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Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

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Welcome to Episode #249. In this episode, we’re closing out our mini-series on social media marketing and diving into an essential aspect of any digital marketing strategy—assessing the performance of your social media efforts. If you’re like most jewelry entrepreneurs, then social media has become an integral part of your jewelry business, but how do you know if your efforts are paying off? We’ll explore various methods and metrics to help you measure success and progress on social media. It’s time to move beyond just counting likes and followers and truly understand the impact your marketing efforts are making. I’ll be covering: How to audit your social media marketing presence to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Additionally, we’ll dive into the importance of setting realistic goals and benchmarks for your social media marketing. Which key performance indicators (KPIs) can provide valuable insights into your social media performance. From engagement rates and reach to click-through rates and conversions, we’ll break down these metrics and explain how they relate to your overall marketing goals. Why qualitative measures and feedback from your audience are also important in gauging the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. After all, building strong connections and fostering genuine engagement with your followers is just as important as the numbers on your analytics dashboard. I just wanted to remind you that our free Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart program is wrapping up at the end of July. Anyone who signs up before it ends will continue to have access to the PDF worksheet downloads, but we’ll be closing off new signups. If you want to sign up for the podcast-guided program, visit JoyJoya.com/JUMP while you still can! For this episode, Jumpstart members will get a template for conducting their own social media marketing audit.

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But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, I might read it on a future episode – please let me know what you think about this episode or about any other major takeaways you’ve had recently. Speaking of podcasts, did you know I also co-host another podcast with jewelry marketer Liz Kantner? It’s called Success With Jewelry, and we’ve already released 43 free episodes everywhere you listen to podcasts as well as on YouTube. We also have an Insider community, where we share extended episodes, hands-on guidance, and a plethora of resources. Visit successwithjewelry.com to learn more.

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Okay, my Sparklers! Let’s get into the next installment of Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart, all about seeking opportunities for improvement in your social media marketing strategy as well as measuring progress and success. As a reminder, for this episode, Jumpstart members will get a template for conducting their own social media marketing audit. Sign up at JoyJoya.com/JUMP to take advantage.

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Alright, so first, let’s talk about how to audit your social media marketing presence to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And we’ll also talk about the importance of setting realistic, yes, realistic goals for your social media marketing. So what is in audit? It’s kind of not the most exciting sounding thing, right? But it’s so important. An audit allows you to assess what’s working and determine if your content aligns with best practices. Requires a thorough examination of your social media marketing efforts. Can be focused on a single platform like Instagram or encompass multiple platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and more. It not only helps evaluate your current strategy but also identifies opportunities for new platforms. For instance, if you’re not on TikTok yet, an audit can determine if it’s the right time to expand to a new social media platform. During an audit, you’ll examine various aspects, including your profile, the type of content you post, platform-specific best practices, and the demographics of your brand and your social media followers. Conducting an audit every three months would be ideal, but it requires a significant time commitment. At the very least, I recommend conducting an audit once a year, while every six months would be even better. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok constantly introduce new features and changes to their best practices. By regularly reviewing your strategy, you can ensure you’re keeping up with the evolving landscape and not getting stuck in outdated approaches. Additionally, conducting an audit helps you identify trends in the social media space. It allows you to analyze your competitors’ strategies and observe general trends in the industry.

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Now, let’s discuss how to prepare for a social media audit. The first step, of course, is to decide which channels you want to be including in the audit. As I said earlier, you don’t have to audit all your social media channels at once. Focus on the ones that are most important to your brand, or even the ones that you feel unsure about, or maybe that you’re thinking about exploring or investing in further. So if Instagram is like a big question mark for you, for example, maybe it’s not performing as well as you’d like. Then start just by auditing Instagram, and see from there, what improvements can be made. Every business is unique. So you need to be prioritizing the channels that align with your goals. After you decide on the channel or channels you want to be focusing on, you’re going to be gathering the relevant data and metrics. I’m gonna put that thought on hold for a second, because we’ll be coming back to metrics in just a second. But just know you’ll be gathering data, it’s also going to be so important to define your objectives or goals. So by doing this audit, you need to have in mind what you hope to learn from it. So if you’re on Instagram, and you want to kind of better understand your engagement and what content is kind of performing the best and getting the best engagement, then you need to have that idea in your head before you get started. If you’re just doing an audit, because me, Laryssa told you to do it and you feel like you’re checking off a box, it’s not going to be valuable to you because you personally don’t have a stake in it or know what you want to get out of it. And then during the audit, you’ll be focusing on evaluating various things like content quality, consistency in your brand voice and identity, your engagement rates, your interactions with your followers. So you kind of have to be familiar with where to also find these things on the platform. And also remember that doing this is not going to be like a one and done thing, it’s going to require ongoing monitoring and tracking so that you can assess how effective your approach is and that you’re always able to identify areas of improvement. I see this so often with Instagram, a brand that is doing in 2023, the same thing they were doing on Instagram, in 2013. And they’re wondering why things are not working for them. So the platform has changed almost. It’s almost unrecognizable for back from how it was in 2013. So you need to figure out, okay, how can I bring my brand up to speed and actually do the best practices that Instagram expects from me?

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And ultimately, this practice will really empower you to make informed decisions, stop feeling frustrated by social media, capitalize on the trends, and really make sure that your strategy is aligned with your business goals. So you’re not just treading water, and checking off the box of social media. And if you go into this with a curious and analytical mindset, then you can really unlock those valuable insights that will enhance your social media performance. All right. So now that we got like the basics of that out of the way, I want to circle back to that data point that I had you just put on hold for a moment and talk about which key performance indicators or KPIs do you want to be choosing or looking at to help you evaluate your social media performance, so I’ll be breaking down these metrics. So first, you need to know where to even find this data. This is so much going to depend on which platform you’re focusing on. Let’s just talk about Instagram for a second because I know this is relevant for a lot of you out there. So with Instagram, you can either access this data in your Meta Business Suite account, or within the Instagram app in Instagram Insights. So if you’re on Pinterest, or TikTok, or a different social media platform, all of those platforms have their own analytics dashboards. And that’s where you would find the data. And you could also reference Google Analytics, which can help you understand if social media is a source of traffic to your website. So you need to first familiarize yourself with where to actually find the data. And then with Instagram, as I mentioned, you can go right in the app and look at Instagram Insights. But even that can feel really overwhelming for jewelry business owners, they kind of see a bunch of numbers, they’re not sure what to focus on what actually matters. So let me tell you, just a few to focus on. And then ultimately, you’ll need to decide for your business and your goals, which ones make the most sense to track. So one of the most key metrics that you want to be looking at for not just Instagram, but really any social media platform is engagement. And that is referring to the total number of say, likes, clicks, shares, saves, and comments. And it represents that people are actually interacting with your content, and not just scrolling past it. I think this is a much better indicator of the effectiveness of your social media marketing, than say something like your follower count or even just your like count on its own, because it shows all the ways that people are interacting with your content.

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And if you want to track engagement, in Instagram Insights, you would go to the accounts engaged section in Insights. And this section provides an overview of how many accounts have interacted with your content, and you will get a breakdown of both followers and non followers. And then you can even see by content type. Okay? Do people engage more with Reels? Do people engage more with Stories? It helps you understand what types of content you’re posting. That’s really having the greatest impact on your audience. Another metric to really pay attention to is reach. So that’s the number of people who are basically exposed to your content is not as crucial as engagement because it’s, I guess, not as hands on. But reach will tell you how many eyeballs get on your content. And that’s kind of a sign. A higher reach is a sign that Instagram is deeming your content valuable enough to like put it on more people’s feeds. And we all know that satisfying the Instagram algorithm is really the end all be all, right? I hope you detect the sarcasm in my voice. But that is really what it means. I would say follower growth is also worth monitoring. But again, not as important as engagement. It does show like brand awareness, it shows the number of people who are interested in actually committing to following you, I would not obsess over follower numbers, but it’s good to kind of like, keep your eyes on them. And then looking at your audience demographics within Instagram Insights is so crucial. I would say a lot of jewelry brands that I talked to, they have kind of this intuitive understanding of who their target audience is. But when you sit down and look at the data of who is following you on, say, Instagram who’s interacting with your content, you may have some really surprising discoveries like, oh, okay, 18 to 24 year old men is not who I thought was interested in my content. And it helps you make sure that the content you’re putting out there is aligned with what your target audience wants to see, and maybe even give you some really surprising insights about your business. And you can find that information also in Instagram Insights. Also, if you sell products online, or you have a website, and it’s very important for you to know how people are getting to your website, then Google Analytics can give you a deeper understanding of the role that social media plays in driving traffic to your site. So that’s super important as well. Again, as I mentioned, not all of these metrics will be relevant for all businesses at every stage of business. It comes down to your goals. What are you trying to achieve with social media marketing? Are you aiming for brand awareness, customer engagement, driving traffic to your site? Once you have clarity on your goals, that it will make more sense which metrics to track to see if you’re actually on the way toward your goals. And it’s really crucial, even after you do this audit.

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If you’ve never checked in with your social media analytics than once a month, you need to be doing this kind of like as maintenance the same way you would, if you get your car fixed, well, you’re not going to ever not ever go get your car maintained network. And you’re going to have to go back on a regular basis to make sure that it still works. And it will get you to where you want to go. And lastly, I want to talk about qualitative measures. So qualitative measures is the opposite of quantitative. Quantitative is more in line with data and numbers. Qualitative is more about feedback from your audience and your like intuitive feeling based on what people are telling you or giving you back. This is also so important in gauging the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. As I mentioned before, the strong connections, the genuine engagement that you’re able to cultivate with your followers is just as important, if not more important, then those dang numbers on your analytics dashboard. So these qualitative measures would be things like comments, direct messages, conversations, general like feedback, reviews. All of these things also give you deeper insights into the thoughts feelings and perceptions of your customer. They give valuable context. They help you understand the impact of your content on a more personal level. And paying attention to this feedback can help you identify what resonates with your audience, can help you address their concerns can help you refine your social media strategy in a way that just looking at numbers will not offer you. So I don’t recommend just looking at qualitative measures, they should be looked at side by side with numbers. But they’re still so important for those valuable insights that just the numbers on their own will not give you.

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Okay, that’s it for now, about auditing and metrics, go to joyjoya.com/jump for additional information, action items, and further resources. If you want more hands on support on doing an audit, when you sign up, you’ll get an auditing template that will walk you through this process step by step. And remember, you can only sign up for a few more weeks, and then access will be close to all new signups. Before we get into The Gold Mine as well as my jewelry marketing news roundup, I want to share a case study of a jewelry brand that I think embodies my approach to marketing. All right, this week’s content case study features Aurate. They’re a fine jewelry brand based in New York City, and they believe everyone deserves jewelry that’s worthy of them. And they create durable pieces with transparent pricing and sustainable practices. They truly target the self purchase a purchasing customer.

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What caught my eye was their recent email campaign, perfectly timed before Amazon Prime Day, so they sent this email on July 7th. The subject line said, “SUMMER. BLACK. FRIDAY. IS. HERE.” If you’re a jewelry brand that offers promotional discounts, even if it’s just once or twice a year, please take note. The playful and conversational copy explained the concept: “Black Friday is traditionally for gifting others, but we’ve never done things by the book. You buy for yourself. So we created this for you.” They offered their biggest-ever summer Black Friday sale: 35% off orders $1,000 and over, 30% off everything else. The email encouraged customers to shop and highlighted that it was their deepest discount ever. By leveraging the timing, Aurate stood out from the noise of regular Black Friday deals. They understood that people have limited budgets and strategically positioned themselves ahead of Amazon Prime Day. The boldness, tone, and unique approach made this campaign stand out. While common discounting holidays like Black Friday can be effective for generating sales, jewelry brands should also consider offering promotional discounts outside of these traditional periods. By strategically timing discounts throughout the year, brands can create unique opportunities to attract customers and stand out from the competition. Offering discounts during non-traditional periods allows brands to tap into customers’ impulse buying tendencies and capture their attention when there’s less noise in the market. It also gives customers the chance to indulge in self-purchasing, as they may have limited budgets during peak holiday seasons. By carefully planning and positioning these promotions, jewelry brands can create a sense of exclusivity and urgency, enticing customers to make a purchase and fostering loyalty through memorable experiences. What do you think? Let me know in a podcast review or YouTube comment. Okay, let’s get into The Gold Mine.

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If you’re new to this podcast, you should know The Gold Mine is a special segment where I get a little bit personal. And I talk about topics like entrepreneurship, success, mindset, growth, I share personal stories, etc. Today’s topic is all about the launch of a new social media platform called Threads by Meta the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. So Threads is being positioned as a competitor to Twitter, allowing posts of up to 500 characters with links to photos and videos up to five minutes long, the interface has that familiar Twitter like look, but with a friendlier and more fun vibe. At least so far, I’ll cover more details about the launch in the news roundup in just a moment.

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But I first wanted to share this personal take on social media and the honestly overwhelmed feeling I had when I first downloaded and opened threads. Now, I’ve been working in digital marketing since way back in 2009, witnessing the rise and evolution of numerous social media platforms over the past 14 years. It’s been quite a journey. So, imagine my intrigue when I learned about Threads’ sudden launch on July 5th. Unfortunately, it happened just as I was looking forward to some well-deserved time off for the Fourth of July. But being the dedicated marketer I am, I immediately downloaded the app, signed up, and started exploring it. After all, it’s my job to stay up to date with the latest trends in digital marketing, and I’m always curious about new platforms. I’ve been a passionate advocate of social media marketing since its early days. As an early adopter of platforms like Twitter, I was active and engaged right from the start. Over the years, I’ve eagerly embraced new platforms like Snapchat and witnessed how existing platforms continuously evolve. However, when I opened Threads for the first time, I was hit with a wave of exhaustion. And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Clients started reaching out to me, asking whether they should jump on the Threads bandwagon and how they should integrate it into their business strategies. It’s not just marketers like me who feel overwhelmed; small business owners also struggle to keep up with the demands of social media. It’s one thing if you’ve already found your rhythm and established your presence on a platform, but it’s a whole different story if you’re still experimenting and trying to navigate these ever-changing waters. The pressure to create engaging video content, master tools like Reels, and be a visual storyteller is immense. It’s exhausting, and the algorithm’s unpredictability adds to the confusion. I recently came across a study about social media marketers leaving the field, and an article published by The Atlantic in November 2022 titled ‘The Age of Social Media Is Ending.’ When things get disjointed, confusing, and overwhelming, it’s a sign that the current state of social media is unsustainable. There’s a point where users simply can’t keep up anymore. Quick summary of that article, which I’ll link in the show notes: There’s a possibility that the era of social media may come to an end. The evolution from social networking to social media, where users became broadcasters and content creators, led to disastrous consequences. The focus shifted from connecting with others to constantly publishing and consuming content. The toxic nature of social media, coupled with its addictive qualities, has created a sociopathic rendition of human sociality. While change is challenging, the decline of major social media platforms could present an opportunity to reevaluate our dependence on these platforms and return to more moderated, meaningful social connections. So, what do you do when you feel burnt out and uncertain about the future of social media, especially when it has been the primary way to promote your business for over a decade? Well, I have some thoughts and ideas on how to navigate this changing landscape. Take a Break: Allow yourself some time off from social media to recharge and regain perspective. This break can help alleviate burnout and allow you to approach social media marketing with a fresh mindset when you return. Evaluate Your Goals: Reassess your social media marketing goals and determine if they align with your overall business objectives. Refocus your efforts on the goals that truly matter and let go of unnecessary pressure or expectations. Streamline Platforms: Instead of trying to maintain a presence on every social media platform, focus on the ones that are most effective for your jewelry brand. Identify where your target audience is most active and concentrate your efforts there to maximize your impact. Outsource or Delegate: Consider outsourcing social media tasks or delegating them to someone on your team. This can help alleviate the burden of managing everything on your own and free up your time for other aspects of your business. Focus on Quality Over Quantity: Instead of striving for a high volume of posts, prioritize creating high-quality, visually appealing content that tells a compelling story. Emphasize the uniqueness and craftsmanship of your jewelry to stand out from the crowd. Engage with Your Community: Allocate time each day to engage with your followers, respond to comments and messages, and build relationships. Authentic interactions can foster loyalty and strengthen your brand’s reputation. So those are my tips. I would love to know how you feel how does threads make you feel? And where are you on the scale of social media burnout? Let me know tell me in a YouTube comment or a podcast review or reach out to me directly. I would love to know your thoughts.

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Alright, let’s get into the news roundup, where I share three relevant articles related to jewelry or marketing. Of course, from Social Media Today comes “Meta Launches Threads, Provides Insights into Coming Elements”. So I am a little bit late to the game in talking about this, but I had pre recorded last week’s episode before the July fourth holiday. So it sounds like I’m really behind but I am up to speed. So it officially launched on July 5 in 100 countries including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And as I mentioned, posts on Threads could be up to 500 characters can include links, photos and videos up to five minutes in length. It’s like basically a different version of Twitter, it, the threads are all presented in one main feed. And then users can like repost and reply to each update. So it’s designed to work on a decentralized protocol. So the app will eventually allow users to have a threads.net user name and facilitate greater freedom to use in-app info and engage in conversations across other apps and digital spaces. And this article thinks that Threads may attract a significant number of non Twitter users, especially Instagram users, because it’s so easy to go from Instagram and create an account. But they also think it will become a viable alternative to Twitter. So my main takeaway is it’s still early days of the platform. So it will be interesting to see how it evolves, and whether or not it attracts interest and engagement from users.

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The next article comes from Gifts and Decorative Accessories publication, and it’s called “3 Store Event Themes That Are Sure to Create a Sense of Community”. I just want to remind you that if you have an ecommerce business, you should always be looking for ways to connect with your customers in person as much as possible. Even if you already have a store or some other in person presence, it really could be great to do something special and out of the norm, and hosting an event every once in a while is a great idea for creating emotional connections and building loyalty. So creating a loyal customer base starts by making customers feel part of a community. And especially for independent retailers, it helps them engage with customers on a more personal level. So Gifts and Decorative Accessories shared three ideas for events that can really help you do that. One, start thinking about the holiday season, which will be here before we know it. So hosting holiday after-hours parties can allow the community or like your group of local customers to gather in the store or another space and create a festive atmosphere leading to increased customer loyalty and new friendships. You can have an event where you offer freebies such as gourmet samples and small gifts. Again, to create a festive atmosphere, you could have music or some other kind of free activity to make customers feel special. You can also consider partnering with local charities for give back events that not only promote your brand, but also generate sales and foster positive warm hearted feelings toward the business. When you do decide to engage in an event, it’s so important to set specific goals whether that’s to generate sales, attract new customers or give back to the community that helps you have clarity on the approach. And don’t forget to collaborate with these collaborate in these events. So that could be with local organizations, chambers of commerce, nonprofits, other businesses that can help expand the reach, and opportunities for successful jewelry brand events. My main takeaway is don’t forget to forge those in person connections. And if you’re already doing that on a regular basis, then try to look for ways to continue to make them feel more special or more novel.

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And then the last article comes from Practical Ecommerce, and it’s called called “Tools for SEO Email Alerts”. If you can’t be bothered to monitor SEO and website health regularly, but you still want to make sure that nothing major things wrong with your site or that no dramatic changes and traffic have happened. And then you may want to sign up for some kind of alerts that can let you know if there’s some kind of big issue with your search presence. And then you can either hire help to support you or find a way to do it yourself. And that’s so important to prevent, like a major loss in traffic to your website. And so ecommerce jewelry business owners really need to be monitoring these metrics to ensure the website is performing well. And there are a few ways to do that. First, Google Analytics Insights can provide custom email alerts based on changes in traffic conversions and revenue. There’s Google Search Console, which can send automated email notifications about errors, performance tips, and security issues. There’s Web SEO, which is an SEO analysis and monitoring platform. And that can offer email alerts for changes in your keyword rankings for technical issues and for Link changes. There are a whole bunch out there. If you want to kind of learn more about this, I would recommend you check out this article from Practical Ecommerce which I’ll link in the show notes so you can get more details about each of these tools. My main takeaway is that working with jewelry business owners, I’ve definitely seen major issues or changes happen to ecommerce websites without the owner realizing it, because they’re not checking in with their SEO or their website health regularly. So don’t let this happen to you when it’s totally preventable.

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Did you have any questions about Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart or anything I talked about in this episode? You can always email me Laryssa that’s laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book, Jewelry Marketing Joy. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai