Week 3B: Communication & Group Comments
Scoping Out the Competition
I had a great time looking through various photo booth businesses in my area. I was surprised to see how each business was using or NOT using social media. Here are my findings...
1. Pixster Photo Booth www.pixterphotobooth.com
They are a big name that many people know in the San Diego area. When visiting Pixster's website it was easy to see the different social media sites that they use. The have links to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter were all updated and looked be used often, whereas Pinterest and Google+ not so much. That last posts were dated September 7th on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Google+ was last updated 50 weeks ago.
2. San Diego Photo Booth Rentals www.sandiegophotoboothrentals.com
San Diego Photo Booth Rentals includes a Facebook, Yelp, and Google link on their website. Although they are working links, when looking at the dates of the latest post they were pretty old. Facebook's last post was dated November 2015, Yelp's last review of the business was November 2017, and Google simple took them to their Google business information. Their website was nice, clean and easy to navigate. It does not look like they are very good at keeping up their social media.
3. Just a Memory Photo Booth www.thesandiegophotobooth.com
Facebook and Twitter where the only two links on the website of Just a Memory Photo Booth. The only working link was their Facebook but unfortunately their latest post was February 2017. The Twitter link only directed you to Twitter itself and not directly to their business page. I appreciated their website design and how they had music pop on when you visited the website. It added some fun and energy. They also don't look to be very involved in their social media.
4. iPix Photo Booths www.ipixphotobooths.com
Although iPix had a beautiful, clean website design, they had NO social media links. I was quite surprised. I was able to track down their Facebook and Instagram sites and was even further surprised by the fact that they had last updated Facebook May 2017 and their Instagram had ZERO posts. They seem to have steady business coming in from the look of their gallery so my guess is that they are either doing a great job with word of mouth promotion or only directing people to the website.
5. Shutter Booth www.shutterbooth.com/san-diego/
Shutter Booth is a chain of photo booth businesses all throughout the nation from what I gather. You can easily buy into Shutter Booth and start your own business using their name. This could be the very reason that they had very little activity on social media. The website itself did not have any links to social media sites probably because there are multiple businesses running under the same name. I was able to find the Facebook and Instagram for the San Diego Shutter Booth. The last post on Facebook was August 6, 2018 and Instagram was on September 5th of this year. It is important to note that their IG only had 23 total posts.
My Thoughts...
After looking through the 5 different photo booth businesses, I am surprised that social media sites were not more used. Collectively, Facebook seems to be much more popular for these businesses. Maybe it is easier to use or the users are more familiar with how it works from their own personal use.
I was definitely prepared to see lots of Instagram posts because of the growing popularity of IG for business. Photo Booths take pictures and IG is the perfect place to post and share pictures. I was surprised to find that only 1 of the 5 was utilizing Instagram well. Instagram is my favorite place to post pictures because of its convenience for sending it to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. It's like killing 2 or 3 birds with 1 stone!
Looking at these other local photo booths sad social media sites drives me even harder to update and continue to use social media sites in my own business.
Group Comments
I have commented on the following group member's posts:
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