When you're selling your jewelry online or creating a community around your brand, you need to give your customers something to look at, watch, and read. This is where a solid content marketing strategy comes in handy for your business. Read on for tips to create jewelry marketing content.
When you start putting your marketing strategy together for your jewelry business, there are a lot of strategies to consider. You’re likely familiar with social media and email marketing as the most common modern way to spread your marketing messages. Gaining popularity (and projected to grow over the next few years) are influencer marketing and user-generated content. The base of these strategies, though, is your content.
What is Content Marketing?
What exactly is content marketing? While photos are your main source of content, a content marketing strategy includes much more. For a small jewelry business, content marketing should include videos, blogs, informational landing pages on your website, and maybe some basic infographics. The main thing you need to remember when it comes to content marketing is that the content you put out must be valuable to your customers.
For content to be valuable, it should answer questions, solve problems, or otherwise educate your customers. For example, think about the material you use. Sterling silver and gold-filled are common materials, but many people may not know what they are, how to care for them, or what makes them different than a similar material. This is a great starting point to create quite a bit of content. Let’s walk through how you can create various types of content with this one topic.
Types of Jewelry Content
Photos Photographing your jewelry is the easiest piece of content to create. This includes beauty shots, model shots, and white background shots. Each one is going to provide different levels of value to your customers. A white background photo is a great way to let a piece of jewelry shine. Without any distracting props or elements, your customers will know exactly what your piece of jewelry looks like. A beauty shot with a few well-planned props might show your piece in various settings – maybe different lighting shows off different elements of your piece. A model shot shows how your piece of jewelry can be worn. It might show how each metal looks on various skin tones or give a better idea of the size and coloring of the piece.
Your photos should be shared across all your marketing platforms: social media, emails, website, etc. Since these will likely be the face of your marketing, you’ll want to make sure you have great photos either through hiring a professional or reading some of our DIY jewelry photography blogs.
Videos Quickly becoming the most popular form of content on social media, videos are a great way to provide information in an entertaining and engaging way.
Short form videos are typically no more than a couple of minutes long, though usually less than a minute and are popular on social media platforms. The trick to success is creating something that engages your viewer. Behind-the-scenes and process videos work great here as they give you a chance to connect with your audience and give them a sneak peek into your jewelry making. Be sure to scroll through Instagram and TikTok to see what’s trending and how you can use a trend to show your content to a larger audience. These shorter videos don’t have to be professional quality videos. They can easily be shot and edited on your phone.
Long form videos work well when you have an idea that will take more than a minute or two to talk about or if you want to create a more in-depth version of a short form social media video. Longer videos tend to be more informational and are best used on YouTube. Aim for a 5-10 minute video, unless the topic requires more attention. These longer videos should usually have higher production quality than the short form videos. They can still be shot on your phone, but consider using a tripod, good lighting, a clean background, and some props to increase the quality.
Let's take our materials topic as an example when creating video content. You might create a quick minute long video for Instagram Reels and TikTok that gives your audience a brief intro to caring for their sterling silver or gold-filled jewelry. But maybe you want to go into greater depth on what gold-filled is or various ways to clean and protect sterling silver. These are more informational and will probably take longer to explain than a short form video will allow. Learn more about ideas for video content.
Infographics These charts are a great way to visually pass on information to your audience. Infographics are easy to understand, use minimal text, and have plenty of images to inform someone of your topic. With our materials topic we can create an infographic such as “Best ways to keep sterling silver jewelry looking nice” or “What to know about gold-filled jewelry”. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to make beautiful infographics! There are many template programs online, Canva being one of the most popular options.
Copywriting All of the text on your website and social media is considered copy. Of course, you’ll want your product descriptions well written, but there is other copy content you’ll want to consider creating for marketing purposes.
Start with a blog. This is an easy way to send important information to your customers. Your blogs can cover how to care for jewelry, what each material is, the best gift ideas for certain holidays and much more. Next think about landing pages such as jewelry care and info pages, FAQ’s, any events you’re at or press coverage you receive, and a good About Us page. If you do custom or bespoke work, you’ll want a page for that. Make sure each of your pages is well written and takes basic SEO into consideration.
Planning Your Jewelry Content Marketing
You want to think as far ahead as possible when it comes to planning your content marketing calendar. You don’t have to plan every single piece of content at once but think about when you want to do the big content creation. For example, each January consider sitting down with a yearly calendar to note when major events are happening and when you want to prepare the marketing content for each event.
Some things to think about:
- Holidays – which holidays are your busiest? When should you have your content ready to share? What content works for those holidays? For example, Christmas marketing usually starts around Thanksgiving, so you’d want any photos, blogs, or big videos done before then.
- New collections – when do you plan to launch any new collections? Will there be one big launch or a few smaller ones throughout the year? Make it easy for customers to find your new collection or items with a separate page, like our New Items section.
- Calendar – keep a calendar handy so you can always look at it and see what’s coming up that you need to get done
- Photos and video content will probably take the longest to create and edit. You can mix in candid photos or quick trending videos, but make sure to plan ahead with a photo shoot so you’re not having to create content from scratch every week.
- Who is creating your content? Will you or any employees be doing the bulk of the work or do you plan to hire contractors to do some of the work? If you’re doing the work make sure you put aside plenty of time in advance. If you’re working with a contractor, know their timeframe and stick to it.
- Where will the content be shared? Copywriting will go on your website (and maybe a little bit on social media or an email), but where will your photos, videos, and graphics be shared? Although social media platforms are starting to overlap more and more, some content might do better on certain platforms than others. You'll also want to decide which blogs and photos to share to your email subscribers.
- Do you plan to work with an influencer to provide additional content?
Keep in mind that every piece of content for your jewelry business does not need to be 100% jewelry related. Once you understand who your customer is, give them content that provides entertainment as well. Do you have a fun studio dog? Show them off sometimes! If your brand is centered around hiking, write a blog about a favorite hiking area. As long as the content is related to your jewelry, business, or brand put it out there.
User Generated Content
User generated content (UGC) is one of the best marketing tactics to add into your jewelry marketing strategy. This content comes directly from your customers and creates a sense of loyalty and community among your customers. Most consumers today are more likely to believe other users and customers over a company. So having user generated content provides added authenticity to your marketing. It's also a highly cost-effective way to promote your products.
Some of the most popular user generated content includes unboxing videos, photos, reviews/testimonials, blogs, or some combination of these. For example, a photo of the customer showing off a piece of jewelry or a video of them opening their package (this is especially fun if you have special packaging materials). If you have employees, they can also create content – for example, a behind-the-scenes of something special going on in their workday.
How to Get User Generated Content
There are a few different things you can do to get content from your jewelry customers. The easiest option is to ask them to leave a review of the product on your website. If you want content on social media, try asking them to post any photos or videos they take of their jewelry with a branded hashtag and tag your account in it. For example, we have #HalsteadMakers for customers to post any pieces they make. Make sure you’re engaging with those customers! If they’re taking the time to tag you or use your hashtag, these are the customers who will likely come back to your business for more jewelry.
You may also want to run a promo in exchange for user generated content. For example, anyone who shares a photo and tags you by a certain date is entered into a chance to win a piece of jewelry.
How to Use User Generated Content
The absolute most important thing you should remember about UGC is that you must credit the person who created the content. Ideally you should also ask permission before using it, but crediting someone either through copy and/or tagging them is a must. When you ask for content, try to be specific about how it will be used. For example, “Tag us and use #HalsteadMakers for a chance to be featured on our social media.” This lets people know how any content they make with your product might be used.
User generated content should not be the primary content you use for marketing your jewelry. You need to create your own content. UGC should be used to fill in gaps, show a different perspective, or provide deeper information from a customer’s perspective. Customer content adds something to your marketing that you can’t create without it feeling forced or scripted.
Keep in mind that this may include dealing with negative content (especially reviews). These should be handled in a professional manner and not deleted, unless it’s a very clear trolling review.
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