Social Media Monitoring - Part One

I have chosen a small business and a brand associated with it. I found out that the name of the owner happens to be their brand name too. Cake Boss called also Buddy Valastro or simply Buddy is an Italian baker from New Jersey, second generation immigrant who is a proud owner of Carlo's Bakery shop in  Hoboken, NJ. He gained his popularity by being a star of a very popular weekly TLC TV show featuring his bakery inner life. He is known for making humongous cakes which require not only baking skills but also design skills.  Buddy Valastro and La Famiglia didn't earn a reality TV show dedicated to his life by

making simple cakes.

At the pick of his social media trend in July 1, 2011 ‘Cake Boss’ Buddy Valastro presented a seriously detailed creation for Chevrolet at the New York International Auto Show . The TLC cable reality show aired the episode this week that chronicles Valastro and his crew from Carlo’s Bake Shop of Hoboken, New Jersey, making and delivering the bright yellow Camaro topped with the action flick’s Bumblebee Transformer emerging from its roof.

"For his son Carlo's first birthday, he made a huge mountain-shaped Candy Land cake with a chocolate waterfall. For a special event, a nearby church got a three-tier confection covered in "stained glass" images made of icing. And for the 125th birthday of the Statue of Liberty, Valastro and his team created a detailed, scaled-down version of the statue that was carted to Liberty Island in pieces and assembled there.

When making such complicated cakes, a significant amount of effort goes into engineering the framework that will support various elements of the design"

According to my research so far, Buddy Valastro has a huge presence built into social media channels.

He has his entry in Wikipedia  and a Facebook Page.

Between the time I started monitoring Cake Boss on Facebook on October 2nd, he had 4.8 million likes, till 10/23 he had  already 4,919,228 likes so about 119,000 likes within 3 weeks. From 10/23 to 10/25 so during two days he gained 2427 likes which makes circa 1200 likes a day. In the pick times he was able to gain as much as about 4000 a day, the most popular day was July 22. Comparing to let's say Old Navy which is a big corporation, and just reached five million fans recently, this small business has a lot of fans.
Again from 10/23 to 10/29 he gained 6827 likes which is about 1137 likes a day.

Facebook  typical post 10/22/12- Today is the last day to reserve our discount tickets to the CAKE BOSS Buddy Valastro show at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Show date: Friday, November 23. Seats: $43 each. Regular price for the same seats is $45.75 plus handling fees!

People definitely visit Buddy's Facebook page and leave many positive comments, mostly about his wonderful cakes, and how they love him.

I found 78 pages of Google search entries starting with Cake Boss

 A website for Carlo's Bakery is well presentable with high quality cake pictures, order page, book by Buddy Valastro about Italian cooking, cake decoration tips, and directions.

Blog page by fans of cake Boss with timeline and pictures. In the blog there is a post about trivia questions from October 2nd -  Cake Boss Unscramble Game that shows his fans have to have a "deep" knowledge about his family details and secrets.. From there we learn about his plans for the nearest future, and his present campaigns. Below are few leading points of his present campaigns, the most important one being his Holiday tour around the country.

1.      "Right now I'm filming for the new season of 'Next Great Baker,' " Valastro said in a telephone interview last week. " 'Cake Boss' is done for this year [but] we come back full-force in January. I film all the time. Usually during my off time I love doing this tour."

2.      The tour of which he speaks is "Buddy Valastro Live! Homemade for the Holidays," which will be making a three-week trip around the East Coast and the Chicago area later this year. On Dec. 9, the show will stop at the Salem Civic Center.

3.      Valastro, 35, said his favorite part of doing the live show is pulling audience members up on stage to participate. But fans in Southwest Virginia will be able to get in on the action a bit early by taking part in The Roanoke Times autumn cupcake decorating contest.   The best-looking cupcake will be selected by Valastro, and the winner will get a pair of tickets to the show and a meet-and greet with the Cake Boss himself.

   

You tube displays many episodes of Cake Boss covering at least 4 years since 2009 when the TV reality show started. This is the last episode from October 2nd, 2012. The subject is mama's disease,  very personal for Buddy, so I guess this is why he is a little withdrawn from social media recently, because his mother got sick. I also think that the way Buddy portrays his family struggles as well as victories is very personal and human and that is why so many people relate to him the way they do.

But usually his shows are about his crazy cakes

Carlo's Bakery Demographics versus Cake Boss show demographics:

There is a slight difference in target audience for Carlos Bakery, which is a popular place for fans to come visit, order a cake, and see Cake Boss in person, and the website for LTC TV show.
TV show interests people in age range between 25 to 64, with no college education and slightly more college educated mostly males with children who browse website from work. The Bakery draws in older people, again males but in their 50s and 60s. The results are surprising for me since I thought his audience is women and children.

Social media Google and Ice-rocket trends show a steady growth of popularity from 2009 till now with a pick in July 2012 (92). I started monitoring trends on October 2nd. Ice-rocket Trend tool shows the same results when comparing the trend from 2009 till October 2012. The pick interest showing July 22nd, 2012.
when the Chevrolet event took place and caused public interest to grow.

Comparison of the trend worldwide in 2012 again pick interest in summer 2012. Interest over time for the last two months shows same growth, with pick social media engagement in September 2012 and decline in interest in October 2012. Interest over last 7 days for October 5th and 6th, shows slight growth which continues throughout my project. Ice rocket tool for the month of September below shows the pick interest in the end of September month, while in October interest declines significantly. On October 26, the Google trend is 93, it shows the interest builds up again probably because of the impact of the planned tour.

People are constantly talking about Cake Boss related topics on Twitter. On October 26 one of the fans refers to Buddy's mom's disease 

On October 18th Buddy V prepares cake for for the Kyrillos fundraiser. Kyrillos, a Republican, is running against Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez. Menendez is seeking his second full term in the U.S. Senate. Maybe he lost a lot of his fans who are democrats because his social media mention looks worse at the end of October.

In social mention he seems to lose some results from the beginning of October and the last few days of October. His strengths came down from 29% to 0%. Sentiment went down from 10:1 to 6:1, passion went down , and reach stayed pretty much the same. 

10/28/12

10/29/12

Buddy Valastro knows how to use his talent to draw attention in social media, and he knows how to use the buzz to boost his business which is booming. As a result of his celebrity fame, he opened new bakeries in a couple of other states, and is currently selling his cakes in grocery chains around the country. 
Adictomatic:

 I have used the Intelliwell  to get updates about Twitter posts.It has completely clogged my e-mail, but there is a lot of mention to follow on Twitter from Imtelliwell.