Week 6: Alternate Assignment

Crafts of a Hand Facebook Details

I launched Crafts of a Hand Facebook Page 32 weeks ago. It currently has 127 likes and 126 Followers. The average page views per week are 20, 66 post reach, 20 post engagements.

I had 44 organic engagement reach this week. I rarely pay for ads because I am unsure of who my target market is. The demographics to include have been a challenge for me. 

3 Businesses Similar to Mine

Lumily
I discovered today that it is a local store in San Diego that sells handmade Guatemalan items. They have 1,087 likes. They are using Facebook to post images of featured products and new products. They also display images of the ladies who make the products that they have to offer. They post about twice a day. I think they are doing an excellent job in their philanthropic endeavor which is providing jobs to artisans similar to Crafts of a Hand. They have a Shop Now button which can help people quickly get to their website. I think they can integrate a virtual shop to their FB page where customers can shop and pay through messenger. Finally, they don't have any calls to action on their cover photo.

Artesanias Azteca
Artesanias Azteca promotes in Spanish and posts a variety of videos, raffles, recipes, and ways to style their products. They have a range of products such as shoes, traditional Mexican clothes for everyone in the family. Artesania Azteca posts close to the dates that are near to a holiday and when they're holding a raffle which they seem to do often. They have bricks and mortar at a shopping mall in Santa Ana. They are definitely targeting the Hispanic community. They post every other week and have a total of 161 likes. Their cover photo doesn't have any calls to action. For the amount of activity they have, I think they should have more engagements on their posts since they are providing a lot of excellent and fun content! I think they should do more videos in English too.


Bazaar del Mundo
Bazaar del Mundo is using its Facebook to excite their 4,774 followers about their new inventory arrivals. They are a market that carries items from other vendors which makes it unique because they have a lot of variety of items from different parts of the world. In my opinion, they are using their Facebook effectively, to the point that I wanted to go to the store and shop! ( I have visited this store before, and it's quite the gem despite it being small and cluttered) They don't have consistent posts although they do post often. It appears that they post when they can. For example, they posted today but hadn't published in 4 days. Before that, they made 3 posts on the same day and before that, they posted every other day. I think that's cool because it keeps their customers anxious to see when they get a new arrival. However, I like to have an organized schedule to post because since its only me running everything, I have to have organization and reminders set for execution and automation purposes. As for their cover photo, there's an image of various products and the same women pictured twice, there are no calls to action. I think they could add some font to state the times they are open to special events to get customers to want to visit their store.

My take away

After reviewing these websites and finding that there are more stores and people in market place selling a lot of the same handicrafts as I am, it actually made me want to close my store! It made me think that I am just another, "Me Too" store and that it is not as unique as I thought it was. When I started my business last year, I didn't see this many stores selling these items. I knew of Bazaar del Mundo, and they inspired me to open my store as well as World Market, (at a tiny scale). I think what I can do to differentiate my store is to focus on a few items. Maybe rethink my niche and sell what I have left from the Mexican collection because that is saturated in SoCal. I can do live raffles like the other business did and I am planning on having limited promotions on there too available to Facebook followers only in hopes that more people will engage with my page.