WEEK 11A: E-MAIL MARKETING

E-MAIL MARKETING:

For my business I think once a week up to once a month would be a good amount of Newsletter to send my customers without overloading them with too many e-mails.

Newsletters from Provence Decor: - Invitation to my Shows: A week before each show I will send an invitation to all my customers living close to the area where my show will take place giving them information about the show, my booth location, etc.
- New products: Whenever I get something new, I will send a Newsletter with pictures and description of the new product on the website.
- Specials: Whenever I have some products on sale, FREE Shipping, Special gifts with orders I will send a Newsletter to all my customers to let them know about my specials.
- Contests: I will promote some contests to get customers involved and engaged on the website, Facebook and other Social medias. Whenever I start a new contest, I will send a Newsletter to let all my customers know.

I want to keep my e-mails simple, consistent and only with information that are really interesting to my customers to avoid getting into the spam box or having them unsubscribe from my list.

I have subscribed to 3 of my competitors Newsletters but I haven’t received anything yet to know what they are doing but what I have noticed is that a lot of my competitors are not using Newsletter anymore, only Social Media.

WEEK 10B: CATEGORIES ON BLOGS

CATEGORIES FOR BUSINESS BLOGS:

Creating categories for a business blog would help keep different subjects organized and that would help customers easily find what they are interested at.
For my business I could create different categories such as:
New Products: for all new products available at the moment; Special Offers: anouncing all products on sale at the moment; Home Décor Ideas: Giving different ideas on how to use the products and starting a discussion about the subjec; Contest: To promote contests and have people excited to engage in the blog (best product picture, best home décor idea, etc.); Product Care: giving tips on how to care for each fabric and leaving that space open for questions and suggestions; Traveling to France: giving tips on where to go and what to do in France, opening up discussions and sharing experiences with customers that have been there already; Recipes: a place to find and share great French recipes and so on.

People love to engage, participate and give their opinions on different subjects if you manage to make it interesting, fun and exciting. The blog is wide open area to do that, with imagination you can create many ways to attract potential customers and make them interested enough to stay and become a loyal customers automatically making your business grow.

Blogs I commented on:
Marchella Valdez
Mejia Abraham
Fanghella Michael

WEEK 10A: PERSONAL TOUCH ON BLOGS

ADDING PERSONAL INTERACTIONS ON YOUR BUSINESS BLOG:

If you have a business where you can have personal interaction with your customers, adding human interest to a post can appeal to their emotions because they will relate to you in a personal level.
For example, in my business, when I post videos or chats about my trips to France a lot of times customers want to buy some of my Traditional French products because it reminds them of the good times they had on their vacation going through the little markets in Provence. Also, adding a personal touch to your posts, makes the customer feel that they are directly connected to you and that encourages them to make comments, ask questions and trust that when they do business with you they will get a one to one special treatment. People like to feel special! Of course, even with a human touch, it is important to keep the posts professional and within the business interests. It can be easy to get off track and add personal posts that have no relation to what your business is offering. It is also important to always make sure not to neglect or discriminate any group of potential customers. If adding a human interest into your posts is appropriate for the kind of business you have, it can only help attract more customers because you will be offering a more personal online experience. People are buying online more and more but they still want to keep the social aspect to it and that’s when Social Media becomes so successful in our business.

WEEK 9 : TWITTER

I have chosen to follow those five Twitter users:

-Pottery Barn: Gives excellent ideas of how to decorate your home and also gives me great ideas on how to take professional pictures of my products for future posts.

-Williams Sonoma: Gives great recipes and decoration ideas as well.

-Interior Design: Like Pottery Barn also gives great home decoration insights to improve your home décor.

France-Voyage.com: Gives all sorts of tips on Trips to France which also helps me with my posts since I am focusing on different areas of France and their Traditional Home Décor.

Frenchly: Covers many different things about France (News, Fashion, Politics, Trips, etc.) which is great to keep updated on with what’s happening and getting ideas for posts that might interest my customers.

Yes, I did have to play around with many key words to find few connections that interested me, it is not easy to find really good ones.

Search words I used to find connections were:

Home Decoration, Home Decor, Interior Design, French décor, French Home Decor
French trips, Traveling in France
French news

Lists are a good way to organize everything by subject because when you start having many tweets going on, it can get really busy and confusing if everything is mixed up.

The lists are also very good to keep some tweets locked so competitors won’t be able to see strategic users you might be following.

I’ve created 4 different lists (French News, French Recipes, Trips to France, Home Décor) to organize my Tweets by subjects and make it easier when trying to find the subject desired.

I still don’t have any customer following me on twitter yet but I believe tweets would be more effective around lunch time, end of the day or weekends because that’s when most of my customers are not working and take time to check their social media.

WEEK 8B: VISUAL SOCIAL MEDIA

Visual Media definitely works for my business. My whole business is based on pictures of the tablecloths, gifts and accessories I sell. Most of the pictures are focused on the product itself (close up showing the details) and some are focused on how that product can be used on your home décor. Videos on YouTube will also be very important to show customers how to use and care for each product.

Businesses that are similar to mine:

April Cornell:
April Cornel is very active on her Visual Social Media. Her main platform is Facebook.
Facebook (last post 7hrs ago) – She posts daily pictures of her products and videos; with 27000 followers, her posts average between 40-500 likes (her last post had 340 likes and 28 comments) which is ok comparing the amount of followers she has.
She is also very active on Instagram (last post 10hrs ago) with 1804 followers, her last had 80 likes and 3 comments.

Based on April Cornell’s Visual Social Media I can see that Facebook and Instagram are a must for my kind of business.

Williams Sonoma:
William Sonoma is very active on his Visual Social Media. He uses all kinds of different Social Media Platforms:
- Facebook (last post 10hrs ago) - On Facebook they post at least twice a day; with 781.000 followers, their posts average between 200-500 likes (last post had 262 likes, 71 shares and 4 comments) which is not that much when you compare to the total amount of followers.
- Instagram (last post 12hrs ago) - On Instagram they also post twice a day; with 549000 followers, their posts average between 5000-7000 likes (last post had 5229 likes, 27 comments) which is great for comparing to the amount of likes on Facebook.
- YouTube (last post January 2017) – On YouTube they have very interesting and professionally made videos; with 50000 they have a lot of views.
- Twitter (last post 14hrs ago) - On Twitter they post once to twice a day; with 97000 followers, their posts average between 5-20 likes (last post had 10 likes) which is really low for the amount of followers.
- Google+ (last post 15hrs ago) – On Google+ they post once a day; with 2million followers, their posts average 20-100 likes; definitely not much for the amount of followers.

      

Provence Soleil: This company only uses Facebook as their Visual Social Media. They post almost every day mainly pictures of France not much about their products. They have 239 followers and their posts average 1-2 likes.


Sur la Table: This company uses Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as their visual Social Media.
Facebook (last post 7hrs ago): On Facebook they post once a day; with 300000 followers, their posts average between 50-200 likes (last post had 32 likes, 1 shares and 2 comments) which is not that much when you compare to the total amount of followers.

YouTube (last post 1 month ago): On YouTube they have many videos showing how to use their products; with 13000 followers, they had 7000 views on the last video posted, which is a pretty good rate.

Twitter (last post 10hrs ago): On twitter they have 31000 followers, their posts average between 2 -10 likes which is basically nothing comparing to the amount of followers.

Twitter is definitely not on my top list as Visual Social Media.

Businesses I am following:
April Cornell
William Sonoma
Sur la Table

WEEK 8A: VISUAL SOCIAL MEDIA

My business can definitely benefit from most Social Media Platforms mentioned bellow since it is very visual and diverse. I can use pictures to show the product itself, pictures showing the product as part of a Home Decor, I can also make videos showing how to care for different products, etc. but the main challenge here is to keep up with all of them. So unless you have a person dedicated only to the Social Media marketing of your business, you will have to choose which platform is best suited to your business success.

FACEBOOK: This is definitely my number one choice. It is the most widely used Social Media Platform, it is very user friendly and most of my potential customers are likely to have a Facebook Page. I can post pictures, videos, articles or anything related to France and French products to keep my followers connected.

INSTAGRAM: I always thought Instagram was mostly for personal use but the more I learn about it, the more I find the potential to expand my business through Instagram. It has a huge audience and it can be used instantly from anywhere with just a picture, a short video and a few words, just enough to capture the audience's attention and make them look for more.

GOOGLE+: I am definitely adding a Google+ page to my business. Mostly to help my SEO and to give me a better rank when customers are searching for my products. There are also many tools that Google+ provides that can help me capture my audience in different ways.

YOUTUBE: YouTube is amazing! You can search and find anything on YouTube and it has a great audience. It is a great platform for videos and I plan to add videos about my products, how to care for them, ideas on how to use the products to decorate your home, etc. I am not sure YouTube will be the greatest platform to build more customers, but I think I can add valuable material for the customers I already have.

TWITTER: I don' know much about Twitter, but I'm sure I can promote my business here since it has such a large audience. Since I will be using Instagram, I could just copy the same posts on Twitter and try to reach a different audience.

PINTERST: I don't know much about Pinterest and how it works but I am very curious to learn. I can see that it is very popular, very visual and has extremely interesting content. I am sure my business could benefit greatly from Pinterest since most users are women and that is my main target. I really need to get familiar with this platform to understand the best way to promote my business here.

TUMBLR: So far I don't have any plans to use this platform for my business. I don't know anything about it and I really don't think I will have time to keep up with every single Social Media Platform out there; so unless during this class I find extreme value to have TUMBLR for my business, I won't be using it.

SNAPCHAT: I am also not familiar with this one and I don't see how my business could benefit from posts that after showing them, they disappear. I think it would be hard to keep up with this one.

WEEK 7B: SCHEDULED FACEBOOK POSTS

I think my posts will engage my audience because they are not only focused on the sales of my products but also on different topics about France like: French Recipes, Trips to France, French Songs, French Restaurants, etc.
I believe if I keep my posts interesting, informative and not only about my products it will capture anyone interested in France and French culture, and those are probably my potential customers. Keeping posts diverse will also give people that don’t want to receive sales adds a reason to follow my page and whenever they need some French products to decorate their home, they will remember my company.
My goal on Facebook is also to create events to keep them engaged: games, competitions, etc.
For my scheduled posts I chose the peak time (Between 12pm and 3pm) and peak days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) hoping will have a greater “Reach” and hopefully more followers.