Life at Everyday Maternity: How Mumpreneurs can use Facebook for their busines...

Life at Everyday Maternity: How Mumpreneurs can use Facebook for their busines...: "Cuddledry are hosting the Business Plus Baby blog carnival today, so in celebration we have written a post about using Facebook to engage wi..."

How Mumpreneurs can use Facebook for their business

Cuddledry are hosting the Business Plus Baby blog carnival today, so in celebration we have written a post about using Facebook to engage with new mums online.

How Mumpreneurs can use Facebook for their business

Its difficult not to have heard of Facebook, and just to prove a point here are the latest facts from the social media leaders themselves:

FACEBOOK FACTS

• More than 500 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

With stats like that it is hard to ignore Facebook as a key tool in your social media strategy. 

It is a tool for connecting with people and as a business you have the opportunity to engage with customers directly and build your online presence.  As a mumpreneur you can harness the power of Facebook to:

• Get found by people looking for your products or services
• Connect and engage with potential customers
• Create a relevant community
• Promote new products, special offers or your blog

 At Everyday Maternity we have had a Page for a while now - we use it to tell our community when things are back in stock, if we have new arrivals or even if we need an opinion on a new product we are considering.  

The first thing you need to do is Create a Page

Pages are your public profiles that users can become a ‘fan’ of and can be created – the only thing you need to invest is your time and effort.   It is worth investing some thought into this, as it is really your shop front – choose photos carefully, make sure you can be found with contact numbers and web address and write a small bio to tell people what you are all about.

Once you have set your Page up, you need to promote it. 

Ideas to do this are:

• Add engaging content – videos, photos, discussion boards.  If you provide interesting items....they will come!
• Update your Newsfeed – if you provide interesting news, the hope is that your fans will ‘Comment’ or ‘Like’ it. This will then appear in their news feed, and be seen by their friends. Try and do something different, pose an amusing question, or ask your fans to interact by posting photos or videos.
• Find some fans – start the ball rolling with your own friends.  You need to send them a request, do this by clicking on the Suggest to Friends link.

The  good news is that Facebook Pages are indexed by the search engines, so do make sure your keywords are included in your company information. This will help you be found.  If you sell breastfeeding clothes in Chester - as we do - then make sure that all those words are in your profile.

Once you have got the hang of everything you can start looking into vanity URLs, Facebook Ads or Applications.

Life at Everyday Maternity: Cuddledry at the Baby Show

Life at Everyday Maternity: Cuddledry at the Baby Show: " As I mentioned yesterday, I have just come back from the Baby Show where I was giving Cuddledry a hand. It is great to spend th..."

Cuddledry at the Baby Show

 

As I mentioned yesterday, I have just come back from the Baby Show where I was giving Cuddledry a hand.  It is great to spend the weekend with them, being such nice people, but also it gives me a chance to chat with other people in the industry, swap ideas and even do a bit of brainstorming.

While I'm at the show I get the chance to see what maternity clothes all the lovely pregnant people are wearing, which keeps me in touch with the public. It is necessary to go to the trade shows and see all the new fashions coming through, but it is important to know what real people are wearing.  And it would seem that maternity leggings are still a winning choice - but skinny jeans seemed more popular this time.

I had a good chat with Helen, one of the ladies behind Cuddledry and she came up with a great idea for marketing Everyday Maternity at the next show.  We need to be able to cut through the leaflet clutter that all the attendees receive, and somehow make the Everyday Maternity leaflet stand-out. I think we will carry on with our VIP cards, but Helen's idea is great to make us stand-out. Obviously I'm not going to tell you what it is, you'll just have to come and buy a Cuddledry Towel at the next Baby Show.  The other interesting thing that came out of the show - after too many glasses of wine - is that Polly (the other Cuddledry mastermind) is going to be setting me up on lots of hot dates in Chester!  You just never know what to expect from a weekend at the Baby Show!

Life at Everyday Maternity: The Baby Show

Life at Everyday Maternity: The Baby Show: "Just back from an exhausting few days at the Excel Baby Show sponsored by Prima Baby - who we love, especially as we are shortlisted in thei..."

The Baby Show

Just back from an exhausting few days at the Excel Baby Show sponsored by Prima Baby - who we love, especially as we are shortlisted in their Fashion Awards.  Very much looking forward to heading up to London for the awards presentation. Fingers crossed, please.

We met some lovely people at the Baby Show - and have some exciting new products to add to the website.  The first was Paul from My Buggy Buddy - they have a great little product that allows you to clip your shopping bags to your buggy, or you can lock it to a railing or post, to save your stroller being stolen. We've added them to the site - so you can buy them easily at Everyday Maternity. The Buggy Buddy Clip  We are one of the first people to have the new pink and blue varieties.

We did find another great product for your buggies, but the company owners were not very helpful and quiet protective of their product - and wouldn't let us sell it.  Their loss we say!

We didn't have our own stand this time, so we gave Cuddledry a hand on their stand.  We had a good laugh with them, while working very hard on our product demonstrations.  We may have had a few too many glasses of wine at the Organisers Drinks - and had a chat with some lovely other retailers.  So we have some new products in the sidelines, that we will tell you about in the coming weeks.

Cuddledry Consultant

Well today a new delivery arrived from Cuddledry - and I have played a little part in the new packaging - so I can now add consultant to my CV!

I'd forgotten about it to be honest, and it was only once the goods were out of the box, that I noticed that some of them were in new, and very smart reusable bags.  Ages ago Helen, one of the founders at Cuddledry, emailed to ask opinions on a new mock up for the packaging.

So being a helpful person, I replied with my thoughts, as they related to merchandising them in a shop, and also with regards to sending them through the post. (being an online company - this is much more important to us).

So it was exciting to see the new packs today, with some of our collective thoughts taken into consideration.   The gang at Cuddledry are great - and the Everyday Maternity team regularly go to the Baby Shows with them, to help out on the stand.

You should take a look at their website, as they have some great new products - such as their baby bath mat.

Of course we do sell them at Everyday Maternity - check out our Baby Collection for the collection of toddler towels and apron towels.