Facebook Posts: On The Grind vs. Emily's Coffee Shoppe

Social media is always causing a battle between businesses in the world today, especially smaller businesses where most of their popularity is from social media. In todays society it makes it much easier to follow the processes of what's going on around us without actually having to put out any effort. This is what we tend to do on social media, is we follow something that we are interested in so we can have access to it at all times. Following a small business can allow you to not only show support but it can keep you updated on certain promotions, new products and events they are taking apart in around the community.

Smaller businesses that usually thrive on social media a lot of the times are the least popular. This is often because they only get attention when something beneficial is being posted by them that other people want to take advantage of. In this case I examined On The Grind, an uprising business in the small community of New Braunfels, TX and I also examined Emily's Coffee Shoppe, an even smaller coffee shop in the heart of Cibolo, TX. Both of these businesses use their Facebook accounts for the exact reason of wanting to get their business seen to get people to come try their coffee. Conducting a small analysis of a small sampling of likes, comments, and shares on their Facebook pages, I have come across some interesting results for each individual business I examined. I have found that if the company is making a connection with the audience and the audience is getting something out of it, it can than become a successful post.

Going through the Facebook page of OTG I found that they have definitely created a mass audience for themselves, well at least more of an audience than Emily's Place. I found that most of the posts that got the most activity were for specials that the company was giving such as 4 drinks for $10, or 9 stamps on a stamp card for 1 drink, or 1$ smalls, $2 mediums and $3 large drinks. These types of things benefit people because they can not only save money, but they can also enjoy their favorite drink with benefitting towards the next purchase. This not only gives a reason for the customers to come back but it also gives them a chance to engage with the company and share the great news with their followers to help them save some money.

 

This was an example of a post that was shared over 50 times. This is because someone had the opportunity to win free coffee for an entire month. This has something beneficial not only for the customer but to the business as well. People are going to share this because its an opportunity to win free coffee, who wouldn't want free coffee for an entire month. So the company is aware that this is going to get shared. Now the company not only made this a high shared post, but they also integrated a contest into the post. Now people are having to go to the stand, order a drink, decorate the cup, post a picture of it online and cross their fingers in hopes to win. This is now promoting OTG and getting interaction with their customers in a positive way. This totally works in every aspect of a successful post. 

 

Here is another example of one of their high posts. This one is buying 4 drinks for only $10. This post is connecting with the audience because they are posting it out and they know its going to be shared, and its also giving the audience something in return, which is the promotion. These types of posts seem to be the ones that work best for OTG and are the ones with the highest activity of likes, shares and comments.

 

However Emily's Place has an entire different agenda, this company doesn't have as great of an audiences as OTG has. This coffee shop is located in an even smaller town Cibolo. Here is mainly local people and less traffic comes through the area, but it is interesting as to how the same style posts as OTG also work for Emily's Place.

Here is the graph showing results for likes, comments and shares for Emily's Place.

 

 

 

This post has one of the highest counts of social media activity on their page. This post invites the customers to come out and take a picture in this fall theme booth and advertises their wonderful coffee. This makes a connection with the audience and it also gives them something, a great picture spot. Emily's place also fails in some other ways:

This post is one that didn't get all that much interaction whatsoever. This is just inviting their customers to come to their coffee shop. However, as someone on social media there is no reason to share this. It does not establish a connection with the audience and it doesn't give them anything. Not only this, but they don't even use a graphic that helps share who they are. A picture of their coffee shop would be much more effective, but this generic picture kind of makes them seem un-legit. These are the types of posts are almost irrelevant to the social media world and will not hold up. If someone saw a post like this versus a post from OTG people in Cibolo are probably more likely to drive to New Braunfels to save some money and get a great coffee.

Social media posts are more likely to be effective with proper imaging, making a connection with the audience they are targeting and giving the audience something they want. When all or some of these connections are made, the post gets higher numbers. Everyone loves coffee but which shop would you be more likely to go to based on these posts?

Is it Worth Sharing?

Sharing has become a huge part of social media, in fact that is what social media can be defined as. Sharing peoples ideas and information has become apart of everyday life and can be accessed through our smart phones at all times throughout a day. Just because there is a ton of media at our finger tips doesn't mean that its worthy of being shared. How does one know what is sharable and what isn't.

Humor is a huge part of why people share in social media. Not just any humor though, the humor has to be a trending in what is funny in social medias. "Recognizing a joke involves exchanging judgments about the world and defining oneself either with or against others", says Mary Douglas. "Humor is not simply a matter of taste: it is a vehicle by which people articulate and validate their relationships with those whom they share the joke", she adds. This is a common tradition of why people share things, the humoristic side emphasizes those relationships with humor. If someone is able to identify something important or not important through a joke, it is more easily able to catch someone's attention.

Memes are always evolving to form with whatever events are trending and can be transform any sort of social issue into a joke.

 

In this meme it brings together the community that is anti-Donald Trump and connects them with an Orange is the New Black message. Not only is this meme going to appeal to those that are anti Trump but it also will be sharable for those who favor OITNB. If something has a greater message it is more likely to be shared especially through humor because everyone is willing to listen or see humoristic things. This clearly has a defined message but by adding in OITNB it serves as a gap as is shared in chapter 5 of Spreadable Media. 

The second thing that I think really promotes something to be sharable is its importance. However, this idea of importance must also be intertwined with my followers for it to be sharable. This not only makes the sharer feel more knowledgeable, in the case of being the first one to hear about it but it also helps get interactions and connections from your followers.

In this case I would share this sort of thing with my followers. Not only does it affect me but the people that follow me. It will promote some kind of interaction with the people that I am friends with on social media. This is going to save the city more money and it could end up helping us TLU students in the long run. Like maybe they can fix the on campus roads with this extra money. In this case it would be important to all my fellow students and peers that I follow. It would also create a sort of boundary for helping them out and sharing something that is relevant to them.

If the message isn't relative to most of the followers a lot of people will share directly. It is still functioning as the same purpose, just not to a mass amount of people. Inside jokes are a common one, or relatable things between you and a small number of people. It also can depend on what kind of social media platform that you are sharing on. This has a lot to do with different audiences and how they will respond different on something like Facebook vs. Twitter. These are two different levels of how something and why something should be shared.

Thirdly I believe that some things will always be sharable and those types of things function under what Lotz suggests in chapter 5:
-available when audiences want it
-portable
-easily reusable
-relevant to multiple audiences
-part of a stream
In these cases something is always going to be shared for at least one of these reasons. It doesn't necessarily matter what the topic is, but it will always matter on one of Lotz's stipulations. Sharing is easy and actually quite simple but for the individual reasons of why certain things are shared and why certain things are not is a complicated concept.

The fourth thing that posts must include to be sharable is something relevant to a particular audience that is on the social media channel you are interacting on. In this case it would be important for you to share something about Texas Lutheran University if you attend the university and have followers that are also in your community of TLU. This will make it more likeable and sharable because it is relevant to those around you. However, if you were to share something about TLU to a community of people who aren't in college the share ability of that post has decreased significantly, not because the post isn't good but its just not relevant to that particular audience.

Lastly a post is more likely to be shared if it can irritate or up-rise a particular audience by standing out. This can relate to some of the political posts that are all over Facebook and these posts are high profile for people to comment and share their opinion on them. This has to do with the connections of people to what they believe their timelines to be full of. If a person sees something on their timeline that isn't in their beliefs they are more likely to share content on it because it stands out. Standing out doesn't always have to be with political views, it can also be done with photographs and stories.

Humans like to be entertained but its sometimes one of the hardest things to do is to get someone to pay attention, this is why the post must stand out like a sore thumb to the audience. This is how news posts get shared at such a high rate, they have an aspect that stands out, usually by a terrifying headline. As economist Richard Caves explains that uncertainty principle is not knowing what our audience really wants, but its important to make content available in forms that the audience will find useful. There will never be an answer for what makes our audience more likely to share something but there are tactics we can use to make the odds high for sharing content.