Even though this post is about our business, know that it applies to all the businesses and pages you love. Its my hope that it will shared and seen by many. If you are a fan, a small business owner, non profit or support group, please feel free to share this- its my sincerest hope that it will help us all reconnect with our fans, customers and peers.
-Seneca M. Hart
owner and CEO, Hero On My Arm
The political season is upon us, and so we're hearing a lot about the state of the economy lately- and the role of small businesses. Small businesses are the life blood of the US economy- they fuel economic growth and provide jobs for over HALF of all Americans. We're important, darn it!
Small business owners have passion, determination, and heart to go along with innovative, creative and quality products- what we don't usually have are advertising budgets, PR departments and grand marketing campaigns. We connect with our customers often one on one, and rely on word of mouth and and referrals from current customers to to help others find us. Or at least, we used to. Then, this really cool website came along called Facebook. You've heard of it, right?
Facebook revolutionized the way small businesses connected with customers and found new ones. It was glorious! People could tell us what they wanted, happy customers could share testimonials, we could run specials and promotions, talk with our fans, spread the word about our company and its mission. And from a dollars and sense perspective, it was even more wonderful, because it was all FREE. But as they say, all good things must end :( And so this happened:
Facebook's IPO bombed and the pressure was on to increase ad revenue for the company. So before, for example, if we wanted let everyone know that everything was 20% off for Military Spouse Appreciation Day, we simply created a post:
And everyone that had liked our page:
Yup, in our case, all 7734 people and pages would see our post show up in their news feed. And now, well:
Yeah, not so much. If you do the math, that's less than 8 % of all our fans!!!! Of coarse, we can always buy our way back into our customer's news feeds:
Riiiiight. So you see, that's why you've been seeing a lot of facebook posts like this lately (we'll hopefully you've been seeing them!):
So the question is, did you actually do it? We all lead busy lives, so chances are, probably not. It's okay though. The most important and easiest thing you can do is to simply INTERACT with the pages you like most, like ours, by liking posts and leaving comments:
So really, its just that simple. Head on over to our Facebook page, and look around, like the pictures you think are really swell, and leave us a comment or two, even if its just a :) We love :)'s
Another really easy to stay connected is to join our mailing list. Its not spamm-y, we swear. We send out one or two emails a month, with all the important goings on at Hero On My Arm, and some extra special deals and sales just for our mailing list members. You can sign up directly from our Facebook page:
Here's another super easy way to stay connected- head over to our blog, www.heroonmyarm.blogspot.com (oh, hey, wait you're already here! So look back up at the top on the left- there's a box to enter your email address and receive updates anytime we post something new on the blog, which is once or twice a week. Right under that is a place to subscribe to our RSS Feed, if that's your "thang" instead:
And lastly, creating interest lists on Facebook (that thing everyone is posting about lately) is a good way to manage all the pages that you like, so if you'd like to do that as well, here's how- in pictures. It really does take only a minute to do. Over on the left side of the screen, click INTERESTS:
Then click +Add Interests
Then +Create List
Then check the boxes of the pages you'd like to add to your new list:
Then name your list and select your privacy settings and click Done.
Did you make it all the way to the end of this? Congratulations if you did. Feel free to take 25% off your order of $100 or more, now through October 31st- just use coupon code SPOOKY.
(See we're cool, we like to have sales and give stuff away, you want to like us....we love you guys!)
