INSIDE THE SHOP: SOCIALS — BAD ADVICE COSTS YOU —Episode 76

https://linktr.ee/KarriKennedy

In this episode, I walk through a real situation where one small change, moving item numbers to the end of listings, completely shifted how the room felt, how buyers responded, and how quickly things moved.

We’re talking about how misinformation spreads, why not all advice is worth following, and how to actually look at your show from a buyer’s point of view before you change something that’s already working.

I also break down how the system on Whatnot actually reacts while you’re live, what it’s paying attention to, and why speed, clarity, and movement inside your room matter more than formatting tricks.

If your show has ever felt slow, if you’ve noticed buyers hesitating, or if you’ve been trying new things and not seeing better results, this will help you understand why.

HASHTAGS

#Whatnot
 #WhatnotSeller
 #LiveSelling
 #Reselling
 #ResellerTips
 #SellOnWhatnot
 #WhatnotTips
 #OnlineSelling
 #Ecommerce
 #ResellerCommunity
 #SmallBusiness
 #SideHustle
 #MakeMoneyOnline
 #SalesTips
 #Entrepreneur
 #KarriKennedy

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey there guys. I hope everybody is doing really well. This is going to be a really pretty quick episode compared to my you know 45 minute to an hour plus uh episodes, but I wanted to just get on here in between the two episodes. So yesterday I did an episode about July 12th and what's coming with shipping. And in that episode, I said that the next episode is going to be me talking about how I had a $1 show with free shipping, 100% free shipping and giveaways on Zero Commission Day. And I am actually going to do that episode after I finish packing up all these boxes and get it out. In fact, the reason this episode has to be so quick is because it's 7 a.m. on the 20th. And uh Sarah will be here at 7:30 to help me finish wrapping up boxes because yesterday was her anniversary. So that being said, I got up with a headache. The dogs had me up, and I thought, okay, let me just get on, whatnot, see if anything exciting is happening, see who's on. I don't do it for very long, 15, 20 minutes, that kind of thing in the morning. Um, but I did that, and uh, one of my favorite sellers is on. I really do like her, and I've been mentoring her and helping her, and she's doing just a really wonderful job. And I'm sure in the future I will talk about some things that she's doing that I really like um that are really good ideas. But right now I want to talk about how she got bad advice, and I just I told her it's bad advice. She's gonna choose to listen to the other girl who gave the bad advice, and that's fine. Um, we all get to pick and choose who we listen to and whatnot. But I've actually done the fact checking and I know that there's people giving bad advice on this app, um, in talk shows, whatever, and they're just making up stuff. I swear it's just made up stuff. I don't know if it's they're trying to be relevant, if they heard it from somebody else, if whatever. But uh bad news spreads fast, and that's why I wanted to get on here real quick and talk about it because it is just wrong. And if you don't believe me, you guys can do a deep dive yourself. You can go to Google, you can, you know, check the whatnot information. I'm gonna give you some of it here, but definitely be careful who you listen to. I have said this time and time again. And also, um, you know, I just I think you need to think about the logic behind it. And I'm gonna talk about that in here too. So when somebody just gives you information and they're like, hey, do this or hey, do that, say, hmm, why? Think about it, guys, because it's really not that hard to go, hmm, that really doesn't make sense. I swear, if you just spend a little bit of time thinking about it, you'll come to the same conclusion. It really is not hard. Okay, that being said, um, so I was in her show this morning, and I knew that she had got this advice because she was talking about how she was talking about going in and changing it. And this one person who has a talk show on whatnot gave her this advice. And I said, I don't think that's right. That's not good. Nope. And I did the deep dive. I went and I checked all of whatnot. I checked Google, I checked social media, I looked everywhere. I knew, I knew it was bad advice when she said it, but I still wanted to check for you guys. I wanted to do the the work. Um, so but anyways, I went in today and it looked, she has all her things listed. She's in a category where a lot of people list different items so that they can just call out what number, you know, and they have it numbered or say it. It's best to do a number because that way somebody can say number 36, number 72, number 384, whatever. You see it at the beginning of the description and not the end. Well, this girl basically had all of her descriptions um at the front, and she pushed her number to the end. So, not on everything, because she has a ton, but instead of now seeing the number immediately and the first thing that you see, so you can quickly call it out, she had it at the end. And sometimes the description was so long you would actually have to click the item before it would pop up to get to the end where you could see it. So you couldn't just say, I want this, I want that. So what's happening is it's slowing the room down because now the algorithm isn't picking up what's happening with the go, go, go fast, fast, fast, which is one of the big differences between Poshmark and eBay and stuff. I'm gonna talk about that. I'm digressing here, but basically her room was slowed down, there wasn't as many people in there, and I could see why it was happening. I could see it because people can't see the numbers as quickly, they can't call them out as quickly, they're having to click on it to read it to find the number. And so people are hesitating, and you could just feel the energy was not as high as it typically is. And when I asked her, you know, why she changed it, you know, she had told me that she had got this information and she told me who it was, you know. Um, but at the end of the day, this is how quickly bad information moves around. One girl said, Oh, you're not supposed to put the number at the front, you're supposed to put it at the end because the algorithm is going to do that. Basically, that's her information, and that's just not right. So she said it convincingly, and other sellers are like, oh, she knows what she's talking about. She has a talk show. So let me go ahead and do what she's saying. The problem is, especially with I know where she got this, she's thinking about eBay because eBay is set up like that, and Poshmark is set up like that, but whatnot is not eBay or Poshmark. So when you take advice from one platform and you automatically bring it over to another platform and you talk like you figured it all out, um, yeah, that's just wrong because the platforms are not the same, and you need to think about that. I mean, we also need to think about the buyer's perspective because if you're a seller in here, nobody matters to you as much as the buyer, right? So when the buyer's going through and you know, you're scrolling through and you want to see it, but you don't know and you've got to click on it, and you've got to find the number, whatever, and people are not bidding up and things are not going fast, they leave, they will leave your room. Somebody actually that I'm mentoring, she sent me another girl's show, and it was extremely, extremely slow, which is totally fine, different vibes, different people, whatever. But she said, Do you think it's good for some shows to be really, really slow? And the reality is, yeah, it might be a great vibe. People might be in there for her personality, and they might really like her items and they might be talking, and she might have 30, 40 people in there, and everything's cool and great and whatever, but the algorithm doesn't like that. And I think you gotta think about your buyer and the algorithm. I flat out told her if you're going really slow, the algorithm doesn't want that. I mean, unless you're doing higher dollar amounts or something, you know what I mean? Um, but, anyways, I think that whenever you can give the fastest, you know, view of the item, the fastest description, the fastest number, the fastest way of doing anything on the whatnot platform, you are in a better position because those delays of oh, I've got to find the number, or somebody's not listing it, or I don't know what she's whenever you have anything, like somebody says, Um even I do this, we're all human, right? But when somebody says, We're looking for those, I did this the other day in the show. We're looking for the three glass bottles. Well, I had moved the three different glass bottles in different places so that it would look pretty on my display, which it did, but I had to turn around and quickly find them. Even that delay made things slow down. So you need to know where your items are, quickly be able to get them, quickly be able to run them. And if people are looking at items in a list, they need to be able to quickly say the number so that you can get it, so that you can go fast, fast, fast. Okay, guys, it matters because seconds count on whatnot. It really, really does. Um, but let me be clear moving the number up to the it to the end so that your description can be in the front. That is not how whatnot works. Um there is no system here. It is not like eBay. The system is not reading your listings that way at all. What the system on whatnot does is it watches people, it follows what's happening, the numbers of people that are in there, how long they're staying in your show. Are they talking? Are they hitting the hearts? Are they bidding? Are they bidding up against other people? Um, you know, boom, boom, boom. The algorithm can't actually see you guys. It's a computer, so it's getting numbers and data, but it is not set up like the algorithm on eBay that is a search engine-based um system. I'm trying to think of the word. It's not, it's not, and that that's one of the cool things about whatnot, but that's also while you'll go from show to show to show, and in those big shows, a lot of the time, and I know some of you guys don't like it, um, there's a whole episode on 40 things not to do um for your uh whatnot show, but people do not like a lot of those shows where they're screaming at you, going, bid up, bid up, go, go, go. Those really fast, fast Uber shows. But one of the reasons they do that is because they know that the the more activity, the bidding it up, the go, go, go, the faster it is, the better they'll do. Um, I can't think of the guy's name, but he is a cowboy on here. He sells shoes. Now he's selling um glasses. I think he's selling other things. He does a great job. Just move, go, move, go without yelling. Um, just okay, these are this. And and now he's got other people working for him. He got married, we all followed the romance. But my point is everybody knows that is one of the big differences between eBay, Poshmark, whatnot is activity, activity, activity, activity. So if you're doing things uh in your show where you're limiting people's activity, meaning they can't see your items, they can't bid on the items quickly, you can't retrieve the items quickly, you can't get to the phone quick enough to hit the swipe button to run the item quickly. You are preventing money to come into your pocket. Period. Point blank, guys. I'm telling you, the fewer people, the fewer sales, that is what makes your room slower. That is what's making algorithm not send as many people in there. Okay, it's hitting your pocket. So let's talk about what whatnot actually watches, right? They're watching where you go every time you get on. Are you going to the same, um, are you going to the same category? Are you going to the same person? Are you a creature of habit that's going into the same talk show or same um, you know, type of show? Are you a girl who buys lots of purses and hats? Are you a guy who buys lots of knives and fishingware gear? They're seeing where you're going, kind of like Amazon. You put in the search engine, it's going to give you suggestions of where you go. I've I mentioned this before. I buy makeup and clothes and household goods on Amazon. It will never ever give me things like chainsaws in my search engine. Same thing with the algorithm here on Whatnot. It's going to send you to places where you spend money, you go, and you participate, mostly where you're going to spend money, right? Um, so whatnot is watching um what people do the second they enter your show, right? And it's going to adjust everything based on that. So you guys gotta realize that the whatnot system is not the same as eBay and Poshmark. It's such bad advice to say, oh, well, you need to have, you know, your keywords and your search engine and whatever. Whatnot's not set up like that, the whole system isn't. Whatnot says it. You can go to seller support shows, you can go look at the data. This is everywhere, guys. I'm not making this up, but it wants you to have people in the room, it wants you to interact with them. That's why a lot of people are like, put the emojis in the chat. Why? Because the emojis mean that somebody's participating, they're engaging, they are talking in the chat. So I just recently decided to start doing that after two plus years, putting a little smiley face with a cowboy hat as my emojis. You when you see people do that, there's a reason behind it. That's why when people ask questions and people talk in the chat, that is why. Because the algorithm sees that somebody is interacting and engaging, the system is working and it will send you more people. Trust me, if you don't believe this, you guys do your own social science test. Have a show where you just talk a whole lot and you don't run anything and you don't sell anything, and you see how it goes. I'm I'm just saying, do that and then do another show where you're talking, you're engaging, you're asking questions, you're telling jokes, you're having fun, you're asking them to put the emojis in, you're doing all those things. You're hitting your pre-bids, you're running your items, you're grabbing things, you're showing them quickly, you've got the numbers, people are giving you your numbers. Maybe you have multiple moderators and they're saying stuff in the chat, that is going to help you. Do it. If you don't believe me, go do this stuff, guys. It has nothing to do with the placement of where your numbers are. Okay. Um, the room is active, people are gonna show up. I told you this as an analogy in the past, but it's like going to a party. If you're the first person to a party and you're two hours late and you thought, hey, you know, we're coming at a good time, but you show up and you're like early, you feel weird. Nobody's on the dance floor, the music isn't going, nobody's having drinks. It's it's a weird shift. And because we're human, we like to interact, we like to be where the people are. That's just the way it is for the most part. Um, occasionally you'll go, Oh, I uh what's this person doing, or you're curious, or whatever. But the majority of this is based on social science and how people work within a room, and so that is a big deal. Okay, so here's a couple things. When you first start your show, it is going to notice this energy. So up at the very top, uh to the right of oh my gosh, I can't I can't think of what it is, but there's a little red button that is gonna show your pre-bids. You're gonna click on that bid, that little red dot that little red dot, and then it's going to click and you're gonna go down to where it says activity. When you click on that, you're gonna kind of have to scroll over to the right a little bit. You click on activity and it will show you your pre-bids. If you have some, it'll come up and it'll say so-and-so wants this vase, or so-and-so wants this picture, or so-and-so wants this jewelry. And when you click on that and you start running it, guess who's seeing it? The algorithm is seeing it because you know, and why should you do that at the beginning? Because the money's already laid down, they've already given you money, even if they're not in the room. You should be running those pre-bids because the algorithm is like, ooh, that person's making me money. The algorithm wants its money. I've said this, you think of it like the um Sully from Monsters Inc. He wants your money. And if he can get money, he will bring more people there. He's seeing the pre-bids, you're running those, okay? Pay attention to these things. Go as quickly as you can. Once you start doing that, the algorithm's gonna bring more people in. And if you keep it going, you're gonna get that early momentum, and that's gonna keep going, okay? Um, if too much time passes because you start telling stories, or as this one girl in another show said, squirrel, you know, you constantly are getting distracted or whatever. Here's what the algorithm sees: nobody's bidding, nobody's talking, there's no sales, there's no activity. That's what the algorithm sees. So if you're asking yourself, why is my room slow? It's not because your numbers are at the beginning instead of the end. It's because you're not having the talks, the bids, the pre-bids, the sales, the activity, the conversation, the emojis in the chat. That is why, guys, your room is running slow. So y'all need to be careful about who you're getting your advice from and how you're doing these things. I promise running items creates the dogs constantly in my shows. Sorry, I apologize. Um, the the algorithm running these items is getting the interaction from the platform. Well, that the platform is gonna react to, okay? And then the algorithm is gonna go, ooh, trigger, trigger, trigger. Um, I don't know if I believe the whole tapping hearts thing, if it works or not. They say that it does. I am questionable on that. We have no real proof or data. I've done it a whole lot in shows and nothing happens. I don't know. But going live a little bit early, tapping the hearts, sharing the show, boosting the show, all those things are the things the algorithm sees. Okay, there is no evidence anywhere anybody can show me. And if you can, by all means, bring it. Because right now, I am like, there is no evidence. I have looked. There is no evidence that putting numbers at the end of your whatever or doing a certain keyword. Now, keywords actually can make sense. If somebody's looking for cats and you put the word kitten, there it's not going to show up. So maybe you write cat slash kitten in your description. Descriptions do matter for the search engine, and that aspect, I definitely think you should, you know, put the information. Um, don't just say, you know, that it's a pot or it's a vase, you know, say who the maker is. Is it a brass vase? Is it a copper vase? Whatever. I definitely think descriptions matter, and I'm not saying they don't, but I'm saying don't put the number at the end. Okay, um, let me see if there's anything else. Um, I did just do a couple notes here, real quick. Um, my dogs are playing really hard next to me, guys. Um okay, whatever. Clarity, it keeps people moving. Okay, so basically, here's here's the thing. On eBay, this is it. I'm wrapping it up. On eBay, everything starts with a search. It literally is a search engine. So if somebody types in what they want, the system is automatically gonna look for matching words or titles or whatever listings based on the wording. On Poshmark, um, it still depends on the search, but there's activity helping with the circulation. So it's even on another level, but on whatnot, the system is basically focused on human-being interaction and um behavior, how you're functioning, how you're doing it, how your buyers are doing it. That is the formatting trick. You guys have got to think about this, okay? You have to understand that it needs to go fast, you need to have active bidding, you need to have patterns that are repeatable. Have people go in and go. I mean, like some of the best shows, I will tell you right now, are people who go on every single day at the same time, like clockwork. They are consistent, they are capable, they're running the same show the same time, doing the same thing day in, day out. That is a repeatable pattern of consistency. The people like it, the algorithm likes it, and you will do better. I do not do one of those. Shows right now. My life is too crazy. I'm going through a divorce. I have a homeschooling my kids. I'm trying to do Poshmark. I'm doing the podcast. I have too many things going on. Um, I volunteer, we got church, life happens. It's just not where I'm at. In the future, do I plan to do that? 100%. 100%. I plan to be on more and more consistently at the same time, something like that in the future. Absolutely. The people who go on in the morning, they sell their items, and by you know, two, three hours later, they're in the mail going and they they do that day in, day out. That is a repeatable pattern. The algorithm likes it, the people like it. You guys need to remember that's what whatnot is about is the consistency, whether it's consistency of swiping or doing your pre-bids or hitting the hearts or having the conversations or sticking the exact same emoji in, whatever. That consistency is what is going to get money in your pocket and get people to come in. But the thing is, before you change something that already works, which is what we've been talking about for 75 plus episodes, before you listen to somebody else's advice and go change something, how it works, think about it, guys. Think about how it's going to affect your buyer. Think about if it's going to make the process easier or slower. Think about where that person's coming from. Do they really have your best interest at heart? Or are they hoping that you'll follow their advice so that maybe they'll they people won't go to your rooms? I don't, I don't know, guys. I don't know why anybody would give that bad advice, but she did, and people are listening to her, and that's why I'm calling it out. So at the end of the day, whatnot response to how your room moves, actual behavior, consistency, hitting those buttons, hitting the hearts, doing the emojis, having the talks, going fast, it's looking at your behavior. It is not looking at your listing to that level. Of course, if you put it in the search engine, yes, but I'm talking about actual shows when it happens. So when people can follow you quickly, when they can react, you know, without hesitation and give you the numbers. If your mod can say, here's the numbers, here's the numbers, that's gonna bring more attention, that's gonna bring more people, that's gonna bring more sales. And at the end of the day, that's what this is all about. So think about who you're getting your advice from, guys. Keep your shows running fast, even if you're a calm, casual, whatever person, you will get more people in the room if you can do that. And um, okay, with that, I am going to get off because Sarah's gonna be here in three minutes to start packing the last uh 20 some odd boxes. So much packing. I'm gonna do a whole show about this later on today. I hope you guys have a brilliant and beautiful day. High five to all of you hardworking buyers and sellers out there. Um, I really hope you have a wonderful week. I will talk to you later. Bye.