Week 17 Wrapping Up

 Overall, I’m glad this class was required and that I took it. Prior to this class I knew that social media and social media marketing was incredibly important but I never realized all of the impacts it can have on your business. I had also never seen the back end, or inner workings, of tools and business pages. 

I think that my viewpoint has changed from a business perspective - I can see now how vital now only using, but mastering, social media is for a business. However personally no my opinions haven’t changed and I don’t expect my usage to go up. 

From a technical standpoint I have a much better idea of how to use social media to develop a successful business. I can see now how scheduling and types of content can lead to positive and negative interactions between businesses and their customers. I also realize how important it is to know where to find data, how to read it, and how to interpret what digital data is telling you about your customer and your businesses’ success. 

The biggest successes I noticed were by businesses and brands who harnessed social media to deliver who they were, put on a personable attitude, and directly reach customers. Certain Brands like Wendys and Taco Bell are known for their hilarious Tweets and customer conversations. On the other hand, the biggest failures I noticed came from brands and businesses who neglected their social media. You can, on a very small scale, have a successful business that relies on word of mouth or local connected customers only, but you can’t grow or scale up that way. Unkempt social media pages remind me a lot of dirty or empty store fronts - you immediately assume the business is not doing well or closed completely. 

I committed during the pandemic to only shopping small and Instagram or Tik Tok have been my main sources for finding and making purchases. 

Week 16A Developing Your Marketing Strategy

 I think that the social media platforms that would best serve the business type I chose would be Instagram and TikTok. Non-profit isn’t focused on sales, but instead focused on growing a community and sharing the difference you are making. I feel that photos and videos can spread your message, and have a better ability to go viral. 

Of all the tools we reviewed I think that Sprout Social (the social median management tool) would be what I would focus mainly on paying for and using. Not only would it do most of the work of scheduling and filtering social media content, but it has a built in analytical and research feature. 

Instagram will be, and has been my favorite. I really dislike Facebook and don’t use it personally or plant to professionally. I think that the world is evolving and we are moving away from written word and more towards what we can see, listen to, and document in detail for the future. 

Because of this evolution, I think that businesses should focus their energy and time as a whole on social media/marketing versus any other platforms. New generations of users will be attracted by and members of a businesses digital environment. 

Week 15B Using Facebook Analytics

 I am an Apple customer who actually stopped using Facebook for the same reasons that Apples update caused them issues. To begin with, Facebook has had analytics to track hate speech, violence, racism, etc. but chooses to overlook them. Prior to Apple making their changes, Facebook harvested almost all customer data available from Apple devices to sell to ad revenue services. Lastly, Facebooks TOC and privacy were very vague, open to interpretation, and they faced many data breaches. All of these led to an Apple lockdown on security and Facebook losing millions in analytics and ads. 

As a moral, I believe that businesses and individuals have a responsibility to combat hate in any environment they directly manage. Facebook created analytics and data harvesting under the guise of a better user experience. However, they didn’t use it responsibly and didn’t use them for good either .

Prior to Apple’s changes according to Facebooks TOC you had to agree to to sign up and use the apps  they could collect everything from internet searches, location, contacts, messages contents, pictures, etc. Essentially using Facebook was agreeing to them keeping tabs on you constantly. 

Lastly, multiple security breaches made the data not safe. People’s personal information and even basic behavioral information like google searches could be hacked and released. 

Week 15A Google Analytics and What We Learn

 After going through the analytics website I think that the combined analytics of Search 360 and their RIO to help drive returning users would be the most help with my business. Even though I am not selling anything, the most important commodity a non-profit has is their supportive base and people who build long last relationships with your organization and mission. 

I think that cultivating your customer base is regardless of industry vital to continuing to do business. As a whole platform I think Google would be overtly very helpful because you can link websites, hours, business information, and contact routes. Then you can turn around with their integrated tools and search how customers found you, why, and how they used the Google Services.

Week 14 Social Media Management Tools

 I knew before researching what social media management tool I wanted to use, but after reconfirming what they offer and the different features I am more sure I’d proceed the same. At a previous job our social media coordinator used Sprout Social, which is a really cool inclusive management and research tool. 

First, there is an awesome month free trial that includes full usage of up to five social media profile, with the option to add more. Previously, it was three profiles with the option to buy up to five. All profiles have notifications and messages that come to the same inbox! Thats a big time saver and best for organizing customer communications in the same place.

The research feature was one of my favorite features, and part of what I think sets them apart. You can gather and analyze your regular metrics BUT you can also research for specific key words, trends, and even compare what was popular across all your platforms in one place. Monthly, its $249 which seems high but for a running business its not considering all the legwork the technology does. 

Week 13B Developing Online Advertising

 These are three ads I have created in the past, and one even did so well you can see I boosted it for a payment at one time.

 All three of these ads are effective for similar reason. I chose bright, catchy, and high texturized images to draw the eye in. You are interested in learning more and going to my page to see more! I included not only beautiful flowers, but a scientific/learning angle about breeding flowers to draw in more interaction from users who are looking to learn too, not just peruse my feed. 

The objective, overall, is to drive traffic to my page. At the time when I made them and/or paid for one I didn’t sell and I am still not. Im not trying to advertise or make sales, my objective is to inform and gather like minded users. This would be the same goal as a non-profit.  

Week 13A Online Marketing Analysis

 I use Instagram daily and what immediately draws my eye is if the content is relevant to what I purchase and am looking for sellers of. I typically look for black, darker, more gothic/classical items or bright, whimsical children’s items and clothing. I also like to look at how put together and professional the ad looks as well. 

When it comes to ads, I dislike ads that block text, or ads that have no relevance to me. I feel if an add is being forced on you they should be user friendly and navigable. Because I use Instagram most commonly, ads are a 50/50 split of either being a website or link tree with different outbound choices. 

Personally, I believe that Social Media marketing is far superior to traditional forms. Firstly, traditional marketing is more expensive and requires a lot more resources and a larger employee chain. Second, a lot of traditional marketing is a pay to access or not readily available to large swaths of the population. If I wanted to go get a paler I’s have to drive around, find it, and pay for it. Alternatively, you can open your ap and see the marketing directly for free access. 

I think that badly formatted random ads you see “jumping” around web pages are not as relevant and very frustrating. I see these a lot as well on recipe websites and it can make navigating a nightmare. In the reverse, the extremely targeted version of ads today feels very intrusive. I know there are things I barely discuss or only in private, but I end up with ads.

Week 12B Business Specific Tools

 I am still unable to comment with my blogger account. 

I read the first four blog posts on the class link and I think, in general we all decided to go the same path and use similar took. The biggest difference, by far, is what type of business and the effects the tools have. My proposed business is a non profit so I’d keep my usage to a minimum across the board in order to keep costs low. 

Businesses that are based around making sales will focus on things like rating sites, whereas someone in my position could use review sites as well to pass along the good word about experiences we provide. 

Week 12A Using Business Specific Online Tools

 In a business class last semester I had to create a full business plan as a continuous final project and one section of that was creating a Google identity. One tool not listed, but that I used and would be very helpful is Google Voice. Its important to have a dedicated business line, however immediately buying a new phone/phone line isn’t always feasible for a business. Google Voice is a great way to have a second dedicated line. 

The next took would be the Good Business Services where you can post your business profile. Not only can you get your full information out, advertise your website, and collect reviews but you can tract metrics about search and return data. 

Google Maps is a great tool, linked to a business profile, where your business will show up when a location is viewed on Google Maps. It also allows you to be included, by radius, in search results for certain types of businesses or keywords. 

There are Google Reviews, and they are super useful to show the customer feedback about your business. Outside sites like Yelp are great for the same reason. 

Week 11B Marketing With Other Social Media

 Blogger will let me log in to post, but when I attempt to comment it says my profile can’t be verified and to please contact Google services. 

Week 11A Marketing With Twitter and More

 Personally, I already use LinkdIn, however as a nonprofit business I would choose to do the same! LinkdIn has been really wonderful for connecting with my coworkers thus being able to connect with others who share similar career paths and thoughts about the career sphere of my life. Its also a very professional atmosphere so you don’t have to worry about the issues you face with Twitter and TikTok environments. 

As a nonprofit, LinkdIn would be an amazing way to connect with other nonprofit workers, executives, and creators. I also feel that it would be a professional environment to foster a relationship with and connect with potential investors. On this platform there is also a much higher resource of career oriented articles, knowledge, and discussion. 

More casual social media like Twitter and Tik Tok foster great customer engagement if you need exposure and sales. To a degree its good PR for a non-profit, but overall I don’t think professional and needed connections can be made as easily those ways. 

In conclusion - I plan on building my LinkdIn presence and eventually using it more full time if I decide to start a non profit at some point. 

Week 10A Researching Email Marketing

 I would definitely have a business newsletter go out monthly! With social media and the way businesses can connect now, I feel like a weekly newsletter would be a bit overboard and dry. However, I would use a monthly newsletter to update followers on the biggest events of the month, highlight big upcoming news, and share a wrap up of sorts for the month. 

Biggest Events of the Month could cover the biggest posts we shared, what special events were done, or highlight special things we did that month. 

Big Upcoming News would be a great way to show off whats coming, garner interest for projects, ask for donations, get volunteers, and connect with followers who may be interested in participating if possible. 

Wrap Ups would cover the general feeling of the month, update on donation goals, share thoughts from volunteers, the business, and those who got help. 

Week 9B Using Categories

 The categories I would use for my blog (the most probable useful avenue of these options for me) would be Activities, Daily, Donations, and Outreach. 

Activities: I would use this category to organize posts that detail the needed materials, instructions, and tips/tricks about different activities that we do. Think of it as a how-to or tutorial section where followers can do some of the projects we are. 

Daily: Daily looks into what activities were done, any day to day updates. This is a large category that would cover daily or every other day posts. 

Donations: This would be a way to thank people or companies who make donations and show whats helping us grow!

Outreach: This would be a category to highlight volunteers and the people receiving our services.  

We would be able to grow followers who want to do our projects, who want to volunteer, and who enjoy following our progress!

Week 9A Blogs, Vlogs, and Webinars

 I think that a personal touch should be added when delving into subject matter that is trying to create a personal or emotional connection with the reader. I don’t think that personal touches are inappropriate for business postings as long as its moderated and used appropriately. I would be much more apt to trust a business if I felt like I was personally connected with them. 

For my business, I think it would be a great way to bring people into our non-profit and get them engaged with our mission and even potentially volunteering or donating! This personal touch would also be helpful in spreading the word of what we do and would be really helpful in engaging with social media audiences. I’m not sure I think there is any business that wouldn’t be helped by being more personable in their social media. During the early stages of the pandemic health and science businesses shared personal stories to get their message across. Banks can highlight the families and small businesses they help. 

Week 8B Your Instagram Hashtag Use

 The hashtags that I used on my posts include: plants, houseplants, green, hobby, horticulture, the specific types of plants, and even my businesses name. The ones I used are either labels for or common sense connected terms that will find mutually interested folks to follow. I included my business name for a type of branding. 

I learned from pretty frequently posting that my ideal post times were late morning and early afternoon! Later on at night or very early and the morning and it feels like my audience gets cut down and/or my post gets buried with everyone else's initial posts or everyone is asleep.  The day itself didn’t feel as important, although weekends are more active usually due to other users having more off time. 

This exercise is a good one to help study and interpret the results of weekly posting, scheduling, and metrics. After learning this information this week you would have the beginning pieces of the day-to-day operations of an Instagram manager. 

Alison Lamb

Riot Dude

Week 8A Expanding Reach by Using #Hastags

 Businesses: foodisfreelaneway , gardeningwithdisabilitiestrust , oldmoatgc , horatiosgarden

All but one of the businesses I followed and researched used hashtags. Instagram does seem to be working effectively for the businesses who use the hashtags. Most of the hashtags used are centered around awareness, gardening, plant identification, charity, social welfare terms, and health/disabilities. All of the hashtags are placed at the end of the caption, usually with some space breaking up the text box in between. This seems to be a pretty common practice across the board for hashtags. There weren’t any specific hashtags so if I searched and scrolled eventually I could find them, but they didn’t come up first. 

Gardening With Disabilities- 

Followers: 1247

Last Post: 10/14/2022

Post Frequency: Every five days with the occasional long quiet stretch 

Comment Amount: 3-7 on average 

Food Is Free Laneway- 

Followers: 4062

Last Post: 10/15/2022

Post Frequency: Daily

Comment Amount: 2-5 on average

Horatios Garden- 

Followers: 7826

Last Post: 10/15/2022

Post Frequency: Daily 

Comment Amount: 3-10

Old Moat GC- 

Followers: 1209

Last Post: 10/12/2022

Post Frequency: Every 3-5 days

Comment Amount: 1-3

I think the biggest help I could draw from these pages is their content, tone, and aesthetic overall - not necessarily hashtags. They are all enjoyable to scroll through, positive, happy, informative, and can connect well with their audiences. The hashtags I would choose to use would start with California, then the local area, gardening words, plant words, help/assistance/outreach words, and I would use my business name or shortened name as well.

Week 7B How Other Businesses Use Instagram

 Group Members visited/interacted with: Lamb Screen Printing & Inglorious Bagels 

My group members are definitely using their pages in different ways than I am! My business Instagram page is more about producing content, interacting, and getting likes. Lamb Screen is a small business Instagram with updates on their events, products, some personal posts from employees, and short videos to capture interest. Inglorious Bagels is a true business Instagram - it conveys all the needed business information, markets, advertises, interacts with customers, serves as a voice for the business. 

Through perusing Instagram there are really distinct types of business pages that offer services/products that do a lot good or a lot not so good. For instance, big Fashion Brands like Chanel and Vuitton are very atheistic driven and their pages are not meant for customer engagement or interaction. You can tell that their pages are like a free advertising event - a digital walk in front of store windows. 

Smaller businesses like local Oceanside businesses Switchblade Sisters Vintage or Pacific Coast Bait and Tackle use their pages to highlight what they offer as well as highlight their positive customer experiences. They receive and respond to feedback in the comments, share updates, and are very approachable and you get a sense you are truly interacting with the business.  

Week 7A Get Visual With Instagram

 I was unable to create another Instagram (maybe because I have my personal and business already logged on) so I decided to share a previous business Instagram I had. During the initial lockdown phase of the pandemic I began keeping and learning about tropical and subtropical plants. 

https://www.instagram.com/swampelephantplants/

This Instagram was really a way for me to socialize during lockdown and share a new passion of mine. I technically have a Youtube channel linked as well! I post photos and videos. I have 553 Followers and I’m following 1,378 other accounts. This page was never specifically helpful, which is why I gave it up. I used to post every other day or so and ended up having 63 posts. I even paid for an ad once. I made sure to include pertinent plant hashtags to every post to chance increasing the viewing audience. 

Week 6B Creating and Scheduling FaceBook Posts

 Members I Visited: 

GRFFX

Lamb Screen Printing

Inglorious Bagels - I want to interact with yours but my friend request wasn't accepted yet! 

Screenshot of Activity: 

I have two GIF's set to post in a couple of hours and then a morning post at 10AM that is an interactive question/answer style post. My two posts with words have a lot of pertinent hashtags that could definitely grow the audience. My fourth post for the morning after tomorrow morning is a connecting to post to the one that precedes it. It explains our page's interest in fall vegetables, some fun facts, and sets up for a repeating trivia/guessing activity. 

Week 6A Engaging Your Customer's (Facebook)

 Seven Businesses Like With My Business Page:

1. Sole Food Farms

2. The Edible Schoolyard Project

3. Viva Farms

4. Grace Field Farms

5. Urban Bounty Farms, Inc. 

6. The Urban Edge Farm

7. The King’s Roost

I chose these businesses because across the spectrum of urban farms, non-profits, socio economic statues, race, gender, and age these business provide resources into getting started, maintaining your farm, ways to build your business and/or provide supplies you may need. 

Sole Food Farms posts day to day updates, posters/announcements for classes, and information on farmer's markets they will be present at. They are well written, have photographs, and have fairly low customer engagement. This page really helps teach how to connect with your community and advertise transferring your knowledge and skills to help others. 

The Edible Schoolyard Project is a non-profit for school children and that's very much the aesthetic you feel when coming upon their page. Their posts are well written, include photos, have moderate engagement, are cohesive, and inform as well as involve the reader in the organization. This is a well-respected successful nonprofit who could share on their page success methods, potential exposure to other business/partners in the industry, and even chances to volunteer to learn the business.

Viva Farms is a much quieter, almost personnel vlog in a way. The posts are often just around the farm, local events, or tips/tricks for farming. There are pictures, very low engagement, and not a bad page all together. I appreciate this kind of point of view and feel. This page would be good for teaching personal and business relation skills. There are also a ton of resources to check out grant programs, resources, finances, etc. 

Grace Field Farms offers a day to day mixed with business type of page for their business. The posts range from updates on projects, volunteer scheduled events, market locations, and the occasional personal post from employees. They are well written, have cozy bright photos, and have low to moderate engagement. Grace Field focuses solely on farming in a regenerative method which is one of the biggest helps - its an alternative to alternative farming.  

Urban Bounty Farms is a farm to table operation mainly focusing on the back end preparing and serving/delivering farm to table food taken from their urban farm. Their posts are sort of short and mechanical feeling in a way. There are a lot of sales, coupons, ads, etc. but not as much of a personal touch. They have photos and very low engagement. The reason I gravitated to this business and page is because they have the back end of delivery and transporting food down and they would be a good connection and relationship with. 

The Urban Edge Farm is a small to medium sized urban farming operation that has a fairly sparse presence online. When they do post they are personal touches, advertising events, and sharing family friendly experience content on their page. They are well written, the photos and videos are good, and they have low customer engagement. I chose this business because they are California based and local connections are good to have, as well as getting to watch their customer interaction model grow and how they handle those needs of the community. 

The King's Roost is the outlier business from all the ones I listed above. They have a full business centric page that focuses not on urban farming or non profits but on the materials, supplies, and place to sell needed for those two types of businesses. That is the main reason I included it. The posts are written well, the photos and videos are good at demonstrating the for sale goods, and customer engagement is low to medium.