do a little bit on YouTube, but I can only do it because I give myself permission to suck at it and not care too much that I suck at it. (It's called authenticity, ok?? 😄)
Leave your ideas in the comments! XO L
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If I had a dollar for every time I wondered if I'm doing OK with social media, I'd have a lot more money than I probably get making social media posts! I post 4-6 times a day, six days a week. Wait, come back! Hear me out! I'm not totally crazy!
So, I take pictures at all stages of working - handbuilding, post-bisque firings, glazing, post-glaze firings, product photos. But I also take "human life" pictures - my dogs, my cats, my tortoises, food, drinks, my garden, my house renovations, bits of nature from my 15 acre property. I take 99% of the pictures with my phone. I take pictures throughout the day and then at night I go through and crop them all to square and upload them to a specific folder on my cloud storage, that I can access via phone or computer.
Throughout the week I'll ... how do I explain this ... I'll "plot out" the story I want to tell over the next week or three, or longer. Let's say I take one day handbuilding. I'll take 6-12 photos of different stages, depending on how many things I'm making. Then starting a week or two later, I'll use the first six photos, once a day for a week. Then the next six. Then maybe I won't post about that batch for a week, then the week after I'll show pictures of loading the kiln, and a big spread of everything post-kiln. Then I'll take a week showing off pictures of glazing everything. Then a week of (again) loading everything into the kiln, and then pictures of everything post-glaze firing. After I get any of that up on my website, and post about the update, I'll use the product photos I've taken as posts on social media as well. I try to take around five pictures of every piece.
I use the same photos for everywhere I post, including on my website, and being one person, I pre-write posts using a program that will cross post to Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok if I ever have enough time to put a video together (so, practically never). I try to take one day a week to pre-write and schedule all my social media. I really only post the personal photos and maybe some in-progress work if it's really catchy, and the finished glaze-fire kiln photos, on Bluesky and Mastodon. Those channels I mostly use to chat with people, to take a little bit of the pressure off work but still talking to ... someone. Anyone. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that working at home, solo, can make you kind of stir-crazy sometimes.
I will usually post, in one day: a personal photo (a pet, some food, something nature-ish), a scenes from a work day photo, a random piece I've made that's online with the description from the website, another work day photo (it does help that I make soap, dye yarn, and have a laser cutter, so I can make this one anything), and if I've just had a shop update, a photo from something in the update. If I'm having a week where stuff is slow, I'll post about soap, hand lotion, yarn, cutting boards, coasters, etc.
I know this sounds like a LOT, and I agree, it's not nothing. It takes time to sit down and write out the week. But! Everything I post on social media happened about two weeks ago (even though I'm making it sound like today) and that actually really, really helps my anxiety. If I have an off week, if something goes wrong, if I can't work one week, I have stuff to pull from. I don't have to struggle to think of something to post on the fly, I have it all scheduled.
Anyway. I hope some of this is helpful, and I'd be happy to chat more if you have any follow-up questions. And I hope your comments don't have a character limit. Sorry I got so wordy! ;-)
-- Lorena
Wow, thank you for all this, Lorena! In content it sounds like we post pretty similarly but you are much more intentional, and also post a lot more. I try to post maybe 10-12 times a week? More on Insta (which automatically means Threads, too), but I also use Bluesky & Facebook, Pinterest, and of course Blogger & Patreon. I use them all slightly differently, so I mostly don't auto-post between them but maybe I should think more about that.
I like the idea of plotting a story you want to tell with your posts.
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