Help A Local Business Grow! Linda Richey

Purpose: Help a Local Business Grow!

This year I decided to really challenge myself.

I selected 1 local business here in Rexburg that was struggling with their social media content, and got permission from the owner to allow me to help them grow their social media accounts!

Objectives:

Content:

I ended up meeting with the owner’s brother, because he had previously been in charge of their social media. He wanted to learn & grow his social media management knowledge!

Together we created a whole bunch of content for their page! (most of it has not been posted to their Instagram yet)

Content that has been posted:

Below I have attached the reels that have already been posted to Fizz Rizz’s Instagram. We made a LOT more content(mostly reels because this was what they wanted), but they have not yet been posted.

Fizz Rizz Mood Board:

On top of actually creating content, Sam (the owner’s brother who I worked with) and I, created a Fizz Rizz Mood Board filled with Inspiration content that better helped us understand the type of content we were trying to create!

We spent lots of time finding reels that we felt fit into the “vibe” of the company & shared them with each other!

Below I have attached some parts of the Mood Board!

Challenges:

No Access to Meta Analytics:

The company owner did not feel comfortable giving access to the actual Instagram account to me OR his brother. He mentioned that he wanted to be the only one to respond to comments & dm’s.

I was NOT aware of this when I talked with the owner the first time and accepted them as my company that I was going to work with. If I had known that there would have been no access to the account for me and his brother I would not have selected this business.

• No access to the account made it difficult to know what was working and what was not working.
• It was also very difficult to get any content posted because some Instagram trending sounds are copyrighted and can only be added through creating the reel on Instagram.
• I was not able to get any analytics or data out of this content posting, so we had no idea what the engagement was.

From what I could see (reel views & comments) it seemed as though the content was performing well, but the only way to truly know would be to look into the data.

Inconsistent Content Posted at the Same time:

Another roadblock that we ran into while trying to change the quality of the Instagram account, was that since the owner was the only one with Instagram account access, he continued to post content that did not align with the new content that we were working on.

Most of the content that he posted was reels with only words & music behind it, which did not perform well on their page. It was apparent that the new content we had created was performing better, but it really came down to quality over quantity.

There was a LOT of content being posted, but not all of it was quality content & I believe that it messed with the algorithm a little bit.

Owner consistently deleted content from the page.

The business owner consistently deleted content(reels & posts) from the visible Instagram page. I am not sure why, but I assume it was if they did not perform as well as he thought or if he just didn’t like them.

This made it made it a little bit difficult for me to accurately include posts & reels within this project overview, but luckily the content we created is still active and on the page.

I did not have a lot of contact with the actual business owner after the first initial meeting. He directed me to his younger brother Sam, and this was the only contact I had with the business.

Overview:

Overall, this experience was amazing and taught me a lot about myself and what i want to do in the future with my Social Media & Digital Marketing Degree.

Selecting a local business to assist in their social media efforts for 3 months was a challenge in and of itself, but I believe we all learned something.

Creating content for a fun local business that has cool vibes already really helped the content inspiration ideas continually flow. There were so many opportunities with this business that we were not able to fully follow through with, but my main goal throughout this experience was to teach the company how to do social media without my help.

Sam, the owner’s brother, was very interested in social media and was really excited to learn how he could better create content for their business. I hope that he was able to take some things away from what we did together.

Overall the company gained 155 followers within these past 3 months.

Insights & Takeaways!

Always gain access to an account that you are going to work with.

It was very difficult to manage & create content without access to the Instagram page. Moving forward in the future, I will be to sure to only work with companies if I am allowed access to look through analytics.

Make sure the company is willing to change for growth.

In this case, it was very hard to help the company because they were not necessarily looking to change anything in their social media efforts. The owner was a little set in his ways & believed that his way was working already. Going forward, I would like to find companies that are seeking help, rather than me going to them for the opportunity.

Be on the same page as the business owner/person in charge.

I personally feel like there was a small disconnect between the business owner & I regarding what I was there to do. I think that if I do this again, I will need to be a little bit more assertive from the beginning to be sure everyone is on the same page from the get-go.

Continue finding ways to uniquely help the community!

I love helping people, and I think that offering my knowledge & experience to those in need of help with their businesses is a great way to serve the community. I did not love every second of this experience, but I did learn a lot about myself and the work that I have ahead of me.

Self Reflection Video