Extra Credit

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Week 9a - Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts & Webinars

I think that making a personal touch is great for everything. People want to know that someone is behind the blog. not a robot. I have thought about making a blog for the store. It would help people who have all the questions about what is good and bad for your pet's food. It could help with getting more customers each day. This brings to mind the Primal Pet Foods blog. It is a great source for everything Primal. They even have a recipes section that shows what products to use to make a Pup'kin Spice Latte or Dog Nog. 

I checked out some other blogs, one was the PetSmart Blog and it is filled with personal touches. Their whole blog is about the employees and pets that they sell. 

Week 8b - Your Instagram Hashtag Use

 I use #proteinforpetsvista on all my posts. I use #proteinforpets too. I'll use a few others that pertain to the subject that I'm posting about. The most recent was for free pumpkin spice lattes for dogs and cats. I used #pupkinspicelatte and #pumpkinspicelatte 

My first few posts after taking over the Instagram, I used way too many hashtags. I use the #proteinforpetsvista to show the location of our store. 

I tried posting at a few different times. I tried a breakfast, lunch and dinner schedule for posting. I didn't really notice a difference in the times that I was posting. 

I learned that hashtags are important and make a difference in posting. They help bring the right people to your posts. 

Week 8a: How to Expand Your Reach on Instagram by Using Hashtags

Pets Plus

Kahoots Feed & Pet Stores

PetSmart

Dexter's Deli 

Yes, visual media does work for the pet food industry. People like seeing the new products posted online or just information about a product. 

PetSmart only uses a few hashtags per post, and a few don't have any. PetSmart has 790,000 followers. PetSmart uses hashtags right after the caption and most of the time before using the hashtags, they use emojis that have to do with what the post is about.

Pets Plus uses quite a few hashtags per post. Pets Plus has 1,331 followers. They use right after the captions, and they also use the emojis. They do use way more hashtags than PetSmart. PetPlus doesn't post as often. Sometimes its everyday and them they are big gaps like days or months. 

Dexter's Deli is using only a couple and sometimes none per post. Dexter's Deli has 6,137 followers. They have one hashtag that they use the most #ilovedextersdeli. It's on almost every single post. Dexter's Deli seems to post about every other day. Sometimes more if they get an extra pet instore!

Kahoots is using hashtags but more than the others. Kahoot has 5,473 followers. Kahoots also uses the emojis, but they don't do the hashtags right after they caption. They push it down the post, so it is the last thing that you see. Kahoots posts sometimes everyday but mostly every few days. PetSmart seems to post every other day for the most part. 

I feel like the smaller stores like Kahoots and Pets Plus use more in hopes of attracting more customers. PetsSmart and Dexter's Deli are well known pet supply companies, so they don't have to use as many. OR they know that they don't have to use that many. I'm sure PetSmart has their own social media manager 

Week 7b - How Other Businesses Use Instagram

To me it seems like the service-based businesses that I looked at use a lot of videos to show what their businesses are about. The eyebrow threading used both video and pictures but seems to use for photos that videos. The videos would show the process and the photos would show the before and after of the eyebrows. The personal fitness trainers used more photos than videos as well. The videos were short and most times it would be a single exercise rather than the full routine. The photos were of them using the gym equipment.

Amazon uses mostly photos of different products. Most of the videos were of customers using products that they had bought from them. That is great for Amazon because it is free advertising (for the most part). Food trucks are wild. They use both videos and photos. I would say they are pretty even in their usages. The videos are high energy and fun. The photos shoe the amazing food being put out.

Personal Fitness Trainer - Service

Eyebrow Threading - Service

Amazon - Product

Food Trucks - Product

california_rad_patches

dojostacos

inglouriousbagels

Week 4b - Defining YOUR Target Market

    The target market for the pet supplies business are people with pets but its more than that. There are also the health-conscious customer and pampered pet customers. This pet store is a little pricey but that's because we care about what food is being given to your pet. We have the no corn, wheat, or soy in any of our products. Most of our customers are between the ages of 25 to 50. The ages 25 to 44 is all about spoiling their pets and making sure that the food that they are giving them is nutritious and a species appropriate diet. The customers 45 to 60ish is more concerned about the health issues of their pets and often come in looking for a very specific type of food such as low glycemic or low phosphorus. We do have all ages that come but those are the majority of customers and what they are looking for.

Week 7a - Get Visual with Instagram - Let a Picture or Short Video Tell the Story

 

Protein for Pets already had an Instagram. They did not have a personal Facebook page, so I started that one. I also joined WhatsApp. I’m still unsure of how that one works. 

Our Facebook just hit 40 likes/followers. The Instagram has 291 followers. I do think that our social media is making a difference. It is a small difference right now but in the future I can see the social media really paying off. Especially because we are doing in store events and even some virtual ones coming up. 

I have had a few customers say they saw it on our Instagram, which means it’s working! 

I do use hashtags on every post. I use #proteinforpets and #proteinforpetsvista on every post. The others I use depend on the picture. I follow many other local businesses and ones we sell in store. I follow different hashtags, too. #vistaca #proteinforpetsvista #proteinforpets 

Week 6b - Creating and Scheduling Facebook Posts

 

This is a screen shot of the 3 post that I have scheduled so far. 

I chose three products because when looking at the insights I can see that informational posts with product pictures seem to get the most engagement.