Week 17: Wrapping It Up

This semester I learned how to utilize social media for my business to grow. I don’t think I want to open my own business just yet, but I would know how to start my business, grow my social media platforms and get customers talking. This semester I learned about the different social media platforms and which type is better for each business depending on the target you’re trying to reach. 

One thing I will continue to use if I ever do open my business is the google analytics. Knowing what audience is interacting to your posts will help you adjust or conform based of the reviews you receive. I didn’t get into Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube because those are platforms that wouldn't be useful for a small coffee shop. 

We also learned about visual platforms which is what I used this semester. Those networks include Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest...etc. I am only using IG and FB. For a small shop, it’s the quickest way to my audience with the quickest response I can get. I don’t have time to generate videos for YouTube, especially when I am only one person posting to our businesses social media page. When we did research those networks, I found larger, corporate businesses using YouTube. Toyota was one of them. Most of their videos were showing the best of the cars features. It’s a great marketing technique for them because pictures won’t do the car justice and customers would want to know how something like that works/looks. For a smaller business such as a coffee shop, it’s more cost efficient and smarter to use networks targeting your surrounding area. 

Before taking this class, I didn’t know that YouTube could be used for social media purposes for promoting your business. Whenever I think of YouTube, I think about bloggers and “how-to” videos people make. I think about music videos and clips from musicians. After searching more on how businesses use it, I can see how useful it can be. When I searched for similar small shops like mine, I found Instagram and Facebook to be the best. I love how I can connect to my customers and reply back to them. 

All in all, this class has been super helpful. I did marketing for my last job so I had an idea of how social media marketing worked, but I gained more information and had fun taking this class. My viewpoint has changed drastically because I always thought social media is used for selfish reasons, but people honestly and wholeheartedly make a living, support their families, and sell/promote amazing products and services because of it.

Week 16B: Planning Your Future Strategy

I commented on the following classmates blog posts:
Andrea Esquivel
Leslie Montano
Megan Smith

Week 16: Planning Your Future Strategy

This semester I learned about all the types of social media platforms, how to utilize them to your specific goals for your business and how to strategically use social media in general to continue progressing through your business journey. I also learned how to gather analytics on Facebook and create relationships with customers. 

For my small coffee shop, I personally think I’d stick to Facebook and Instagram. Those are the 2 visual social media platforms I know could help excel the business and bring customers in. I could go on to Twitter, but if I am the only one running the social media, I want to make sure I’m consistent with what I have and not go overboard with it. For my online marketing strategy, I would definitely use the boosted posts on Facebook. Like I said I am one person, so I think having an already set schedule for when my posts go out would really help. I would spend everyday on social media for my coffee shop. I think it’s important to keep up with content on your page and throughout peoples newsfeed, especially if we have something exciting happening in the store. The only other way people would know about us is organically. 

With Facebook and Instagram, I will add the same content to both. For example, if I post a picture on Facebook, that same photo will go on Instagram at the same time (I love that feature!). Because we are a new coffee shop, I want to give out free coffee for the whole month if you sign up for our newsletter. I think this strategy could work because who doesn’t love free coffee? This way, our customers can stay up to date with what’s going on at our shop. Secondly, I will post every day that were open (everyday except Sunday), and post a time during the day that most people are on their phones. I find this to be 6pm-9pm. Lastly, I would like to also post 1-2 times a week of real customers at our coffee shop. With permission, of course. 

Week 15B: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

I didn’t have enough likes on my page to use my own date, so I used The Aztec Brewing FaceBook page. First, I like how the analytics shows you what age and gender has viewed your page. I think this is pretty important because it can help your future posts to reach more of that demographic. You can go even deeper and see how many people in a certain area have viewed the page. If you notice you have fewer followers in a certain city, I would [for example] invite a local band in that area to play at the brewery and have them promote that they will be at store. I think it’s interesting how you can see summary’s of your previous posts to see what does and doesn’t work. For example, it looks like a post back in late November reached 904 people and 17 people were excited enough to react, comment or share that post. For social media purposes, I would go back to that popular post and use more of that content on my page. And how crazy to see how many people are on their mobile devices compared to on a computer. I would take that information and research what time of the day is a good time to post and reach more customers who would view on their smart phones. 

Week 15: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Sales forecasting for coffee shops can be a piece of pie for data analytics professionals with viable historical sales data. Because knowing today what you are going to sell tomorrow makes you not just more prepared but turns planning into an easy task. Another benefit would be checking promotions and advertising. Creating promotional product bundles is an easy and fruitful task with data analytics. It helps easily to identify product correlations which will turn into increased turnover. Lastly is pricing. It is that particular value which is going to maximize your sales in terms of profitability. For instance, if my coffee is sold for $2, reducing or raising the price by just 25 cents will have its impact on the actual sales. 

Week 14: Developing Online Advertising

This week I created 3 ads. 2 of which were similar and 1 of them was looking for a part time barista. I love the fact that social media can be used to find jobs. I think a free coffee is a small price to pay to get someone to click on my ad and visit my coffee shop. The audience I was targeting is everyone. Everyone who enjoys coffee. I don’t think the limit is set on who to specifically call my “customers” because they can be any gender, race and age. 

Boosting posts for my shop makes the most sense because for a small coffee shop like mine because there can’t really be much to sell other than a few different items. I want to be able to invite people into the store because coffee is everywhere. It’s a competitive group area in social media marketing when people already choose Starbucks for the name and inconvenience. All three ads I created are directed to my actual website where I hope that people can be directed to and learn more about On the Edge Coffee House. 

Week 13B: Online Advertising-Analysis of the Marketplace

After reviewing the multiple Facebook ads possible for my business, a small coffee shop would benefit from using a boosted post. I would use automated boosts, which is where I would schedule the posts I would like boosted, such as recipes and pictures I think would target my audience. I would like to boost my posts though Facebook and Instagram. 

Some other ads I thought were pretty cool were domain ads. This ad is a linked directly to your website for people to browse. Another one was canvas ads. This ad is linked directly to the page you’re wanting to purchase the item. Ive seen Target and Walmart use these ads on Facebook all the time. I think it’s extremely effective, but with a small coffee shop like mine, I wouldn’t have much to offer other than trying to get my customer to come into the coffee shop to purchase coffee.