DIARY OF A MAKER - Rethinking my content strategy
I've been doing a lot of strategic thinking lately.
Now, before I go any further and get into the meat of of the story, you can either click here (or the arrow below) to watch the video I made for the TLDR/short version, or you can keep reading.
The full story
Three years after changing my direction on Instagram to cats only (and cats + sushi in my Etsy shop) in a effort to create a consistent and easily recognisable brand, I realised that it just wasn't working.
Don't get me wrong: the first year and a half of this strategy showed great promise. Things even started to go really well at one point.
But one day, engagement started dropping, slow at first and then more and more rapidly.
Sales followed a similar pattern and that, my friend, is a signal that I couldn't ignore!
There are several factors that could have contributed to this situation of course.
I wish it were a simple case of just blaming the current state of the economy - and maybe it played a role too, who knows? - but as a business owner I have a duty to take a critical look on things and be honest about what's happening, even if I won't like what I see.
And I'm afraid that most of it is probably due to things that I have control over.
For example, there's the fact that I started a first part-time job on top of running my business in May 2022, then added a second part-time job to that in September 2023, and ditched my part-time jobs to start a new full-time job at the beginning of 2024.
I did manage to maintain a consistent posting schedule on Instagram the whole time (whoop!), but this significant change in my lifestyle did affect the time I have available to interact with others on social media. And if you don't give, you don't get.
I also picked a very (VERY) competitive niche: cats are awesome, I love them, and so do a lot of other cool people, but it means there is a loooot of content about cats out there and that it's very easy to get lost in the crowd.
Finally, as far as Instagram is concerned, it changed and I didn't.
The platform has become a lot more video-based to compete with the rise of TikTok and, in great part due to the time I have available, I stuck to aesthetically pleasing still image-type posts that (I find) are easier to create.
The fact that these days my engagement is not only very low but I'm also losing more and more followers with every new post that I publish instead of gaining new ones (or at the very least maintaining the numbers) is, once again, a signal that I need to do something.
I know that there are people out there who say "don't worry about how many followers you have."
To some extent they're right, and once upon a time I would have gladly backed them up.
However, the fact that sales in my shop are also dropping is quite alarming and, as I said earlier, something I CAN'T ignore.
So here comes the thinking.
The three key questions that I pondered are:
- How do I get eyes back on what I do?
- How do I get the engagement on social media back up?
- How do I drive more sales?
When it comes to my shop, I really believe in my products: I believe in the designs, I believe in the quality, and I believe in my pricing. So I don't think it's any of that stuff.
After thinking about it for a bit, I started seeing a link between what seemed like two isolated events: I first noticed a drop in engagement on social media and a soon after, sales started dropping too.
And sure enough, when you look at how social media platforms work, it can be summed up like this:
Less people engaging with my posts tells the algorithm that my content is not worth showing to more people, so it's shown less → less people see what I do → less people are aware that I'm even here and that I have a shop → less shop visits → less sales.
Pretty simple.
The conclusion I drew from this is that if I can fix my engagement on social media, there's a chance I might start seeing more sales again.
(Quick note here: I'm not suggesting that engagement is a magic fix and that it is the only thing one needs to look at if they want to fix a drop in sales. I just believe that in my case, fixing my engagement on social media will likely have a positive impact on my sales too. Now back to what I was saying!)
So I hired a social media content strategy consultant to help me work on this part - and some of my doubts were confirmed:
I need to move with the times and start creating and posting more short video content (they also recommended I joined TikTok, which for me is a massive step since I've never used it much).
I also made the decision to backtrack a little and abandon the cat-only direction on Instagram in favour of showing cats (don't worry, they're not gone!) PLUS my other characters, as well as other content that, quite frankly, I haven't figured out yet - I need to revisit my content strategy report to decide that part. 😛
To make this happen, I will have to break my pretty grid 😭 because I need room to experiment, make mistakes, see what works, etc.
I'll be honest, it's scary. It feels like starting from scratch again.
And there's of course the fear that I'm throwing 3 years of hard work out the window for the unknown - because at the end of the day, there's no guaranty that this thing will work!
But as my buddy Albert Einstein supposedly said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
So, I guess I'll have to try something different and see!
Video fun facts
I thought it would be fun to finish with some fun facts about the video above (Haven't watched it yet? Take a 👀 here!):
- Video length: 45 seconds
- Total time spent working on this video: 6 hours
- Number of takes it took to get the full 'pitch' right: 4 - the longest was 10:30mins, the shortest (which is the one I used in this video) was 1:40mins
- Number of days to film + edit: 2 - I had to edit the video twice: the first edit, which was using the longer take, just didn't work. I had to reshoot the next morning before my day job started.
- Number of B-roll* videos filmed (*secondary footage that you can insert in between to create more interest): 17
- Number of B-roll videos actually used: 5
- The automated captions managed to make me say the word D*CK at one point. Fortunately, I spotted the mistake and was able to correct the subtitles before it was too late. I know I have a bit of an accent when I speak English, but - come on!