Social Media Spotlight: Olejo Stores

For today’s edition of Social Media Spotlight, we are highlighting an e-commerce business that has used to social media to build brand awareness, create relationships with customers, and promote products. Olejo Stores was started in 2008 as a way to cater to specialty shopping categories online. Olejo Stores operates specialty home and house ware websites include Each site caters to a specialty “boutique” product that can be purchased on the site. Olejo Stores currently has 25 stores under its umbrella, and is expanding rapidly into new product categories, which will debut in the coming months. Let’s find out what has worked for Olejo Stores in terms of social media, and what hasn’t. The Marketing Director at Olejo Stores gives us an inside look at their strategy…
What social media platforms do you currently use?

M: Currently we are using Twitter and Facebook most actively. We have also done a lot with Quora to try and gain credibility within our industry. We have a WordPress blog integrated within our site, and we try to ‘comment market’ with that platform, but there are not many mattress bloggers out there, believe it or not. We tried Tumblr for a while, but didn’t see how we could really draw value from it, as more socially active companies could.

What value, if any, has social media provided for your business?

M: We have had many visitors on our site come from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The traffic increase has provided value to our business because our followers have become more aware of the products we offer.

Which social media platform works best for your business?

M: Facebook. When people see their friends talking about brands or products they always want to check it out for themselves to see what all the fuss is about. Getting a ‘like’ on Facebook is like the gift that keeps on giving, as showing up in news feeds doesn’t bother people as much as over-tweeting.

How has social media impacted your business in terms of marketing and sales?

M: We have not seen a huge increase in sales. However, we expect more of an impact down the road when our company has more of a budget (we are in bootstrapped startup mode at this point) to do contests and actually develop on the Facebook platform.

Do you have any advice for companies who are on the fence about social media?

M: It could never hurt (unless you post something offensive)! Establishing a social media presence gives your company a personality, and potential customers love that. Getting people to talk about your brand is what all brands want, and social media allows that to happen.

Is there any social media strategy that you would like to improve or do differently?

M: I wish I could find a way to get Olejo more Twitter followers. Being a food blogger, I quickly found a market and was able to get involved and tap into it. But the mattress and bedding industry has proved way more of a challenge in that sense.

Olejo Stores has showed us that certain industries call for different social media sites and tactics. It’s great to see that they recognize the value of social media in terms of creating a buzz around your brand and building relationships with customers. Social media marketing also has worked for the company in terms of driving more traffic to their website, but in terms of sales, they will see start to see an increase when they have the budget for giveaways and contests. This is an important method in order to increase sales via social media marketing, and it’s good that they understand the measures that need to be taken. Thank you, Olejo Stores, for giving our readers real insights to social media marketing.