Week 14 - Social Media Management Tools

I wanted to try Hootsuite free version, but it required a credit card to set up, so I skipped it. I wanted to try all of them, but I ran into some issues along the way that I couldn't figure out. I tried Zoho. It took a minute for it to get set up. Once it was all set up, I was a little overwhelmed with what to do first. I was able to ad both, Instagram and Facebook. Once I connected those, I could see my brand health and my recent posts. I like that it has a way to invite others team members to collaborate. This a great perk considering, I'm not the only one with access to the store Instagram. I scheduled some posts and went through all the analytics. This is a great all in one tool for social media. 

Week 13b - Developing Online Advertising

 I have been making ads to get more foot traffic into our store. It seems to be working. I do ads for one week and then a week off. I was curious to see the change in foot traffic. During the weeks with ads, we definitely notice a difference in our sales for that week. Then a dip for the weeks that we don’t do ads on Facebook. 

I have tried to do ads on Instagram but it always says that there is an error. 

Week13a - Online Advertising - Analysis of the Marketplace

I find that most ads are annoying but there are a few that catch my eye are always about curly hair or dog things. The ones that draw my attention are always about animals, and a few about hair. The one that I find annoying are the ones that I have no interest, which is most of them. The ads that I do pay attention to always use photos and the link takes you to a website to buy or see what they are selling. 

I kind of miss the traditional advertising from the radio and newspapers. Sometimes I'll listen to the radio just for the ads. Most of the time I'm not interested in what they are selling. I like to use my imagination to visualize the ad. I love billboards of all kinds; they are my favorite form of advertising. I love being in the car and watching the billboards go by and reading them. I believe that all forms of advertising are effective. The more you are out there, the more chance of someone being interested and buying what you are selling. 

Instagram and Facebook are both intrusive with ads. I can say something and within a few hours an ad pops up on one or both of these sites. This is my favorite way to holiday shop now. I simply say what I'm looking for and the ad pops up within a few hours. Most other sites are generic advertising. 

 

Week 10a - Resesrching Email Marketing

​I think that a newsletter would work pretty great. I feel that quarterly would work for this business. Every 3 months we could sent out a newsletter with information about the products that we sell, new products coming in, and sales that we are having.

Some topics we would include is chewing, product informations, mixology, and more. 

Week 12a: Using Business Specific Online Tools

 I tried a few different online business tools. I am really curious about the meet up one. I have to talk it over with my boss, but I want to set up some kind of meetup, whether it be online or in person, and talk about the benefits of the dry food that we sell. The benefits of raw food. Why we don't have corn, wheat, or soy. 

We already use Yelp but none of the reviews are recent. Trying to figure out how to claim this business or find the person who already claimed it. With 85 reviews, we rate 4.5 stars on Yelp.  

I tried TikTok but got nothing from posting on there for the week. 

Week11a - Marketing with TikTok

 It seems that some businesses can use TikTok as an advertising platform. Seems to be a great fit for people that are selling different crafts and homemade items. I'm not too sure on the pet store being a good fit for TikTok, only time will tell. There are sites that you can visit to take classes on how to use TikTok for business. I'm going to try a few different ways to promote on TikTok and see what happens.

I did find that Petco and PetSmart are on TikTok and have quite the following but nothing like their Instagram pages. It seems that they both use the same strategy as Instagram. They post mainly videos of dogs with the hashtags.