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Daily Bread’s Use of Social Media

Abstract: 

This report will analyze the effectiveness of Daily Bread Food Bank’s social media presence. Overall, Daily Bread does leverage multiple social media channels as a way of communicating their strategy; however, they lack a foundational theme which is detrimental to their brand and portrays them as an organization that solely focuses on local funding and aid.

Purpose:

Daily Bread Food Bank is one of the largest food banks in Canada supplying food to approximately 200 food programs across Toronto (Daily Bread, 2019). This report is two-fold: we will explore the overall effectiveness of it’s current social media strategy, as well as identify strengths and weaknesses in terms of their targeting approach. Finally, we will focus on how Daily Bread can convey their message with a more all-encompassing, brand-centric approach with the intent to yield more of a following and then support of their objectives and end goal: funding.

Audience: 

While the Daily Bread generalizes their targeting approach to focus on funding the food bank, they directly address Toronto locals. An excerpt from their website, “Working on long-term solutions to poverty while providing food to 175 food programs across Toronto,” explicitly addresses the local audience (dailybread.ca) By analyzing how the site is directly addressing this audience, it is concluded that the target group is volunteers, low-income families, and the homeless. Daily Bread is also branching out to focus on green gas emissions to gain new supporters like environmentalists.

Methodology: 

This report focuses on the main channels of social media used by Daily Bread including Twitter, Facebook. YouTube, and Instagram. For each channel, the following questions will be analyzed and evaluated:

1)    Does Daily Bread’s social media channel express the company’s goal?

2)    To what audience is the content tailored towards, and has the organization successfully expressed this within their messaging?

3)    Is the design and writing cohesive, clear, and user-friendly?

Results & Analysis: 

The results of the analysis are broken out by social media channel within this section. We have analyzed the organization’s publicly stated goal, “collaborate with all to eliminate food insecurity, and advocate solutions to end poverty” found directly on their website. We are assessing whether this is messaged appropriately to promote brand effectiveness within the four main channels the Daily Bread has leveraged: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Twitter

1) Daily Bread does a good job in ensuring consistency in the tweets that it posts and shares. The tweets are revolved around food banks and food donations and covers topics like various food-related campaigns and events, company milestones made, and updates.

2) There does not seem to be a clear audience in terms of demographics, but it is evident that this is targeted towards those who live in the GTA based on the tweets that they share. This makes sense as it is a community-based non-profit focused in that area.

3) Daily Bread does a good job providing a variety of tweets in terms of posting versus sharing and the hashtags that it uses. One thing that can be improved is making it clearer as to what’s going on at Daily Bread in terms of what they’ve accomplished, what they plan to do, and what their goals are.

 Facebook

1)    Daily Bread does well to capture the reader's interests by posting photo and videos directly related to their goals. This immediately reveals what the organization is about before the reader has to do further research.

2)    Their posts are consistent in showing and describing what they do. Often these posts will discuss a event that they were helped with or their thanks to supporters and donators which is great for consistent page traffic.

3)    Facebook page has many links to their about page, photos, videos and a well situated and user-friendly, “Donate” button at the very top of the homepage.

 YouTube:

1)    Daily Bread has recorded and published three videos. In the first video titled, “Daily Bread Impact Report 2018”. The organization’s use of direct address to audience is greatly messaged to support the overall objective of gaining more financial supporters. Daily Bread shared very impactful numbers of how donations helped to end hunger, and provide more fresh produce, “Your donations helped provide 5000 hot meals weekly” as an example. This use of direct address within the video provides confidence in the organizations ability to use donations appropriately, and while it is intended as a “thank you” to those who have supported it, it is also a way of attracting more funding through showing appreciation and hard statistics.

2)    Another video, Food Sort Challenge, has been created to attract corporations and volunteers to choose Daily Bread as a way to give back. The video sells “team collaboration” and team-work to gain volunteers. By showing how teams can have fun, and feel good, the video effectively demonstrates the positive impact volunteering can have on organizations. By doing this, Daily Bread achieves their goal by obtaining more volunteers in large groups to help with food sorting.

3)    The third video, “Thank you for giving so generously” hosts the CEO and is intended to give thanks to volunteers and those who have donated financially. The video does a great job of visually demonstrating what a donation supports, as well as how volunteers make a difference – by doing this the organization provides confidence in their ability to run a not for profit organization.

 Instagram

Daily Bread’s instagram is not as strong as their YouTube messaging. Their use   hashtags are inconsistent and could be improved to drive traffic to one site – their website.

1)    The main heading on their instagram lacks consistency.  The use of hashtag #wearedailybread could be strengthened by simplifying: #dailybreadfoodbank Fighting to end hunger in our city.  We collaborate with all to eliminate food insecurity, and advocate solutions to end poverty. #WeAreDailyBread www.dailybread.ca/most-needed

2)    While the categories are strong and clear (broken out by four, “Fresh” “DB kitchen”, BT x Daily, and Mobile Market) it is not consistent with their overall approach and lacks alignment.

3)    The selected images on their feed are helpful and allow users to see what the Daily Bread Food Bank is doing, but they do not have a consistent hashtag strategy, or a tie in to the overall strategy.

Conclusion:

It is found in our investigation that Daily Bread has successfully engaged their audience and is effective at leveraging it’s various platforms, however opportunity lies in creating a more cohesive marketing strategy. Daily Bread Food Bank could benefit from tightening consistency through the social media platforms they are using, and draw upon some of the key things that are done well (ie, addressing the right audience)

Recommendation(s):

We recommend developing a theme that can be applied to all social media platforms. This includes determining the colour, font, style of writing, and other factors to increase continuity and also make its content more attractive. In addition to that, they should consider facts, statistics, and ideas that are more attention-grabbing.

1)    Create two separate pages for the food bank and one for their environmental programs in order to keep things organized and concise for readers.  

2)    Create user-friendly navigation by making the menu layout stand out and keep content separate from the information. Also, change the large layout to something that is more informative. Changing the usability on the webpages to something more organized is easier to navigate.

3)    Creating a consistent platform that amplifies the purpose of Daily Bread with interesting visuals, videos but also enough information to introduce a new user to their goals.

4)    Align on a small number of hashtags to increase the power of one place to find information.

5)    Align and execute one main channel of focus (website perhaps) that they can communicate in all social media platforms as way to increase donations.

References

https://www.dailybread.ca/about/

https://twitter.com/dailybreadto?lang=en

 https://www.instagram.com/p/BuJ_TAcBT6x/ https://www.facebook.com/DailyBreadFoodBank/

https://www.youtube.com/DailyBreadFoodBank/

https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/06/06/5-tips-make-website-attractive/

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Introducing Fair-Trade Chocolate, by XOXO

Our mission

XOXO is company that puts morals first. Our mission is to improve the world by reinventing everyone’s favorite food, chocolate! By doing it right, we can provide a beautiful and delicious product, and bring justice to farmers and possessors alike. Farmers rights are what we believe in, therefore all purchase profit on chocolate you buy go directly to the farmers.

Our Chocolate

This is some of the best chocolate you can find! From three flavors to choose from, every ingredient is pure. Choose from the mouth-watering taste of milk chocolate, the sharp and woodsy taste of dark chocolate, or the soft and sweet taste of white chocolate. Grind the dark chocolate into frothy milk to enjoy the aroma of a sweet hot-chocolate drink on a cold day and let the sound of a crackling fire bring you warmth. Melt the milk-chocolate over an ice-cream sundae on hot day while sitting at a beach, watching the waves roll in.  Pair the white chocolate with some peppermint for a classic twist on a holiday favorite while you sing a classic carol!  

You can feel good knowing that what you are savoring is also sourced sustainable, and fair-traded. In addition, our chocolate comes with a non-GMO guarantee and never has gluten, corn or soy.

Please check back often to find more flavors and products as we embark on this incredible journey to bring you the best products on the market.

Our Farmers

XOXO has carefully sourced products from farmers in the Peruvian Valley. Our farmers sustainably source all ingredients, and each chocolate is hand-crafted with love.

Thank you for checking us out. We hope you enjoy our chocolate, as well as helping us make the world a better place. One farmer and one chocolate bar at a time!

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GREAT resource for things to consider when starting a garden! 

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A great resource for Ontario’s main growers, as well as produce that is currently in-season! 

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Welcome to She Grows In Dirt!

Who Am I? 

Hi! I’m Amy. A woman of many roles, but most importantly a life-long gardening geek (or a plant-lady)

One could assume that a person who has a gardening and plant blog is a professional gardener, but alas this is not the case. I currently work for a large telecommunications company as a marketer and am known to the be crazy plant lady at the office. Why you ask? Because I cannot walk by a plant without checking its health, and I am often caught talking to my plants as if they are part of my team. Work feels hard. But taking care of plants? That I can do.

I am told that as a child I would eat dirt. Although I do not remember that, I do remember the feeling of my hands in the earth and hoping to find worms under the darkness of the soil. The smell of soil after a rain is a scent I’d love to bottle into a perfume. I began to draw plants and then further became interested in oil painting which I did, and still do, to this day as a hobby. Most of my paintings are of landscapes and (surprise) flowers! You may find one of my paintings on my blog from time to time. 

Here is one of #purpleconeflower which MIGHT be my soul-mate flower! 

My Garden: 

I live in a suburban area outside of Toronto, Ontario with a regular suburban house and a pie-shaped lot. It’s really nothing to write home about, and honestly wouldn’t make the bottom 100 cut for Home and Garden magazine. But it’s where I go when I need peace, and it’s become my sanctuary. The progress of the garden is as much a joy as each beautiful flower petal that comes out of it. My garden reminds me that time, sun, soil and a little rain is enough to make miracles happen and that anything can be done with a bit of patience and some dirty fingernails. 

Why did I start this blog?

Have you ever stopped to think about what makes you feel completely whole? I mean, that feeling where you can separate thought from being, or where simple joys are enough to stop time? This is what gardening has become for me. Whether I am planning out a new garden bed in my yard, perusing the local nursery, or celebrating a bulb’s bloom, I am most alive near plants.

This blog will mostly be about plants. But it will also be about transformation and growth – personally and within the natural world. Gardening is said to be a form of therapy for some, and for me this is a truth. My wish is that this blog inspires you to spend time outdoors or to try something different in your own garden!