Week9 - Adding a Personaity

Portraying an active personality within your blog can be very important to the traffic it brings and often creates a passionate following. I follow a few blogs currently that are a bit risky with there marketing strategies but thats exactly why I keep coming back!

 Im not sure if we have all heard of Secret Entourage but they definitely reach outside the box, having active call outs of people being lazy or not doing enough. This translates to their following of up and coming entrepreneurs to get inspired to go chase dreams and make things happen for THEMSELVES. I feel having an active personality is very important to each blog post however content that is posted must maintain relevant to what your blog may be aimed towards. Meaning personality needs to make since for what your content is.

I truly feel its important to always have a personality displayed when Blogging. Your readers/followers are coming back for a certain reason this is because they are a fan of your content. So be that voice they want to hear and attach to. By offering a trending vibe or voice to your blog people will continue to come back for this voice if the content is good. You want to offer a page feel and that brings people back by doing this you should try and find an ongoing and trending personality that is always felt when viewing your page.

The only time I could see Blog posting being better with less personality is when your trying to deliver either serious info or an announcement regarding a specific promo. Sometimes your personality could be overpowering of the content that is given. So when posting regarding specific topics or info you want to get out you may want to tone down the personality and let the content do the talking.

Week 8- Get Visual

Companies to follow on Social Media

Some brands I admire for their Social Media direction is:

PuraVida bracelets& Blenders Eyeware. 

I really like the content provided by both respected brands. Not only do they shows great product detail, along with there photos is a created lifestyle that they continue to have ties to. They both present a Socal Lifestyle brand feel that is well developed through their lifestyle imagery. With my Brand Original Grain we are not exactly going for a of Cali Beach lifestyle but we are going trying to promote our brand with getting our and taking in experiences and allowing yourself to enjoy the "times" you have. We have yet to develop a strong Brand Identity but through Social Medias, the Visual content that can be provided will develop that brand vibe that we have to reach soon.

Pura Vida and Blenders do close marketing and in fact do a lot of imagery of the same places. They provide regular posts on Instagram and Facebook. I looked into their Youtube channels as well and they have a few solid videos explaining their brand concepts and as well feature their products. This is an avenue I want to start promoting and pushing Youtube channel for my brand OG. These videos would be great to establish brand feel and as we read in the previous lesson can help with SEO as well as drive traffic to our website.

Week 8- Visual Networks (Video Included below!)

 The Visual Networks of FB, Youtube, IG, Pintrist  are exactly what my brands needs and uses for our media marketing.  The engagement and brand awareness that can be developed through these platforms is crucial to a start-ups growth as well as sustainment. The amount of traffic these platforms receive cant be found elsewhere and once you have these potential customers as followers is when you have free range to drive the brand home though Visual Marketing.

The best Platforms that are used best with our brand is FB and Instagram(IG) however this may be due to the amount of effort put into these to networks. I would also like to think Pintrist would be great for our company as well as creating an efficient YouTube channel that continues to get updated. We currently have one but videos are posted rarely and posts are not always wrapped around big promotions that we may be posting on FB or IG.

FB- Great for everyday posts (motivation Monday, fan friday, etc.) As well as features and giveaways. This platform is good to have your following posts shares for an exchange of some sort. When they do this it allows their followings to see your company page giving you even more exposure.

IG- Same as FB

Pintrist- Just recently have I started to explore into the world of Pintrist but im already hooked. For the everyday consumer this is a dream I feel like. For example if your in the mood for some new clothes or shoes simple go to Pintrist and search what your looking for; chances are they have what you wanted or have something even better. Pintrist is a great shopping source to find the things you want to buy and by integrating my company amongst the search of wood watches I know we could be exposed to a whole new following.  Excited to start posting a lot more through Pintrist.

Youtube- We currently have a youtube channel that is only used primarily for instructional use or random video clips we have put together. Im interested to start using Youtube to feature some of our other deals and see the outcome that is transpired though this platform

Week 7 - Twitter

 Finding a match-
Using specific words to target other accounts that I could potentially add followers, collab or receive features from was not to hard to identify with my company. At first however I was using keywords that was too describing of my brand such as wood watches, stainless steel, courtz movement, etc. The results that Twitter would pull were either my company or direct competition. So I had to dig deeper.

I then used Keywords that would best describe that of the accounts  I could potentially cross promote with. The Accounts that I would want to collab with would be of High Fashion, Mens Fashion, Watch blog, Watch enthusiasts, accessories, etc. The search then brought up more relevant accounts that would be more willing to participate with my brand with a feature.

When using the twitter search I found it would be best used when I would only use 1-3 Keywords rather than 5-10. This enables the search to be more targeted and less sporadic with the results that do appear. If you search less keywords your able to know more about the results that come about and which word they are specific too, this helped me in my search.


My company has used other platforms such as Vocus to target keywords others may be using in there posts. You can be very detailed with your search. We would target accounts that would say along the lines of "I just broke my watch" we would then target them with a post or send them a link to our website to help them out with there situation. The Twitter search can be very focused and specific if you want, be creative as possible when trying find your future followers.

Facebook Scheduled posts

 Scheduled posts:

For my upcoming posts here are the posts that will be appearing on my social media outlets for this week.



These posts have been scheduled but they are all scheduled based on different features we do for each particular day

Monday- Motivation Monday

Wednesday- Wrist shot wednesday


Thursday- Throwback Thursday                                                                                     

Here at Original Grain we try to have a reoccurring themes that we cross. MondayMotivation, Tuesday we post lifestyle, Wrist shot Wednesday, Throwback Thursday, Fan Friday, Product shots on Saturday and OG Sunday. This allows our following to expect a solid amount of posts and creates a theme behind what we do, sparking a certain level of interest behind the posts. We will also promote other features/promotion we may be holding that week in between these posts, we just use the days as a guide to make sure we are posting enough content.


The scheduled posts I have currently in the chamber that will be released are fun posts for me. They allow us to provide come character behind out brand and calls for some engagement, not as much as Fan friday does but our Motivation Monday is our direct call to our following to have a great week. We try to influence our following with inspiring quotes or lifestyle photos that promote achievement.

Wristshot Wednesday is just a good play for us being a watch company, it allows us to show our product as shown on a wrist. It also allows us to promote some lifestyle and feature a certain level of fashion that may go well with our watches as shown on the photo above.

Thowback Thursday- We use our throwbacks to reflect on how far we have come as a company or encourage our following to reflect on accomplishments they have achieved. This week we take a look back to our first video we ever submitted introducing our company to Kickstarter.com where we successfully raised $390,000 in a 30 day period. This benchmark pushed us to be ranked #84 in best crowdfunded companies of 2013. We try and inspire our following once again with these Throwbacks.

Week 6: Facebook Strategy Info

As easy as it may sound to just go like 5 pages that could potentially provide some sort of return for you and your company is actually pretty hard. Yea you can just select 5 and move on, but getting 5 to actually respond to you and see a return you might want to go ahead and follow 50!!

To receive a follow back or return from some of these big pages should be a dream but one you shoot for. We have had some successful encounters  with some major fashion/lifestyle blogs such as Secret Entourage, Highheel Suicide, Necessary Coolness, this required first a lot of requests on my part as well as a little luck. To even be recognized by these companies or companies many of you may have followed go ahead and take those as a victory. If you can try and get them to push your business to their following, if not just embrace it and try and pick their mind for the knowledge bombs!(then tell me)

I follow a lot of blogs through social medias such as FB and IG. I use them strategically of course. If you ever want to be featured on a blog I do suggest that you are actually following them. Not only because then they may become familiar with you and your company through the photos you like and comment on, but then when you approach them you actually know what they feature and the styles they present.  It also gives you time to access whether or not their following is a place you would want your company to be featured at. Remember some say all press is good press but bad press with bad followings can come back to haunt you! Trust me, be selective where you want to market your company and target where your product/business is going to be scene at.

Given that Im in the watch business, I try and follow a lot of watch blogs on Instagram and other high mens fashion blogs. I do so because this is where my target market aligns. I suggest if you know other companies that may be selling what you have, see who they follow and who features them. As a start up you have to learn from what is currently working and once you get ahold on that expand into what you need it to be to best fit your company profile.

Competitors - WeWood

I also follow pages that are even my competitors. Use them to understand the market you are in, If you see they may get a bunch of interactions from cool giveaways or sharing certain photos, then go ahead and do that. If your target audience is being attacked effectively by an alternate company Im not saying go and follow exactly what they do, but understand the trends that occur and understand the capacity of your audience and what they relate to. Its IMPORTANT!

I use Facebook and other Social Medias everyday to push content and raise awareness for my company. I continue to thrive off what I am doing as well as my competitors or other companies I could possible collaborate with. Understand the targets of which you are marketing to is the first step, then finding where they are at is next. Once you have found a good avenue and platform where they are at try and attack this with a post, product feature or review. Being scene on blogs that people know and trust is big for a start up, Many people don't even know who you are, so when these big blogs sign off on you its instant credit and you are given the go ahead. Try and exploit other peoples following, this will get you plenty of exposure and certification amongst the community.

As always, a pleasure, Cheers!

Andrew Beltran

Week 5: Post Reach vs Post engagement

POST REACH/ POST ENGAGEMENT 

The difference between post reach and post engagement is important to understand for any Facebook Admin. Knowing the difference could mean how well you know you are actually marketing yourself/ business. On your Facebook insights page your will see your Post Reach/ Engagement. Demographics and geographic analytics, along with which posts receive the best response.

This will tell you just how many Facebook users that are seeing your posts. This consists of the amount of viewers that are seeing the posts you put out as well as the posts that pertain your company/FB page. The knowing of how many people sees your posts helps gauge the quality of the content if your not getting much feedback and there is a lot of Post Reach. However by knowing you have a relatively low Post Reach you might need to start boosting your posts to make sure you get a high amount of exposure, your efforts to market deserve and need views to generate any kind of quality engagement.

While you start to see your posts receive a heavy amount of Post Reach you will begin to want to start to look into your  next challenge; your Post Engagement.  For me at this point I know I will receive a couple thousand views per post.  The return we like to see is a 5%-10% engagement per post. So 1,000 people see a specific post it would be nice to see at least 100 viewers, comment, like, share, click on our posts. If you are receiving this level of feedback it will mean your posts are effective and your CTA's may be getting a good response/understood.

We use our Facebook insights to better serve our community by knowing whats getting the best interaction. Whether thats a share photo, or giveaway. We know which posts are that receive the best response from our customers. We will use this to our advantage by pushing a big promo or getting important info through a post that we know is going to create the most exposure.

Your Facebook insights page will also tell you how much engagement or reach your are receiving during the current week compared to last week. This will help gauge your efforts and the effectiveness of your posts during the current or previous weeks. Another aspect to our Facebook Insights page is the demographic collection that is gathered. The admin for the page will be able to see the demographic of their audiences, Age and gender is included. As well there is a geographic collection that lets you know where you page likes are coming from. That being US based or internationally. Knowing who and where your audience allows you specifically target a certain audience if you find a trend in the analytics.