From Zero to industry top in less than two years

When we started our novelty socks shop, we had zero fans, zero customer base, and zero industry recognition. On a budget of a few dollars a day and an amazing social market outreach program, in under two years we had a Facebook fan page with more fans than anyone else in the socks industry. Averaging over 150 likes on our average posts with spurts into the 1000s on original content and with a consistently amazing engagement rate helps keep interest and sales coming on strong. But post and page likes aren’t what sets our social media management apart. Knowing our audience, knowing how to interact with them genuinely, and knowing how to turn fans into repeat engagement are all key to true social media marketing. Social media only has value when it drives your business and brand image. If it’s just people liking cat memes and nothing else, your social media doesn’t have a whole lot of value.

See more Artisan Crew S.E.M. results

In the wake of the Komen controversy, and facing the very understandable backlash against corporate "pinkwashing" pandering, we needed to find a way to create an honest and real experience for our fans, their friends and family, and our corporate client, and get people thinking about breast cancer awareness without being fake or ham-fisted.

Our solution was to first, move breast cancer awareness out of October, the month when people resent pinkwashing by about the 2nd of the month, and into the summer months when a quiet voice could be heard, and to give a genuine and personal voice to the campaign.

In July, the month of family vacations and swimming suits, we created a "Stay in the picture" campaign reminding moms and sisters and women that we literally and figuratively remove ourselves from the picture too often, and that staying in the picture, both literally and figuratively, is the most important thing we can do.

We took the risk that women might not participate and share pictures of themselves, but an amazing number did and we were able to form a very real connection and respond to each of the hundred posts personally, and got tearful genuine messages from participants.

The actual corporate social responsibility campaign can be seen here.

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How do we keep inventory flowing for our shops?

By making sure we're choosing what our customers want, and are willing to buy at what price-point BEFORE we place costly orders.

Choosing items we think will be viral hits is a big part of running online shops. Using our engaged social media fan-base is a huge part of our purchasing strategy that keeps our inventory moving. Because we’ve worked to get reliable, relevant fans for our pages, we trust them to guide us when we need to choose items from our already short-listed lineup. By leveraging and engaging our fans when we make purchasing decisions, we order inventory knowing what style of items our customers will be more likely to buy and at what price point. And, for those fairly rare times we totally miss, we have a great place to showcase the latest addition to our sale category, or be a jump-off point for viral content.

Some relevant prizes + a small ad budget + a really nice cause = huge results

Even if you have over 100,000 fans, a contest can often fizzle and fade and fail to create a buzz. Through trial and error and analysis (on our own properties), we’ve come up with formulas that create contests with super high engagement and entry levels that leave our clients pages with more fans, and much greater engagement. For the cost of the prizes and the time to make the contest (both of which are usually low) we get people excited about the brand, engaged, and happy when they win. Especially if you’re not a household name, getting product in the hands of people who would buy it is a great way to create brand loyalty and create customers who seek your products.

An all inclusive Mother's Day campaign.

How does a new fan page without many fans celebrate Mother's Day?

If you're an Artisan Crew social media marketing client, the answer is:
"By getting over 750 likes and shares. On one post."

We helped our client do something other than give mom a post with roses, we made sure their Facebook fans knew they understood that there are more than one style of mom out there. And in return, people shared.