Week 8 part B

1. For my three posts, I used quite a few different hashtags based on the post. All of them were associated with beekeeping and I used the search feature on Instagram to confirm they were the hashtags I wanted to use. They included:

     #beekeeper #queenbee #bee #pollinators #savethebees #varroa #varroamites  #healthybee #beekeeping #beekeepinglife 

   The hashtags are very specific to the business to ensure that those interested in beekeeping could see the posts based on the tags. The goal is to ensure that I reach a little bit of a larger audience. For the posts, I don’t think that times or days released was necessarily as relevant as the posts themselves with the appropriate tags. The release times did not relate to any major event or something that was taking place in the market so I felt that the content was the most important item versus the timing of the posts. My learnings included that the content is important, my posts did not receive a lot of response so I clearly have work to do to engage other social media users to expand the value of the information. My thought is that my media probably needs to be custom video that allows users to learn or provide more meaningful content so they engage my business posts.

   
   

Week 8 part A

 In the business I’m creating, visual support is useful to grow the business organically on Social Media platforms. On Instagram, there are Social Media businesses and accounts that have been heavily followed by using visual support to show beekeeping. In once case, the Social Media business, Texas Bee Works with Erika Thompson has a large number of followers due to your visual video’s; however, one of the reasons is her lack of wearing beekeeping protection while handling bees. The visuals are very nice but the combination of visuals and lack of safety has drawn both positive and negative audiences but, this has resulted in an overall large following which may have been part of her strategy. For those working in beekeeping, comments reflect that she has poor safety practices and that anyone who performs the same activities while thinking western honeybees are friendly, will surely find themselves on the wrong side of the learning curve, especially if you don’t know how you will react to a bee sting. I feel that she uses visual media and hashtags to successfully promote herself and she draws a large following, about a million, which allowed her to be a features speaker on Joe Rogan’s podcast, so, she has marketed herself well. Her hashtags include bees, beekeeper, beekeeping, insects, nature, and savingthebees and she posts consistently on her Instagram account, a video every month.

MannLakeLtd is a business started in 1983 to supply beekeeping equipment including bee boxes, bee frames, bee suits, tools, bee rearing equipment, bees and queens, etc. The Instagram account visual media mainly focuses on product for sale from the business, the do not seem to have engaging video’s like Texas Bee Works. The business does not have a lot of followers comparatively, they have 7,350 followers compared to the million followers that Erika Thompson has on her account. The visual design is primarily images of pruducts and some of the images attempt to provide useful information to new beekeepers but it is very limited. Additionally, one image is to help customers pick-out the correct breed of bees for them and the link presented is no hyperlinked, so this isn’t effective from a media perspective. They use tags which include mannlake, beekeeping, beekeepers, and beebreeds and post regularly. While they are a national business that supplies large number of beekeepers, their Instagram traffic is light overall and, in my opinion, should be much larger.

Bee hero is a new beekeeping technology company that has an Instagram account with 721 followers. The beehero.io account has a small following and technology with investors behind it that have provide over 40 million dollars to work on the technology. Bee hero has a combination of media, including images and video’s on their Instagram account. Most of the information focuses on managing hives, keeping them healthy with more real-time data, and value to farmers that need pollination services, especially in the Almond groves. The technology has real potential to save beekeepers significant costs knowing that a hive has an issue however, they do not discuss the cost of the technology versus hive losses. For each hive with a sensor, you can monitor the colony and the system determines if there is an issue with the hives health so you can address it quickly. This business manages 11,000 bee colonies and they have very low traffic on Instagram. They use hashtags such as bees, pollination, honeybee, almondpollination, centralcalifornia and beehero. With the amount of capital behind them, to me, they are a nationwide large technology business with very few followers.

In Summary, the question must be why is TexasBeeWorks so successful using visual media with a huge number of followers in a small amount of time? Erika Thompson was born in 1986 and has a million followers, whereas Mann Lake has been supplying beekeepers nationally since 1983 and has less than 1 percent of her follower numbers at 7,350. Additionally, Erika has 9 million followers on TikTok which seems to drive some of the traffic to Instagram. Beekeeping is an old-school business and I believe Erika was able to drive traffic based on the risk she takes while working with bees, her age, looks, and personality. It seems that an individual’s appearance doing interesting things is more highly marketable then say, a 50-year-old man with more subject knowledge doing the same beekeeping tasks when it comes to Social Media marketing. That probably sounds socially incorrect but in terms of interest and marketing, I feel that may be what is happening here. My thought process is that if Mann Lake want’s to drive a larger following, they can create more exciting video’s with a younger generation interested in beekeeping. You could use the same group to travel to exotic places and see different cultures performing beekeeping in the video’s as well. If all else fails, they could use a service to drive your Instagram follower growth.

Week 7 Part B: How Other Businesses Use Instagram

             I reviewed three of my classmates’ Instagram accounts, all of them are business owners and/or managers with experience in their specific industry. They have a variety of followers depending on the business and all of them seem very qualified for the areas that they work in, which is great! I reviewed their Instagram accounts to see how they were using their Social Media along with the types of tags they are leveraging.

            All three Instagram accounts that I reviewed have clean photos and reels. It helps to show their business results and work-in progress when they post more frequently to keep followers and customers engaged. Clearly, they enjoy their work, and it shows how engaged they are working at their businesses, which also grows customer confidence knowing they really like what they do. They all share similarities including reels, photos, and unique logos so their postings are similar in their overall use of Social Media on Instagram.

Instagram is effective for them by posting often, they make it look like their businesses are fun and interesting, and they seem to inspire you to want to do that job. Photos and videos are appropriate for the Instagram accounts, they look organized, it’s very easy to follow what their business/ job is, and all three that I reviewed worked in interesting industries and have nice job skills as clearly seen on Social Media. Some of the review included an account with a small amount of content, so I have to assume it is a new site or business that is still underway.

I feel that all Instagram posts can improve by tagging postings with appropriate hashtags, and possibly advertise specials for their business/ job and to connect with more customers. Engaging with local groups, and those interested in the same businesses, I feel, would attract more followers, and help reach a wider audience. I also prefer more short videos (under 5 minutes) instead of reels and images. I think it would be nice to watch videos for their business to accomplish specific goals, with good editing, showing the quality of their work and accomplishing a work task from beginning to end.

Overall, I think the three classmates reviewed did an excellent job presenting their businesses. When you see how much they really enjoy their work, it is inspiring. Now, I want to go and build a muscle car!

https://www.instagram.com/sparkygarage1/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSp-oyJsUFP/

https://www.instagram.com/dw_equipmenr_repair/

 

Week 6 Part B

  Here is what I found out about Instagram videos and photos from my group members, I see a lot of creativity, and a lot of effort into these Instagram pictures than videos. I recommend putting an edited photo or video, and then put tags on the video. this shows that business is more posted, and more active then for a year to go by or something unique, to get audience hoked into your video's/photos. They might have a website, and social media as shown like all social media, and you click on it links you directly through the link into their own business. This is very good, very unique and well throughout. I would say a good business would always make accounts for all  social media with the links directly to their webpages and all there accounts so its more easy to follow them. It also helps to figure out what they are doing or currently doing in the real world. I also wanted to say that this will also improve to growth and evolve into a better business on their own page work website, and bring in more audience into their Instagram or their website fakebook page.

I commented and like down under the names below

Nicole Angelwarrior, on Instagram - Angel warriors is a limited comments on so fyi

Week 6 Part B

    I created three posts that are scheduled to release over two days. I made sure that they were scheduled for certain a date and time, and release to the public on my Facebook page. The Facebook post tools are easy to use and I enjoyed learning about these tools that are new to me. I hope my posts provide valuable information about Queen Bees that the community finds interesting and it will encourage visits to the business page. I hope these posts drive attention to the company and I'm interested in seeing how the post analysis goes based on followers, likes, shares, and overall interest. I'm hoping that this allows others to share information with me as well and it provides good information to new beekeepers or those interested in queen bees.

 

Week 6

This week I commented on company's below 

B'z Kickz

CS Specialist (CS)

Real Estate 

Week 6 Part A; Engaging strategy of Facebook For your customers

 In general, I chose Two like businesses that supply the bee keeping industry. The reason I shoes these businesses is that they have a large following of beekeepers, and I would like to build relationships with companies that may want to distribute my queen bee’s in the future. By following these companies, I can also see their posts, current information about the beekeeping industry, and how they market their products for sales. The businesses include large manufacturers and distributors of products used by beekeepers.

            The Facebook posts include images and video for these businesses. The posts seem to be unique for each business, including images and videos they create to present information. Seeing the posts and videos about the business is a good way to gain followers, likes and teach interested parties information about products and the industry. The posts are well-written and effectively communicate the message and information about the business.

            The businesses use more photo’s than video’s, but both are used and good for communicating specific topics. Depending on the information they want to present, they decide to post images or video’s based on what is most effective. The media makes the post more interesting, and it definitely helps focus followers on information they may be interested in.

            From the posts, you can quickly identify the topics you are interested in based on the media. Some of the posts include business product sales information and discounts, while other posts show information and learning information in video about a topic. What is obvious is that posts that include media have a much higher engagement with followers than posts that do not have media included. From a marketing perspective, it’s important to choose the right media to engage your base followers.

            Customer engagement varies by business and products however, all of the businesses do have a high-level of engagement. Mann Lake Bee and Ag supply has 24k likes and 27k followers as they are a large supplier in the industry and their followers are always looking for product savings. Additionally, Mann Lake has a lot of information on bee breeds, and ordering live bees, based on where you live and the yearly seasonal weather. As example, Itialian bees are better in the south, the build rapidly, and are gentle excellent honey producers. From this perspective, it helps teach customers and engages the audience, especially new beekeepers, interested in learning.

Week 5 Part B

 

                                Post-reach is important for a business to understand the number of entities that a post is viewed by with respect to overall totals. A post on Facebook can include text, photo’s, video, links and products for a business interested in reaching a large audience. The goal on Facebook is to help improve and evolve your business by being noticed in the community, by potential customers, and current customers while continuing to build your brand. Leveraging a platform like Facebook and having a high-volume post-reach can help drive business to your website as well. Post-reach is important as you want to continue to increase the number of people you reach over time to drive traffic to the business.

                                Post-engagement is a way to see how many people or entities view and interact with your business post which will give you an understanding of interest. Based on the posts, we can understand the content and the value people are interested in which may modify our business model with respect to outreach. As example, if a post reaches 100,000 people, and only 1,000 share or interact, the value is probably low. In comparison, if the post interaction is 15,000, we know that people are interested in the content and the post is more valuable. Post engagement interaction, especially if it’s paid content, is critical to understand the value based on interaction and shared returns.

                                Above, we covered a little of the learnings but the main goal is to understand the breath of people you reach, and the depth of who is interested in the content. As many of us know, content that goes “viral” is of huge value in driving visibility and interaction to businesses and individuals. In the context of Facebook, it’s really understanding how many people you reach and how many people are interested in the post.

                                In the context of the bee queen business, Facebook insights can provide detailed information about individuals and businesses interested in the content. So, if the age demographics fit a range content, we will adjust content to target those folks’ on a go-forward basis. As example, if 75 percent of the people interacting are in the bee pollination business, and have large numbers of colonies, we will know to post information that includes possible news about pollination or rental rates paid for by almond growers for pollination services in the post to drive interest and see our queen bee production business as well. Facebook insights are critical to understand the interest in the marketplace, which content drives business to our site, and how we want to adjust content to drive business exposure and value.

                                I reviewed fellow classmates including Villalbeso’s Jewelry Business along with Bernard’s Shoe Business and commented on both.