No, not that kind. I’m already married…
I’m talking about the wanky sales term about how to talk to your audience and get them to talk back to you.
Side note: I gave up coffee today so this blog post is not being written by caffeine and may therefore be an 76% less exciting. Don’t ask me why I gave up coffee, I guess I’m actually into BDSM after all…
Moving on.
Engagement.
Engagement is when you have captured the momentary attention of your audience. Which in today’s day and age, is a monumental thing because we all have the attention span of a demented goldfish and even ‘liking’ something takes effort. When your audience is engaged, they are giving you a brief moment of their time to either ‘like’ or comment on something you’ve posted or shared.
Who is your audience?
Anyone who is clamping eyes on what you’re doing.
On your panty selling platform that is every person ONLINE at that moment looking at the screen. That means sellers and buyers (and admin I guess).
On Twitter that’s your followers and anyone who follows your followers and gets to see random shit you posted because someone that followed you liked or commented on it.
Same goes for all social media you’re posting on. Even if that person doesn’t follow you. We’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole of clicking on people following people following people we follow and found six hours of time disappear into nothing.
So yeah. That’s who we’re trying to engage with.
YES, we are trying to engage with people who may not even be the people we want to sell to because of the reasons I just mentioned above.
Engagement is engagement and there’s no such thing as bad engagement. Well, that’s not true. Clearly there is but what I’m saying is that we’re really wanting to increase eyes on our stuff so that we can build the brand, build the customer base and make more money!
That’s what it’s all about.
AND LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT ALGORITHMS FOR A HOT MINUTE.
I swear, I’ve not had coffee.
Algorithms are a mystical creature that nobody understands – not even the guys that invent them. It’s all computer stuff, innit? It’s all computers learning about what stuff to show people. Long gone are the golden days on social media when it was all just lovely and chronological and you got to see all the things from all the people.
NO.
Now Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk want you to work HARD and jump through hoops aplenty in order to be seen and heard. But that socialist agenda is a topic for another day.
My point is that the machines have decided if lots of people like and comment on stuff it must be good and so it gets shown to more people. That’s kinda why you’ll find that the more you use Twitter, the more you get seen and followed. That’s just life.
So…. What’s the point of this blog you may be wondering (and truth be told I’m hoping it becomes apparent to me soon too).
The point is that a lot of sellers AREN’T ENGAGING.
They post their shop items and think that’s it.
They post on their social media and they think that’s it.
They do the bare minimum to participate and wonder why they’re not making sales.
Let me tell you a little story.
I was helping out a male seller today and went on Male Things Worn. I was clicking on seller profiles (guys selling to guys) and was just utterly blown away by the cool ideas I saw that guys were using to engage with buyers.
Legit. They were using really interesting and unique ideas to get their customers (and other sellers) to participate and form a community that creates a fun, safe space for people who WANT TO HANG OUT THERE AND BUY.
Good Lord.
When it comes to your audience, you want to get them thinking, spur their emotions, and make them feel important.
Technology makes this shit easy.
Look at Instagram and Twitter. You can run POLLS! Hello?
You can create your own hashtag or turn of phrase. Look at Sellers Before Fellas. I also invented Pantyversary and Panty Buying Unicorns and these phrases are just now in the vernacular of panty selling. I didn’t ask for permission I just decided to make it a thing. You can use pantypreneur or pantygasm (I didn’t make them up). You can create your own. Look at #kbarmy – created by now defunct selling platform KB bunnies. More recently I invented International Up Your Prices Day. I just did it.
Ask provocative or fun questions.
Tell a story.
Relate to a recent event – hello election, hello No Nut November, hello corona.
Refer to another seller or buyer’s cool stuff
Talk about something relevant to the industry
Be funny.
Be helpful.
ALL THE THINGS
You don’t have to operate within a box or behave in a set standard way.
You can be the one that stands out because they genuinely want to engage with other people in the community. Not to make sales! You can’t fake your enthusiasm. Do it because you want to and the sales will follow.
Engagement is key.
We made it through this blog sans caffeine. Yay!
If you want to hear more about my best ideas for sales, join the Panty Seller Pro training and gain access to Pantypreneur Discord group where I share all my top ideas and you can get personal support from me.