The whys and hows of using social media effectively

If social-media network Facebook were a country, it would be one of the most populous on Earth, with more than 500 million active users. We talked with several Christian retailers about how they view and use the online service.

Taking part in the conversation were:  

?Angie Adams, co-owner of Guiding Light Christian Store in Barboursville, W.Va.

?Kira Brant, owner of Kira’s Cottage Christian Gift and Book Store in Franklin, Ind. 

?Michelle Cousins, owner of Capstone Christian Store in Mechanicsville, Va.  

?Dan Panella, owner of Vine & Branches in Lodi, Calif. 

?Todd Whitaker, manager of New Life Christian Stores in Forest, Va. 

Todd Whitaker: We started out probably two or three years ago. Our store now has five Facebook accounts for different purposes. Every several months it seems lately we’ve been adding a different Facebook account for either for a different department in the store or for a different reason to reach a different group of people.

Angie Adams: I have my own and I have one for the store. For myself, I probably joined Facebook about two and a half years ago, the one of the store a little over a year ago.

Michelle Cousins: The one I started for the store I started about two years ago, but I have been more actively working on it in the last six months. And I do have a personal account as well. 

Dan Panella: I probably started the store account roughly two years ago. I’ve had a personal account for close to four years now.

Kira Brant: I started my personal account about two years ago and then the store account about a year and a half ago. 

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Why did you start a Facebook page specifically for the store?

Whitaker: We had a Liberty student working for us and we had a special event in the store, and he said, you know, we should announce the event on Facebook. At the time I wasn’t super familiar with Facebook, but I said, why not, if that’s what the college kids are doing these days, why not go for it? Within 15 minutes we already had people in the store from his announcement on Facebook, and I said, oh my goodness, this is ridiculous. This thing really works. So literally within 24 hours of that we put up our own store account. 

Adams: Just watching the flow on Facebook, and I was gaining friends at the time…  being able to see how it operated. And other stores and businesses were using it as an advertising tool, so I just thought that was the time to set one up for the store as well.

Panella: (It’s) another way to connect with customers. I like being able to just share something really cool like, hey, we came across this or we just started listening to this CD in the store, as a way to gain some interest in stuff that we may or may not be promoting in our catalog. We try to keep it relational, too, not just ads.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How many friends did your store’s Facebook page start with and what are you doing to increase that number?

Whitaker: Initially we probably had 50-100 and then started ramping it up and talking about it more. We have several pages, but combined all together we have probably got maybe 600-700 people.

Adams: I probably have right around 820 friends on my personal one, whereas the store has a whole lot less, 212. At this point I have more announcements on my personal page than I do on the store page. I’d like to turn that around, but those people who know me, they’ll respond back. I think they are quicker to respond to me personally maybe than they are to the store. 

Panella: It started out probably around 20-30 or so. Right now we are at a little over 1,100, and a lot of that comes from the fact that we put on a lot of concerts. When we were doing those, we would do Facebook ads for the event, but it would just take them to the Facebook page. That’s how we picked up a pretty significant portion of them. 

Brant: Once I got my personal page built up, I suggested my store page to all of my friends and that actually built up pretty quickly, so now we are up to 610. When we get close to that next 100, I do a drawing for a gift certificate to the store, and I’ll send an invite that says, suggest your page to all your friends.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What do you use your store Facebook page for?

Brant: We promote all our events, all kinds of things. Community events, canned food drives that we do, anything like that. We also do Bible trivia once a week where we will ask a question and the first person to call in with the right answer will win whatever we decide.

Whitaker: We are focusing mostly on getting information out about either events or products that we have in our store. When I talk about events, I’m not just talking about outside things like concerts, but also special sales that we’ll have that day or a new-release Tuesday kind of a thing. It’s really informational. We don’t get a whole lot of direct feedback from it. We have created separate Facebook page for a laser-engraving service that we do.

Adams: One example—and this wasn’t even a new book, just a book that I had not read—it was a Stormie Omartian book and it made an impact on me, so I made comments about it, not on my store page but on my personal one, and took a little bit of the information just off of the inside cover and put it out there for them to read. I sold five books based on just that one comment. That was pretty incredible. 

Cousins: Most of the time it’s to let people know what’s going on, what might be new, different events or local artists or authors we are featuring. A lot of times I’ll post something on there that a local church is having, a fall festival.

Panella: I like to put up book trailers and especially trailers for movies and about emerging artists. We’ll also try to get personal with it, too. When my wife and I were at the International Christian Retail Show last year, we posted a lot from the show floor, and we had a lot of people that appreciated that. And sometimes it’s just random stuff we mention. We try to have it not be totally serious all the time. 

Brant: We’ll post fun little pictures. Like, yesterday we got our fireplace all started, so I took a picture and posted it. I don’t like it to be all about, “this is on sale today,” because I don’t want it to be this big sales pitch all the time. I also write a blog for the store, and I will connect the blog articles that I write back to the store page, like if I do a book review and things like that. 

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Tell us about some of your Facebook promotions and how successful they have been.

Whitaker: We do Munce catalogs and they have given us digital files to the catalog, so we can actually put our entire sales flier up there, not on Facebook, but a link to it. We’ve gotten several responses off of that. We’ve tried to do these things where if somebody were to come in the next 10 minutes, then we’d give them a special deal or something like that.

Adams: The last thing that we did was we had two front-row tickets to see Casting Crowns and then we had two front row seats for TobyMac, announcing that you needed to come into the store to register to win by a certain date. It wasn’t huge, but we had some response on that.

Cousins: The most offbeat one we do is probably early in December—we have a Happy Birthday Jesus party, and we encourage everybody to wear their pajamas. It’s a lot of fun and we do readings and have activities and hot chocolate and juice and cake and cookies and that kind of thing. We’ve also been allowing people to put something on layaway for about six to eight weeks, and we do that about the time we do the party. We offer a Christmas wish list because typically husbands will come in looking for something their wife wanted and they know it was by Beth somebody or whatever, and they don’t know what it was. 

Panella: We’ve done some giveaway stuff, not as much as I’d like. I do a lot of links, even if it’s just promos and stuff. I do a lot of YouTube trailers for books or DVDs or a song. 

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Do you typically seen sales generated via Facebook?

Whitaker: A little bit here and there. I don’t think it’s a huge spike. If you get in 10 people that weren’t going to come in otherwise, you have at least increased yourself a little bit.

Adams: Yes, some. I’m getting back about as much as I have put in it. Probably if I would nurture that more, then I would get more sales out of it. I get a little because I’ve put in a little at this point. 

Cousins: I haven’t seen too many. I have had people say they saw my ad on Facebook, and they came in for that specific thing. One of the things we do is we advertise a lot on Facebook. On Mondays we offer 20% off their purchase if they have their church bulletin, and I’ve noticed that’s been picking up lately. People will come in with their church bulletin on Monday and they are all excited. 

Brant: I’ve been really pleased with our response from Facebook. I do tons of stuff with my blog, and I send out weekly e-mails. I do a lot of connecting all three together. I think that has helped me a lot. I am on Facebook at least twice a day, and I do more with my business page than my personal page. I try to post something at least every day. I like it when people comment on certain things because when someone comments, you know they are reading it.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What have you found to be effective on Facebook?

Whitaker: It’s frequency. How often are you on there? If you never look at your page, if you never send out announcements, then people are probably going to overlook it. You’ve got to do whatever you have to do to get your name out there, to get your face out there over and over again. 

Panella: I have found it is interesting to spark conversation. I’ll ask people just out of curiosity, which translation are you reading right now? Which one is speaking to you? It is interesting to see, and you can compare and contrast yourself with your Facebook responses to what you’re actually selling in the store. It sort of gives me a demographic idea of who is on Facebook and who isn’t, prepares me for Bible sales.  

Read edited excerpts here and listen in on the entire discussion at roundtable.christianretailing.com.

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