Over the next 5 years, the world of retail is going to radically change. Currently there is the Wholesale model. And there is a Direct model. But it will soon be joined by another model. A new ‘Retail Force’ created by the individuals who have huge influence on social media. They will create another distribution model. We shall call this ‘ Smart model’. Named after their audience is built on smart phones.
Where there’s audience, there is power. The people we follow on Instagram vary from 4K to 1.1M followers. Each day their followers go and find what they are doing, where they are, and yes, what they are wearing. This in shop terms is footfall. No bricks and mortar shop has 400K of football each day. But some of the Instagrammers do.
One day, one morning, they will wake up and figure out they can use this influence to make money, to sell things. That day is coming. And that day for some has already arrived.
They have influence. And they will master how to use it. Instagram, and other social media platforms that come after will create the next brands, companies, and it will create its own Insta-millionaires.
David Hieatt – Hiut Denim
Each year Hiut Denim host an Open Day and as part of that, David Hieatt tells the audience about their progress and their plans for the future. It’s been visionary and bold from the start. See the full content here.
Build an audience
Where there’s audience, there is power. The picture above is from the Northern Ireland Aeropress Championships which was held in Established Coffee, Belfast last month. We witnessed a striking example of a [coffee] audience filling a space powerfully to watch other people make coffee in little plastic tube-like vessels. One person was following an online live-stream and the atmosphere captivated him so much that he got in his car and came down to the event.
Your audience may not be best suited to Instagram depending on your business or organisation. Maybe your best way to build an audience is on Twitter or Facebook but, we think you still need to be on all three of these platforms and perhaps on others. Your audience has to start somewhere and the initial stages of trying to make it grow can be frustrating as you wait for people to react, follow, engage. You need to be creative but most of all, you MUST engage in the conversation. There is no excuse for businesses and organisations in our town.
Ballymena Today loves Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. There are bigger hitters than us on these platforms but we are still building our audience… we aren’t done yet.
Start working on your audience now.
[I posted some quick thoughts on my own blog recently because I’d had a few conversations about social media use.]
Follow people.. that’s a no brainer right? You’d be surprised!
Share information
Champion others
Pay attention
Keep telling a story…
Stop looking for an angle
Look for more angles
Be honest
Take ownership
Don’t lie in your bio… ie: social media experts & analysts have more than 5 followers on twitter.
Don’t buy followers. Social media ‘experts’ do this and we can spot them a mile away.
Connect with some of the people in reality, not all… some… you will have to ignore some people. It is what it is!
Build a community of interested followers
Ask for help
Or… on other hand, don’t!
And this takes time and patience but you have to move fast, pay attention, be good and be nice.
Maybe you’re not online with your business or organisation? Or maybe you are online but you need a leg-up, a plan, some help to get moving?
Get in touch with us using the contact form in the sidebar, we want to help you be better at this.