Mastering Social Media for Your Micro Bakery

In this episode of the Bread Winner podcast, Caroline Bower provides an in-depth guide on using social media effectively to grow your micro bakery business. Building on the previous discussion, she delves into setting clear social media goals, identifying and understanding your audience, and optimizing your profiles, especially on Instagram and Facebook. Through practical tips and strategies, such as using content calendars, batch creating content, and utilizing Instagram templates, listeners will learn how to stay consistent and engage both local and broader audiences. The episode also highlights common social media challenges and offers solutions to overcome them, helping bakers to reach their goals efficiently.

00:41 Establishing Social Media Goals

02:20 Identifying Your Audience

02:42 Choosing the Right Platforms

03:39 Optimizing Your Instagram Profile

07:04 Setting Posting Goals

08:44 Creating Consistent Content

09:32 Using Content Calendars and Tools

11:07 Batch Content Creation

13:07 Types of Instagram Content

15:00 Simplifying Instagram Reels

17:12 Writing Effective Captions

20:10 Using Hashtags Strategically

21:27 Personal Social Media Strategies

23:46 Conclusion and Final Tips

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Links to things we talked about: Subscribe to The Simple Sourdough Social Kit (no longer active, but check my weekly-ish email newsletter for free social resources!)

Caroline Bower Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinebower_sourdough

Episode 10

The goal of the episode today. Is to really drill down on your goals for social media and how to accomplish them.

Are you looking to engage local followers and stay right in your geographic area to attract the buyers who will be shopping from you?

is your goal a little bit different and you're aiming to grow a larger account to reach a wider audience, maybe with more of An educational focus on your account, teaching people how to bake.

Are you. Planning to use your account to share mostly sales, new products. And updates on your business, or do you want to use your account more as a lifestyle or educational platform?

Perhaps you want to monetize your account down the road by sharing affiliate links or Amazon links. Whatever your goal. They're all good goals, but just be clear about it and understand where you're headed.

After you've decided that, and you're clear on whether you're building a small engaged, local following, or a larger, wider audience, and why you're there What you're trying to communicate through that account. The next step. Is to identify your audience.

So the question you're asking here is who are you speaking to? Is it local customers? Or a broader online audience. Understanding your audience

will guide you in the type of content you create and the way that you interact with your followers.

And your goal really is to hone in on which one or ones are going to benefit you most and then optimize your content on those accounts.

So let's talk a little bit about what it means to optimize. Now for the purpose of this episode, we really are going to lean into Instagram. And a lot of what we do on Instagram is transferable over to Facebook.

So for myself, for example, I put a lot of my content for my bakery on Instagram. And then I just go ahead and share it over to Facebook and that's pretty effective.

So we're going to focus in on our Instagram profile for a minute.

So your Instagram profile should have a profile photo. This should be either your logo or a clear photo of your own face.

And then your bio is really important. The top line, the name field is searchable. So it's important to use that strategically. I recommend using your name and then a dividing line, and then something along the lines of artisan sourdough, in your town.

Now, in the bio, you have a few characters where you can add a little bit more information. So in this, what you want to do is add a very quick little overview of what you offer. So that could be something like.

Artisan sourdough bread and baked goods. Or organic sourdough bread. Or something along those lines. And then a clear call to action. call to action is what you want your customers to do. It's an invitation. a call to action is really important because our brains need directions. So it should be something like. Click the link in the bio to order or. Order here with an arrow pointing down to your link.

And then finally you'll want to add your location as well.

Then in the link field, you're going to want to put your website or your ordering platform, make sure that you have a link in there. Don't just say DM to order, put an ordering link in there. That's going to make it a lot easier on you and on your customers to order from you.

And then the final thing to optimize your Instagram profile is to post an introduction post.

This could be just one picture or a little carousel of photos of you, and a little bit about you. This allows your customers to get to know you and connect with you. And you're going to pin that post as the top post on your profile or one of the three top posts. So that people don't have to scroll and scroll through photos of bread to see a little bit about you. People really want to know the person behind the account.

Now that we've optimized our profile. Let's talk a little bit about posting and setting your goals for posting.

So keeping in mind that the more you post and the more strategically you post, the more you're going to grow. You'll want to set your goals to understand, what's realistic for you when you're setting your goals. That might be posting three times a month. It might be posting once a week. It might be posting four or five times a week.

Be realistic about your capacity, both your capacity to create content and write captions, but also just your capacity to be on your phone, engaging and responding to comments on the post.

Try not to go more than two weeks or so without putting up anything. The reason being is that people who are coming to your account, new people who don't know you well Or people who are just stumbling across your account are going to click through a couple of posts. And if they see that you haven't posted in three weeks or a couple of months, they're going to assume that you're not active. So it's important to be regularly posting, even if that's only once a week or a few times a month, just make sure that it's clear to people that you are still in business.

So when you're posting, think about what comes natural to you. As far as format of content We're going to go a little bit deeper on that in just a moment, but think about whether posts with text or videos come easier.

Speaking of struggling with posting consistently, I recently polled. my audience on Instagram and asked you all what your social media struggles were. The majority said, coming up with content, a lot of you said it's staying consistent and a lot of you said, you just don't know what to post.

I relate to this completely.

You get a full calendar of content ideas. As well as Canva templates that you can customize with your own photos, colors, fonts. But they're kind of a done for you format for a few different types of Instagram posts. So you just go in Canva and make it your own. The content calendar also has a few fun business promotional ideas in there as well. So if you're feeling stuck, this is a really good way to get you unstuck.

Okay Back to creating content. So one of my favorite strategies and something that I am continually working on getting better at is batch content creating this means you're creating a lot of content all at once. So that you have a backlog in a sense of content, ready to post when you're ready. So you create five or six or 10 posts in one sitting, and then you have a week or two weeks of content ready for you and just you get to post it when you have a minute, rather than sitting down and trying to crank something out in a 10 minute block and not knowing what to do.

Same with photos. With photos, good lighting is really important.

So if you're having a hard time figuring out lighting, I recommend you go near a window or even step outside on your porch. Go somewhere where you have bright, natural, indirect lighting. So the sun isn't shining directly on you it's filtered, but you have that bright light.

Okay. Talking about types of content.

There are a few main types of content on Instagram. And similarly on Facebook, you have your stories, you have your reels and your posts, and then you have live videos as well.

So reels are really great for reaching brand new people who wouldn't see you otherwise. Most of the time reels are the type of content that get the most reach. They get shown to people who don't follow you most commonly.

These are posts that are not videos or just your photos. And you're graphics on your feed.

Typically those reach, primarily the people who already follow you. So they are a great way to nurture your current audience. And these are a great place to share updates such as sales and promotions, as well as education. If you want to lean into the education side and teach more about sourdough bread or how tos. The static posts and like a carousel post where you have a series of photos. Are a great way to do that.

I've recently found a much simpler way. And I've eliminated a lot of the overthinking in my Instagram reels process and it's been super game changing. So I'm going to share that with you. In Instagram, when you go into the button to create your reels along the top, there is an option to select a template. So I scroll over, along the top and click on templates and you'll see some.

So maybe you have a video clip of you mixing your dough and then a video clip of you shaping your dough and then a video clip of you putting it in the fridge. So grab a little, few seconds of each of those and the template will size it down just right. And it'll be synched up to the music. You don't have to worry about any of that.

Sometimes I'll sit down and I'll use the templates to make five or six reels like this and save to my drafts. So that I have content ready to go. And I don't have to think about it when I am ready to post.

Now when you are writing your caption. Your caption and your calls to action are really important. So don't just throw some texts up there and call it good. Don't overthink it either, but do be strategic about this.

The most important thing is to have a clear call to action. For example, if your post is about your menu that's opened this week and you have a certain timeframe that people need to order, explain that, and then your call to action should be something like click the link in my bio to order. Very clear. There's no wishy washiness.

When you're writing your caption, if you're anything like me, this might be another thing that you overthink.

You can allow it to be a less, is more, some people love to pour out their hearts in their caption. Other people's struggle with it. If this is somewhere where you struggle.

They're really helpful tools available to us in our current age of technology.

So this is where I usually have an idea of what I want to communicate, but I'm having a hard time putting it into clear articulate words. So I will just stream of consciousness, put this into chat GPT. So something like.

the caption should communicate. That bakers don't need to spend thousands of dollars to grow their micro bakery business. And then I might elaborate a little bit more. And then I would say the call to action is X, Y, Z. Please write it in a casual, friendly chatty tone, and you can even give it something like in the voice of someone who inspires you. Or a podcaster that you love to listen to, sometimes I use Amy Porterfield who is a business podcasts that I admire, and I really appreciate the tone of voice that she speaks with.

However on my business account for this podcast, Caroline Bauer. Caroline Bower underscore sourdough. I do use hashtags because that helps me reach a wider audience on my bakery page. I really am only trying to reach very local customers. I do not want people who are not local to me following me. So I'm not trying to reach them at all. At my bakery page, I'm not tagging sourdough or micro bakery business. I am just strictly adding in a location tag. And leaving out the rest of the hashtags, because I don't want to reach a wide audience over there.

If you're posting about your local farmer's market or something, you can also tag the farmer's market in your post or add them as a collaborator so that your post will show up for them as well.

And they can also share it.

This will help increase your visibility and reach a wider, broader audience.

Now, I touched on it a little bit, but I'll share a little bit about my personal strategy and my bakery, social media. Like I said, I am not trying to grow a large audience over there.

And that's where I allow them to get to know me.

So I post usually about once a week on my Facebook and my Instagram. And then I posted my stories a couple times a week. So my goal with my Facebook and Instagram page for my bakery really is just to nurture local connections and grow a little bit at a time. Like I said, I don't want to large audience I just want. A handful of really engaged people who really want to hear from me. And then they want to tell their friends about me.

I don't, I'm not trying to reach my local community at all. And so I don't do local hashtags on this account.

So hopefully that helps you consider and think about how your goals are so important. And a strategy that might work well on one account is not going to be relevant on another one.

It is totally okay to not want to go viral, to not want to build a huge account. But it's also okay. If those are your goals, just be clear on what you're trying to accomplish through your social media. So that you can strategically pursue those goals.

And then once you're pursuing those goals, commit to showing up consistently and in a way that makes sense for you. All right. That wraps up today's episode on using social media effectively. I really hope you found these tips and strategies helpful. Maybe you learned something that you haven't thought about before.

If you subscribe in the month of August, you'll get the founder's discount and lock in the monthly price of just $7 a month.

You're getting a full month of content ideas as well as customizable templates. And fun seasonal bonus ideas to help you get unstuck, reach the right people and grow your business.

Okay. If you enjoy this episode please subscribe to the Bread Winner podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a review so other people can find the show too. And it always makes my day. If you screenshot the show and tag me on social media so we can connect I'm Caroline Bower, B O w E R underscore sourdough. And I love to reshare your posts so we can all get excited and connected together.