A brand new Aussie children’s interiors brand gained 1000 followers on their Instagram page and nearly 400 likes on Facebook before their website even went live! This past Sunday marked the launch of the Coco Rose Interiors site, and they now boast just over 1100 followers. I wanted to shed some light on the social media success of this small business, to reiterate the importance of having a social presence for your own brand. More than that, it is important to have a presence with strategy. I spoke to Petria Field, owner of Coco Rose to get to the crux of what she attributes her new found online success, and gain insight into what your small business could be doing to get your name out there!
Q. How has Instagram contributed to the success of your brand?
A. Instagram has allowed us to reach our exact target market with maximum exposure as our brand is very visually orientated. There is a very strong trend now with new parents wanting professionally styled nurseries and we believe this is driven almost exclusively by social media platforms.
By styling our own nursery with our brand we’ve literally opened our doors to new parents wanting to do the same. We are able to show them how to make gorgeous tropical bohemian styled rooms, without the need for invasive, expensive and timely appointments by stylists or ever having to visit a physical showroom. The accessibility of social media platforms provides absolute convenience for both the customer and the brand.
Q. To what do you attribute your Instagram success?
A. We’ve been very fortunate enough to surround ourselves with some amazing like-minded businesses and have adapted a cross marketing strategy to involve other brands that complement our products and will help us grow our brand.
We use only professional photos and invite other brands to send us their products for our photo shoots. In return we provide access to our photos, encourage reposts of our shots and ask them to tag @coco_rose_interiors in each photo they post on their feed. We’ve found it gives us great exposure to already established audiences with tastes akin to the Coco Rose Interiors image.
I think you need to take a holistic approach to Instagram and also be willing to seek professionals that can help your brand adapt as your account and the platform itself evolves. We have been working very closely with Mackayla from @social.stylings for marketing strategies with Instagram and will continue to engage with her more as our brand grows. There is a whole science to Instagram that most would never realise without the help of a professional social media marketer and as a result you have to constantly analyse and adapt to trends of the ever changing platform that is Instagram!
Q. Tell us about the importance of having a blog on your website? What do you hope to achieve from the blog?
A. We want to have a regular blog on www.cocoroseinteriors.com.au to have as a medium to show a deeper side to our business. Instagram is generally a very positive space with fun posts and memes but isn’t really the platform for articles on more involved topics on our brand such as the family behind Coco Rose Interiors, our personal experiences and how we are developing our brand.
Blogs allow us to give our customers an insight into what really drives us to create our brand in the way we do. We are able to draw target audiences with important topics our followers are interested in and create a brand that our followers want to be a part of. Our blog is there to build a community around Coco Rose Interiors and will organically give us a stronger presence on the Internet.
Every blog is written with SEO in mind and as our blog develops it is our hope that other online mum bloggers, interior magazines and parenting forums will repost our content, do their own features on Coco Rose Interiors and help us build a wider community around our brand.
Q. What is your advice to other small businesses beginning their journey in the online sphere?
A. Our first two blogs are actually based exactly on this, beginning the journey. You’ll read that we found there’s no set formula for a start-up. Whichever way you go about it, you will run into unexpected or unthought-of parts of the business – it’s simply impossible to know everything. You do need to just dive in but our best advice would be to start with what you know well.
You’ll find as the process develops there will be so many more new processes that have to be learnt. Don’t try and take everything on yourself because you will undoubtedly fail. Surround yourself with professionals in fields that you simply do not understand and allow them to work their magic!
As a husband and wife partnership we excel in written and visual content respectively. We are not tech savvy so we enlisted our web designer @dachboard to develop our online store and launch our website which we couldn’t be happier about! She implemented systems and extra little details on our website that we would’ve never known about and now that we have, we will undoubtedly have a market edge that our customers will instantly notice and appreciate over our competitors.
Similarly with our photography, almost anyone can pick up a camera and take a photo. With the help of Instagram they can even make it look good, but we understand that our photos are everything as an online business, so we use a product photographer @millyjanephotography to capture the perfect shot.
The little details become everything when you are trying to build a reputable brand. So to sum it up, it would be get help where you need it and use that extra time to focus on the finer details because that is what will give you your edge.
If you need a hand with an aspect of your social media presence, I encourage you to get in contact with me today. I can also assist in writing blog posts and articles of varying lengths and complexity.
I hope this case study has been of use, my hope is that Coco Rose’s success will inspire you to dedicate some more time, money and effort to your online presence.
X Cat.
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