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As a small business, Swamp Fox Bookstore relies on Sendible to create and automatically post engaging content on a regular schedule that inspires online sales and brings in foot traffic.
Meet Terri LeBlanc, Co-Owner and Operations Manager of Swamp Fox Bookstore.
With a brick and mortar storefront, community engagement is key for Swamp Fox Bookstore.
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To find out more about how businesses can use social media to boost in-person visits and increase sales, we chatted with Terri LeBlanc, Co-Owner and Operations Manager (plus social media guru), for the Swamp Fox Bookstore team.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell us a bit about yourself! What do you do?
"I'm Terri Leblanc and I'm the Co-Owner and Operations Manager of Swamp Fox Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Marion, Iowa."
What were your biggest challenges with social media management before using Sendible?
"Well, we are a team of three and we have many responsibilities that go along with owning a bookstore on top of maintaining our busy personal lives.
Sendible allows us to streamline our social media posting process so it takes less time to keep our Facebook page and Instagram feeds going with content."
What are your favourite Sendible features, and how do you use them?
"We take full advantage of the queues and the repeat scheduling on individual posts. For the repeat scheduling, we have a post that gets sent every day that encourages people to stop by the store during your regular hours and if they can't make it, to place orders online.
So I usually set those up a month in advance and that way we can change out the photo or if our hours changed slightly for the following month, then we can just modify those as needed.
And then we follow a similar process with our small group events with the recycling posts feature. Those events happen right now on Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays so we have a reminder post that is posted the day before and then another post that's posted just a few hours before the event.
And then an extra step we take, if time allows, is to actually share one of those posts into one of the Shop Local Facebook groups that we belong to. This allows people at different times of the day to see the events publicised. Usually we schedule these a month at a time so we use repeat scheduling to block those times out.
And then for Sendible queues, we've launched some ongoing campaigns. One that we did during the holiday season was where we picked a specific day to always post items from our holiday catalog.
But the campaign that I love to talk about (and that I'm the most proud of) is our Shop Local Shop Small campaign which shares the benefits of shopping local. It includes data we acquired from the American Booksellers Association, which is the professional organization we belong to.
We include other local businesses we work with and facts about our team that relate to the specific image in the post. We've refreshed that campaign a couple of times to keep it out there in front of people.
It's important to shop local all year round, not just during the holiday season. So we've taken advantage of the ease of keeping the text in Sendible and just putting new images in the queue."
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It's important to shop local all year round, not just during the holiday season. So we've taken advantage of the ease of keeping the text in Sendible and just putting new images in the queue.
What positive results have you seen since using Sendible?
"By taking advantage of queues and adding posts to them on a regular basis, we've seen steady engagement on both our Facebook and Instagram pages, and that’s what we’re really going for.
As a small business, we get a lot of foot traffic - or as much as what’s possible during this unique time that we're in with the COVID-19 pandemic - so we don't necessarily see a lot of direct sales from it, but we do hear people when they walk in say, ‘Oh, I saw your post on social media,’ or ‘I saw it on Facebook,’ or ‘I saw it on Instagram,’ and that drives them to come into the store and make that purchase from us.
So many people are like, ‘Oh, I love that picture you posted on Instagram,’ or, ‘Oh, I saw that event on Facebook,’ so it's been really great to see that and hear that too."
We do hear people when they walk in say, ‘Oh, I saw your post on social media,’ or ‘I saw it on Facebook,’ or ‘I saw it on Instagram,’ and that drives them to come into the store and make that purchase from us.
What best practices would you recommend?
"As the social media guru for our team, I'm the one that seems to know the most about Sendible. I find working in batches speeds up the process, so I try to take time each month to shoot a bunch of photos, process them, and then create the posts.
When I'm creating the posts in Sendible, I review our reports to see if our peak engagement time has changed and then I adjust the timing on the queues accordingly.
To take some of the burden of picking stock off our shelves, I usually ask one of my co-owners to choose 15 or 16 books. I then take them home, do the shoot, and bring them back in. I'm kind of surprised sometimes when I see the pictures because I don't know what they've picked out of the shelves for me to photograph.
It works well because I usually do my stuff on the fly when I’m in the store. So if a book is facing out, I’ll do a quick post on Instagram or Facebook. My co-owners, on the other hand, are more suited for picking out some of the titles that I don't necessarily see on the shelves, and I love the combination."
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When I'm creating the posts in Sendible, I review our reports to see if our peak engagement time has changed and then I adjust the timing on the queues accordingly.
What is your advice to others who are considering Sendible?
"Give the trial a shot and definitely take a look at the reports. That's really what sold me on Sendible: the low cost of the program and then having some stock reports that are really easy to read.
I found reports to be the most valuable piece of everything beyond the queues that allow you to keep a steady flow of posts going out.
With reports, I usually look at the time of day that posts are happening. I want to try to make sure that our posts are going out around key times, which are different on Facebook and Instagram.
Plus, the Sendible reports are a little bit easier to read than going into the Instagram app, which is not super user-friendly for looking at data and analyzing it.
So I like that a lot about Sendible - plus it’s the same with Facebook. Sometimes it's nice to just have everything consolidated down and see it all in one big picture."
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That's really what sold me on Sendible: the low cost of the program and then having some stock reports that are really easy to read.
Recap and results
With a brick and mortar storefront, foot traffic and audience engagement is key to driving sales for Swamp Fox Bookstore.
Using Sendible, Terri is able to create simple interaction posts inviting fans to engage with their posts by clicking "like" or leaving a comment. She builds a library of these types of posts and then queues them up easily.
Terri also uses reports to find the peak times of audience interactions to stay top of mind and automate recurring posts for store hours.
Check out Swamp Fox Bookstore and connect with Terri. 👈
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