This post – likely my last for the year – will be a mish-mash of thoughts I’ve had:
(1) If you can’t see the impact of what you are doing, your efforts will diminish.
Since the late summer I haven’t been able to see the trends in who reads my posts, or the number of people who do. The analytics are definitely there, they are just “somewhere new” that I haven’t yet figured out. Even though I am a pretty motivated and disciplined person, this has had the effect of me posting less often. Maybe call this the “black hole” effect…a good reason to let people know how they are doing in real time, in any endeavour.
Goal for 2016: Figure out the analytics for my blog!
(2) If customers don’t know you are selling something, they won’t buy it.
We launched Cakes by Prairie Girl almost a month ago and until this weekend, all of our orders were via the old-fashioned method of emailing the catering coordinator…not a single online cake order! It occurred to me that other than social media, we haven’t been advertising that we can do these cakes so we need to bring the Cakes to the people…the many, many people who visit our PGB cupcakes site every day. So on Friday we added the Cakes icons to the PGB ordering page under a separate heading called “Special Occasion Cakes” and GUESS WHAT? We sold a Cakes by Prairie Girl online over the weekend! Woohoo!
(3) When a business tries something new, some or all of it will require fine-tuning or a complete overhaul.
See above re Cakes by Prairie Girl requiring some nurturing time, some participation in a wedding show, some word of mouth. But in the meantime, we need to find some twist on cake design that people DO want, right now….answer: amazing Christmas tree ornament cupcakes! Done by our talented cake designer, we’ve sold over a 100 boxes of these beauties this month. Not cakes exactly but close enough while we get the word out about “real” cakes.
So to all of you who have read my blog in 2016 – as per above I have no idea if you or anyone else has 🙂 – thank you and I wish you the very happiest and most peaceful of holidays ever! I am looking forward to kicking back in Calgary for 5 days with my husband and sons, always a really relaxing time of the year.
Jean
