Week # 10B : Categories for blogs

What a great idea to collect all scattering ideas on what I plan to post on Social media and then put them into each category!  I can see by doing this would help me stay organized and focus more.  The most important thing is that it will help ease my stress level to not pressure myself when it's time to post something on social media.

Since I have too many ideas, so I decide to separate them into 2 big categories by the type of each post:

- Images / text 

- Videos

Then from those two categories will have its own sub-categories that would be something interesting for my audience in each subjects as following:

- Ingredients

- How to cook

- Cooking Tip

- Opinions about Thai food

- Sightseeing in Thailand

- About Thailand

- etc.

However, all of these categories are initial groups that would help me plan and stay focus to find or create my own content to write on each post.  Using "HootSuite" will help me schedule my posts for all social media platforms that I use.

Blogs commented on:

- Tiffany Frutiger

- Michelle Bryson

- Joshua Pheneger

Week # 10A : Blogging for Business

Adding human interest to a post definitely appeal to peoples emotions since human beings live on emotions and feelings. What if we don't have no feeling on anything, we would turn to be a robot!  That's why I think using an emotional message on a blog would add it more attractive for visitors.

However, not all businesses can use much of personal touch.  It depends on how professional the company is, how casual the way company runs, and what type of products it sells.  For my business, Gin Arai, I will use myself as the face of my company.  Then I plan to play around with emotions, feelings, and personal touches on my blog in order to communicate with customers and let them know that I'm a real person and the owner of the company!

I also added Google Analytics on my blog as it's shown at the left bottom of my blog (a picture below).  I'm not sure that I did it correctly or not, please anyone advises me.

Week # 9 : Twitter

For my upcoming business, I don't plan to use Twitter to be a main social platform since I personally don't have much experience of using it and I feel that Twitter needs more attentions to update and more time consuming.  I get a little bit intimidated to use Twitter.

However, after getting to know a bit more about Twitter, I may consider to use it as a part of social media plan for Gin Arai.  

The keywords I used to search are "meal-kit delivery", "meal prep", and "ingredient box".  Surprisingly, these keywords give me similar results.  As it's shown in the picture, I separate a group of people or companies into:

- Influencers: writer, bloggers, or consumers

- Who else: other meal-kit delivery companies

I would think the best time to post on Twitter either lunch time or dinner time when people have a short break from their work or their daily life.

Week # 8B : YouTube

When I personally use Facebook and Instagram, I always scroll down to past posts that don't have image or video.  It's just because I don't have much time to read...what a good excuse, right?  Actually, I'm too lazy to read but love watching videos instead. 😅

Talking about the business side, it depends on what type your business is in.  Luckily, my upcoming business is in food service area that I can communicate with potential customers by using visual media.   Let's think about the sight of food.  The expression "eat with your eyes" is certainly true because when a dish is visually appealing, it's more appetizing.

As I mentioned in my post before about other companies in this type of business, there are 4 big companies which are Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Plated, and Marley's Spoon.  I've been studying on what they're doing to get to know their styles of posts they apply.  All of them heavily use their visual media to post pictures and videos through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.  Not only do they have a lot of followers and likes, but also they communicate well with their customers.  

The more I do research on these established companies, the better I learn and understand who customers are and how to approach them.

Week # 8A : Get Visual

There are so many social media platforms that companies can choose.  In my case, Gin Arai is a Thai meal-kit delivery service.  When I choose which platforms are the best use for my company, I make a decision based on these following factors:

- a natural type of the business: it's a food business.
- visual images needed?: yes! One picture worth ten thousand words.
- video needed?: definitely! it's more attractive to show videos of food, cooking, or other related videos.
- explanation needed?: since we're a new company, we need to give more information to our potential customers who we are and what we're doing.  So I think we will use a lot of info-graphic images or videos to make it more interesting.
- time & management?:  this one is the most important thing since it doesn't matter how many social media your company has BUT it does matter how effectively you use each platform.

The social media platforms I plan to use are:
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Pinterest
- YouTube

Week # 7B: Facebook Content Plan

I've scheduled these 3 posts and put them in the order by its content.  Since Gin Arai is a brand new business, we want to give more information about our company to create a "Brand Awareness" at the first stage.  Then I start with the first post that helps our potential customers know to pronounce our company name correctly.  For other two posts, I just give interesting content that audience wants to check it out and I try not to sell too much of my products or services since people could get bored with all sales pitches after awhile. 

If you notice, I set up to post it on daily basis during lunch time when people take a break from work.

For me, creating content with pictures and videos is not a hard part since I know what contents I want to use but the most difficult part is "writing" a post.  I have a hard time to write it down and have a tendency to overthink due to lack of confidence in writing!  I hope I would get better soon if not, it would be a BIG problem!

Week # 7A: Like as my page

To be honest, at first, I had no idea what business I would choose to like as my page since I don't even know the names of magazines, media companies, or bloggers.  Luckily that most of the companies in a meal-kit delivery service business are well established, for example, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Plated, and Marley Spoon.  Then, I got the idea why don't I just study and see which businesses these companies choose to "like" as their pages.  

I immediately started to make a list and separated the companies I found with a type of business as follow:

- Food distributor

- Magazine

- Media, News

- Public Figure

- Society & Culture website

- Home & Garden

- Personal Blog

- Health & Beauty

- TV Show

- NGO

I initially had about 75 businesses to go through.  After that, I searched to see which businesses would be the ones that my audiences are interested in.  I ended up with 50 pages that I chose to like.  I believe that I will learn a lot of things from these pages and see what they post on their pages as well.  Can't wait to explore more what I can grow my business with this feature of Facebook!