Week 6 Part A: Engaging Your Customers - Facebook Strategy

For this investigation, I conducted different searches off of my business page on the following topics: flower business, flower photography, art marketplace, and floral wall prints. The flower business search resulted in local florists and Carlsbad Floral Trade Center. From there, my search led me to The Flower Fields and San Diego Botanic Garden. The flower photography search directed me towards Joel Grimes Photography and Carol Fox Henrichs Photography. MK Photography was found in both the flower photography and floral  wall print searches. I discovered Art for Sale through the art marketplace search.


 Carlsbad Floral Trade Center 
I chose this site because it's local and it's a flower mart. The posts are a mixture of customer shares, personal business posts about current flower shipments, and posts from floral arranging class attendees. All posts contain clearly shot photos from the Trade Center. The writing is of a personal and celebratory nature and does contain some conversational exchange. In 2021 there was one post in May.

The Flower Fields https://www.facebook.com/TheFlowerFields
I chose to follow The Flower Fields partly out of pure enjoyment and also as a potential customer base. Their posts are business centered and quite varied. In September, the posts were on the following topics: information about bees pollinating lavender, video about a partnership with California Wild Ales, a share request for tips on growing roses, a shout out to their farming team with statistics, and a marketing informational about their use of Kaolin clay as a natural olive fruit fly deterrent. The posts are extremely engaging and well written, with inviting photos or videos. They respond to posted comments with a friendly personable tone.

San Diego Botanic Garden facebook.com/SDBotanicGarden
I chose this site because I felt it would be another good source of potential flower print lovers. There have been eight posts in the last four days. The posts are mostly informational and business oriented. The post about the "Kids Free" in October campaign contains a call to action link to make an admission reservation. Both the post about The California State Coastal Conservancy grant and the review of "Seeing the Invisible" contain clickable links to the pertinent articles. There's an informational post about the Bromeliad plant sale. The docent recruitment post contains a video and a clickable link to the Garden webpage. There were also two really interesting posts. One was part of Hispanic Heritage Month and described the Monstera deliciosa. The other contained a Munia Khan quote about trees along with a video. The posts average 15-30 likes and loves along with a couple of comments. The Garden does reply to Garden specific inquiries.

Joel Grimes is an established, award winning photographer, who also conducts photography Masterclasses. I chose him to see what I could learn about setting up a photography business Facebook page. His posts contain stunning photos with information about the subject, location, photography skill focus, and equipment used. His posts generate a lot of comments, mostly positive, but sometimes negative. Of interest, is that there is a line at the bottom of the comment feed, "Most Relevant is selected, so some comments may have been filtered out." While Joel does not respond much to comments, there is a bit of dialogue interaction amongst the comments.

Carol Fox Henrichs Photography 
Carol Fox Henrichs is an acclaimed, award winning photographer and artist who exhibits her work in shows and juried events, in addition to conducting webinars and online workshops. I chose her to compare her business page to Joel Grimes Photography. Her September posts contain: pictures of her entries available for sale in upcoming shows, notices about events she will be selling work at, and a link to free registration at Photoshop Virtual Summit 3 in October. She received a couple of comments on her posts, and she responded to every one. 

MK Photography showed up in two different topic searches. The business specializes in couple and family portraits in outdoor settings. I decided to review their page because of the way they use Facebook for their business. Currently they are booking photo sessions for their Pumpkin Patch Minis. There are two posts about the upcoming photo opportunity. One is a video showing the Pumpkin Patch backdrop area and props for the photo session. The other post is a photo of the backdrop. There is a link to the booking site that has all the pertinent information and a booking spot function. There are only a couple comments, but from looking through the post feed, the photo shoot slots do get filled.

Art for Sale is a public group of over 90 thousand members who place their artwork up for sale through the page. I chose it to see what an art marketplace is like on Facebook. Artists post pictures of their art with a brief description, price, and contact or shop link. The group accepts art of all levels from around the world. There were 521 posts today. There is practically no interaction with the posts. I did not want to join the group and was unable to like the page, so I liked Society 6's page instead at https://www.facebook.com/Society6

I learned more than I imagined from examining the various businesses post content and comment feeds from this investigation. The only business that had any negative comments posted was Joel Grimes Photography. The negative comments were usually about the photo techniques used and frequently morphed into a technique discussion. His site also had the most amount of discussion with the least amount of response from him. He has over 200,000 followers and is well known in the photography world, so a discussion precedence must have been established at some time on his site. The Flower Fields also receive high praise for their posts celebrating their joy and love for all things floral.

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