WeeK 16: Post 2 Future Plans

I sell used horse tack on Ebay for myself and for friends.  I chose to market my Ebay tack sales under a business that I decided to call "The Tack Shed".  The Tack Shed promotes the tack for sale and attempts to drive buyers to my Ebay listings.  The tack I am selling already gets plenty of exposure from being listed on Ebay, which justifies paying Ebay approximately 10% commission on each item that I sell.  Any sales that are generated from social media marketing are just "icing on the cake".  In this case, the time I would spend on social media marketing would probably be minimal.

At some date in the future, I might decide to create my own on-line tack store to carry new and/or used tack.  At that point, marketing would be critical.  If I wasn't counting on Ebay to create traffic to my listings, I would probably be spending at least 75% of my time on social media marketing.  Without a physical location to draw buyers, my only sales would be those that I could generate on-line.

At the moment, I have about 20 items for sale on Ebay.  This items are individual items, I only have one of each item listed.  If I ever decided to create a true on-line tack store, I think I would need to increase my inventory and have multiple sizes/colors of the items I carry.  In the meanwhile, it would be a good idea to "start the conversation" on social media.  While I am still selling on Ebay, I can continue to create a presence on social media.  At this time, I think I should concentrate on creating some interesting and educational content in blog postings to initiate some discussion.  I could continue to post on my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram business pages.  I have access to my Ebay buyers' email addresses at the time of sale, but I think it is frowned upon to use those for marketing outside of Ebay.  I should collect any email addresses outside of Ebay for a future newsletter, but I don't plan on starting a newsletter right away.

Over the next six months I think my plan should be to write at least one blog post per week.  I plan on posting on Instagram 3 times a week.  The Instagram posts will be more casual, mostly pictures around my horses.  I will attempt to get likes and comments from my followers.  I will post on Facebook twice a week, also attempting to get likes and comments.  I think I can manage this much is about 2-3 hours a week.