Week Twelve - Online Marketing Tools

For Tia's Bakery, four additional online marketing tools that might be beneficial would be:

Google +
Yelp
Linked In
Groupon

For my current marketing strategy, I think the one that would benefit most would be Linked In.  I could start a personal profile along with a business profile and begin to market myself as a gluten free dessert creator expert.  I could start groups, engage others in discussions and create a network of other specialty food creators.

I won't be creating a Google + account or Google Map location for my business since it has not store front.  I'm not sure how I was able to create a Yelp page, even though I had no store front at the time, but have always been available exclusively in retail locations.

Week Eleven - Free Online Advertising

There are a number of options for free online marketing.  By asking your current followers to recommend your site, you can increase the number of people you interact with.  By also offering demonstrations in either YouTube or little short videos in Instagram would allow me to show a particular skill in gluten free baking, or making a recipe.

Anything that would interest the consumer to "tune in", whether it be an interview with a popular person or getting someone important to recommend you as the go to person for gluten free recipes or even teaming up with another person who has a lot of followers in a complementary field would open you up to many more followers.

Week Eleven - Ad Feedback

Responded to the following blogs:
1.  Freshii
2.  Word Association
3.  Dani Pop

Week Eleven - Online Advertising

My business could use the advertising options in Facebook that boost posts so that more people would see the posts or we could also promote our website to point more customers to our website once we have online purchasing available.

I think it would benefit Tia's Bakery to boost the posts.  Budget would be about $5/day for a few months to see if there is more interaction with the consumers.

Also, if we sent people to our website once we have online shopping available, then we could see a direct result of our dollars spent by the number of sales that we have filled.

Any of the following ads would be effective because they are eye catching - who doesn't love chocolate?

Week Ten - Newsletters

For my business, recipes would be a good subject matter to use.  They could be holiday or season specific to inspire people to try something new.  For example, pumpkin in the fall, berries in the summer, etc.

Newsletters would be sent 4-5 times per year so as to not overwhelm the customer, but still keep us relevant.

Content Ideas:
Celiac Awareness Month
Winter Holiday Desserts
Summer Desserts
Valentine's Day Chocolate
Spring Desserts

These topics would be of interest to my customers because they're based on desserts and gluten free, both of which my customers want.

Week Nine: Blog Categories

In order to stay organized and to reach my target audience, I would create the following categories:

Recipes
Health
About

These categories would help my company to grow by showing me to be a leading authority in the gluten free field, in both recipe creation and also health references.  The About category would help the reader to feel more familiar with the company and also more engaged.  We would have a face behind the name.

I commented on the following blogs:

1. Soyology Candles
2.  Freshii
3.  Word Association

Week Nine: Letting Personality Show Through on Posts

For almost all blogs, writing must be interesting and engaging.  If the reader is bored, they will just click to move to a new website.  Unless your subject matter is very serious, dealing with abuse for instance, lightening up the posts with humor and personality is a good thing.

When you have a unique voice, people will notice the authenticity of that voice and you will get followers.  I have a few people that I follow on Instagram, not necessarily for the subject matter that's revealed, but more for the entertainment of the actual reading of the post.

Also, if you are consistent in your approach and your voice, repeat readers will look for that consistency.  It's just the same as when you are attracted to someone in person, if their personality kept changing all the time, you wouldn't know where they stand and which is the "real" person.  It also applies to online personas.  If you have way too much variety in your format, super serious one day, light hearted and joking the next, then ultra zen, the reader isn't sure where you stand and won't want to follow you.

Whether or not you impart a lot of personality in your posts, you should make the writing interesting and easy to follow.  Break up the paragraphs, use light background with dark letters and utilize interesting graphics.

Week Eight - Twitter Lists

To search for potential users on Twitter I first used the words gluten free.  It didn't turn up the exact type of users that I wanted, so I added Los Angeles to the list.  This brought up a couple of Celiac Groups in the Los Angeles area as well as some people who found gluten free restaurants in Los Angeles.

I created two lists: Peer Companies and Celiac Groups.  The Peer Companies list I created so that if I need to reach out to other food companies for advise or support, it would be easy to find just them.  The Celiac Groups would be perfect to spread the word of any upcoming events or demos, as they have quite a few followers that have our exact customer profile.  Creating lists in Twitter help you to stay organized when you start having quite a few people who you are following.  You may want to pinpoint who is going to get your tweet, as opposed to sending out a blanket tweet that will reach everyone that is following you.

I would think that most people would see my tweets in the evening or weekends, when they have more free time to play around on social media platforms.