INTRO
January 22th, 2022. Founder’s Log #30. Welcome to iteration Number 30. 30 of these logs account for an entire history of a business from the original thought process sitting outside shooting ideas about names and products continuing to our first investment in beef jerky bags to now closing in on 2 years of history. These logs may not seem like much to the average listener/ reader but I, myself, have done quite a bit of logging and my favorite part is laughing at the memories, looking at the struggles and hurdles we’ve faced along the way, and seeing how we’ve been able to push through each hiccup and continue to stand here today continuing to write the next weeks log.
THE PAST
Well, the #Daily30 has continued to take storm across the internet from being uploaded to YouTube to now being uploaded to Instagram. These 30 seconds highlight more of my individual life but I want it to open a door and spark interest in the side hustle and projects that we are doing here at American Butchers JERKi. The door is open and we continue to highlight a presence in new markets. Thus so far we are looking at a successful 9-day upload streak. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself.
I am going to open the floor with some questions here to help gauge a little audience participation and maybe help me out with the last past week of thought process and personal development. So many times writers or video makers provide the answers for their audience or a sense of motivation/ passion but I ask you today to provide me with some of these examples. There is often a time when passion and determination help achieve a task but how do you continue to stay passionate? How do you continue to drive through to achieve success even when things start slowing down or not working out in the way that you had opened previously? These are questions I ask myself oftentimes when I experience setbacks and it helps me try and find my purpose, my motivation to keep moving forward. Outside influence can be a great aid in your journey but ultimately, it comes right down to your willpower, your focus to get the job done. In the end, no one is coming. It’s on you.
THE PRESENT
This week was all about performance and Promotion Insights. We have run ads in the past from Instagram to Google and even had a marketing team at one point assist in helping us run our ads. Let me be the first to tell you that marketing is a whirlwind. As someone who studied Public Relations in college and got to experience a little bit of marketing and advertisement, it is much different learning it in the classroom than actually being able to perform and market your business. Syracuse University had an outstanding Public Relations department and is world renown for its influence in the PR world but if there was one thing I could add, it would be to recommend students to start a business or start something they want to advertise and help promote. Examples having students pick their businesses (small businesses) and as the class would be taught, they would practice their skills on the business they want to promote.
We’ve learned about Instagram and promotional tips and tricks but this week was all about raw data. I wanted to see exactly the results we were spending and what we were achieving. So where do we start? Well, why not with our latest post. What we did was essentially take our most recent post and break down all the components of the post. What was the post about? Did we utilize any hashtags or tag any other accounts? How many likes did it already have? We took all this raw data and created a spreadsheet. From here we decided to promote a post for 1 week. $5 a day for a total of $35. May not seem like a lot but we are learning. What we hope to see is based on this one post, how did the results go from completion? What resonated well with our audience and what is our current audience that engages most with our posts? Do we get many family and friends? Military enthusiasts? or random Instagram scrollers.
But why Instagram? Well, we had to start somewhere. As a new rookie to the digital marketing age, I felt it was important to focus and learn one specific platform and learn the trade. Once our post advertisement was complete we could look at the results and determine our audience. It’s all about rinsing and repeating. We’d promote another post and compare that upload to this and essentially we are going to build data to further our information. Once we notice that one of our posts seems to be doing a lot better than other ones we’ve advertised in the past, well like any good Texas Hold ‘em player, you double down and raise the crap out of that post until there is no more. Rinse and repeat.
THE FUTURE
As we take this leap into marketing and advertisement, there are thousands of books that know all about influence and reaching new audiences. What I think will help us is to take a look into some of these books and learn. Similar to anything I’ve ever done for new subjects, it’s important to study and learn. Learn from those who have done not from those who are also learning. I found a great book to start called “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” so i figure that’ll be a pretty good book to start.
Fun fact, I was assigned this book in college but like others, I am sure, I didn’t exactly do all the readings in college. Shame on me, I know. From a brief insert from the book I will add it here to get the brain rolling: “Instead of generic information dreamed up by an advertising agency, they tell authentic stories that interest their customers. Instead of selling, they educate through online content. Instead of ignoring those who have already made a purchase, they deliver information at precisely the moment customers need it” It seems to be all about telling a story and proving knowledge to customers. I am in no way the subject matter expert when it comes to storytelling so as I learn a thing or two I’ll make sure to share it with you along the way. With that, I’ll sign off now and talk to you all again next week.