Interview with StylinOnline’s James Stylin: Social Media Marketing Tips
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
At last month’s Internet Retailer 2010 Conference & Exhibition (IRCE), I had the good fortune to sit in on several social media presentations with some great takeaways that I look forward to sharing in an upcoming post. In a previous post to the blog, Mike Ober touched upon using Twitter as one way to engage customers, increase site traffic, and help improve sales, but we haven’t yet had a look at Facebook, and how it can be leveraged to benefit your site’s traffic and sales.
Earlier this month, I learned that Yahoo! merchant StylinOnline, which sells novelty t-shirts, had focused some of its efforts on using Facebook as part of its social media marketing strategy, with good results. Following IRCE 2010 and our Chicago Merchant Summit, James Stylin, president and CEO of StylinOnline, came back from Chicago armed with a few social media marketing best practices that, when implemented, saw his business’ rate of new Facebook fans grow from an average of 100 fans per week, to an average of 7,000 fans per week. As a result, James has seen increased traffic to his online store. He’s shared some of these strategies with me, so I can share them with all of you.
What were the top social marketing tips you learned at Internet Retailer and the Yahoo! Merchant Summit that you acted upon for your store?
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I looked at a few of the presenters’ Facebook pages, then took what I thought to be the better practices and applied them where feasible. One presenter discussed the importance of a welcome screen where you had to "Like" the page to gain access. Another discussed how to engage a Facebook fan without over-doing it. We also implemented a Twitter product update button and a "Share this on Facebook" button right on the item pages of the StylinOnline.com web site. We also do Facebook ads for our products, which help get people to click into our store, which in turn gets them to "Like" our fan page. |
StylinOnline Facebook welcome screen
Of these tips, which ones have you found to be most effective, and how?
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It really is a collaboration of efforts, but I think the welcome screen on Facebook has really helped. It’s hard to track exactly where the fans are coming from, but I do have the Facebook link [displayed] prominently on all of my pages. |
Which social media channels are you currently using, and what are some of the ways in which you engage users with the features each channel provides?
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We currently use Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. We push content to our fans that promotes weird pop culture things that we think they might have an interest in if they’re our StylinOnline fans in the first place. As well, we push our own daily deals, product of the day, discounts, and other promotional angles to get [our fans] surfing our own website. |
Social media links on StylinOnline.com
How much time is dedicated to your social marketing strategy?
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We spend about 30 hours a week on an average developing content, or generally managing content to engage users. |
What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from your use of social media marketing so far?
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You will only get what you put into it. DO NOT "set it and forget it." |
Are there social media marketing pitfalls you’ve experienced, that you would advise merchants to avoid?
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You may set up social pages with all the best intentions, but if you don’t grow and cultivate them, you will end up giving the impression you don’t care enough about them. If you don’t care about the pages that you expect fans to participate with, why should they care enough about your pages, web sites, or even the product you bring to the table? |
Can you share your top tip for new merchants looking to develop a social media marketing strategy?
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Be prepared to make the time to interact with your web site’s fans, as you will learn a great deal that can help you better understand your shoppers. |
Thank you, James, for sharing some of your social media marketing experiences and tips. If you’d like to learn more about what StylinOnline has been up to across their social media channels, you can check out their Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages by following the links on their store site. If you have questions for the team at StylinOnline, please leave them in the comments.
Jennifer Farwell
Yahoo! Small Business
Follow @YSmallBusiness on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook
Comments
Great social media strategy article, Jennifer. I’m not seeing a “like” or “tweet” button this on this blog…let me know if I’ve overlooked it or when one is added, as I’d like to share it with all my social media friends!
Comment by Jonathan Poston — July 27, 2010 @ 5:28 am