Welcome to the Social Smarty Show, your weekly podcast for social media marketing tips, tactics, and practical digital marketing advice. Let's get you taking real action to grow your online audience, build connections, and your business. I'm your host, Jodine Mcintyre. Think of me as your digital marketing coach, cheerleader, and wing woman all rolled into one. Grab some of my social media marketing know-how for free at www.socialsmarty.co/freebies. Now, before we dive in, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any future episodes.
Welcome to The Social Smarty Show. Today's episode is going to focus on selling products on social media. Now, this is a really hot topic at the moment, and that is because Meta has made some big changes this month. Back in April, they announced that they will be basically forcing all businesses that want to have an Instagram or Facebook shop that has all of their products in it and they want to use product tagging, they're going to force those businesses to use Meta's own checkout facilities. That is uploading your credit card details, saving your credit card details to Instagram or Facebook, and checking out using that built-in checkout facility. Now, in the past, businesses could choose whether to use that checkout if it was available in their country, or they could choose to have their customers check out on their website. Now, I'm based in New Zealand, and we have never had access to the checkout facility, so we have always had to direct our customers from our product tag or from our Instagram or Facebook shop to check out on our own website. That last piece in the puzzle, the payment, the handing over of the cold, hard cash, that has always happened on our website.
Meta is making these big changes and forcing us to use their checkout facilities, but we still don't have access to them in here in New Zealand. We have now lost the ability to have a Facebook or Instagram shop and tag products in our organic posts. Now, interestingly, Meta has said it's fine if we want to pay them money. So if we want to run a paid campaign, we can still go ahead and use that. But for our organic posts, we no longer have that ability. That's really frustrating for a lot of businesses. I know it's not just New Zealand. I don't have the full list of countries that have lost this ability. But if you have a look at the show notes, I'll put a link in there to a blog post I wrote a few months ago that covers off the list of the countries. We either have countries who can access the checkout facility through Facebook and Instagram who are being forced to use it. We have a bunch of countries who don't have access to it and have completely lost their shops and their product tagging. Then we have some countries that are in limbo.
These countries not yet have the access to the checkout facility, but they still haven't lost their ability to have a shop and to tag products in their posts. I suspect that the checkout will be rolling out to more countries soon. But for us down here in little old New Zealand, it's a little bit tricky. We don't really know what the future of that is. What I want to do for you is give you some tactics, regardless of whether you have that ability to take products and have a shop or you don't. These tactics are going to help you regardless. But what I'm going to do is split this episode up into two chunks because it's quite a meaty topic. Today's episode is going to really focus on housekeeping. This is all about optimizing your profiles to make it super easy for people to purchase from you. Now, I think this is really important, and it's something that you probably should have taken care of when you set up your accounts. I'm suspecting that a lot of this you will have already taken care of. But what we want to do is just make sure that we've ticked all those boxes, we've got everything optimized so that we're putting our best foot forward when we're wanting customers to buy from us.
The first thing I'm going to do is look at Facebook. We really want to visit this or revisit your Facebook profile from the perspective of our customers. So when we look at your Facebook profile or your Facebook business page, there's a few areas that we want to optimize. So the first area is our page name. Now, of course, most people name their business page after their business. It makes complete sense. But if we stick with that, we are relying on people to know our business to find us. So for example, if I was selling earrings and I wanted to call my business something like Jodyne's Boutique, I'm relying on people to find me by literally searching for Jodyne's boutique. But there's going to be a whole lot of people out there that don't know to search for me by name. Instead, I'm going to add some keywords to my page name that just help me communicate what it is that I sell. This is great for existing businesses, but it's really important for new businesses. If you're new to market, we can't rely on your brand recognition or people knowing your brand name. We need to add in those few extra words that really communicate what you sell.
Let me give you an example. Say I started a skincare line and I called it Sunshine Glow. I have the skincare brand called Sunshine Glow, and I'm going to target it to teenagers. Now, when I set up my Facebook business page, of course, I probably go ahead and call it Sunshine Glow. But what we need to do is think about all of those people that don't know yet what my product is and don't know to search by name. I'm going to add in something like at the end, so I'll have Sunshine Glow, hyphen or a dash, and then maybe skincare for teenagers. That is what is going to help me appear in search results. If someone is looking for a skincare range for teenagers or skincare for their teenager, I am going to have a better chance of appearing in their search result. Now, I can take that one step further and add even more descriptive words in there. I could have something like, Sunshine Glow-organic skincare for teenagers or medicated skincare for teenagers. Now, if someone is searching for medicated skincare for teenagers, of course, I'm going to have such a better chance at popping up in the search results.
Think about your page name and think, is it optimized for search? Sometimes a business actually tells you what it does in the business name. That's really good. If you're in that boat, then you may not need to do anything there. But if not, if your business name is something that's not related to what you sell, then absolutely add in those keywords. Now, of course, there are some rules around what we can use in Facebook business page names. Again, check the show notes and I'll add a link in there so you can have a look at what you are and aren't allowed to use. Right, so let's move on to your cover image. This is prime real estate. You know that saying, A picture paints a thousand words, well, your Facebook cover image, that picture has to really communicate so much to your target audience. Have a look at the image you have used, and I want you to treat this like a billboard. So if you were spending thousands of dollars on a billboard that had to really clearly communicate to the passing traffic that's traveling fast that is only going to see that billboard for a snap second, what is it that you would use for your imagery?
What is it that really represents your brand? What makes your brand different? Relevant or what problem you solve for your customers, or even what it feels like to use your products. Once I've bought your products, what does that feel like? That is the type of imagery I want you to use. You can even add some words over the top so you could really spell out what it is that you sell and think about using it like a billboard. Then we want to take things a little step further. Facebook can't see images. Well, it can identify some images, but say, for example, you've got a beautiful image of children wearing the clothing that you sell, they're having fun, they're playing. It's really like an evocative image. It makes you feel something when you look at it. Facebook doesn't actually know all of those things. But what we can do is we can add some text to the image to give Facebook some more information. The way that we do that is when we click on our own cover image, we'll see a little Edit button up on the right. I want you to click on this and I want you to add some text that really explains what it is that you do.
We need to think in terms of keywords here. Think about the words that your target audience might be using to search for what it is that you sell. We do need to make it readable. I don't want you to just plump a whole lot of keywords in there, a whole lot of words that your target audience might be searching, but we want to make it readable, we want to make it clear, and we want to finish with a call to action. So any links we put in here are clickable. So if we finish up with something like, shop online now and then a link to your website, that link will be clickable. So someone could literally land on your Facebook page, click on your cover image, click on your website, and that's just taken two or three clicks and we have them on your website shopping. The text that we add in there means that now your cover image is searchable. If someone is to do a search on Facebook for any particular words that you've used in that little description box there when you've clicked on Edit, that can connect up the dots. And so your cover image can appear in their search results if they're searching for the words that you have in that section there.
This is really important. Most business owners skip it, but just take some time to pop in that information there. Now, the next area we want to optimize on our Facebook business page is the intro or the bio. That's a really short piece of text. It's like 200 characters, but it's where you can clearly communicate, again, what it is you offer to your target audience. Now, unfortunately, this isn't searchable, so that's why that cover image text is so important. But what it does is it does let you communicate something to your target audience, let them know that they're in the right place. As they're scrolling down, they've landed on your page, this is going to be quite prominent. It is going to tell them, Yes, you're in the right place, or No, scroll on by, this is not the right page for you. Then we need to think about our main call to action button. This is the big button that shows up just underneath your cover image. Now, if you're an admin on your page and you're logged in as your business, you might not even see this button. But for our target audience, this is the main action button on your Facebook page.
We need to think about what is that one action you want your target audience to take. Now, I would recommend we take them through to your website where they can shop with you. We want to edit that action button and we can either select shop now or learn more depending on what's available for your page. Once we have selected that button, then we just need to pop in our website URL. Now, rather than sending people to the homepage, you might want to send them to a page where you have all of your products. I would go to your main product page, copy that URL, and paste that in when we're editing that action button. Now, the next area we want to optimize on our Facebook business page is our featured section. Again, if someone lands on our page, they like the look of things, they look at your cover image, and they think, Yep, I'm in the right place. They scroll down, they read your intro or your bio, and then they get to your content. This is the first piece of content or the first section of content that they will see. Now, we have the ability to add six posts to this featured section.
What I would recommend is thinking about adding some of your key products, maybe your best sellers, add a great customer review, add any specials or current offers that you might be running. But remember, this content needs to be current. We don't want to highlight an offer that maybe expired months ago. Just have a quick look. You might have some old content that's still featured there, so we can edit that and choose which posts set up in that featured section. We have optimized our Facebook business page. Let's head over to Instagram. We're going to take a similar approach to Instagram as we did with Facebook, and we're going to start with their account name. Now, this is not to be confused with your username. That's the one with the little @ symbol at the front, and that's like the address for your account. Your account name is a little bit lower down, and this one doesn't actually need to be your business name. If you've used your business name for your username, which is what I would recommend, then you can take a slightly different approach with your account name. The reason for this is because your account name is searchable.
Your username is searchable too. If you've used your business name and someone searches, they're obviously going to find you, but then they might not know your business name. We need to think again in terms of keywords. What is it that our target audience could be searching for that we offer? If they don't know our name, what words are they using? We can edit our account name and we can pop in some more keywords in there. Now, again, there are some things you can't use, so I will pop in a link in the show notes so that you can go and check out. Before you go editing your account name, we can check out what it is that you can and can't use. Next, we are moving on to our bio. Just like with Facebook, our intro or our bio is a very small window of opportunity. This is where we get to tell people what it is we sell, the problem we solve, what makes us unique, and how people can purchase from us. Keep it short, keep it easy to read. Definitely go for clear over clever. We don't want to try and confuse people.
We need people to land on your Instagram and say, Yes, I am in the right place. The next thing we want to edit or optimize is our link in bio. When people say, Click on the link in my bio, this is where we are sending them or we're sending you. That is that one clickable link that we have. Obviously, links and captions are not clickable, but we can send them to our bio and they can click on that link there. Now, I say the one clickable link, we now actually have the ability to add five links. We've got a few different ways we can approach this. We can either send people directly to our online store, maybe our product page, or we could add multiple links in here. Up to five, as I mentioned, we could add five different collections. If we have all of our products on our website split into five collections, we could add one of those in each of our link options. We could add a link to our sign-up page for joining our email community, and they could have an offer like a code for free shipping, or a welcome discount, something like that.
Or we can use a tool like Linktree. So Linktree creates a landing page that has one link. So we put that link in our bio and it creates a page with a whole lot of buttons on it, and we can choose what those buttons are. We could have one that takes them to a particular product, or we could have our collections, or we could have our sign-up page, or we could have a number of different options there on that one landing page. The other option we have is to create our own version of Linktree, so a landing page with multiple links, but we do it on our own website. Now, if you're not quite sure what I mean, head to my Instagram account at socialsmartie. Co and click on the link in my bio and you'll see my version of a Linktree page. It's a page I've created on my own website, and I've just added a number of buttons, and those buttons change depending on what I'm currently promoting. Lastly, we want to select our pinned posts. Now, these are the first three posts that any visitor to our Instagram account will see. Just like Facebook, where we put our best foot forward with our featured posts, we want to do the same on Instagram.
We want to select three posts that we're going to pin to the top of our profile that highlight our best sellers or our best piece of content that really highlights what makes us unique. Or maybe it's something that highlights our point of difference, or maybe it's a customer review. But we want to view this content with the lens of a brand new potential customer. They've discovered you for the first time. What do you really want them to know? This content is going to have to really clearly communicate and highlight why they should buy from you. There we have it. Now, your Facebook and Instagram profiles are optimized for sales. Now, let's quickly recap. We dive into how to make the most out of your Facebook and Instagram profiles, especially in light of the new changes brought about by Meta. First of all, we tackled how to optimize your Facebook page name by using relevant keywords. Then we dived into the importance of your cover image, so treating it like a billboard. We had a look at adding context to your cover image, so with text and a clear call to action, we talked about your intro or your bio, the main call to action button, and then that featured section on your Facebook business page.
Then we went over to Instagram, we talked about account names and how they don't need to be the same as your username because this section or your account name is searchable. We talked about your bio and how crucial it is to optimize that for your potential customers. Last but not least, we discussed having those pinned posts at the top of your Instagram accounts. Now that your social media accounts are fine-tuned for sales, we need to create some content. In the next episode, I'm going to be diving into the types of content that you can create to drive those sales. Don't miss the next episode, particularly if you are selling products online. I would love you to join me then. Until then, stay social.
