Still a lot of work to do

So, I’ve created a Shopify store, and Kate created about 30 products and uploaded them to the store. Of course, what we have right now is pretty far for a ready-to-launch store, and we would be embarrassed to launch soon. But it’s a good start nonetheless. We can see this thing coming together. I can see products in the storefront and how they affect each other visually. I think we can start iterating over the products and how we’re displaying in the store now. Kate initially created mockups from mockup templates found on Freepic.com and similar sites and photoshopped designs into them. I think we might shoot our mockups if we have time to display products better.

It seems like there’s plenty of work ahead. Kate will have to create much more designs because it looks like 30 products don’t look right. Maybe she’ll need to do a hundred or so. It is yet to be decided. I’ll have work to do too — some pages have to be added like FAQ and about. I’ll also have to work on our value proposition and mission statement because we want to build a brand from the very beginning. I’ll also need to customize the theme because I’m not very happy with default page layouts.

Building Instagram audience before launch

It would be a waste of time to work on the shop itself and do nothing on the marketing side. Also, since plenty of work around the store has to be done there’s a limited amount of time. I decided to focus all my spare time on Instagram before we launch. It would be good to research the audience a little bit better and build the following over time. If all goes well by the time store launches, I’ll be able to get some instant sales off the Instagram. It would also be nice to convert Instagram followers to mailing list readers later.

So far I’ve created an Instagram account, added about 20 posts that Kate made explicitly for Instagram using mockups that are not suitable for the store. Most of them are our designs placed on products that we’re not going to sell. Instagram is starting to look good, that creates motivation for new posts. I think we might even do a photo shoot to have content for new posts. I would shoot different objects so that Kate would add her designs to them. So far Instagram account has eight followers, all of them are those who followed me when I followed big accounts like Mailchimp or Adobe. I still need to do the work to get real followers.

There’s a ton of work that can need to be done on Instagram. Honestly, I had to start doing all this long time ago. I regret not doing so. Shooting photos and photoshopping designs onto them would be the easiest part. I think I’ll have to spend plenty of time researching hashtags, following people and commenting on their posts to grab their attention. But first I want to look into hashtags and user profiles to get a better understanding of the audience, what content they like and what their interests are in general

Audience research in instagram

I don’t know how long building the store will take. It will be probably something like 2-3 months, maybe less. It’s essential to have clear goals, so I want to have 1000 followers at that moment. I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I will try. I would say that I would have roughly 100 days so I’ll need to grow by ten followers each day. Sound like something that can be done by strategic following. I will also track my time to see how much time I need to spend to get those ten followers to better plan future work. I bet I will also learn a lot about people we’re going to sell to, and this will affect the website copy and overall brand image.

Instagram is an excellent tool for audience research, or maybe I should call it customer development like in b2b. I want to look up about 30 hashtags with ten to twenty thousand posts each for the research that is related to my niche. Very popular hashtags are useless because my posts are going to be pushed out from the ‘explore’ page in seconds, while unpopular hashtags will barely make any eyeballs to look at my content. I also want to select hashtags that are relevant to my brand and content. I’ll check that by checking the frequency of posts with a hashtag and actual content. After defining hashtags, I’ll check about ten people posting to them and few people following them to get the idea of what content they like and post.

Engaging with the audience and getting feedback

Building Instagram audience is also a great way to engage with people and get their feedback on products early on. Who knows, maybe nobody wants products that we are going to buy. Perhaps they’re too expensive, or maybe we need to use different quotes in designs. I hope that I’ll be able to get answers to those questions through Instagram. I want to post our products and be very upfront that we’re going to sell them eventually. I’ll ask people’s opinion and maybe DM those who replied in comments to engage in a short interview.

Overall I think we’re in a great spot because Kate is a designer and I’ll do the marketing so that we can do work in parallel. I think that for someone who’s doing everything on her own it would be hard to do two things at a time. I would choose to do only the Instagram work then because if you have a decent following, you don’t even need the store. There are a ton of sellers on Instagram who sells directly from their posts. Plus you can always create a quick website on Wix or Squarespace and add simple PayPal buy button. Of course, it won’t look as good and professional as Shopify store, but it would be a start, and your fans won’t care anyway.