From Hobbyist to Entrepreneur – Elevate Your Idea Into A Dream Business With Social Media

So, you have a cool hobby that you enjoy, and your friends and family keep telling you that you should sell what you make.

How could you go about testing the market to see if your passion could turn into a business? Social media is the perfect place to start. It’s practically free and you don’t have to start big or invest in market stalls, you can just get going right away.

You can start a business selling anything at all via social media.

Social media offers access to 4.62 billion people worldwide and 30 million South Africans, any of whom could be your customers. Facebook Marketplace alone has over 1 billion users and it’s quick and easy to set up a seller profile. What’s great about Facebook Marketplace is that you can test the market with your product and see if people are interested in it. It’s a great place to start your business due to the low barrier to entry and the fact that you don’t need to have made a huge amount of stock. You could make and sell one product at a time to see how it goes.

If that goes well, you can move on to phase two, opening an eCommerce store on Facebook or Instagram, however, you will need to set up your own way to process orders and fulfil orders. These virtual storefronts allow you to set up catalogues of your products that are for sale and customers to click through and view all of your products and prices in a logical and intuitive manner and best of all, it’s searchable. You will have to communicate directly with each customer about payment and shipping.

However, if logistics and payments are too daunting to manage on your own, or you’re simply too successful to handle this, you can work through eCommerce sites like Takealot or smaller artisanal collectives, like Made By Artisans.

Social media is the cheapest, lowest-risk way to start and market your own business. This does however mean you need to do certain things in order to make your online business successful. Making Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok pages where you showcase your products and express your brand is an absolute must. When doing so, ensure you use high-quality images of your products, adding lifestyle images too will add to the clarity you offer your customers. Lifestyle images show the product in use in an attractive environment.  

Spelling is more important than you realise. Even when simply posting on Facebook Marketplace, your spelling needs to be accurate, or the search results will not show your products to people searching for them. Use tools like Grammarly to help.

Keep in mind the information your customers need to know when they look at your store. How much the product costs, its dimensions or size, what it’s made of, how to contact you, and where you’re located. All of this sounds obvious, but these are often things a person can forget to include.

It’s also a good idea to include the information of the product, your logo, or a watermark on the images you share of your products so that other people cannot steal your images and pretend they are the seller.

If it looks like people are interested and you’re ready to take the next step, social media will really help you expand. But, doing it right can be a full-time job and when you’re growing your business you need to focus on your core business. There are tricks and tips to target your audience, expand your customer base and become more successful. This is where we can help. HashTag Marketing is equipped and ready to help you with everything from getting your social media pages up and running to starting an eCommerce store. We can help you through it all.

To give your business the best start, contact HashTag Marketing.