Week 15: Wrapping things up.

My use of social media has definitely changed since beginning this course. I now understand that every post should have a rhyme and reason, with deliberate thought behind word, hashtag, and photo. Before, I would just post whatever I thought looked good enough, and didn't think about any kind of analytics or studying how well each post does. Now, I have those tools to go back and analyze and get insight into what makes people respond to our content. 

My business has also steadily continued to grow as I implemented these tools. I learned about how to engage with my audience and especially how to respond to positive feedback -- that I should respond and acknowledge the individual that took the time out to write something nice! 

Week 14: More Social Strategy, Part 2

I really think my business relies heavily on social media. I think that its important that I spend at least an hour or two on it, fine tuning, and not getting distracted (nothing like getting sucked into the black hole of going down your feed on Facebook, twitter, or instagram!) :)

My strategy is to continue posting twice a day once in the morning between 6am-10am and in the evening 5:30pm-10 pm. I also have found an app called "Auto Liker" that allows you to type in a hashtag that you wish you "look through" and it will like each recent pictures found inside the hashtag on Instagram. This has been really helpful to me when I don't always have to time to go through people's feeds and like their pictures, in order to spread the word about my business. I use hashtags related to my business: #sandiego #sandiegoflorist #flowers #peonies #roses #weddingflowers .. etc. etc. If I can do this once a day, I can continue to expose my business to people who would be interested in my service/product. 

I also plan on starting a blog. Since it is the beginning of wedding season (and with June-October already booked!) I really would like to give my readers an inside scoop on how wedding prep and set up goes. I would post these on Mondays or Tuesdays (usually the days I don't have flowers everywhere!). This would be a great way to engage our followers on all other social media platforms to see a little insider on our business. I am choosing this avenue because I want to be personable with my audience, and for them to feel like they are part of the process :) I plan on creating at some point a tutorial blog on how to create a great arrangement. I want to be the go-to florist on design and for being down-to-earth! 

I think that making sure I post unique posts on Twitter and Facebook (rather than simultaneously posting on all avenues through instagram) would help me keep my followers engaged on these platforms and hopefully build more followers. I want to be more specific. I want to make it not so much a secondary platform and spend time liking content and following related users/businesses to boost my credibility. 

Week 14 response to blogs

I commented on:
Leslie Gjonbalaj
Miguel Rojas 
Fritz Templin

Week 14: More Social Strategy, part 1

It was really great taking a look at so many different social media platforms and learning their differences. From the very beginning of this class, I had the impression that Instagram would be our most successful social media platform, and its been growing more and more every day. My business relies on photographs to display our work. What better social media avenue than instagram, which is purely visual! People scroll through their feeds looking at hundreds and thousands of photos every day. 

I have found it much harder to post an engaging photo on Instagram when I am scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find a good photo of our work. On days where we are prepping for an event or on the day of the event, we are much more excited to post and show new content. The captions come easier and interesting hashtags do too! 

I really like the fact that I can post both on instagram and Facebook simultaneously. This is something I can do everyday, and in fact, I make sure I post at least twice a day. When I have time, I will share with Facebook things that I am not sharing on Instagram, and vice versa. 

Because we get new content at least once a week, I end up posting on a whim, rather than a scheduled post. I tend to think more in the moment (and sometimes procrastinate!) which makes instagram a great platform for me to work with, since I can come up with something to post in 5-10 minutes. It still works on a much less frequent time schedule as well, because all of my earlier and older posts are easy to access so people can still see them and like them without having to scroll through pages. 

Week 12: Using other Social Media tools - Part 2

Using Yelp - 
I have definitely found that Yelp has made an impact on local businesses. I have entered many businesses with a yelp sticker at the door that says "people love us on yelp" so that customers can have piece of mind knowing that they are credible and that they will receive a great product/service. There are a few florists in my area that have a store front and they have the stickers and plenty of reviews. 
Currently I have 4 five star reviews, and plan on reaching out to past customers to leave a positive review for us. 



Using Linkedin - I saw that there were some groups of people working within the wedding industry. This would be a good place to show up and become involved in. Most of our money is made with weddings, so the more that we can land, the better :)

Week 12: Using Other Social Media Tools

I think that at Google+ account, Linkedin, Yelp, and Groupon could be useful in helping me grow my business.

I like the different options that Google+ offers and also the potential of putting my business on the map. Right now, since we don't have a shop that we sell flowers out of, I am not ready for the map location offer. 

Linkedin would be a really useful Social Media tool to have in order to connect with other professionals in my industry. It could be a good connection to be referred by others and look for other professionals on my end.

Yelp is a great tool because it adds credibility to your business and lets the outside world know that you are a legitimate business. I have already had multiple customers reach out to our business, even with just a few positive Yelp reviews. 

Groupon would be a good idea to look into when wedding season is over. We could offer discounts on a floral workshop or even a discount on wedding flowers, if we are looking to fill in a space in our calendar.

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I have created a Google+ page for Bloom Babes for this assignment. 

Here is the link: 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/115686331549199396007/115686331549199396007/photos

If that doesn't work for some reason.. Here are some screen shots :). It was not allowing me to add a profile picture, for some reason.

Week 11: Online Advertising part 2

Marketing on Social Media for free can be tricky but once you understand how to do it, it becomes kind of like a game.  It's all about posting interesting photos and coming up with captions that will capture your followers. It's always changing and evolving with trends and different interests, so it's almost like each post is an experiment on gauging how well it will do in terms of engagement. I think as long as you have the basics covered: a beautiful photograph, call to action, or sparking curiosity, you have a good basis for free marketing.
Here are a few posts showing for a call of action:

Week 11: Online Advertising part 1

Since we are a pretty small company with a tight niche, at the moment, I don't think advertising would set us ahead from other companies. We aren't looking for weddings of any kind, but we look to connect with  brides who are open to non traditional flower design.

There's different kinds of ads for different objectives. There are domain ads (not mobile compatible but can be cheap. only show to the right of the page), page post links (most commonly used that catches the user's attention with a photo and directs them to your website, found on the news feed), multi product ads (available only in the Newsfeed for desktop and mobile, is  similar to the normal page post link ad but instead of featuring only one link it will show up to 3 different pictures to show different products.) 

I would probably try the page post links if I were to try advertising. I think it would get a lot of engagement from my audience since people respond so well with photos that are visually appealing. I like that it is also mobile compatible, since a large percentage of people on facebook are accessing it through their mobile devices.

I would probably start off with a small budget of about $10-$20 for a day and to show up in the morning and night. I would guage how people are responding to it and if it is getting any engagement. 

I think these ads would be effective because I am capturing the audience with a colorful flower arrangement or installation, and hopefully people will want to see more and comment or like on the post. I think it will intrigue people to click on my website to see what other designs we have come up with.