Increasing revenue through social media? Here's how it works [Republished]
Hello dear listeners! We’re back from summer break with a little surprise for you: so you won’t get bored until the release of our brand-new episode on August 14, we’ve brought along one of our podcast episodes from 2023. Because the topic is still highly relevant for online sellers – so definitely tune in!
Whether on your smartphone, tablet, or PC, browsing social media has become a fixed part of everyday life for many of us. Isn’t there also a great opportunity in that for sellers to reach new customers? We think: absolutely!
How the various social media platforms work and how eBay sellers can use them for their business is explained by online marketing consultant and managing director of the agency Complus Media GmbH, Jonas Fartaczek. He is a social media expert and founded his agency back in 2018.
So that the leap from theory to practice succeeds, our hosts Isabell and David play Content Ping-Pong with Jonas and deliver a list of posting ideas that can be applied to many different businesses and eBay shops. Enjoy listening!
**Important Links**
- First podcast episode with Jonas: Social media for small and medium-sized businesses
- Statista study on social media usage in Germany
- DataReportal report on social media usage in Germany
- Creator Studio for Facebook
- ChatGPT
- Answer The Public
- Jonas’s website
- Jonas’s LinkedIn profile
- eBay Community
- eBay for Business on Facebook
- More info on the eBay podcast “All top-notch. Gladly again!” and on our podcast hosts
**Mentioned podcast episodes**
- First episode with Jonas: Social media for small and medium-sized businesses
- More traffic for my listings – here’s how it works
** Chapter markers **
- 00:00:00 to 00:00:35: Disclaimer
- 00:00:35 to 00:03:16: Intro
- 00:03:16 to 00:07:37: Is it still worth starting with social media now?
- 00:07:37 to 00:09:33: Which platforms should I actively create content for?
- 00:09:33 to 00:14:59: How do I use Instagram properly?
- 00:14:59 to 00:16:25: How do I use Facebook properly?
- 00:16:25 to 00:18:42: Which content formats can I use to reach new customers?
- 00:18:42 to 00:30:22: Bring on the posting ideas! We’re playing Content Ping-Pong.
Lisa: Hello dear listeners. Did you think you’d have to get through the summer break completely without any input? Don’t worry! So you won’t get bored until the release of our brand-new episode on August 14, we’ve brought along one of our podcast episodes from 2023: increasing sales through social media. In this episode, you’ll learn how the different social media platforms actually work and how you can best use them for your business. On top of that, there are plenty of ideas for posts you can implement right after listening. So definitely stick around! Enjoy listening!
Isabell: Whether on a smartphone, tablet or PC, browsing social media has become a fixed part of everyday life for many of us. Isn’t that also a huge opportunity for sellers to reach new customers? We think: definitely! So that you know exactly how the different platforms work and how you can use them for your business, today we have a special guest: Jonas Fartaczek, online marketing consultant and managing director of the agency “complus Media GmbH”. He founded his agency back in 2018 and is a real social media expert. Today we’re also playing Content Ping-Pong and giving you a fresh list of posting ideas. Enjoy listening.
Jonas: So I think Facebook is often dismissed as, yeah, that’s the platform where all the “old” people are, and all those young cool people are somewhere else. I still don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Facebook is dead, even when I look at our customers’ accounts. Very often, sales still come through Facebook, maybe also because there’s sometimes a more affluent target audience there. So I wouldn’t underestimate it.
Isabell: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of “All top-notch. Gladly again!” the eBay podcast all about commerce and e-commerce. I’m Isabell Butterwegge, Seller Engagement Manager at eBay Germany, and today I’m once again in the studio with my podcast colleague David Philippe. David is also a Seller Engagement Manager at eBay Germany. Hey, David!
David: Hi Isabell, I also think it’s really nice to be back here, but we’re not alone here, which has actually happened from time to time lately, because today we also have someone else with us. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably already know him. We have online marketing consultant Jonas Fartaczek here. He is managing director of the agency “complus Media” and specializes in social media performance marketing, so among other things he manages ads for smaller and larger medium-sized companies in the e-commerce space.
Isabell: Yes, Jonas is the ideal contact for social media, and he already proved that to us in an earlier episode. We’ll link that again in the show notes. Today we’d like to refresh the knowledge from that old episode a little. Back then we mainly talked about Instagram, and today we want to give you content ideas that can be put straight into practice. So, today we really want to talk about practical implementation in the social media space.
David: Exactly, because at the various stops of our event series “eBay das Lokal” we noticed that there are still quite a few open questions around the topic of social media, and so we’re really looking forward to Jonas and his box of content ideas. So first of all, welcome back to the studio, Jonas!
Jonas: Hey you two! So great to be here with you again!
David: Before we open that box of content ideas, just as a recap or refresher for our listeners on the topic of social media knowledge: honestly, hand on heart, for all those sellers who aren’t very active on social media yet, should they even start now? Is the train already gone, or is it still worth it?
Jonas: I’d definitely start with social media again now. I think everyone will get annoyed looking back in three years and saying: man, why didn’t I start back then after I listened to the podcast! That would have been the perfect day!
David: I definitely feel the same way. But for our listeners, results are always especially interesting, and maybe also as a preview for the episode. You don’t just do social media because you want to do social media, but actually to achieve something with it, and that’s where the topic of measuring success is of course important. Is it even possible to come up with a standard definition of success for social media?
Jonas: So, most people, when you ask them about certain metrics, look at likes and followers and things like that. But honestly, we’re all sellers, we’re all business owners. We look at two things: revenue and expenses, and somehow it has to be worth it — meaning the time, the money, the investment I put into my channels. Somewhere I need to see and feel that reflected in my sales time.
Isabell: Yes, and when we talk about revenue, we’re basically already in e-commerce, meaning the sellers active on eBay naturally want to sell and generate sales. The bridge between e-commerce and social media is also nicely called “social commerce”. Nowadays on eBay you can link your commercial social media accounts, i.e. business accounts, with your eBay account and then basically write a post directly from the Seller Hub Pro, the interface used by our commercial sellers. What you’re doing there is basically posting an offer directly on social media. What do you think of that?
Jonas: I think it’s totally great, because eBay makes it very, very easy for me to share my content on the social media platforms, especially on several platforms at the same time. I think that saves a lot of time.
Isabell: Yes, it’s already nice to have confirmation from an external expert that we’re moving in the right direction there. Still, we keep hearing feedback that sellers, as David just said, are a bit doubtful about whether they should really jump on the social media train now. How is it in Germany right now? Where are people hanging out the most, and where should I best start?
Jonas: So, I completely understand the doubts, let me say that up front, because of course it’s become harder to become successful and grow on all these platforms. The more people are hanging around on them, the more competition I have for attention, and on social media it’s basically about getting attention for your product and service. But I still believe that social media channels are among the most important communication media we have. Around 61 percent of Germans still use Facebook monthly, or 57, 58 percent use Instagram. That means that with just those two platforms, which are very easy to use because they’re so closely connected, I can reach more than half of internet users in Germany, and that actually makes it totally easy to get active there. For many people, though, it’s also often just an excuse to say, yeah, it’s gotten so difficult, and that’s why they don’t want to start. I always say, you have to have actually tried it, and then we can talk about it again.
Isabell: What I find so fascinating about social media is that there’s actually no cannibalization, meaning one person can follow ten or 100 businesses too.
David: Yeah, it’s not like, I’m following this business now, so I can’t follow your business anymore. That doesn’t work like that, right?
Jonas: No, definitely not. Of course you can follow multiple businesses, but naturally in your feed, where you consume the content, you’re now competing with several businesses. And yes, that also relates to the initial question of whether it’s still worth getting started now. Yes, of course there is competitive pressure, and if you had started on Facebook or Instagram ten years ago, then yes, you’d probably be further along now and would probably already have more followers. Back then it was also easier on the platforms. So the rule of thumb is: when a platform is relatively young, growth is still relatively easy, because the time users spend on the platform is generally higher than the content available there; and the older a platform gets, the more content you have. The time, however, stays the same — it’s limited to 24 hours, theoretically, and let’s just hope nobody is hanging around on Instagram for 24 hours.
David: But Jonas, back to basics, also for our listeners. Yes, you just mentioned Facebook, Instagram — there are plenty of others too. If you have someone who is just starting or is still relatively at the beginning and says, I may not have time to cover everything. What would your recommendations be? Which platforms should our listeners actively create content for, in your opinion?
Jonas: I think getting started on social media is still easiest with Instagram, simply because the way you publish content there is relatively straightforward. If I think of TikTok, then I immediately need videos and a camera, and for a beginner it’s maybe just a bit more complicated. That means, personally, if I had to start from zero, I’d begin with Instagram and then see Facebook as an extension of that, because when you want to publish content on Instagram, you can tick a box and the same content appears on Facebook too. That means I can effectively cover two platforms — the two platforms with the greatest reach. With Facebook and Instagram combined, we reach just under 43 million people in Germany. That’s quite a lot. With relatively little effort, I can cover both platforms, and as a seller I’d probably still start with that. Unless I’m totally comfortable with video and think it’s really cool to jump right in, then maybe TikTok is the one, simply because it’s a young and growing platform.
David: And you’re saying: Instagram, Facebook, 43 million. That probably covers a big chunk of your target audience too, right?
Jonas: So, if I think about Germany, I believe we have 84/85 million inhabitants, and 43 million are reached through these two platforms. Let’s subtract everyone who is too young for a smartphone, and everyone who is too old for a smartphone — that’s almost everyone. Let’s agree on that!
Isabell: Okay, so today we’ll mainly be talking about Instagram and Facebook, meaning listeners: if you’d like to learn more about TikTok, then feel free to write to us in the eBay Community or directly on our Facebook page “eBay for Business Germany”. Then we’d be happy to invite Jonas back onto the podcast, and we’ll talk in detail just about TikTok.
Jonas: I’m happy to come a third time too.
Isabell: Very nice! Jonas, then give us an overview of Instagram. How can I improve my eBay presence as an eBay seller on Instagram, or how can I even get started on the platform?
Jonas: So, I think there are mainly two things you should pay attention to when you start on Instagram. There are formats that are especially suited to quickly getting a lot of reach. Reels are a big part of that. I think that’s the trending format right now when it comes to getting a lot of reach very quickly.
Isabell: Could you briefly say what a “Reel” is? In case someone hasn’t heard the term before.
Jonas: Yes, a Reel is simply a short video: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a classic video, called a “Reel” on Instagram. Just like videos on TikTok are called TikToks, they’re called Reels on Instagram. Exactly, that’s a Reel. I still think it’s the format with which I can currently get a lot of reach relatively quickly, also simply because the algorithm works a bit differently than curation in the normal feed. Um, that’s one. We had this last time in the previous episode, if you remember, those were the things on the pedestrian zone: approaching people, making new contacts, flirting with people, winking — that was it. The second format worth mentioning when it comes to getting reach, in my opinion, is the classic carousel post. Why? Because you have to swipe through it — those are the different images that come one after another, where I can then swipe through. I spend a lot of time on that content, and a lot of time on one piece of content is usually a positive signal to the algorithm saying, this must be really interesting. Someone is spending a lot of time on it, so I’ll give it a lot of reach, because honestly, Instagram also just wants you to spend as much time as possible on the platform. That’s their main goal. So, those are the two formats I’d recommend if you want to quickly build reach and get started. And the second type of content we have on the platform is: in the last podcast, this was like, this second and third and fourth date you had after getting to know someone. Those are mainly story formats, feed posts or also the chat, where I can, of course, also send links to individual products in one-to-one exchanges, which I can’t always do with every post in my feed.
David: With stories or in the feed too, it’s the case that you have to keep in mind only followers really see them, right?
Jonas: Exactly, that’s basically the distinction. In general, I usually only see stories if I follow you and your business. Whereas Reels are something that people who don’t follow you yet can also see, as long as they’re simply interested in your topic, for example DIY. And then, and I wouldn’t underestimate this, there’s the whole topic of chat. I think Instagram is basically a huge chat platform now. Also this whole broadcast channel thing. So anyone who wants to deal with chatting on Instagram — I think there’s still real potential there, and it’ll probably keep evolving. Many people now use it, at least in my circle of acquaintances — very subjective, of course. But when I talk to younger colleagues, many of them say, hey, just give me your Instagram account. Back then we exchanged phone numbers, and nowadays everything is on Instagram, but not because I want to look at your pictures somehow — just because I want to chat with you. So I think this chat topic is really still underestimated, and of course it’s also an opportunity for me as a seller to post or send links to my eBay profile and so on, which I can’t do in a normal post.
David: What other options do I have to build more reach besides the different formats? I mean, do hashtags still help, or is that already over?
Jonas: If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said hashtags are dead, because I was actually convinced that the algorithms now understand so well what the posts are about that you don’t need them anymore, since hashtags originally existed to categorize content and to categorize it by topic. I think they’re having a bit of a revival right now. So I’d still use them, and it absolutely makes sense to occasionally take a look, and especially I’d check which hashtags my target audience is active in — not some random “Follow4Follow” or “PicOfTheDay” or anything like that, but actually think, okay, in this DIY niche, maybe DIY with pallets, take a very specific look: okay, where is my target audience actually hanging out? And then use those hashtags.
Isabell: How do I do that? So how can I find out whether a hashtag works for me now?
Jonas: Research, take your phone and just look. Of course there are also tools that can help with that. But I think when I’m just starting on a platform like this, it helps enormously to simply take my own phone and look around a bit within my niche to see what others are doing and what’s happening under those respective hashtags. And if I then understand the mechanisms through that too, I think you understand the mechanisms better, and then using third-party tools afterwards that help me with research is smart in the second step, once I’ve understood how it basically works.
David: In that context, what equipment would be needed to get started on Instagram? Do you need to invest heavily right away, or can it be simple?
Jonas: So, I think the most important equipment we all have in our pocket or handbag: our phone. I’d start by taking photos and making videos with my phone. I think that’s enough. And if you want to go to the next level, maybe get a nicer or better microphone for your phone, if you actually want to make videos where you’ll be speaking, so the sound and sound quality are good. But I think before I invest heavily in video equipment, I’d rather think a lot about what I even want to show. Because sometimes the quality doesn’t matter — the content is what counts.
David: I think we’ve already covered quite a lot, and in the first podcast episode on the whole topic we also said a lot about Instagram. So to everyone who wants even more information now, feel free to listen to that episode — it’s linked in the show notes. But now I’d like to move on to Facebook. What do I need to pay attention to there, Jonas?
Jonas: So, I think Facebook is often dismissed as, yeah, that’s the platform where all the “old” people are, and all those young cool people are somewhere else. I still don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Facebook is dead, even when I look at our customers’ accounts. Very often, sales still come through Facebook, maybe also because there’s sometimes a more affluent target audience there. So I wouldn’t underestimate it. That’s the first thing. And the second is, I already hinted at it earlier: basically, when I publish content on Instagram, Instagram already gives me the option to publish the same content on Facebook too. The second option is simply to publish the content directly on the computer for both platforms via the “Facebook Creator Studio” or “Meta Creator Studio”. There I can cover both platforms at the same time and then publish content through that.
Isabell: And where do I find that?
Jonas: We should definitely put the link in the show notes. It’s a free tool directly from Meta itself.
Isabell: Ah, great, so that means when I sit down to produce content and think about what I actually want to post, I don’t think about what I post on Facebook and what I post on Instagram, but instead I sit down once and basically do both in one go.
Jonas: Exactly, I’d think about what kind of content I want. What story do I want to tell? And the platform doesn’t matter at all.
David: Jonas, how would you categorize the main content themes that sellers can use as a guide when they want to post regularly?
Jonas: So, I think most people immediately think product, product, product, product. That’s one category, and it’s also right — product-related posts. The second is, of course, I can also tell a bit of the story around it, the whole company background. Why did I even found the business? Why do I even sell on eBay, all that story around it. The third, I think, is always quite exciting: facts, news, and other topics around my niche, my product, my subject. And the fourth topic, especially when sellers get bigger, is of course the whole thing about “branding” and “employer branding”. So when it comes to maybe attracting employees through the platform, I also think that’s an important topic.
David: So just to summarize again, you shouldn’t only post your own products — so not having an account where only ads for the products are posted — but maybe also talk a bit more about the company, news in that area too, so beyond your own business, show a bit of expertise, and if you eventually get big enough and are interested in hiring staff, then also address that topic, right?
Jonas: Yes, last time we said exactly that. There’s no point in going down to the pedestrian zone and immediately making a marriage proposal saying: buy me, buy me, buy me, buy me! That gets annoying at some point. Instead, we first need to get into a conversation. Basically, these are all entertainment media. It’s about entertainment. We want to be entertained. I’m on Instagram because I’m bored right now, not because I urgently want to shop with you. For that, I might go directly to eBay. So really, it’s an entertainment medium, and that should be the focus. And of course, in this bored setting the user may be in, I can manage to sell my product through that.
David: And what I also find interesting — you mentioned it earlier again — is the whole topic of “chat”, yes, that’s also another opportunity to open up a channel to approach the whole topic of customer service or even just advice. How do you see that?
David: Absolutely, absolutely! I think chat is a super good way to get into personal exchange with customers. That’s really great! It leads to really good conversations. And yes, customer support, questions in advance, all those topics too. What is actually stopping me right now from buying this product? Being able to discuss that in chat, or offering people the chance to say, hey, just write me if you have questions. I think that’s really good, really great, super good idea!
Isabell: Of course, it’s also a great opportunity to get to know your customers better, even if that naturally comes with a lot of time investment. But good customer service should already be covered for most people anyway. We announced at the beginning that today we had thought of something very special for this episode, because the question of what should I even post comes up a lot. You already named the four categories just now, of course it shouldn’t only be product-related posts, but what can I do then? And yes, today we want to inspire our listeners a bit and give them a few tips, a few ideas, and basically take away the fear of that first step of posting something. So now we want to play “Content Ping-Pong” together. We’re going to toss a few ideas back and forth that you, dear listeners, can use to place your businesses on Instagram and also on Facebook, and let’s see how many ideas we can come up with.
Jonas: How many do we need?
Isabell: I’d say ten.
Jonas: Ah, ten and we’d be done quickly, no, we need, we need a challenge!
David: Let me put it this way: we have 52 weeks in the year, Christmas and Easter are covered, 50 ideas! Can we do it?
Jonas: All right, 50 ideas! Then let’s go!
Isabell: You start, Jonas.
Jonas: So I think the very first thing, and also the most obvious, is to first tell or think about what the product idea was. What motivated me to be active on the platform as a seller? That’s a great source of inspiration, and honestly, let’s count that as three or four posts right away. You can do a lot with that. I can make an infographic out of it, I can make a video, I can make a Reel, I can already do a story about it, because I think just this idea of talking about the first step contains so, so, so, so much.
David: So a bit of the company history. Why did I found it? Why did I start selling?
Jonas: So, I think company history alone is already 50 posts for some sellers and merchants. I think we’re done quickly here now. That was easy.
Isabell: It’s not that easy for us, but what’s also super exciting, of course, besides the company history, is the story of the products, meaning how is the product made? Where does the idea for the product come from? It goes hand in hand a bit, so I think that’s also always super exciting.
Jonas: Behind the scenes, an absolute classic.
David: I also just find tutorials interesting. How do I use the product? Especially if you maybe don’t have such a self-explanatory product like, I don’t know, a knife or a fork or something? Yes, but something a bit more complex, I don’t know, brakes for a car or something — how do I install them properly? Stuff like that always works and at the same time is even a service.
Jonas: Yeah, so I think “step-by-step guide”, “basic guide” for getting XY done, “this is how you learn yoga”, and here’s how you can use my yoga block, some beginner tutorials for this and that, do yoga like a pro. Now we’ve gotten stuck on yoga, we need something else here. Making coffee properly. Making coffee properly, like a pro. I think if you just think about this, this tutorial topic with different “hooks”, as I always call the angle, the point of view. I think you can come up with a lot of ideas that way, or a guide on how to create this and that or how to make this and that, I always find that great too.
Isabell: Now we actually said we wanted to leave product content out, but of course what you can also do is post discounts and voucher promotions and things like that. On eBay, for example, you can also create voucher codes that you only share on social media. That’s also a cool add-on to basically round out the story a little more.
Jonas: I think voucher codes are great precisely because they’re also a way to measure how efficient what I’m doing on social media actually is.
David: That’s almost next level already here.
Jonas: This is Champions League stuff now, but really, that’s the best thing about a voucher, giving a discount. I always say that’s cheap marketing — I can always give discounts, boring, but actually using vouchers to measure, okay, how often was the voucher I only published on Instagram redeemed? That gives me insight into how efficient what I’m doing is. That brings me back to your initial question, how do I actually measure success? Exactly like that.
David: Yes, absolutely. Another idea would of course be to do something like product of the month or product of the week, to highlight a special product, maybe paired with a voucher code to really push it. But that also gives you something you can do regularly, so you’ve already got at least one post per week or per month covered.
Isabell: What I also always think is cool — you talked a lot about communication and chat and stuff. I also really like these Q&As, where all the questions come in bundled and you answer them publicly in stories in a bundled way.
Jonas: Either use Instagram’s Q&A function to get questions, or my secret tip for really good Q&A is honestly all the reviews and questions that come in on the platform itself, that land in your inbox at eBay and that your users write about your products, and use that as a source of inspiration to create content from it. If the question keeps coming up whether this T-shirt fits me — does it run large or small — then explaining that in a video or in an image or in a carousel? Great idea! And something else that comes to mind in this context is always this idea of problem and solution. What problem does my product solve? And then I talk about the problem and then say, hey, look, here’s my product, that’s the solution to it.
David: Also, and because we already said it earlier, yes, industry topics — if you have industry news or other industry information, I mean, you’re usually an expert in the area you sell in anyway, and posting about that I find absolutely legitimate. So it doesn’t always have to be about my company or the product, but if something happens in the industry and I can say something useful about it, that’s definitely worth a post to me.
Jonas: Also, people who inspire you — I always find that super interesting too, and not just taking a quote from them and then all of us sharing the same quotes on Instagram, not at all. That can make sense if it fits my product, but it’s usually the same ones. But maybe in my industry there is actually a guru I admire too, maybe.
David: Yes, and much more, or I always find it more interesting: not just, yes, this is the person who inspires me, but why does the person inspire you? What about them inspires you and what has it changed in you?
Isabell: Yes, and besides all the inspiration and the story around it, what also always works are holidays and seasonal trends. If I sell costumes, then carnival is obviously my peak time. What are the top Christmas gifts, what works well at Easter, Father’s Day, whatever, or of course as an evergreen, birthday gifts.
David: Who doesn’t know it? The birthday car!
Jonas: What I try to do, or what I always recommend, is making top 5 or top 10 lists, and then saying the “Top 10: gift ideas for birthdays”, the “Top 10 tips for doing XYZ”, the “5 tips for finding beautiful garden furniture”, the “5 trends for...”. That helps in several ways, because what’s actually exciting right now, what we’re doing right now, is that we’re talking a lot about different ideas. We haven’t even talked about formats yet, and that’s actually the clever part. I haven’t counted, maybe we’re already at 15 or 20 ideas. But if I manage to make not just one post from each of these ideas, but several, then it gets really exciting. Then everything multiplies. Because if I take my top 5 birthday gift list, for example, and make a video about it, then I could of course also do the same in a carousel. And now that we already have the five products, I could also do something for each individual product. And very often in consulting I notice that people have this thought, well, now I’ve got something on this topic, that’s enough. No, I always compare it a bit to sustainability. If you eat meat and you kill a cow for it, this, this cow is the topic, and now we want to use the individual parts. There’s no point in only using the fillet. There’s still a lot more on it. What do we actually do with the rib? And then thinking about how we divide that up across the different channels? Then I can do a huge amount from one idea, top-5 ideas or “birthday gift ideas”, by breaking it down across the different platforms and the different formats on the platform.
Isabell: What would you say about how often one should post something? So, for example, I now have my list of the top 5 ideas. When should I post something again next?
Jonas: The expert in me would of course say, ideally daily and ideally several times a day. But let’s be realistic: that never pays off for small and medium-sized sellers. So maybe let’s start with once a week — that would already be great, and then our 50 ideas today are enough too. More is more. That really is true, because with every video I publish, with every Reel, I of course also have the chance to reach new people.
Isabell: Yes, we’ve brainstormed a lot of ideas now. I’m very sure there are many more ideas out there. But we’ve just realized that once you sit down and brainstorm, you can really milk that very well and very quickly. Would you say that before you start, first make a rough list, make a plan for how much you want to post, or just start right away? Do it blindly before you have a plan.
Jonas: Having a plan is always great, of course, especially when I have a big pool of ideas I can draw from at any time, because when I actually sit down and do a photoshoot or produce a video, I also find synergies with other topics that may be nearby to that topic and can use them right away too. The hardest thing is simply getting up in the morning and saying, I really should post something on Instagram again, because I never think of anything suitable in the morning.
David: What if someone says: okay, I’m going to try to gather my 50 ideas, and after ten ideas I’m stuck? What can you do then? Where do I find inspiration?
Jonas: So, I think one source of inspiration that a lot of people are using right now is “ChatGPT” — there, I said it. There’s a lot of material for different industries. If you write smart prompts there, a lot of useful knowledge actually comes out, which I also think is good. Another tool is “AnswerThePublic”. I don’t know if you know it; otherwise I can maybe explain it in one sentence.
David: A quick explanation never hurts. #00:28:38-2# Jonas: Basically, it’s nothing more than a Google search. I type something in there and search for a topic, and what “AnswerThePublic” does is basically also query all the who-what-where-why-type questions around it on Google — like how do I do this, what do I do there? Why do I do that? And through all these who-what-why questions around this product, I then see all the questions other users are asking on the internet about this topic, and if you enter a word there, by the way, you get hundreds of ideas. If we had said that at the beginning, we could have saved the episode.
David: Of course we’ll also post the link in the show notes as a little service for our listeners. One thing I’d still like to mention briefly: we said earlier that once you’ve grown a bit bigger, the whole topic of “employer branding” also becomes relevant. So you can post about that on social media too, maybe to attract new employees.
Jonas: Absolutely! It’s super helpful to be attractive as a company not only for customers, but also for new employees, and even if it’s just photos from the Christmas party, that’s content too, of course.
Isabell: And what we also learned in the episode on offer optimization, of course, is to always look at what the competition is doing, look at what I can copy and what I might also do better.
Jonas: But also in terms of social media now, take a look at what the competition is doing on Facebook and Instagram, or on TikTok, and let it inspire you, not copy it. But inspiration is great! If they have a really, really good Reel on a topic, just turn that into an infographic, and boom — you’ve got content!
David: Absolutely. But I’m just hearing from the control room that we need to wrap up soon. So I think we definitely have enough content ideas.
Jonas: Are we already at 50?
David: I don’t think quite 50, but we did also give some ideas on where else to look for inspiration.
Jonas: Okay, if we count that as ten, I think we’ve done it!
David: Jonas, you’ve already been here as a guest before. So you know what’s waiting for you at the end. At the end of every podcast episode, we ask: what was the last thing you bought on eBay?
Jonas: I think recently I made quite a few sellers happy on eBay, because I moved, and we have a completely newly furnished living room.
David: Can you remember what you last bought for the living room?
Jonas: Actually a shelf divider.
David: Okay, so a work area and living area separation, right?
Jonas: Living and dining separation, a bit of industrial style with wood, definitely pretty cool. I’m happy!
David: Very nice! Jonas, many, many thanks for the “Content Ping-Pong”. That was really fun. We should do something like that more often.
Isabell: Definitely.
David: I’m also sure there were some ideas and points of reflection in there for the listeners to get their social media channels really moving again, or also for everyone who is just starting with social media and wants to make their eBay presence more visible.
Isabell: Yes, Jonas, a big thank-you from me as well. Thanks a lot for the knowledge update on Facebook and Instagram. The platforms have changed a bit since we last spoke. I think we need to make this a regular thing now.
Jonas: Thanks for inviting me again, and if that’s already being hinted at, I’d be happy to come back.
David: Very nice, dear listeners, thanks a lot for tuning in and listening. We want to hear from you in the eBay Community or also on our Facebook page “eBay for Business Germany”: did our “Content Ping-Pong” help you? Were you inspired? Are you already active on social media or do you want to become active now? And above all, if you’re already active, where do you get your inspiration from?
Isabell: Yes, and if you want to learn more about the social media platform TikTok, as I said, please write to us — then we’ll bring in another expert here to the studio. We hope you really enjoyed this episode, and of course we’re always happy if you leave us a subscription or a like wherever you’re listening to us, if that’s possible. Yes, and with that, goodbye and see you next time!
David: Bye!
Isabell: Whether on a smartphone, tablet or PC, browsing social media has become a fixed part of everyday life for many of us. Isn’t that also a huge opportunity for sellers to reach new customers? We think: definitely! So that you know exactly how the different platforms work and how you can use them for your business, today we have a special guest: Jonas Fartaczek, online marketing consultant and managing director of the agency “complus Media GmbH”. He founded his agency back in 2018 and is a real social media expert. Today we’re also playing Content Ping-Pong and giving you a fresh list of posting ideas. Enjoy listening.
Jonas: So I think Facebook is often dismissed as, yeah, that’s the platform where all the “old” people are, and all those young cool people are somewhere else. I still don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Facebook is dead, even when I look at our customers’ accounts. Very often, sales still come through Facebook, maybe also because there’s sometimes a more affluent target audience there. So I wouldn’t underestimate it.
Isabell: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to another episode of “All top-notch. Gladly again!” the eBay podcast all about commerce and e-commerce. I’m Isabell Butterwegge, Seller Engagement Manager at eBay Germany, and today I’m once again in the studio with my podcast colleague David Philippe. David is also a Seller Engagement Manager at eBay Germany. Hey, David!
David: Hi Isabell, I also think it’s really nice to be back here, but we’re not alone here, which has actually happened from time to time lately, because today we also have someone else with us. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably already know him. We have online marketing consultant Jonas Fartaczek here. He is managing director of the agency “complus Media” and specializes in social media performance marketing, so among other things he manages ads for smaller and larger medium-sized companies in the e-commerce space.
Isabell: Yes, Jonas is the ideal contact for social media, and he already proved that to us in an earlier episode. We’ll link that again in the show notes. Today we’d like to refresh the knowledge from that old episode a little. Back then we mainly talked about Instagram, and today we want to give you content ideas that can be put straight into practice. So, today we really want to talk about practical implementation in the social media space.
David: Exactly, because at the various stops of our event series “eBay das Lokal” we noticed that there are still quite a few open questions around the topic of social media, and so we’re really looking forward to Jonas and his box of content ideas. So first of all, welcome back to the studio, Jonas!
Jonas: Hey you two! So great to be here with you again!
David: Before we open that box of content ideas, just as a recap or refresher for our listeners on the topic of social media knowledge: honestly, hand on heart, for all those sellers who aren’t very active on social media yet, should they even start now? Is the train already gone, or is it still worth it?
Jonas: I’d definitely start with social media again now. I think everyone will get annoyed looking back in three years and saying: man, why didn’t I start back then after I listened to the podcast! That would have been the perfect day!
David: I definitely feel the same way. But for our listeners, results are always especially interesting, and maybe also as a preview for the episode. You don’t just do social media because you want to do social media, but actually to achieve something with it, and that’s where the topic of measuring success is of course important. Is it even possible to come up with a standard definition of success for social media?
Jonas: So, most people, when you ask them about certain metrics, look at likes and followers and things like that. But honestly, we’re all sellers, we’re all business owners. We look at two things: revenue and expenses, and somehow it has to be worth it — meaning the time, the money, the investment I put into my channels. Somewhere I need to see and feel that reflected in my sales time.
Isabell: Yes, and when we talk about revenue, we’re basically already in e-commerce, meaning the sellers active on eBay naturally want to sell and generate sales. The bridge between e-commerce and social media is also nicely called “social commerce”. Nowadays on eBay you can link your commercial social media accounts, i.e. business accounts, with your eBay account and then basically write a post directly from the Seller Hub Pro, the interface used by our commercial sellers. What you’re doing there is basically posting an offer directly on social media. What do you think of that?
Jonas: I think it’s totally great, because eBay makes it very, very easy for me to share my content on the social media platforms, especially on several platforms at the same time. I think that saves a lot of time.
Isabell: Yes, it’s already nice to have confirmation from an external expert that we’re moving in the right direction there. Still, we keep hearing feedback that sellers, as David just said, are a bit doubtful about whether they should really jump on the social media train now. How is it in Germany right now? Where are people hanging out the most, and where should I best start?
Jonas: So, I completely understand the doubts, let me say that up front, because of course it’s become harder to become successful and grow on all these platforms. The more people are hanging around on them, the more competition I have for attention, and on social media it’s basically about getting attention for your product and service. But I still believe that social media channels are among the most important communication media we have. Around 61 percent of Germans still use Facebook monthly, or 57, 58 percent use Instagram. That means that with just those two platforms, which are very easy to use because they’re so closely connected, I can reach more than half of internet users in Germany, and that actually makes it totally easy to get active there. For many people, though, it’s also often just an excuse to say, yeah, it’s gotten so difficult, and that’s why they don’t want to start. I always say, you have to have actually tried it, and then we can talk about it again.
Isabell: What I find so fascinating about social media is that there’s actually no cannibalization, meaning one person can follow ten or 100 businesses too.
David: Yeah, it’s not like, I’m following this business now, so I can’t follow your business anymore. That doesn’t work like that, right?
Jonas: No, definitely not. Of course you can follow multiple businesses, but naturally in your feed, where you consume the content, you’re now competing with several businesses. And yes, that also relates to the initial question of whether it’s still worth getting started now. Yes, of course there is competitive pressure, and if you had started on Facebook or Instagram ten years ago, then yes, you’d probably be further along now and would probably already have more followers. Back then it was also easier on the platforms. So the rule of thumb is: when a platform is relatively young, growth is still relatively easy, because the time users spend on the platform is generally higher than the content available there; and the older a platform gets, the more content you have. The time, however, stays the same — it’s limited to 24 hours, theoretically, and let’s just hope nobody is hanging around on Instagram for 24 hours.
David: But Jonas, back to basics, also for our listeners. Yes, you just mentioned Facebook, Instagram — there are plenty of others too. If you have someone who is just starting or is still relatively at the beginning and says, I may not have time to cover everything. What would your recommendations be? Which platforms should our listeners actively create content for, in your opinion?
Jonas: I think getting started on social media is still easiest with Instagram, simply because the way you publish content there is relatively straightforward. If I think of TikTok, then I immediately need videos and a camera, and for a beginner it’s maybe just a bit more complicated. That means, personally, if I had to start from zero, I’d begin with Instagram and then see Facebook as an extension of that, because when you want to publish content on Instagram, you can tick a box and the same content appears on Facebook too. That means I can effectively cover two platforms — the two platforms with the greatest reach. With Facebook and Instagram combined, we reach just under 43 million people in Germany. That’s quite a lot. With relatively little effort, I can cover both platforms, and as a seller I’d probably still start with that. Unless I’m totally comfortable with video and think it’s really cool to jump right in, then maybe TikTok is the one, simply because it’s a young and growing platform.
David: And you’re saying: Instagram, Facebook, 43 million. That probably covers a big chunk of your target audience too, right?
Jonas: So, if I think about Germany, I believe we have 84/85 million inhabitants, and 43 million are reached through these two platforms. Let’s subtract everyone who is too young for a smartphone, and everyone who is too old for a smartphone — that’s almost everyone. Let’s agree on that!
Isabell: Okay, so today we’ll mainly be talking about Instagram and Facebook, meaning listeners: if you’d like to learn more about TikTok, then feel free to write to us in the eBay Community or directly on our Facebook page “eBay for Business Germany”. Then we’d be happy to invite Jonas back onto the podcast, and we’ll talk in detail just about TikTok.
Jonas: I’m happy to come a third time too.
Isabell: Very nice! Jonas, then give us an overview of Instagram. How can I improve my eBay presence as an eBay seller on Instagram, or how can I even get started on the platform?
Jonas: So, I think there are mainly two things you should pay attention to when you start on Instagram. There are formats that are especially suited to quickly getting a lot of reach. Reels are a big part of that. I think that’s the trending format right now when it comes to getting a lot of reach very quickly.
Isabell: Could you briefly say what a “Reel” is? In case someone hasn’t heard the term before.
Jonas: Yes, a Reel is simply a short video: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a classic video, called a “Reel” on Instagram. Just like videos on TikTok are called TikToks, they’re called Reels on Instagram. Exactly, that’s a Reel. I still think it’s the format with which I can currently get a lot of reach relatively quickly, also simply because the algorithm works a bit differently than curation in the normal feed. Um, that’s one. We had this last time in the previous episode, if you remember, those were the things on the pedestrian zone: approaching people, making new contacts, flirting with people, winking — that was it. The second format worth mentioning when it comes to getting reach, in my opinion, is the classic carousel post. Why? Because you have to swipe through it — those are the different images that come one after another, where I can then swipe through. I spend a lot of time on that content, and a lot of time on one piece of content is usually a positive signal to the algorithm saying, this must be really interesting. Someone is spending a lot of time on it, so I’ll give it a lot of reach, because honestly, Instagram also just wants you to spend as much time as possible on the platform. That’s their main goal. So, those are the two formats I’d recommend if you want to quickly build reach and get started. And the second type of content we have on the platform is: in the last podcast, this was like, this second and third and fourth date you had after getting to know someone. Those are mainly story formats, feed posts or also the chat, where I can, of course, also send links to individual products in one-to-one exchanges, which I can’t always do with every post in my feed.
David: With stories or in the feed too, it’s the case that you have to keep in mind only followers really see them, right?
Jonas: Exactly, that’s basically the distinction. In general, I usually only see stories if I follow you and your business. Whereas Reels are something that people who don’t follow you yet can also see, as long as they’re simply interested in your topic, for example DIY. And then, and I wouldn’t underestimate this, there’s the whole topic of chat. I think Instagram is basically a huge chat platform now. Also this whole broadcast channel thing. So anyone who wants to deal with chatting on Instagram — I think there’s still real potential there, and it’ll probably keep evolving. Many people now use it, at least in my circle of acquaintances — very subjective, of course. But when I talk to younger colleagues, many of them say, hey, just give me your Instagram account. Back then we exchanged phone numbers, and nowadays everything is on Instagram, but not because I want to look at your pictures somehow — just because I want to chat with you. So I think this chat topic is really still underestimated, and of course it’s also an opportunity for me as a seller to post or send links to my eBay profile and so on, which I can’t do in a normal post.
David: What other options do I have to build more reach besides the different formats? I mean, do hashtags still help, or is that already over?
Jonas: If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said hashtags are dead, because I was actually convinced that the algorithms now understand so well what the posts are about that you don’t need them anymore, since hashtags originally existed to categorize content and to categorize it by topic. I think they’re having a bit of a revival right now. So I’d still use them, and it absolutely makes sense to occasionally take a look, and especially I’d check which hashtags my target audience is active in — not some random “Follow4Follow” or “PicOfTheDay” or anything like that, but actually think, okay, in this DIY niche, maybe DIY with pallets, take a very specific look: okay, where is my target audience actually hanging out? And then use those hashtags.
Isabell: How do I do that? So how can I find out whether a hashtag works for me now?
Jonas: Research, take your phone and just look. Of course there are also tools that can help with that. But I think when I’m just starting on a platform like this, it helps enormously to simply take my own phone and look around a bit within my niche to see what others are doing and what’s happening under those respective hashtags. And if I then understand the mechanisms through that too, I think you understand the mechanisms better, and then using third-party tools afterwards that help me with research is smart in the second step, once I’ve understood how it basically works.
David: In that context, what equipment would be needed to get started on Instagram? Do you need to invest heavily right away, or can it be simple?
Jonas: So, I think the most important equipment we all have in our pocket or handbag: our phone. I’d start by taking photos and making videos with my phone. I think that’s enough. And if you want to go to the next level, maybe get a nicer or better microphone for your phone, if you actually want to make videos where you’ll be speaking, so the sound and sound quality are good. But I think before I invest heavily in video equipment, I’d rather think a lot about what I even want to show. Because sometimes the quality doesn’t matter — the content is what counts.
David: I think we’ve already covered quite a lot, and in the first podcast episode on the whole topic we also said a lot about Instagram. So to everyone who wants even more information now, feel free to listen to that episode — it’s linked in the show notes. But now I’d like to move on to Facebook. What do I need to pay attention to there, Jonas?
Jonas: So, I think Facebook is often dismissed as, yeah, that’s the platform where all the “old” people are, and all those young cool people are somewhere else. I still don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think Facebook is dead, even when I look at our customers’ accounts. Very often, sales still come through Facebook, maybe also because there’s sometimes a more affluent target audience there. So I wouldn’t underestimate it. That’s the first thing. And the second is, I already hinted at it earlier: basically, when I publish content on Instagram, Instagram already gives me the option to publish the same content on Facebook too. The second option is simply to publish the content directly on the computer for both platforms via the “Facebook Creator Studio” or “Meta Creator Studio”. There I can cover both platforms at the same time and then publish content through that.
Isabell: And where do I find that?
Jonas: We should definitely put the link in the show notes. It’s a free tool directly from Meta itself.
Isabell: Ah, great, so that means when I sit down to produce content and think about what I actually want to post, I don’t think about what I post on Facebook and what I post on Instagram, but instead I sit down once and basically do both in one go.
Jonas: Exactly, I’d think about what kind of content I want. What story do I want to tell? And the platform doesn’t matter at all.
David: Jonas, how would you categorize the main content themes that sellers can use as a guide when they want to post regularly?
Jonas: So, I think most people immediately think product, product, product, product. That’s one category, and it’s also right — product-related posts. The second is, of course, I can also tell a bit of the story around it, the whole company background. Why did I even found the business? Why do I even sell on eBay, all that story around it. The third, I think, is always quite exciting: facts, news, and other topics around my niche, my product, my subject. And the fourth topic, especially when sellers get bigger, is of course the whole thing about “branding” and “employer branding”. So when it comes to maybe attracting employees through the platform, I also think that’s an important topic.
David: So just to summarize again, you shouldn’t only post your own products — so not having an account where only ads for the products are posted — but maybe also talk a bit more about the company, news in that area too, so beyond your own business, show a bit of expertise, and if you eventually get big enough and are interested in hiring staff, then also address that topic, right?
Jonas: Yes, last time we said exactly that. There’s no point in going down to the pedestrian zone and immediately making a marriage proposal saying: buy me, buy me, buy me, buy me! That gets annoying at some point. Instead, we first need to get into a conversation. Basically, these are all entertainment media. It’s about entertainment. We want to be entertained. I’m on Instagram because I’m bored right now, not because I urgently want to shop with you. For that, I might go directly to eBay. So really, it’s an entertainment medium, and that should be the focus. And of course, in this bored setting the user may be in, I can manage to sell my product through that.
David: And what I also find interesting — you mentioned it earlier again — is the whole topic of “chat”, yes, that’s also another opportunity to open up a channel to approach the whole topic of customer service or even just advice. How do you see that?
David: Absolutely, absolutely! I think chat is a super good way to get into personal exchange with customers. That’s really great! It leads to really good conversations. And yes, customer support, questions in advance, all those topics too. What is actually stopping me right now from buying this product? Being able to discuss that in chat, or offering people the chance to say, hey, just write me if you have questions. I think that’s really good, really great, super good idea!
Isabell: Of course, it’s also a great opportunity to get to know your customers better, even if that naturally comes with a lot of time investment. But good customer service should already be covered for most people anyway. We announced at the beginning that today we had thought of something very special for this episode, because the question of what should I even post comes up a lot. You already named the four categories just now, of course it shouldn’t only be product-related posts, but what can I do then? And yes, today we want to inspire our listeners a bit and give them a few tips, a few ideas, and basically take away the fear of that first step of posting something. So now we want to play “Content Ping-Pong” together. We’re going to toss a few ideas back and forth that you, dear listeners, can use to place your businesses on Instagram and also on Facebook, and let’s see how many ideas we can come up with.
Jonas: How many do we need?
Isabell: I’d say ten.
Jonas: Ah, ten and we’d be done quickly, no, we need, we need a challenge!
David: Let me put it this way: we have 52 weeks in the year, Christmas and Easter are covered, 50 ideas! Can we do it?
Jonas: All right, 50 ideas! Then let’s go!
Isabell: You start, Jonas.
Jonas: So I think the very first thing, and also the most obvious, is to first tell or think about what the product idea was. What motivated me to be active on the platform as a seller? That’s a great source of inspiration, and honestly, let’s count that as three or four posts right away. You can do a lot with that. I can make an infographic out of it, I can make a video, I can make a Reel, I can already do a story about it, because I think just this idea of talking about the first step contains so, so, so, so much.
David: So a bit of the company history. Why did I found it? Why did I start selling?
Jonas: So, I think company history alone is already 50 posts for some sellers and merchants. I think we’re done quickly here now. That was easy.
Isabell: It’s not that easy for us, but what’s also super exciting, of course, besides the company history, is the story of the products, meaning how is the product made? Where does the idea for the product come from? It goes hand in hand a bit, so I think that’s also always super exciting.
Jonas: Behind the scenes, an absolute classic.
David: I also just find tutorials interesting. How do I use the product? Especially if you maybe don’t have such a self-explanatory product like, I don’t know, a knife or a fork or something? Yes, but something a bit more complex, I don’t know, brakes for a car or something — how do I install them properly? Stuff like that always works and at the same time is even a service.
Jonas: Yeah, so I think “step-by-step guide”, “basic guide” for getting XY done, “this is how you learn yoga”, and here’s how you can use my yoga block, some beginner tutorials for this and that, do yoga like a pro. Now we’ve gotten stuck on yoga, we need something else here. Making coffee properly. Making coffee properly, like a pro. I think if you just think about this, this tutorial topic with different “hooks”, as I always call the angle, the point of view. I think you can come up with a lot of ideas that way, or a guide on how to create this and that or how to make this and that, I always find that great too.
Isabell: Now we actually said we wanted to leave product content out, but of course what you can also do is post discounts and voucher promotions and things like that. On eBay, for example, you can also create voucher codes that you only share on social media. That’s also a cool add-on to basically round out the story a little more.
Jonas: I think voucher codes are great precisely because they’re also a way to measure how efficient what I’m doing on social media actually is.
David: That’s almost next level already here.
Jonas: This is Champions League stuff now, but really, that’s the best thing about a voucher, giving a discount. I always say that’s cheap marketing — I can always give discounts, boring, but actually using vouchers to measure, okay, how often was the voucher I only published on Instagram redeemed? That gives me insight into how efficient what I’m doing is. That brings me back to your initial question, how do I actually measure success? Exactly like that.
David: Yes, absolutely. Another idea would of course be to do something like product of the month or product of the week, to highlight a special product, maybe paired with a voucher code to really push it. But that also gives you something you can do regularly, so you’ve already got at least one post per week or per month covered.
Isabell: What I also always think is cool — you talked a lot about communication and chat and stuff. I also really like these Q&As, where all the questions come in bundled and you answer them publicly in stories in a bundled way.
Jonas: Either use Instagram’s Q&A function to get questions, or my secret tip for really good Q&A is honestly all the reviews and questions that come in on the platform itself, that land in your inbox at eBay and that your users write about your products, and use that as a source of inspiration to create content from it. If the question keeps coming up whether this T-shirt fits me — does it run large or small — then explaining that in a video or in an image or in a carousel? Great idea! And something else that comes to mind in this context is always this idea of problem and solution. What problem does my product solve? And then I talk about the problem and then say, hey, look, here’s my product, that’s the solution to it.
David: Also, and because we already said it earlier, yes, industry topics — if you have industry news or other industry information, I mean, you’re usually an expert in the area you sell in anyway, and posting about that I find absolutely legitimate. So it doesn’t always have to be about my company or the product, but if something happens in the industry and I can say something useful about it, that’s definitely worth a post to me.
Jonas: Also, people who inspire you — I always find that super interesting too, and not just taking a quote from them and then all of us sharing the same quotes on Instagram, not at all. That can make sense if it fits my product, but it’s usually the same ones. But maybe in my industry there is actually a guru I admire too, maybe.
David: Yes, and much more, or I always find it more interesting: not just, yes, this is the person who inspires me, but why does the person inspire you? What about them inspires you and what has it changed in you?
Isabell: Yes, and besides all the inspiration and the story around it, what also always works are holidays and seasonal trends. If I sell costumes, then carnival is obviously my peak time. What are the top Christmas gifts, what works well at Easter, Father’s Day, whatever, or of course as an evergreen, birthday gifts.
David: Who doesn’t know it? The birthday car!
Jonas: What I try to do, or what I always recommend, is making top 5 or top 10 lists, and then saying the “Top 10: gift ideas for birthdays”, the “Top 10 tips for doing XYZ”, the “5 tips for finding beautiful garden furniture”, the “5 trends for...”. That helps in several ways, because what’s actually exciting right now, what we’re doing right now, is that we’re talking a lot about different ideas. We haven’t even talked about formats yet, and that’s actually the clever part. I haven’t counted, maybe we’re already at 15 or 20 ideas. But if I manage to make not just one post from each of these ideas, but several, then it gets really exciting. Then everything multiplies. Because if I take my top 5 birthday gift list, for example, and make a video about it, then I could of course also do the same in a carousel. And now that we already have the five products, I could also do something for each individual product. And very often in consulting I notice that people have this thought, well, now I’ve got something on this topic, that’s enough. No, I always compare it a bit to sustainability. If you eat meat and you kill a cow for it, this, this cow is the topic, and now we want to use the individual parts. There’s no point in only using the fillet. There’s still a lot more on it. What do we actually do with the rib? And then thinking about how we divide that up across the different channels? Then I can do a huge amount from one idea, top-5 ideas or “birthday gift ideas”, by breaking it down across the different platforms and the different formats on the platform.
Isabell: What would you say about how often one should post something? So, for example, I now have my list of the top 5 ideas. When should I post something again next?
Jonas: The expert in me would of course say, ideally daily and ideally several times a day. But let’s be realistic: that never pays off for small and medium-sized sellers. So maybe let’s start with once a week — that would already be great, and then our 50 ideas today are enough too. More is more. That really is true, because with every video I publish, with every Reel, I of course also have the chance to reach new people.
Isabell: Yes, we’ve brainstormed a lot of ideas now. I’m very sure there are many more ideas out there. But we’ve just realized that once you sit down and brainstorm, you can really milk that very well and very quickly. Would you say that before you start, first make a rough list, make a plan for how much you want to post, or just start right away? Do it blindly before you have a plan.
Jonas: Having a plan is always great, of course, especially when I have a big pool of ideas I can draw from at any time, because when I actually sit down and do a photoshoot or produce a video, I also find synergies with other topics that may be nearby to that topic and can use them right away too. The hardest thing is simply getting up in the morning and saying, I really should post something on Instagram again, because I never think of anything suitable in the morning.
David: What if someone says: okay, I’m going to try to gather my 50 ideas, and after ten ideas I’m stuck? What can you do then? Where do I find inspiration?
Jonas: So, I think one source of inspiration that a lot of people are using right now is “ChatGPT” — there, I said it. There’s a lot of material for different industries. If you write smart prompts there, a lot of useful knowledge actually comes out, which I also think is good. Another tool is “AnswerThePublic”. I don’t know if you know it; otherwise I can maybe explain it in one sentence.
David: A quick explanation never hurts. #00:28:38-2# Jonas: Basically, it’s nothing more than a Google search. I type something in there and search for a topic, and what “AnswerThePublic” does is basically also query all the who-what-where-why-type questions around it on Google — like how do I do this, what do I do there? Why do I do that? And through all these who-what-why questions around this product, I then see all the questions other users are asking on the internet about this topic, and if you enter a word there, by the way, you get hundreds of ideas. If we had said that at the beginning, we could have saved the episode.
David: Of course we’ll also post the link in the show notes as a little service for our listeners. One thing I’d still like to mention briefly: we said earlier that once you’ve grown a bit bigger, the whole topic of “employer branding” also becomes relevant. So you can post about that on social media too, maybe to attract new employees.
Jonas: Absolutely! It’s super helpful to be attractive as a company not only for customers, but also for new employees, and even if it’s just photos from the Christmas party, that’s content too, of course.
Isabell: And what we also learned in the episode on offer optimization, of course, is to always look at what the competition is doing, look at what I can copy and what I might also do better.
Jonas: But also in terms of social media now, take a look at what the competition is doing on Facebook and Instagram, or on TikTok, and let it inspire you, not copy it. But inspiration is great! If they have a really, really good Reel on a topic, just turn that into an infographic, and boom — you’ve got content!
David: Absolutely. But I’m just hearing from the control room that we need to wrap up soon. So I think we definitely have enough content ideas.
Jonas: Are we already at 50?
David: I don’t think quite 50, but we did also give some ideas on where else to look for inspiration.
Jonas: Okay, if we count that as ten, I think we’ve done it!
David: Jonas, you’ve already been here as a guest before. So you know what’s waiting for you at the end. At the end of every podcast episode, we ask: what was the last thing you bought on eBay?
Jonas: I think recently I made quite a few sellers happy on eBay, because I moved, and we have a completely newly furnished living room.
David: Can you remember what you last bought for the living room?
Jonas: Actually a shelf divider.
David: Okay, so a work area and living area separation, right?
Jonas: Living and dining separation, a bit of industrial style with wood, definitely pretty cool. I’m happy!
David: Very nice! Jonas, many, many thanks for the “Content Ping-Pong”. That was really fun. We should do something like that more often.
Isabell: Definitely.
David: I’m also sure there were some ideas and points of reflection in there for the listeners to get their social media channels really moving again, or also for everyone who is just starting with social media and wants to make their eBay presence more visible.
Isabell: Yes, Jonas, a big thank-you from me as well. Thanks a lot for the knowledge update on Facebook and Instagram. The platforms have changed a bit since we last spoke. I think we need to make this a regular thing now.
Jonas: Thanks for inviting me again, and if that’s already being hinted at, I’d be happy to come back.
David: Very nice, dear listeners, thanks a lot for tuning in and listening. We want to hear from you in the eBay Community or also on our Facebook page “eBay for Business Germany”: did our “Content Ping-Pong” help you? Were you inspired? Are you already active on social media or do you want to become active now? And above all, if you’re already active, where do you get your inspiration from?
Isabell: Yes, and if you want to learn more about the social media platform TikTok, as I said, please write to us — then we’ll bring in another expert here to the studio. We hope you really enjoyed this episode, and of course we’re always happy if you leave us a subscription or a like wherever you’re listening to us, if that’s possible. Yes, and with that, goodbye and see you next time!
David: Bye!
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4 comments
steffi@ebay
very gladly 🙂
teppichwunderland
·2 years agoHi,
Thanks for the info.
best regards
steffi@ebay
Hello @teppichwunderland, great that you're using eBay to upload products to Instagram. In general, links on Insta aren't clickable - so I always create a story where I paste the copied link from the eBay item and then save it as a highlight. That way the link is clickable both in the story and in the saved highlights. Hope that helps you.
teppichwunderland
·2 years agoI use eBay to upload products to Insta & etc.
But the link on Insta isn't clickable, what could be causing it?