Week 17-Final Post- Wrapping it up

 First and foremost, thank you for teaching this class. I enjoyed diving more into social media and how it applies to businesses. Going into depth with all the marketing tools and utilizing them has been a great learning experience. I also took delight of reading my classmates real business or fictious and how they would implement on what we covered in class each week. 

My viewpoint on social media has not changed much. I do feel concerned about certain things in regard to privacy. My personal accounts I have a better perception on what I post especially with my kids. However, on a business standpoint, the more I put out there, the better. More exposure turns into clients and generate sales. As apple mentioned, about the privacy policy I think is great unless you are a small business trying to make a name for yourself. I see how it can impact on that. 

Creating a business profile on Instagram and Facebook, has helped discover new customers through the research I learned. For example, how many viewers looked at our page and new followers. Interesting enough, other businesses started following us. In a sense it's great networking which can lead to potential collaborations and new customers. 

Our business had a minor increase with customers. A family came in after seeing our Instagram on special orders of donuts and requested 2 dozen Christmas and Hannukah donuts for an event. We hope this turns out to be a frequent client of ours. Apparently, she searched Encinitas donuts through the hashtag and came across to us. We were closer to her and the reviews on yelp sealed the deal! 

With social media constantly revolving and being the digital way of word of mouth, Encinitas Donuts needs to stay on track with the latest trends. Venturing out on other platforms especially TikTok since many young viewers use it. We can capitalize on that target market and generation. Since we are close to San Diguito Academy high school, it gives us the opportunity to convert the students into customers. Also, we would need to keep creating new content and posting consistently to stay relevant. 

I appreciate the guidance you taught us in this class. The commenting on your group's post let alone creating and writing a blog was unfamiliar to me. I've never written one or even read one. I love the idea of blogging now! Thank you. To my classmates, I value the feedback I got from you about Encinitas Donuts. Next year as the new owners, we will take consideration of all the suggestions that were made. Good luck!

Week 16B: Planning a Calendar of Marketing Strategy

 Our content strategy for the month.

This week 12/11-12/18

• Take some images of customized donuts for special orders. 1 hour. 
• Edit images. Create content. 
• Schedule posts to post at 3am. An hour before we open to the public. 
• Create short videos or reels baking from scratch and all the hard work goes into making donuts.
• Twisted Thursdays. All the twisted donuts.
• Go on google analytics and see how we're doing. How many new followers along with viewers. 

Week of 12/18-12/25

• Hanukkah donuts are special ordered. Post images and video content of the Sufganiyot jelly donuts.

• Follow up with any direct messages or comments from followers. Address any concerns or positive feedback.
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•      Update our holiday hours and post on social media with some festive contents.
•      Follow up with or Facebook for business page. Add more details if needed.
•      Check our status on engagement and analysis.

    Week of 12/25-1/1

• During closed days, check all of our operational/back of house duties. 
• Create new content with New Year's resolutions poll. Perhaps looking into gluten and vegan free donuts.
• Post " Happy Holiday's from your mom-and-pop donut shop" content. 
• Update when we will reopen. 1 hour
• Go over our Zoho account. 

    Week 1/1-1/8

• Check our conversion on both social media platforms
• Analyze trend from this year's holiday and plan for next year. 2 hours.
• Start forecasting for next month's content. 
• Reaching out to clients if needed.

Week 16 Part A: Developing your Marketing Strategy

 The future of Encinitas Donuts, we will continue to use Instagram and Facebook. It's user friendly for our already clients and even new ones. With Facebook for business, it allows a viewer to read more information about us. Instagram has been convenient for us. We are able to post images and short videos aka reels. The option of customizing a post with gifs, background music, and hashtags. Everything is business friendly. I do like the scheduling tab. Often times, life gets busy, and we tend to forget things. The schedule post timer helps a lot. I also like integrating hashtags with our posts. Being creative and differentiating ourselves and staying relevant. 

Google Analytics would be a great marketing tool to keep track of our audience engagement, what we are doing wrong, and how we can improve. Google Analytics will give us an idea on how our content is engaging with viewers. What we need to change or how often or less we should be posting. Our peak times on how many people looked at our Instagram. Perhaps we can also implement Zoho as another management tool. With Zoho we are able to stay organized. Allocating all of our social media, emails, and finances. 

 Right now, we are enjoying Instagram. I've been using it for personal projects since it launched in 2010. It was a no brainer on how to integrate from personal to business. I enjoy the switch profile feature. I don't have to create a separate profile with a new username and password. Everything syncs to one user account. 

Social Media marketing would play a huge part with Encinitas Donuts. My in laws aren't social media friendly, but that's why once we take over, we hope to gain more business than before. I plan on doing all of our digital marketing and spending a couple of hours of taking photos and videos. Editing and thinking of content that is not too gimmicky. Also, promoting our business at my son's elementary school, especially the PTA and even the school district. I'll being that while working on my Social Media Marketing degree at MiraCosta.

 

 

Week 15 Part B: What we learn from Facebook Analytics

Since I did not have enough page likes, I could not get an accurate data reading for Encinitas Donuts. Our actual count is 55 Facebook page followers along with 25 Instagram followers. Just shy of 45 more. As an alternative assignment, we had to research on how the changes Apple has made to their privacy practices, impacts Facebooks ability to collect data to share with business customers.

Apple updated their privacy by requiring apps to get permission from the user before tracking their data. It's about choices with the user if they want personal information being shared. As an apple consumer myself, kudos to them for implementing this. I don't like my information being shared without my permission for other business purposes. It may lead to a data breach and can lead to spam emails or texts. An annoyance for sure.

           Facebook's rebuttal is that it will, " hamper the ability and reach of businesses to use targeted ads." What to know about Apple's new privacy update and why it's riling Facebook - ABC News (go.com) Many small businesses will be affected. I definitely understand both parties, but why can't small businesses find an alternative to reach an audience on their own? If you have to use other people's data without their permission, then your advertising, content, and target marketing needs some improvement. 

Facebook is concerned on the impact of Apple's app tracking transparency. Sales is a major one. According to, "Facebook said on Wednesday that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature would decrease the company’s 2022 sales by about $10 billion." Facebook says Apple iOS privacy change will cost $10 billion this year (cnbc.com) Isn't Facebook a multi-billion-dollar company? I understand that Apple is a well-known company that generates millions of dollars every nano second. Facebook can find other ways to allocate more sales. 

 Overall, it's about choices. Apple's consumers have the option of allowing an app to keep tabs on personal data or not. Facebook should take into consideration of consumers privacy. I'm sure once you log in on social media, your personal information has already been collected and shared with other businesses without anyone's knowledge. Sad.

 

 

 

 

            

  

 

 

 

     

Week 15 Part A: What we learn from Google Analytics

 After reading the lecture and data report that was provided for this assignment, I learned that it is beneficial to have a google analytics business account in order to stay on top of everything. From looking into our own data on google analytics, the average engagement time was down by 45.5%, however our event count was up by 640.0%. in the last 7 days. 

It is convenient to integrate all social media platforms and the statistics of what we did right versus missed opportunities and how we can improve. Being more creative with our content, posting consistently, and capturing an audience and converting them into regular customers. The traffic Aquisition tab is unique to see how many are visiting our pages.

Going forward, Encinitas Donuts will focus on authenticity of our brand content and gimmicky. Being relevant and differentiating ourselves from other donut shops would be key. Digital Marketing is rapidly advancing that we need to be well rounded in these areas of data web tracking. My father-in-law has a notebook that he keeps track of sales from last year, how busy it was, and if we had any special orders that day. He then forecasts it for the next few weeks on how much to bake. With google analytics, we won't be needing no notebook to keep track of sales, trends, and etc.

Week 14: social media management tools

 Going over the article that was provided for this assignment, we would consider utilizing Meet Edgar or Zoho as a social media management tool. We like that Meet Edgar has a free trial and that you can schedule your posts to automatically run-on multiple platforms. Although it mentions that it is limited to a few social media platforms, we are ok with. Facebook, twitter, and Instagram is what we already use. We also like that it analyzes our customer engagement with our followers.

Zoho has a neat feature that it consolidates everything into one tool. Managing social media, emails, projects and finances. The standard membership is inexpensive for a month and if we wanted to upgrade it would be reasonably affordable with what it comes with.

For now, our business is thriving. We've had some new faces come in and purchase a few dozen on Thanksgiving Day. Since then, they have been coming back every morning. Going into future we would definitely try all the management tools that come with a free trial. 

I commented in Megan McDonell's blog. Sprouts having the highest ranked social media management tool and a long free trial, is up my alley. Being a small business, a free trial of anything helps. At least we can get a variety of options to choose from if we decide to go that route.

Week 13 Part B: Developing Online Advertising

 

The first ad I made was for Facebook. I wanted to put more awareness of who we are and how we differentiate ourselves from other donut shops. All of the years we've been servicing, we will be open on Thanksgiving Day until 12pm. Close on Friday-Sunday. We are the only donut shop that's open on Thanksgiving Day. In case folks are looking for fresh baked desserts to add on to their meal menu.

My Instagram ad will also coincide with our Facebook by bringing awareness and also engagement with our followers. We will be authentic when it comes to questions or concerns and respond in a timely manner. In the future once we take over, our call to action would be buy a dozen on your first visit you get a free donut of your choice. We ask is that they take picture and tag us and use our hashtags. 

Twitter was another social media platform I chose to create an ad for. I chose twitter because of Elon Musk taking over and all the controversy, I wanted to see how it all plays out. Besides that, we want to connect and engage with more followers. We want to be known as the best fresh baked donuts at affordable prices!