Week III Pt II: Examples of Business Social Media & Comments on Other Blogs

Brief Analysis of 5 Business's Social Media:

1. Little Angels Service Dogs

              Facebook: Today, 09.06.19
              Instagram: Yesterday, 09.05.19
              YouTube: Last Week, 08.30.19
              Twitter: Yesterday, 09.05.19
  • Analysis: For a small (<50 employee) non-profit organization, Little Angels Service Dogs does a great job utilizing social media to increase awareness of the organization to the public. On YouTube, their posts are regular, though inconsistent, averaging at least two posts a month, up to a maximum of five. With over five hundred subscribers and up to 12,000 views on their best video, it is clear that their use of YouTube is complementary to other social media platforms, but holds great potential for improvement given some thematic and temporal consistency. The organization's social media focus clearly revolves around Facebook and Instagram, with over 5500 likes and nearly 3000 followers, respectively. Activity is frequent, nearly once a day and no less than twice a week. Hundreds of likes per post are the norm for each post, which comes as no surprise; who can resist puppy pictures? Finally, Twitter presence is growing but weak, at a few hundred followers despite weekly, if not daily posts. 


2. PuraVida Bracelets

              Facebook: Today, 09.06.19
              Instagram: Today, 09.06.19
              YouTube: Last week, 08.30.19
              Twitter: Today, 09.06.19
  • Analysis: For a company that made $68.3M in 2018, PuraVida has the resources and the presence for near-perfect social media execution. On YouTube, their weekly posts rake up a few hundred to a couple thousand views. Considering they have nearly 3000 subscribers, it is surprising they have similar view numbers as that of Little Angels, a tiny non-profit. Still, their playlists are organized and the content is prime, so this is a curious cloud in an otherwise spotless social media atmosphere. One last peculiarity is their Facebook page, which has nearly 2 million likes but brings in no more than 100 likes per post. This all begins to make sense considering it is a jewelry sales company, meaning it focuses most of its efforts on Instagram, and Twitter. Respectively, each platform boasts 1.8M and 44k followers, with a few dozen likes/retweets per Twitter post and at least 30k likes per Instagram post. Activity is synchronized across all platforms but YouTube, with upwards of four posts per day. Overall, it looks like Instagram is the sales-driving, crowd-sourcing platform for this young company.

3. Midori Bikini

              Facebook: This week, 09.01.19
              Instagram: Today, 09.06.19
              Twitter: Months ago, 06.21.19
  • Analysis: With 300k in sales in May 2016 alone, it seems Midori follows in the footsteps of PuraVida and similar womenswear companies. Despite the lack of YouTube presence, the company seems to do just fine with mainly Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, in order of importance. With a quarter million followers on Instagram and an average of one to two thousand likes per post, the brand focuses on body-positive, all-inclusive self love for their clients. A Shopify article outlines their strategy in concise, very useful detail, pointing to their use of user-created content as a prime driver of brand awareness and revenue. Like PuraVida, Facebook and Twitter posts hardly breach 100 likes per post, despite 12k and 2k followers, respectively. Given the boutique-style model of the company and its humble origins here in San Diego, these metrics make sense regardless of the room for improvement.

4. The Obama Foundation
              Facebook: Yesterday, 09.05.19
              Instagram: Yesterday, 09.05.19
              YouTube: Two Weeks Ago, 08.21.19
              Twitter: Yesterday, 09.05.19
  • Analysis: For a massive political non-profit organization, the Obama foundation sets the standard for using social media to increase awareness to the public. On YouTube, their posts are regular, though inconsistent, averaging four to fourteen posts per month in several organized playlists. With five hundred to five thousand views per video from nearly 100k subscribers, it is clear that their use of YouTube is complementary to other social media platforms. The supporters on Instagram bring in five to fifty thousand likes and views on posts frequenting the page at least a few times a week. About a million fans on Facebook and Instagram bring posts and Tweets posted every few days anywhere from 1k to 100k likes.  social media focus clearly revolves around Facebook and Instagram, with over 5500 likes and nearly 3000 followers, respectively. Considering the massive following, the foundation seems to have a good footing across several platforms.
5. CLIF Bar
              Facebook: Yesterday, 09.05.19
              Instagram: Yesterday, 09.05.19
              YouTube: One Week Ago, 08.21.19
              Twitter: Yesterday, 09.05.19
  • Analysis: For a multi-million dollar corporation, CLIF does a seamless job bringing together multiple social media platforms. YouTube posts are well sequenced and distributed, with at least four videos per month raking in a few hundred to a few million views. On Instagram and Twitter, around 150k followers like and share daily, at the least weekly, posts a few hundred to a few thousand times per post. The brand strikes an interesting balance between social responsibility and corporate goals, behaving more like the Obama Foundation than PuraVida bracelets. Overall, engagement is not stellar, but is more than solid for a company that's been around and will continue to be around.

Summary:

It seems that the size and quality of the company is the critical factor in the nature of its social media following. For Little Angels, the small, cause-oriented mission of the company creates an incredibly loyal, tight fanbase online. It would be interesting to follow the company as it grows to see if it suffers from the same dilution as the Obama Foundation, an equally loyal fanbase but much larger and less participating than Little Angels. In terms of for-profit companies, the same effect can be seen between two womenswear companies. PuraVida, a massive company with tens of millions in profits, clearly has the budget and resources to create an entire blog with dozens of posts on lifestyle, recipes, travel, and fashion, creating a micro-economy for clients to dive into. Meanwhile, Midori bikini, with a fraction of the social media following, seems to hold its clients with the same, if not a tighter grip, following a higher-end boutique style model to drive profits and exclusivity up. CLIF finds a happy medium as an equally large company with just as much content as PuraVida, but the same customer product obsession as Midori. Not to mention, its mainly cause-oriented mission allows it to engrain its public profile in a less corporate light.

A brief overview of these companies' presence on each social media platform reveals the micro-social happenings that create their macro-social profile. YouTube is a good place to begin. The most successful individual and corporate YouTubers have millions of subscribers, with no less than a quarter million views per video, and up to a billion or more views on their most viral hits. None of the companies above seek the same profile on YouTube, despite its ability to massively bolster community engagement and net revenue. Little Angels and the Obama Foundation use the platform for educational and public awareness purposes. PuraVida uses it for user-created reviews and unboxing videos, and Midori does not use it at all. CLIF Bar makes the best use of YouTube out of the group, with great promotional and public relational content organized and posted at least once a week. Overall, it seems the corporate focus on YouTube could use some improvement.

Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook seem to be less important to the user when it comes to retail companies and large non-profits. Little Angels alone has a decent ratio of engagement to followers on Facebook, and both the Obama Foundation and CLIF Bar are incredibly active but have little to no likes and retweets on Twitter. This is likely due to the final point of this analysis: the prevalence of Instagram in connecting user desires to matching products.

It seems regardless of engagement on other platforms, Instagram is queen of online sales and activity. Perhaps this is due to how easy it is to commit to a passing like or to briefly click an intriguing ad than it is to comment on Facebook and Youtube or share on Twitter. This was no surprise with retail, as Instagram is a much more emotionally-bound platform than others, reaching directly into users' social need and self-image beliefs through incessant photos and videos. Product placement is built into the social interaction of the platform, making it a quick and effective venue to profit from retail, boost awareness of a cause, or even share a simple icon.

All in all, this was a fascinating opportunity to reflect on the patterns and behaviors of consumers and businesses of various types online. Can't wait to make more detailed technical analysis to learn how to optimize social media for my own business!


Comments on others' blogs:

Comment I:
     https://csit155-fa19-lindsayw.blogspot.com/2019/09/week-3a-communication-business-consumer.html
Comment II:
       https://csit155-fa19-sadeghr.blogspot.com/2019/09/week-3-part-1-blog-post-have-you-ever.html#comment-form
Comment III:
       https://csit155-fa19-apagatpatan.blogspot.com/2019/09/week-3a-communication-business-consumer.html
Comment IV:
       https://csit155-fa19-isabelf.blogspot.com/2019/09/week-three-part-one-communications.html
Comment V:
       https://dburkscsit155fa19.blogspot.com/2019/09/week-three-part-1.html



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