We're into Q2 and so here is a good point to look at the start of this year and what's happened so far.
First, let's look at the pure stats as a start, I had targets to aim for on growth for social channels, so this is where we got:
Instagram:
Start of 2021 - 620
End Q1 - 875
Target - 850
Comments:
Instagram is a great channel for engagement and I think pictures lend itself well to this, so cheese pics help. I spent a lot of time testing strategies on this. I would make trips to the shops to get pics etc. or find ones online and write something about them and schedule these for the week on a Sunday. It would take me about 2-3hrs to do and I'd post about 2-3 per day. I recently have been putting more time per post (c.1hr), which is very hard to scale and do in one day for the week. Why longer? Engagement and education. I want to bring something to our audience that they find valuable, so have been looking into origins of cheeses, histories etc etc. which takes TIME! Either way, I have been doing fewer of them but they have been very well received and engagement on them is way up.
Facebook:
Start of 2021 - 1775
End of Q1 - 6243
Target - 10,000
Comments:
Facebook is a bit sack to be honest. We have some OK engagement, but you're not looking at anything like the engagement on any other channel. I paid to promote ads to get the audience. Not buying the audience, promoted posts to get them in, but the way FB works makes it hard to get really good engagement fast. You have to build it and it's a numbers game, or they want you to pay to promote to your audience. Either way, it's OK and the business suite means I can post from one place and it covers Insta and FB at once.
Linkedin:
Start of 2021 - 12
End of Q1 - 280
Target - 250
Comments:
If you don't do LinkedIn for your company, I would 100% recommend it. The engagement I get on posts compared to my audience size is WAY above any other channel out there. Not only that, as people are there for business it's led to a number of potential business deals and relationships because of it. It's been great and I auto post from FB > LI using Zapier. Bonus. This one has been a real winner for me.
Twitter:
Start of 2021 - 49
End of Q1 - 270
Target - 250
Comments:
This for me takes a whole different approach to any other platform/ channel out there and you need a whole different strategy for it. I haven't been using a different one, but to make the most of it you need to and you need to put the time into that. For me though, I'm unsure if the trade off of extra time vs. the value is there. This is tbc but needs more testing.
Website:
Start of 2021 - 12 monthly visitors
End of Q1 - 301
Target - 350
Comments:
This channel needs the most work from me in the next sprint. I need to make it better as a site and pull the cannels together in terms of consistency and value across the different "products". The website should be the first thing people see, but at the moment it's a bit sack, and doesn't have the same info on as the app and really doesn't provide much value. I need to work on this with urgency and has my priority in this next quarter.
App Users:
Start of 2021 - 313
End of Q1 - 556
Target - 500
Comments:
This is the big one right? The one we wanted to hit really. On top of everything, we need these numbers to hit that 5-10k mark. We started on 313 and it was a slog but we hit the 500 and are now sitting on 583 as of today. I'm super pleased but we need more and faster! This rate of growth is OK (c.20% MoM growth this year so far) but that'll take years to hit that target. What I need is to make the app better and understand how people are using it and use some data to pull all our channels together in one cohesive offering of value. More on this in next steps.
Company News:
Outside of our channels, we have completed the onboarding of 2 new people as of last week; Roshni our new CFO and Mina our new CMO. Both have HUGE experience in their fields and operate at these levels for companies at present. I'm just trying to ramp up some proper onboarding and getting them all setup so we can be affective together now. This is my challenge but I'm working on this and alignment and next steps for us all. Excited to get Roshni sorting all our finance stuff out and Mina has already done a lot when it comes to input on the marketing side.
So we're now getting a bit more "Official" with 4 people. For those interested, it's done on a equity basis and both will get 10% company shares, vested over a 3 year period.
Next Steps:
Spend to date this Q:
Just wanted to check in and update where we're at. It's useful for me more than anything as now I can create some tickets and work on my actual next steps and making them happen. Target for this Q? I think we should aim for 1k users... why not?
First, let's look at the pure stats as a start, I had targets to aim for on growth for social channels, so this is where we got:
Instagram:
Start of 2021 - 620
End Q1 - 875
Target - 850
Comments:
Instagram is a great channel for engagement and I think pictures lend itself well to this, so cheese pics help. I spent a lot of time testing strategies on this. I would make trips to the shops to get pics etc. or find ones online and write something about them and schedule these for the week on a Sunday. It would take me about 2-3hrs to do and I'd post about 2-3 per day. I recently have been putting more time per post (c.1hr), which is very hard to scale and do in one day for the week. Why longer? Engagement and education. I want to bring something to our audience that they find valuable, so have been looking into origins of cheeses, histories etc etc. which takes TIME! Either way, I have been doing fewer of them but they have been very well received and engagement on them is way up.
Facebook:
Start of 2021 - 1775
End of Q1 - 6243
Target - 10,000
Comments:
Facebook is a bit sack to be honest. We have some OK engagement, but you're not looking at anything like the engagement on any other channel. I paid to promote ads to get the audience. Not buying the audience, promoted posts to get them in, but the way FB works makes it hard to get really good engagement fast. You have to build it and it's a numbers game, or they want you to pay to promote to your audience. Either way, it's OK and the business suite means I can post from one place and it covers Insta and FB at once.
Linkedin:
Start of 2021 - 12
End of Q1 - 280
Target - 250
Comments:
If you don't do LinkedIn for your company, I would 100% recommend it. The engagement I get on posts compared to my audience size is WAY above any other channel out there. Not only that, as people are there for business it's led to a number of potential business deals and relationships because of it. It's been great and I auto post from FB > LI using Zapier. Bonus. This one has been a real winner for me.
Twitter:
Start of 2021 - 49
End of Q1 - 270
Target - 250
Comments:
This for me takes a whole different approach to any other platform/ channel out there and you need a whole different strategy for it. I haven't been using a different one, but to make the most of it you need to and you need to put the time into that. For me though, I'm unsure if the trade off of extra time vs. the value is there. This is tbc but needs more testing.
Website:
Start of 2021 - 12 monthly visitors
End of Q1 - 301
Target - 350
Comments:
This channel needs the most work from me in the next sprint. I need to make it better as a site and pull the cannels together in terms of consistency and value across the different "products". The website should be the first thing people see, but at the moment it's a bit sack, and doesn't have the same info on as the app and really doesn't provide much value. I need to work on this with urgency and has my priority in this next quarter.
App Users:
Start of 2021 - 313
End of Q1 - 556
Target - 500
Comments:
This is the big one right? The one we wanted to hit really. On top of everything, we need these numbers to hit that 5-10k mark. We started on 313 and it was a slog but we hit the 500 and are now sitting on 583 as of today. I'm super pleased but we need more and faster! This rate of growth is OK (c.20% MoM growth this year so far) but that'll take years to hit that target. What I need is to make the app better and understand how people are using it and use some data to pull all our channels together in one cohesive offering of value. More on this in next steps.
Company News:
Outside of our channels, we have completed the onboarding of 2 new people as of last week; Roshni our new CFO and Mina our new CMO. Both have HUGE experience in their fields and operate at these levels for companies at present. I'm just trying to ramp up some proper onboarding and getting them all setup so we can be affective together now. This is my challenge but I'm working on this and alignment and next steps for us all. Excited to get Roshni sorting all our finance stuff out and Mina has already done a lot when it comes to input on the marketing side.
So we're now getting a bit more "Official" with 4 people. For those interested, it's done on a equity basis and both will get 10% company shares, vested over a 3 year period.
Next Steps:
- Alignment of all channels, consistent offering and value across all
- email marketing - currently no emails are sent to users of the app, not even a welcome one. This needs to be brought inline, and encourage us to push value this way and measure.
- Dev - kick up the bum and get the main points hammered out in the next 2 weeks he has off work. I need this to be done asap now or I'll be getting another person.
- Work on the company; getting us 3 main folk chatting, in a rhythm and all bases covered across product/marketing and finance
- Hunt for a hands on CTO...
Spend to date this Q:
- $500 on sponsoring cheese awards in May
- $100 on promotion on facebook
- $300 on server costs
- $150 on data entry costs (cheese pics still being uploaded at present!)
Just wanted to check in and update where we're at. It's useful for me more than anything as now I can create some tickets and work on my actual next steps and making them happen. Target for this Q? I think we should aim for 1k users... why not?
Appreciate it though. Hopefully some decent big changes coming to it in the next couple of weeks to the user journey in the app. 
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