Business Research: Week 2 Part B

 

Sekoya 

 https://sekoyabotanicals.com/

 

    Small Mother-Daughter owned plant store in Eureka, CA. Walk-up storefront, employees consist of family and friends. Very small mom and pop shop. They have been around for about 2 years. Sales have gone up during the pandemic because house plants are currently trending.

    Sekoya uses Instagram (15.2k Followers), Facebook (1,518 Followers), and Pinterest (42 Followers, but 6k monthly viewers). Their Social Media Tabs are located at the top right of their page as miniature icons. They use all of their social media platforms on the regular. Their Instagram is pretty popular, they have a lot of likes and engagement. They talk to their customers when one of them has a question, but only "likes" the comments that comment compliments. Their Facebook page is regularly updated, but their images have very few comments and far less likes than on their Instagram.

 

Andrea Soos Art

 https://www.andreasoosart.com/

     Andrea Soos is an independent artist in Victoria, British Colombia, Canada. She sells her work globally through online sales and through curated gallery shows. She has over 75K followers on her Instagram.

    She uses Instagram (75.1K Followers) and Facebook (519 Followers) to market her work. Her links are on her website. She actively uses both Social Media Platforms on a daily basis, but engagement levels are at a higher level on her Instagram.  On both Instagram and her Facebook, she posted a collection of her most recent paintings about 7 hours ago.  I included this image in the photo above. Although she uses her social media successfully, with 75k followers, she doesn't engage people in the comment sections too regularly. She will go through and "like" the comments placed under her photos, but won't necessarily comment back. They do seem to mostly be compliments, but one person had a question about a mural that was in the background of her paintings, and she never got back to them. She used to be better about that, but perhaps since she has so many followers now, it might be a bit overwhelming with the amount of comments she receives.

Sea Hive Marketplace

 https://www.seahivemarketplace.com/

    Small Store Collective in Oceanside, CA. There isn't a lot of information on their website, but It's a neat concept for a store. It's basically a very large consignment shop, but instead of people selling a few selected items here and there, small businesses and independent artists/ designers/ collectors can come in and set up an entire table or space with items they choose to sell. The people running the table aren't there during the sales. There is a singular register, just like any old consignment store. It's kind of like a craft fair though with all the independent stores all set up through the very large storefront.

    For Social Media they have Facebook (1,360 followers)and Instagram (8,816 followers) displayed on their website. It was kind of hard to find, but it was located at the bottom of their website's page They use their social media platforms on a regular basis, almost every day. They get a lot of comments from their customers on Instagram but don't really comment back too often. It seems like they haven't used their Facebook Page in a while, or perhaps the person who does their social media has another page, and uses it to "tag" Sea Hive in posts marketing the page. Almost all of the photos on the Instagram are there, it was just posted by a "travel San Diego" type page. The photograph above was taken was from today, posted onto their IG, the woman featured sells jewelry at Sea Hive, and it is her birthday. Posting content like this places community onto their social media page.

Los Bagels

https://www.losbagels.com/

    Los Bagels is a "multicultural" local Bagel, pastry, and "artisan-level" Coffee Shop in Humboldt County, CA. They have three shops. Two in Arcata (one on the HSU campus) and one in Eureka. They have been around since 1984. Going onto their website, their social media pages were not featured. I had to Google them in order to find them. 

    After doing a little bit of research, I found that they have a Facebook (13,808 followers) and an Instagram (7,512 followers) that they use on a daily basis, along with a Twitter (1,176 followers) that they haven't touched since 2018. They actively use their Facebook and Instagram in order to make announcements on deals and schedules. There isn't a ton of engagement from customers other than through likes. When customers do comment, they don't really respond to them either. It looks like they have a possibility of making more sales if they were to increase the amount of pastries they made for the day, as a customer commented how they were disappointed that they were sold out by noon on a Sunday. I think maybe if they commented back every once in a while on their social media platforms, they can engage their community and make their customers more satisfied with their customer service.

Sugar House Coffee 

https://sugarhousecoffee.com/

    Local coffee house in Salt Lake City, Utah. This coffee shop provides a Public Gathering Space since 2002, but during Covid-19, they are relying on a drive-up/ walk-up window in order to keep their employees and customers safe. You can place orders online by clicking on an "enter" sign to the mobile menu. They use Facebook (4,858 Followers), Instagram (3,686 Followers), Twitter (624), and Yelp, and they are all displayed as very large clickable tabs:

    In comparison to the rest of the shops, I've looked at, they do an amazing job of engaging their customers.They comment back on the regular. For the small amount of followers they do have, they are able to hold conversations and it feels like their community cares about them. The images they post on their social media platforms have to do a lot with what is going on at their shop, in regards to promotions, what's going on with the community, and what their schedule is going to be like, along with some photos of their customers and staff too. I think the next step they should focus on is trying to take, perhaps better, more streamlined images for their social media page in order to grow their following. It's a really cool place, but the images might need to be a little more thematic because right now, while they look good individually, together they don't make a lot of sense. I think they need to take another look at their website and try and match the professionalism their website has to their social media pages.

 In Conclusion...

Overall I found that the businesses were all using Instagram the most in order to market their products. They all posted content on an almost daily basis. Most of the websites were clear and clean cut, very fleshed out in their design and information. The social media links were posted clearly on the first page of their website. I didn't have to look terribly hard. I think the website that was most successful was the Sugar House coffee because not only did they provide a beautiful website for you to enter but they also made it easy to order their drinks and food through a link that said "enter." I thought that was a nice touch and made it personable. Their website felt like it was provided more for the community versus what they were trying to sell to us and that's kind of what their gimmick is anyway. The basis for their business is community and I feel like that's very important, even before covid-19 people were feeling neglected Community-wise, so they listened and provided something more than what coffee as a product can do. I think the website that needs a little more work is Sea Hive Marketplace. I really like this business but I didn't really get a sense of what they were or what they provided through the website or through any of their social media. Like yeah I get that they sell clothes and products but they have a quite a unique layout that I haven't really seen before. So it would be nice seeing them put some more work into their website and their social media in order to provide more information on what they are and how they serve the community as a business. Sea Hive Marketplace does have a sense of community inside of the building, but you wouldn't know that unless you actually went to the destination. I think all together what I've learned from these studies is that you really need to provide a clear-cut sense of what you are as a business and also provide clean aesthetics and a good amount of information whether it be through words or through images of what you are and what you provide and perhaps what you want your customer to even feel just by looking at your business through the lens of a social media page.