Week 2 Part B: Business Research
Giant Artists
Giant Artists is a production and management company founded in 2006 and is based in both New York and Los Angeles. They specialize in managing creatives from photographers to film directors. They are a small firm with only eight artist representatives but they are able to manage hundreds of artists between them. Although they are a U.S based firm they represent artists internationally.
As far as social media use goes it seems they are simply using Instagram. The Instagram logo is at the very bottom of the page and very small. I thought they didn't have any social media links at first.
Their Instagram page seems to have a new post every few days or so with a decent amount of interaction. Their last post was on Tuesday the 2nd and they have 11.7K followers.
It's hard to say why they chose to limit their social media presence. I might make a guess and say its so they don't take away from their very well put together website. I think that of all the social media platforms Instagram works best with their business model seeing as how they manage photographers and film makers. If it were up to me though I would have used a few more platforms such as Twitter or Facebook to promote.
Helium Films
Helium Films is a San Diego based video production company. Although based in San Diego they also have offices in France. Helium Films was actually originally a French video production company and was founded in 2011. They are a rather large company and have worked for the likes of Sony and Google. Their services include everything from script writing to graphic design and seemingly everything in between.
Like most websites I see their social media links are at the very bottom of the page. They are using three platforms: FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter.
They have 1,502 followers, they seem to only post once or even less a month with their most recent post being September 2nd and the one before that being all the way back in July.
Their Instagram is not much better with 460 followers and 199 posts.Their most recent post was September 2nd with the one before that being back on July 1st. They seem to be posting to Instagram once or twice a month.
Their Twitter page seems to be the worse one yet. They have 189 followers, 559 tweets since they joined Twitter in 2013 and their most recent one being from December 23, 2020. They were posting to Twitter less than once a month.
For a business that seems to do a little of everything in the video production field I think their social media presence is lacking to say the least. I'm not sure how the do their promoting but it seems that social media is not a priority for them. Maybe they could have focused on one platform and done that well instead of using three and having all of them be very mediocre.
Multnomah Farms
https://www.multnomahfarms.com
Multnomah Farms is a mushroom farm in Portland, Oregon founded in 2014. Multnomah farms is small, local and mainly run by 6 main people. They have a team of cultivators and foragers that work for them and they seem to operate in a true farm to table type way.
Once again I find that their social media links are all the way at the bottom of the page. They are using Instagram and Facebook.
They have 515 people that follow them on this platform. They haven't posted much on here at all. They had a few posts from April and March of 2018 with the most recent post being from December 26th 2020.
On this platform they have 322 followers with a total of 72 posts. They seem to be posting a couple times a month with the most recent post being from September 6th.
Being a small local mushroom farm I'm sure they get most of their business by word of mouth. In my opinion they seem to have a great product and would definitely benefit from a stronger online presence. Alternative medicine and dietary supplements seem to be gaining more and more traction in the main stream and they could be taking full advantage of that, especially in Oregon, by ramping up their social media.
Mycopia Mushrooms
Mycopia Mushrooms was founded in 1977 and was the first to commercially cultivate Shiitake mushrooms in the United States. They grow more varieties of culinary and nutraceutical mushrooms than any other farm in the States.
Mycopia Mushrooms was the first website I've seen with their social media links at the top of the page. This makes the most sense to me and I'm not sure why everyone isn't doing that in the first place. They are using FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter.
On FaceBook they have 6,749 followers and post maybe once a month. Their most recent post was from September 2nd. They have a lot of followers but not all that much interaction.
On Instagram they have 5,164 followers and a total of 220 posts. They seem to post anywhere from once to three times a month with their most recent post being all the way back from February of 2020. It's too bad they stopped posting on Insta because I think they have a beautiful feed and it seems that they were getting more interaction with their Instagram posts than they were with their FaceBook posts.
On Twitter they have 1,452 followers with a total of 860 tweets. It seems as though they haven't used twitter in some time because their last tweet was from February of 2019. In fact they only have three tweets in 2019, all the rest are from 2018 and at a pace of about one or two a month back then.
Overall they seem to be a great company who has a proven track record. It seems as though their social media posting dropped off around the time the pandemic started to hit hard. I believe that if they had a dedicated team to reimagine their social media presence they could get back on track as they already seem to have a large following on all the platforms they use.
Culinary Photographer
https://www.culinaryphotographer.com/san-diego-food-photographer
Culinary Photographer is the website of food photographer Allen De Herrera. He started his business in 2007 and has since worked with brands such as Cheesecake Factory, Coca Cola, Jack Daniel's and Folgers. This is a local photographer who has worked internationally.
His social media links are at the bottom of the web page. Its a great page full of awesome photos but I think the links should be at the top. He is on FaceBook and Instagram.
On FaceBook he has 190K followers and is posting 5-10 times a month. He hasn't posted anything in September yet though. His most recent post is from August 18th.
On Instagram he has 9,139 followers with a total of 1,062 posts. His Instagram posts seem to correspond with his FaceBook posts as they are posted in the same frequency and on the same dates. His most recent Instagram post is from August 18th, same as FaceBook.
He seems to be getting plenty of work with big companies so I would say that what he's doing is working for him. As far as his social media is concerned maybe he can switch up the content a bit so that both platforms don't look the same. I can relate to that though because a lot of things I post on Instagram automatically posts to my faceBook as well.
After doing the research on these businesses I saw a couple of things that stood out and, excepted for one, they all had in common. All the websites except for one had their social media links all the way at the bottom of the page. A spot that no one would really end up at unless on purpose. I also noticed that all but one business pretty much stopped posting on social media during the heart of the pandemic.
I believe that it is important to have your social media links be visible in the first few moments you open up a web page. They should pop out at you but not take away from the website either. I think that by having the links way at the bottom of the page you are seriously hindering the traffic you could get if you would have placed them somewhere thats easily visible.
I noticed that all but the food photographer's social media pretty much went radio silent during the pandemic. I totally understand why this would have happened. Many businesses were affected and I'm sure they were just trying to stay afloat. Social media was probably the least of their concern. What I would suggest to them, if I could, would be to revamp and reimagine their social media and get it going again. I think that many people had a lot of time to get aquatinted with online shopping over the last year or so. These businesses getting their social media in order should be on their to do list.
This research assignment really opened my eyes to how social media can really make a business look like they are on top of it or not. Whether or not they are bringing in money, when a business has a social media that hasn't been updated or posted on in months it makes them look less than desirable.
Comments
Post a Comment