Oluwo Akanbi: Leave Me To God, Stop Judging Me On Social Media

The Oluwo of Iwoland, Oba Abdulrosheed Adewale Akanbi, yesterday explained his frosty relationship with some traditional rulers in Iwo, Ola-Oluwa and Ayedire Local Government Areas of Osun State.

The Oluwo was last Friday reported to have beaten the Agbowu of Ogbaagba at a peace meeting convened by the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 11.

Breaking his silence on the outrage that trailed the incident, the Oluwo yesterday asked his critics to leave him to God and stop judging him on the social media.

According to him, Nigerians, outside Iwoland are ignorant of the true situation of things and the hardship some monarchs in their domains are inflicting on their subjects.

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Your goal: Make 10 sales

Your goal is to get ten sales using each of the methods below in the order listed. Try not to skip to the next task until you have received an order from the previous. Your goal beyond getting your initial sales is to understand how each of the channels work for you and your brand, as well as their level of difficulty. 

Are you ready to get your first sales? 

1. Send an email to your pre-launch list

We’ve discussed it previously on the Shopify blog, but generating buzz and an email list, even a small one, is an important first step to launching your business. If you built a pre-launch list, then you’re going to want to email this list before you do any other tactics. These people will likely be your most qualified leads when starting your online store since these people have already raised their hands with interest and gave you their email to hear more. 

You can use a service like Klaviyo or any one of the other great email marketing services in the Shopify App Store to build and send an email to your pre-launch list announcing your launch. 

If you didn’t build a pre-launch list, you can move onto the next tactic.

2. Sell to friends and family in person

The most basic tactic for making your first sales is to get a friend or family member to legitimately purchase from you. This doesn’t mean guilt-tripping your mother into purchasing a product she can never use. What you want to do is think about and seek out a person from of your family or friends that would actually appreciate and use your product. Try connecting with them personally, ask them for a few minutes and bring by your product.

If you’re on the Shopify platform, you can use the Shopify POS mobile app and free card reader to create the order and accept payment in person, saving your friend or family member shipping costs.

3. Run a contest or giveaway

Let’s be honest, giveaways have always been a great way to get eyeballs on a new product. Although it can be argued that giveaways mostly encourage interaction from people looking for a deal, if done correctly, the viral nature of a contest can garner a lot of initial traffic and word of mouth, expanding the presence and knowledge of your store and its products. 

There are some really great Shopify apps out there that help enhance your giveaways and expand their reach by giving participants contest entries based on them sharing your store/products on social media.

Run your own contest or check out ViralSweep and Gleam to get your contest started.

4. Strategically sell to friends through social channels

Ok, so previously you convinced a friend or family member to buy from you in person. Maybe you were hanging out with them, or you targeted one of them at a get-together or party. Now, it’s time to dip your toes in into social media. If you’re like most people, you’re on Facebook. 

So how do you strategically sell to friends on Facebook?

First, before you go announcing your store and products to everyone, try taking a smarter, more targeted approach. You can use Facebook’s powerful social graph search to find people that are most likely interested and more likely to purchase your products by searching for keywords related to your products.

That’s exactly what Noah Kagan did when he was trying to validate his idea for a subscription beef jerky business. 

"I searched my Facebook graph for people who like paleo, health or jerky. I had a few friends and messaged them."

Once you’ve identified the friends on your friends' list with some potential level of interest in your product, you'll want to reach out to them and message them personally. 

Additionally, after you've tried the targeted approaching above, you can try the broader shotgun approach and make a few status updates to announce to your Facebook friends your new store. Since these people are friends and family, you'll want to consider also providing a friend and family discount if it makes sense to you.