Good To-Go v. Heather's Choice

MBA 660 - Managerial Marketing

Individual Assignment 3
David Geiger (Group 7)
Company: Good To-Go

Good To-Go's Social Media Strategy
Good To-Go has a strong social media presence. While they utilize various social media platforms, their strongest followings by far are through Facebook and Instagram. They have 14,700 followers on Facebook and 17,800 followers on Instagram. They post new material at least two or three times each week and occasionally pay money to boost their posts on Facebook. However, they have found that they receive the most interaction through Instagram. Thus, they have shifted their strategy from Facebook "boost" posts to prioritizing Instagram heavy content to garner user interaction. They believe that this is in part due to partnering with other companies that utilize Good To-Go's products for special and promotions. They have found that companies that utilize Instagram over Facebook have been more receptive to partner with them. While they still get strong interaction through both platforms, Instagram is definitely their preferred choice.

While partnering with other companies through social media has greatly helped Good To-Go's social media presence, another reason they have been successful in the three years they have been active is due to the strong content that they put out. Instead of spending excessive amounts of revenue on photographs and videos of their products, they have partnered with many free lance photographers and artists that offer high quality content for little to no expense. All of the content that they push out has an authentic feel to it since none of their material is product focused, but rather shows real people using Good To-Go's product.

Good To-Go v. Heather's Choice
For this assignment, I chose to look at Good To-Go's most similar competitor, Heather's Choice. Also another recent start-up, located in Alaska, they have positioned themselves as a dehydrated food supplier which specializes on quality. Their Facebook presence is a fraction of Good To-Go's current following with 3,300 followers compared with 14,700.

Good To-Go v. Heather's Choice: Likes

As shown in the chart above, the engagement for the last 100 posts between the two companies has been dominated by Good To-Go. However, this is clearly due to their larger following. At their peak, Good To-Go's best post received 1009 likes, while Heather's Choice best posted garnered 87. It is no surprise that the number of shares correlates with the number of likes as the more shares that Good To-Go had on each post, the more likes it received. Heather's Choice did not receive many shares with its posts. The most interesting fact was that comments did not seem to have a correlation with likes as their was minimal engagement in comments for either company.

Good To-Go v. Heather's Choice: Total Engagement (Likes, Shares, Comments)

When adding up the total engagement between the two companies (likes, shares, and comments), Good To-Go's advantage over Heather's Choice appears to be even more pronounced. While Heather's Choice has improved recently, they have never topped a total of 200 in total engagement. Good To-Go has managed to top 1000 twice. Good To-Go's advantage in the number of followers definitely shows and at times Heather's Choice appears to perform well when compared to Good To-Go as far as the percentage of followers that engage. However, these charts show that Good To-Go's reach can far outpace that of Heather's Choice under the right circumstances.

Good To-Go's Highest Rated Posts

As shown above, the two highest posts for Good To-Go received 1009 and 635 likes respectively. In regards to total engagement, the two posts received 1115 and 1011 scores respectively. The highest rated post was right after the hurricane in Puerto Rico and was shared a record high of 93 for Good To-Go. However, comments were minimal. In regards to their second highest post, they partnered with Ruffwear Performance Dog Gear which has a major Facebook presence of 300,000+ followers. While shares were only 37, they received a record high of 329 comments on this post. Thus, while comments and likes do not necessarily correlate, Good To-Go is still receiving high engagement levels. Moreover, it also appears that their engagement ratings spike when they promote their products in conjunction with companies that have greater social media followings or for real world events such as Hurricanes. Similarly, it appears that Heather's Choice follows the same pattern as their highest liked post was due to partnering with another company as seen below.

It appears that Good To-Go's lowest rated posts are due to a combination a few factors. Posts that are not original and that are "shared" by Good To-Go seem to perform the least well. An example of this is shown below. The post simply shares the post of another Facebook user. Additionally, as Good To-Go has grown their social media followers, they have increased performance. Thus, posts that were generated in 2016, do not perform as well as 2017 due to the increased followers that have gained. Therefore, if Good To-Go wants to receive better feedback from their posts, they should avoid posting links to other posts. The exception to this rule is when they provide links to articles that focus on the accomplishments of Good To-Go, such as when an article was written about how they won the Maine Gorham Launchpad competition. In that specific post, Good To-Go received over 300 likes. These posts tend to perform exceedingly well.

Below is a breakdown of total engagement (likes, shares, comments) on the type of post (video, link, pictures). As demonstrated, it appears that pictures generate the highest spikes for engagement amongst followers with an average total engagement of 127 per post. Video content posts come in second with 81, while posting links generated only 59.

In summary, Good To-Go has built up an impressive social media presence with little to no budget and one person in charge of Marketing. They have outpaced Heather's Choice in the number of followers and engagement by more than four times. This is very impressive considering that they both started around the same time. Additionally, it appears that both companies receive spikes in engagement when they partner with other brands that are better known. Moreover, posts that correspond to real life events seem to have higher engagement levels as evident through enhanced likes and shares. Finally, there does not seem to be a difference to the type of content (videos, photos, links) as long as the content seem authentic and relate to real world events.

Screenshots from Facebook Crawling

ID Number and Hyperlinks