Nearly everyone in this digital era is using social media, but what does this have to do with your business? The answer is: everything!
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began, customers have been flocking to the digital world more than ever. In 2020, ecommerce sales rose 27.6 percent over the previous year, and it’s continuing to grow. This means customers are spending more time online and researching products they want before committing to a purchase, whether that be online or in person.
Building a follower base on Twitter with your ideal customers will give your business the highest quality attention over any other platform.
To maximize the success of your business, you want to be where your customers are, where they can see you, and where you can interact with them. The easiest way to do that is on social media. The best part about this valuable piece of digital real estate is that it doesn’t cost any money to use. It just requires a bit of time and creativity to start, but it is easy to manage once it’s up and running.
Figuring out where to begin can seem a bit overwhelming. There are over a dozen popular platforms to choose from, and new platforms are introduced every year. As of this writing, the top two platforms every single business should be on are Facebook and Twitter, and most businesses should also have an Instagram. Here is how to get started and build a strategy around each of these three platforms. Facebook
Facebook is the cornerstone of social media with over 2.8 billion active users. This is the first place most customers will go in their digital search. Just having a business profile here will give your company awareness and exposure that would have otherwise been missed. Maintaining an active business profile can yield appreciable results.
Having an active business profile means that you are posting pictures and comments on your profile page, joining groups where your customers congregate (yes, there are numerous adult-related groups on Facebook), and engaging with your customers via likes, comments and shares. Businesses in the adult industry are allowed on Facebook and can maintain an active profile, but with a few restrictions.
Facebook does not allow nudity of any kind (including toys that represent genitalia), any pornographic material (even links to pornographic material), or any profanity. Now, before you conclude that your business cannot have a presence on Facebook with these restrictions, I urge you to keep an open mind and think outside of the box. There are still thousands of different toys that are allowed that can help represent your company and the selection you offer — everything from restraints, gags and floggers to clothing and harnesses, just to name a few. You can also post sales and promotions you are having, as well as advertising banners.
To get started with your Facebook profile, you want to input all of your business information, including location (if applicable), and make a few posts a day that capture what your company is about. Even if you have plenty of content ready to go, spread it out over several days to show Facebook’s algorithm that you have an active profile. Keep posting multiple posts per day until you have 20-30 pieces of good content on your profile. After that, posting one or two times per week is recommended, but more is always encouraged. You never have to worry about posting too much content on Facebook!
Maintaining active posting will cause you to start showing up in customers’ feeds, and in turn, they’ll start following you. You can actively seek out customers in communities called Groups. Simply search for adult-related keywords that are specific to your business, and there is almost guaranteed to be a Group that exists around it. Joining the Group and interacting with the members will cause them to follow your profile as well. You can also look for geographic-specific groups if you have a brick-and-mortar store.
Twitter is the lawless wasteland of the social platforms, which is perfect for us in the adult industry. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has practically no restrictions. You are free to post any and all products, nudity, pornographic material and anything else that could be relevant to your business or customers’ interests. Because of this unrestricted freedom, Twitter is lit up with kinksters and other highly sexually active people, making this the ideal platform for an adult company to have a presence. Much like Facebook, you want to be consistent in your posting (again, no such thing as too much here), and you want to like, follow, comment and share (retweet) your customers’ posts.
Twitter originated the use of hashtags (#), which work like keywords, helping everyone in the Twitter community to organize, sort, search and filter their posts. You can list multiple relevant hashtags on your posts so customers browsing those topics will find you, and ideally end up following you. Having a high number of followers is key to having a prominent, reputable profile and company on Twitter.
Finding and following other users is the quickest way to build a strong following of your own. Search for hashtags and keywords that are relevant to the products that you sell, and you will instantly find thousands of posts from customers using that exact keyword/hashtag. From there, go to the customer’s profile and follow them, and in many cases, they will reciprocate by following you back. After you follow them, you will receive a short list of recommended profiles that you can also follow that will be relevant to that customers’ interests, which in most cases will be relevant to your business.
Building a follower base on Twitter with your ideal customers will give your business the highest quality attention over any other platform. On your feed, you can also see what they are posting, share their content, like and comment on their posts and even open up a private dialogue in DMs (direct messaging). Here is where you can truly build rapport with your customers. This will ultimately be the most impactful and rewarding action you can take on any social media platform. Instagram
Instagram is an excellent platform for those businesses that are able to produce a large amount of visual content. This could be product photos, store photos, photos at a trade show/ event, captioned photos, advertising banners or anything else relevant to your business. Instagram has proven to have the fastest-growing follower base for us over any other social platform we use, but it also requires the most work and consistency.
Instagram’s restrictions are the same as Facebook’s but their tolerance for adult content is razor thin, so all of the content posted here needs to be very mild and watered down. Because of these tight restrictions, there are not many adult companies in this space. As a result, the user base of Instagram flocks to any adult material, allowing you to quickly build a reputation.
The key to a successful Instagram page is to post consistently, but only a few posts per day as the maximum. Otherwise, Instagram will flag the profile as spam and possibly remove it. When creating your posts, you will also want to utilize relevant hashtags to make your content discoverable to new customers.
You can also build your following on Instagram using the same strategy as on Twitter, by searching the relevant hashtags and following a handful of users. You do not want to follow too many users on Instagram in one sitting, or they may flag you for spam. The strategy for Instagram is to know you are running a marathon, not a sprint.
We have been utilizing all social media platforms for the better part of four years. This vehicle has been our single largest driver for sales and awareness, with over 60 percent of all of the customers that visit our web shop discovering us on social media. It is the most cost-efficient method of advertising we have discovered, only requiring a bit of time and creativity — but the exposure it provides our company makes it well worth the work. Feel free to look us up and follow us to see how we post on each platform, and the strategies we implement along the way.
Austin Madore is the founder and owner of Locked in Lust, a manufacturer of chastity devices.
