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GOING SOCIALA guide to building a social media presence in the B2C space

Eric Bandholz // Founder of Beardbrand

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ERIC BANDHOLZFounder of Beardbranderic@beardbrand.com704.299.5378

Eric Bandholz founded Beardbrand in 2012 after attending a beard competition in Portland, Oregon. His vision was to build a community of urban beardsman who were stylish, independent, and of course bearded. Before Beardbrand, beardsmen where thought of as bikers, hippies, vagabonds, or outdoorsmen and he saw a more professional community of beardsmen.

Beardbrand started off as a blog and when he was contacted by NY Times to be quoted for an article on beard care he designed to launch the ecommerce portion of Beardbrand. Through bootstrapping, and social media Eric was able to grow Beardbrand from zero in sales to over $120k per month in less than a year. Beardbrand has been quoted in Men’s Journal, Yahoo, and many other publications.

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SOCIAL MEDIA STARTS WITH A MARKETING PLANDo you have the resources for active management?

Do your customers have an expectation for you to be online?

Do you have the support within your organization?

BEARDBRAND SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN1) Produce quality content that is searchable and related to our products

2) Curate daily content to maintain audience’s attention & build brand

3) Interact with community and answer questions / complaints

4) Own the platformW

WHO MANAGES OUR SOCIAL MEDIA?It’s a team effort for us. I personally am still engaged in certain aspects of our social media - most specifically YouTube and email. Our in-house customer service talent will handle our Tumblr and Pinterest. We outsource our social media for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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WHERE IS BEARDBRAND TODAY?Our community launched in February 2012 and was actively built starting in January 2013.

Current numbers as of September, 2014.

Facebook: 39,000

Tumblr: 18,500

YouTube: 18,500

Email: 14,000

Instagram: 10,00

Twitter: 3500

Pinterest: 750

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WHERE DID OUR CUSTOMERS FIRST HEAR ABOUT BEARDBRAND?

SOCIAL MEDIA BREAKDOWN

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Other 10%

Social Media 46%

Google Search 35%

Referral 6%

Web Ads

YouTube

Facebook

Reddit

Other

4%

54%

27%

12%

7%

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SELECTING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELSBuilding with a strategy to control your content.

Better to be very active in a few than; not active in all of them.

Understanding the communities of each channel.

What platform suits your company’s culture the best?

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GENERAL OVERVIEW OF PLATFORMS

AGE GENDER INTERESTS TIME REQUIREMENT EASE OF USE

Facebook broad both broad low easy

Instagram teens - 20’s both photography low easy

LinkedIn 20’s - 50’s both business moderate moderate

Pinterest teen’s - 40’s female life inspiration + products moderate easy

Reddit teen’s - 30’s male technology + cats + anything high difficult

Tumblr teen’s - 20’s both creativity + photography + individuality moderate easy

Twitter broad both real time information + direct talk high moderate

YouTube broad both broad moderate difficult

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SOCIAL MEDIA WRAP UPDon’t over complicate the process - it’s just content and communication.

Communicate and create with purpose.

Don’t plan for any “viral” marketing. Build to last.

Tell a story and have a voice.

Tips for growing your community - have contests via Gleam.io.

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QUESTIONS?