Week # 12A : Other Social Media Tools

For all four additional online marketing tools, I believe that using Google+, Yelp, and Google Maps would help me grow my business.  Google + and Google Maps are great tools since it would help my SEO.    

However, with a time constraint, I'm afraid that I won't be able to update or keep track every social media that I have.  At the beginning stage, I would rather focus only 5 main social media platforms which are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube.   

Week # 11B : Blogs commented on

Blogs commented on:

- Tiffany Frutiger

- Abdul Saltani

- Joshua Pheneger

Week # 11A : Email Newsletters

Since Gin Arai is a brand new business, I would plan how to use newsletters by using a timeline as a phase of a business cycle to help us organize and plan what content we will send out to clients.  Luckily, I have been teaching Thai cooking classes around San Diego area for 7 years so I have a list of email contact information of my students who took classes with me.  Therefore, I will have them as a group of existing customers who know me well in person.  The followings are the contents and timelines on what I plan to use newsletters effectively:

At the beginning, I will use email as a relationship building tool.  Since I already have a great relationship with these existing clients, the content will be an introduction email about Gin Arai, let them know why I start this business and how they will get a benefit from Gin Arai.  Moreover, I will encourage them to connect with all Gin Arai's social media platforms. 

After a while, the content would be drive sales tools that promote products, promotion, or a special sale by having a call to action on the email.

For other information, we may send out the content to update our weekly menu, food pictures, or other video links as well.

I will start signing up for my competitors' newsletters to learn what they do to see what I like and don't like about and what topics or contents they send out their newsletters.  This way definitely will help me understand more how e-newsletters work and make a decision later on how often I should send it out.

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.