CSIT155-F18-TBantle

I knew some social media platforms before starting this class, but nothing like I know now. Learning social media for a business is totally different and way more time consuming than I ever thought it would be. Over this past semester, I have spent endless hours learning about the various types of social media.  Which one's are better for our farm and which one's I shouldn't use. I've created colorful eye catching posts and learned how to respond to comments with more likability.  We used to post things that were kind of boring and not interesting about our avocado farm. Now we will take a different approach so viewers can watch, learn and appreciate what goes into growing the world's finest avocados. I have learned what kinds of posts can catch a persons attention and which kinds don't. I now know how to create a call to action and offer discounts. I also learned how to track who my page visitors are and where they are from. And, I learned how to create a c

I posted on the following students in my Group#1: Christian Dahmann Alexa Floren Kalyn McMackin stopped posting Vicky Mowery Mario Panousos Shana Thompson Floyd Williams stopped posting

Learning the various social media platforms has been a real eye opener. I thought Facebook, Instagram, You Tube and Twitter were all good for our business and creating newsletters are an invaluable tool to create and increase sales, but learning to blog was also a very useful tool I am planning to expand on. In researching all of our competitors, I got to see what they are or aren't doing. There were a few companies that are very active in posting regularly and I learned from them and will grow from that. I liked some of their visuals on their websites and I will incorporate similar offerings. Offering seasonal ads as well as sales is a good idea especially in the gift giving season going on now. Farming is such a day to day business and things change rapidly so I'm going to start blogging more in addition to Facebook and Instagram about what we do to try and convey honesty, hard work, quality and value in what we produce.  I will plan on  spending  3-4 hours a day for 2 da

It appears that I am able to view more categories in Facebook Insights then I recall seeing before on our Facebook page: Bantle Avocado Ranch. We have 145 likes/followers now too.  I don't remember "People" being an option before. This is really cool because I can now see whether they are male, female, their ages, where they are and languages spoken. I can see my fans, followers and people I reached. Women are our major customer ages 18-64, but we do have some men too. The activity on the page has increased as well. This inspires me to become more involved in posting more creative ads and content.

The features of GA I think would be best for our business is found under Reports and Acquisition.   Here I can see Real Time/Traffic Sources, ie: where people came from, what they are looking at and content performance. I can see what people are looking at right now. With this report, I can learn how to focus my marketing efforts on which social media platform customers are using most. I can also use the Audience Report to see where my customers are based. Since I can't sell out of the country privately, I can determine if I am being watched by other countries, perhaps spied on for growing secrets or hacked by Russian Spies. :-) One last area I would look at is the Bounce Rate to see if people are only clicking once and leaving the page. I installed Google Analytics to our website, here's a screen shot for extra credit.

I created a few ads that I thought would be effective. I had some fun with this assignment as I got to get a little creative. The first one shows the sun shining on our fruit as it hangs in the trees and it encourages the viewer to buy some as a gift. This is a stock picture that was offered on Facebook. They had many to choose from which was helpful. It shows that we get our hands dirty to grow the best avocados we can and the viewer can get to know us better by liking our page. This is just a simple Instagram ad with a Shop Now button. There was an article that came out today about a shortage of Mexican avocados, so I thought I'd include this in an ad to urge a call to action and show some of our perfect fruit hanging in one of our trees. Hope you liked my first ads. I can't wait for our season to actually open so we can start running some real ads. Maybe next month!

This week I researched the many Facebook advertising options. Using the principles of good design with eye catching images and urging calls to action, I know I could implement a few good ideas into our ads. The different types of current Facebook ads I found listed on their website are: Video, Collection, Carousel, Slideshow and Single Image. Using Boost Posts is essential due to the algorithm they have now and I often receive discounted offers from them to do this so that is helpful in lowering the cost. I just need to set up our target market which won't won't be difficult as just about everyone loves a good California avocado. Some of the ads are only available to mobile users, not desktop, so I probably won't be using Canvas and Collection Ads. Another simple way to engage new customers is by using Messenger. We are already using this option. We get contacted by people around the world asking a variety of questions from how to grow avocado trees from a seed, to can th

In researching similar businesses, I found more than 5 Avocado sales companies that sell direct. I was able to find more by looking on the California Avocado Commission's website. The Google search engine has not been efficient for me in my searching. Some of the advertising I found is effective, but some isn't, because they are not consistent with their type of content or their frequency of ads. "Mraz Family Farms" has somewhat annoying ads. For example, they used a video that showed a man's hand cutting open a reed avocado and putting it on toast with Trader Joe's Everything seasoning, but they never show you who the guy is and when the owner of the company is a celebrity, he should show his face in my opinion,  so I felt a bit let down at the end of the video. It was effective though in that it left me wanting to eat that avocado toast and maybe it would cause the viewer to buy some. Avoganic is another example of ineffective ads. Because the California

In researching other forms of social media, I discovered Google Business. It's not the same thing as Google+ and  Google + is now obsolete anyway. Google Business is free and you can use it if you have a business location or don't.  When you create a business account with Google Business, it adds your business name to a google search. You can create a website for free if you don't have one already. Google Business lets you publish your events, products and services directly to google search and maps. By creating posts, you can place your timely text, video, or photo content in front of customers when they find your business listing. I think that is really cool, especially because it's free! Other options I like are social community websites such as Nextdoor when you can add your product for sale to many communities or on Facebook Groups, there are community exchange pages where you can type in a city such as Fallbrook and up pops the Fallbrook/Bonsall Area-Sell,Buy,Gi

Normally with our avocados we sell direct to a packing house, we don't have a store front or an address for picking up, but we could if we worked at a weekly farmers market. It's hard for us as we do not live at our grove and it's an hour away from our home. We would like to sell direct, but using LinkedIn would not be a good platform for it. If we sold at a farmers market, Yelp would be a good platform as it would give reviews on our fruit and show the price is worth it. I would not use Coupons, Groupon, or even Living Social. I am guaranteed making money selling to a wholesale packing house, as there is a demand for California avocados so selling using coupons would be a loss as it would not be worth it because Groupon charges 50% of your selling price. There's so much work involved just in picking the fruit, cleaning it, weighing it, packaging it, then shipping it, if we offered coupons like Groupon, we may as well just sell to a packing house and forego the hass

Creating the mass email required some creativity and pictures. Not sure I got it quite right yet, but it's a start. I tried to keep it simple and to the point. I sent 3 screen shots in a test email to Claudia Faulk. I commented on the following blogs: Olivia Cruz, Christian Dahmann, Jesus Farias and Cole Walker.

If I were to write a newsletter, I would write one just before harvest season which usually starts in January, but this year will probably start earlier than that and again throughout the season bi-weekly, until the end of the harvest which is in July for us in San Diego. I would offer a discount coupon code for 5 or 10% off to inspire readers to buy now. The content would consist of the following ideas: Our fruit is hand grown by a small family on 12 acres in the avocado Capital of the world. We take pride in how we grow our fruit, raise our bees to aid in pollinating the trees, how we water and fertilize the trees, how they are in season NOW, how the oil content is just right, how ours are pesticide & herbicide free, high in zinc and other essential nutrients and amino acids that our bodies don't produce on their own, how they last longer than mass marketed avocados because we don't gas them with synthetic ethylene like the packing houses do to speed up ripening, how th

I have often thought about blogging for the family avocado business. There's so much passionate work that has to be done to keep the grove going and fruit producing and if I can show the reader some of what goes into growing our amazing, award winning healthy avocados, I think they would gain a better appreciation for them and it might inspire them to buy some. By describing some of the many obstacles besides our crazy mother nature, that we have to endure such as manual labor, bees obsconding, labor shortages, water costs, electricity hikes, soil samples, tree leaf analysis, trying to go organic, refusing to use pesticides and herbicides, creating our own moisture sensors for the soil, our wireless irrigation system we spent 2 years creating and what it takes to grow a delicious California Hass avocado, then they can get an understanding of why they are more expensive than the typical watery, stringy, rotten imported avocados they find in the store for 75 cents a piece or less.

Learning the details of Twitter took me quite a long time as I was not very familiar with it.   I'm glad I understand it better now so that I will try to utilize its sales potential. Selling avocados direct will need a buyer with money who can appreciate the best avocados that money can buy. I looked up some celebrities to start out my lists who would be able to afford them and I looked up a couple of people we know already that are sort of locals.  I searched Avocado, superfoods, LA Farmers Markets, Health Magazines for men and women, and some famous younger and middle aged people. I found many celebrities, such as Justin Timberlake, Kevin Hart, Ellen Degeneres, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Tiffany Haddish. I made 2 lists: Ca Avocado Lovers and Local Avocado Fans. The CA Avocado Lovers list will be used to tweet ads to generate direct avocado sales through the mail and the Local Avocado Fans list will be for special sales whenever we have a surplus from wind fallen fruit or if we

Finding Avocado Farming companies on Facebook has been a challenge, but I found some as well as on YouTube that had some videos that were effective in getting the selling point across, but likes were few compared to their amount of followers.  Instagram is used by these companies as well and get more traction. California Avocados Direct.com- This company advertises on YouTube and Instagram. You Tube hasn't been updated in 6-7 years, had 707 views and they had 7 videos. Instagram's last post was on May 30th and got 77 likes.  The videos on YouTube were effective as they took a tour of the farm and explained their history and how they pick and ship the fruit.  The proportion of followers to the number of likes is unknown as they do not have a current facebook page. Mraz Family Farms advertises on all 3, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. They are very popular as the singer/songwriter Jason Mraz owns it so he gets a lot of visibility. They have 3,636 followers  and 3,462 likes o

Of the top 7 platforms listed in the Class Lecture PDF, Snap Chat was listed twice so I will discuss 6. I have chosen Facebook & Instagram for my business social media platform. I don't know if they are right for my product but they are easier to advertise than using YouTube as that is more time consuming. The reason I don't know if it's right for my product is because we haven't received one direct mail order as of yet. Only family and friends and they always want a huge discount which gets old really fast, especially when we are operating at a loss. When we branch our business out into selling smart irrigation systems, I will start making videos and using YouTube more then. On Facebook and Instagram, I can post engaging pictures and videos as well as try to generate sales with a Shop Now button.  I haven't used Pinterest yet. I've only used them for "how to" ideas. I need to explore that platform more. Twitter is not a good platform for selli

I chose the following businesses to like on my page: San Diego Business Journal, San Diego County Farm Bureau, California Avocado Society, California Avocados, Mraz Family Farms, Hunter Industries, AvoTerra by Index Fresh, USDA, Avoganics, West Steak House, Gelsons Markets and Trader Joes. I chose these businesses for a variety of reasons but the main reason is because they are all tied to farming avocados. The Business Journal did a story on our irrigation technology. We are members of the SD Farm Bureau. The Avocado Society does the marketing for California avocados and we pay them a percentage of our sales. Mraz Family Farms is a competitor and they do direct sales and sell out so I want to learn their skills. Same for Avoganics. AvoTerra by Index Fresh is our packing house we sell to. USDA is who we get our grants from. West Steakhouse, Gelson's and Trader Joes might need our avocados some day. I really like this feature. I had no idea it existed. I plan on using this feat

My family's business began in 2011 and our Facebook page started on April 30, 2014. It's a small avocado farm of 12 acres on a hillside in DeLuz which is in Fallbrook, CA. We primarily grow all Hass avocados, without the use of any pesticides or herbicides. Our FB page currently has 116 followers and gets posted on almost weekly, but we haven't sold any fruit direct yet, but are hoping to generate sales next year when the fruit comes back in season. Currently they are sold out and all sales were to a packing house which is the typical way many avocado growers do business, but the sales could be so much more if we sold direct. We also sell automated irrigation systems and that is slowly starting to get added to this page. I looked up the following Facebook pages that were similar to mine: Mraz Family Farms, Avocado Organic, Avocado Box, Growers Direct and California Avocados. It was surprising to me that I couldn't find that many companies using the name Avocado in

Knowing more about the customer will help with planning for efficient advertising. The target market/psychographic for direct sales of pesticide free Hass Avocados would be to either males or females, over the age of 18. It would have to be someone who is health conscious and/or athletic, who is looking to spend some money on quality food products that are hand grown in California. Their income would need to be over $50,000 a year. It doesn't matter if they are single or married, have children, or an education. Race or religion is not a factor either. It is a health and taste preference and if they have the affordability, they would buy them. The saying, we are what we eat matters to this target market. They want to eat as healthy as possible so they have a healthy mind and body. They are strong believers of super foods and the Environmental Working Group's Clean 15 with Avocados being #1 on that list. They believe that healthy fats are important and needed in our daily diet. A

I reviewed Armstrong Garden Center and Myrtle Creek Gardens. The target market for Myrtle Creek appears to be for tourists, young families, the retired and photo opportunities and perhaps weddings, I couldn't find any fees charged except for photography. I think they need pictures of things for sale if they offer any. The target market for Armstrong is for higher income homeowners with gardening needs and landscape services. The psychographics for Myrtle Creek are for those who love visiting well manicured gardens, farm animals, bird sanctuaries, and those who enjoy home made jams, crepes and garden art.  Armstrong's psychographics are geared towards the affluent who want high end gardening services with high end products. Armstrong stores are placed near expensive and highly visible areas. Myrtle Creek is in a tucked away area in farmland. The overall tone of Myrtle Creek is very relaxed, serene and inviting to come and spend a day there.  Armstrong nursery is more bright and

https://www.amazon.com https://www.youtube.com Amazon and YouTube are two websites that I use frequently. They both have well designed websites and the content is easy to find. They are fairly well "craphted". They are both effective websites as well. About 90% of the time, Amazon has what I am looking for. You Tube has a wide variety of videos that range from educational to entertainment. I come back to these websites because they are full of the things I am looking for and the search bar is easy to find. Specifically,  YouTube and Amazon have a great concept. While YouTube's contrast is subtle, everything is given the same emphasis, Amazon's has bold contrasting colors and also is categorized by pictures and departments. The alignment is left to right, not centered. Images have room to breathe as they are kept a small distance away from the text. They have good proximity. The hierarchy is clear and easy to understand, but with Amazon, sometimes the hierarchy ca

Jamilyn.com and roverp6cars.com are two websites that I felt could use a lot of improvements. First off, the name Jamilyn for a website doesn't explain anything. She would never be searched for unless people knew of her to begin with. Second, this site has way too much going on. The fonts are not uniform and they range from tiny to large. This website looks horrible. There's no branding, no logo, the color of beige is plain, the video is weird and too long. If you click on her skin care advertisement, it takes you to another website. I liked that she had some drop down menus and a contact us at the top instead of the bottom. The impact it had on me as a potential customer is that this lady is wacko and unorganized. I would not buy anything from her. As for Roverp6cars, I guess if you are an old car restorer you might know about this car, I didn't. Too much is going on in this website and it was too long to scroll down through. I didn't like all the red used in it. T

(1) The business name 1.      California Avocados Direct Their website url 1.      http://www.californiaavocadosdirect.com/default.aspx The social media they are visibly using [links on their website] 1.      None Check the links and see if they look like they are well used or hardly used at all. 1.      No Add the date of the last post on each of their their social media 1.      None Write a short analysis of their use of social media - Are these businesses using their social media well? Do they use some more than others?  1.      This is supposedly one of the top online avocado sites. They don’t seem to have any social media presence. The website feels dated and is difficult to navigate. (2) The business name  1.      Avocado Organic Their website url 1.      https://avocadoorganic.com The social media they are visibly using [links on their website] 1.      Instagram 2.      Facebook Check the links and see if they look like they are well

I have experienced many difficulties communicating with businesses. Using social media can sometimes make it easier to get noticed and get the problem solved. It just depends if companies  have good social media presence or don't.  For example, United Airlines is inconsistent with how they choose to respond. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, where other companies will respond every time. Complaining via social media usually means you have to have social media knowledge to begin with to know how to tag your posts correctly so they can become visible to the public with hashtags. I had a bad experience when Cold Stone Creamery closed early one night as I was walking in and they told me I had to leave because they were closed and their posted hours of operation showed them as still being open. I got mad and wrote the company to complain using Twitter. They responded and a few days after that, I received a letter in the mail offering me a free ice cream of my choice and an

1. In my opinion I think Snapchat and Twitter are geared toward personal use. Snapchat has a variety of features where the user uploads their face and applies things like silly ears, mouths and voices with short videos and disappears quickly. Also, you can create stories with short 6 second snippet videos combined together but again are short lived as they go away in a day. Twitter blasts out a message sent by an individual. These would not be very effective for business advertising. 2. Facebook, Instagram and Youtube are effective means of advertising for businesses. Facebook can get likes and followers so each ad that gets created can show up in a customer news feed repeatedly. Facebook can also have an attached website and you can place an order or contact the business in its built in messenger app to ask questions and get answers fairly quick. Instagram is simple and more straight forward. You can share a picture with comments attached and get followers likes and comments. You

I commented on the following 3 blogs: Olivia Cruz, Vicky Mowery and Cole Walker.

I chose this theme because I like cosmetics. I often watch videos on how younger women apply certain cosmetics so I can learn how to use them properly and look my best. Because they can be very expensive, I have to be careful not to go overboard on how much I spend. I thought it would be fun to start reviewing what I use so that maybe I can get some followers, sponsors and maybe some free products! This theme explains a lot about me just by looking at it. The soft colors of the theme are nice, the brush, glittery nail polish and eye shadow stand out. I like the black background and uniformity because it looks like a web site not just a blog. I've never written a blog, never even read a blog so I'm not really sure what I'm in for. All I know is that it sounds like fun and I hope it turns out great. I look forward to expanding my knowledge on this so I can use this technology over and over.