OK, I’ve been working in the online world for way longer than I’d like to remember…

I’ve been taking a career break after having my little girl. She is now 4 (where did that time go) so will be starting Reception in September.

During this time I have been running Quirky Purple  and it’s been a blast! It has allowed me to use my creative side and made lots of lovely handmade goodies but also to keep my online skills up to date by running a WordPress site, Etsy, Folksy, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter sites. Because it’s a micro-business and there’s just me, I can flex the work up and down and even close my shop when I need to. OK, it doesn’t make a lot of money, but its fun and keeps my skills ticking over.

Now, ticking over – there’s a problem.

I decided last year that I needed to get cracking on updating my skills if I wanted to be properly ‘work ready’ by September. I spent a lot of time going to open days and looking up courses. I was accepted on another MSc (I’ve already got one in Networked Information Engineering) but unfortunately the university couldn’t seem to get to grips with my need to know in advance when I would need to be physically in the university so I could arrange childcare.

Anyway, I finally came across Digital Mums. They run a 6 month course on Strategic Social Media Management. Not only do they understand that we sometimes have to work around our children but they actively promote #workthatworks and flexible working. The really cool bit is that you work with a real life client though the course and run a real social media campaign for them.

So far it’s been brilliant starting to getting back up to speed in the fast changing online world. It’s also very cool working with like-minded people again!

If you’ve been reading these regular blog posts, you’ll have noticed that Facebook features quite a bit. Well, there’s a reason for that – it can be a lot of things to a lot of people.

Simple web presence

Setting up a Facebook page can often be the quickest and easiest way of getting a web presence. For many small businesses, it is their only web presence – and Facebook can work well!

It’s so easy to set up a page and do a simple bit of customising. Very often this can be done with a profile and a header picture. You can then easily add in some photos of your products and you have your starting point.

Simple Sales

Countless small businesses will also use Facebook as their main selling platform. There are a number of ways to do this. The simplest ways is to add photos of your stock and then add information to each picture, including the price. Put a note to ask people to message you if they want to buy and then you can send them a PayPal invoice. This method is used effectively by many small crafters.

Driving sales

If you use eBay, Etsy or Folksy as your main selling platform you can use Facebook to drive sales across. All of these selling platforms will let you share your products on Facebook which includes a direct link to your product sales page. Statistics on those sites will also let you check how many people clicked through from Facebook.

There’s also a second stage where you can use a Facebook app to create a tab on your Facebook page which list all of your products with clickthroughs to the product sales pages. Many are free such as EasySocialShop and easy to set up.

Don’t forget Facebook ads too. They can be used to increase the likes on your page or drive traffic through to your sales platform.

Keeping people interested

Although ultimately you would like people to buy your products or services, you have to make sure that you are not just doing the hard sell all the time.

Try to get a good balance between selling and  non-selling. Like pages and updates that you think will interest your followers. Post up interesting articles or pictures. Try and relate your posts to special dates, news or celebrations – Valentine’s Day, Royal baby news, for example.

You could even start your own funny Friday photo!