Importance of social media community and growth of influencers

Our Soap Making community has gone from strength to strength in recent years and it is largely down to the growth of different platforms and generally, technology advancements that made it easier to reach people all over the world and engage with them. Social media, especially, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook offer free platforms for people to advertise their products with speed and ease. It has also helped many cosmetic businesses, crafters and companies to share and sell their creations with a more connected world.

The Influencer Effect

One aspect of social media that we feel is becoming more apparent, is the use of social influencers. In the ever-changing social & digital landscape, social influencers provide an opportunity to explore different avenues and strengthen the connecting bond with customers and community.

Benefits of connecting with influencers

There is a great potential for boosting and expanding our community by teaming up with influencers who share the same values. In the past, we’ve worked with creative bloggers that shared their soap ideas and creative possibilities using our soap and cosmetic bases. We believe that lasting relationships with influencers could help us to provide more value to soaping community.

Similarly, it is sometimes challenging to keep up with the trend’s that surface from blogs and social influencers. One trend that we see still evolving is vegan and organic blogs and this is due to the rise in more environmentally aware consumers (not surprising since there has been a 350% increase in Vegans in the UK alone over the past decade). Thus, connecting influencers with the community will be beneficial for us to keep up with trends and emerging concepts.

Stephenson’s Social Media Communities

Our community has always been at the heart of what we do here at Stephenson Personal Care. We strive to build a community of like-minded Soapers, crafters and businesses whilst actively encouraging people to share their creativity through social media. We appreciate all the comments and recommendations, mentions and shares as it is incredibly important to share our passion for soap making and cosmetic products and strengthen relationships with our customers and distributors by creating a sense of belonging.

Facebook

Our ambition certainly with Facebook is to connect with our customers, understand their needs, understand what they do with our products, identify areas where we can improve and drive communication. We started by investing time into our Facebook platform to create this ‘community’. By actively developing Social we can enhance our sales strategies, both push and pull.

We have over 31,000 followers on Facebook and we continue to grow! We appreciate every single submission to our weekly #MakeitMonday, your comments and reviews. Our weekly soap making ‘Make it Monday’ competition provides a space for the community to show off their incredible creations. We ask people to like, share and comment on the competition post to increase our reach and get more people involved in soap making. You can see our choice of 12 creations from 2017 here

Facebook, amongst other social channels, allows us to get customer feedback on our products. It’s incredibly valuable as we don’t directly sell our products to the consumer market. This allows us to work on improvements and hear all the positive experiences people have had with our products. The communication on social is very valuable and we want to thank those involved as we wouldn’t be where we are now without you.

We’ve seen decent growth in our Facebook page over the past year, as we try to expand with Blog Outreach, a #soapandshare campaign, #MakeitMonday product giveaways and more video content. We’ve seen our Facebook community grow from 700 when we first started two years ago, to now over 18,600 today (a growth of 26X in our fan base) which for a soap-making factory, isn’t too bad. However we’re only scratching the surface in terms of engaging with our customers worldwide, we still have a lot to learn and a lot more to achieve.

We’ve also worked on the Personality of our brand, the tone to develop trust, this can be challenging for a soap-making factory! We work to answer each comment personally, promptly, and with a tone of voice that echos the way we work as a team so that any member can reply and our message remains consistent. It’s not created, not staged, it’s who we are.

So….in summary Why do we care about building an online community? Why is a fifth-generation family soap business on Facebook?

Building our Reputation Online Developing a platform to launch new products Creating a soap making community Supporting our Distribution Partners / become a visible supplier Develop Brand Loyalty Brand Tone / Consistency Added Value to both Business and Product Engage and Interact with our customers We’re still working hard on keeping things fresh, relating, inspiring and growing our community. So why not join our journey, share what you create just here.

Instagram

We’ve seen a steady increase in interactions on our Instagram page. It’s an important platform for us to connect with other creatives who share our passion for creativity and colour. We are often asked a lot on Instagram about recipes for the soaps and cosmetic products we displayed. We now try and link videos or step by step tutorials on recipes, making it easier for the community to replicate their favourite creations.

Over on Instagram we have 10k followers, with our focus being on increasing engagement through visual means and again connect with like-minded people. The #soapandshare campaign through Facebook and now Instagram has proven to be a great success as we, and thousands of you, continue to share and learn from each other’s innovation, passion and creativity.

Twitter & LinkedIn

We also use Twitter to get more engaged in the industry news and trends. Not only does it provide an inspiration boost but also allows us to stay updated with trends, new product launches, new cosmetic developments etc… We listen to the trends so that we can provide more value to our community as well and make them aware of opportunities.

We use LinkedIn for more connectivity with other businesses and distributors in order to share and stay up to date with trends, events and personal care industry developments.

Community Power

You as our community have superpowers. Because we are a manufacturing business we predominantly rely on a network of distribution when introducing new products to the market. This can be slow, difficult to track and we rely heavily on re-sellers & partners to market the product, promote and inspire sales. Thus, the community has a power to drive demand for specific products in different locations around the globe. By driving this demand, you are able to introduce new product lines in your markets, offer innovative cosmetic solutions and stay ahead of the competition.

So… in summary. Why do we continue to build and strengthen our community?

• To support idea sharing and learning from each other
• To engage and interact with our community (after all, the only reason why we are here is because of you!)
• To receive feedback on new product recommendations, packaging and product ideas
• To expand our following and building a wider community
• To explore different ways in connecting people to our products
• To share the knowledge about trends, natural ingredients etc…
• To create an inspiring place with crafters and businesses
• To build relationships with influencers
• To provide a competitive edge to our customers

We hope you find this blog useful and would want to be a part of our community and get engaged more with your customers.

Are you an influential content creator with an engaged community? We want to hear from you, contact us!