** THE STORY **

It All Started When...

In 2008 I was a passionate, driven, young go-getter who was completely and utterly bored-to-tears working in an office. I longed to build something meaningful, rather than give all my time and energy to the "rat race".

Wraggamuffins - image 1 - student project

When you do something you love and you’re passionate about, it shows. So when I created Wraggamuffins in 2010 the creative endeavour and freedom to build my own company by doing what I loved was the main driving force. This was (and still is) crucial for the business, probably more so than the monetary reward.

Customer service and baking are two things I’m incredibly passionate about and so I wanted to create a brand that offered delicious muffins, cupcakes and brownies that were different from the norm, coupled with excellent customer experience from start to end. It’s not enough to bake something that tastes great and deliver to customers; I wanted each and every customer to know that my heart was invested in this, in them, and that they were dealing with a real person from start to finish who genuinely cares about the reason WHY they’re ordering the same as if it were my own event or gift.

With that in mind I started out with an eCommerce website and some social networking profiles and in the last three years have built the brand into one that has several high profile clients, corporate accounts and regular wedding bookings. Everyone is treated the same no matter if you’re spending £1000 or £10, I want every customer to feel important and trust that we care about their order as much as they do, what’s important for them is important for me. This is why when I have any kind of contact with the customer I talk to them as I would anyone else, there’s no stuffiness or standard responses, they get a personal (yet always professional) and appropriate response.

Whatcha' Making Over There?

Standing out from the crowd with a product line that draws on my time living in the USA, I chose to mix BIG American Style with classic British flavours (and sometimes some American ones too). I genuinely believe that what Wraggamuffins offers differs from the usual muffins, cupcakes and brownies that you can buy in London. The concept is "American Style, British Born"

Wraggamuffins - image 2 - student project

People buzz about the “secret hidden filling” inside the cupcakes and the choice of brownie flavours which are loaded with stuff, not a spattering of filling: if we say it has Oreos in it, then we mean every bite has Oreos! The muffins range from mini (described as the cutest things ever) to our regular size of BIG American Style (described as a meal in itself, perfect to share but don’t want to).

It’s important that the customer knows we have a really strong work ethic so they can trust that when we say we’ll do something, we’ll do it! This I do by walking the walk and not just talking the talk. It has proved successful. If you have passion, drive, and love what you do then this oozes into the customer experience.

Having fun is a big part of it too, so I choose to share various jokes and tidbits to allow my sense of humour and personality to shine through.

Cool! What's Next Amigo?

So that’s the base, the next step is SCALE, SCALE, SCALE! And to make people want Wraggamuffins' products as much as this little fella wants a Smurf!

Wraggamuffins - image 3 - student project

________________________________________________________________________

** THE SOCIAL STUFF **

Facebook

www.facebook.com/Wraggamuffins - 1.9K followers, reasonable engagement metrics, but feel that at least 60% of the audience don't see my posts. Over the past 12 months I've changed tatics somewhat and focused on shareable content; lots of images, videos, blog posts, Fan of the Week, etc. So I feel that I'm jabbing all over the place, but not really giving any right hooks.

Going forward the plan for Facebook is to:

brand all Wraggamuffins content with the company logo and slogan
create more of a cycle of jab, jab, jab, right hook. Initially I'm going to stick with the 3 jabs then a right hook and see how response goes, changing accordingly depending on success
definitely guilty of the 'half-pregnant' approach, so will ensure a jab is a jab and a hook is a hook
next big event is Valentine's Day, instead of posting brownies with hearts on and trying to constantly right hook to get orders I've decided to trial #LoveMuffin over Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook side of it will be to show a photo of a London location once a day where Love Muffin has been (perhaps obscuring it slightly), and one person from the correct answers will win a Love Muffin to be sent to their Valentine on St. Valentine's Day.

Instagram

http://instagram.com/wraggamuffins - 195 followers, below average engagement (generally from the same people), not using for video content only for images.

I've been active since February 2012 and primarily use Instagram to share photos of products and cupcake towers at weddings. Every now and then I throw in a personal photo, still keeping it professional though.

I'm sometimes jabbing, never right hooking!

Going forward the plan for Instagram is to:

inject more personality into the images. Create a more human approach as this is missing across most of the social platforms Wraggamuffins is on.
link more of the images to London, take more photos of landmarks when en route to a delivery, include more location shots.
before and after shots are quite popular, plan to take humourous/educational photos of the baking process.
Right hook more often, around special holidays and events would be ideal and not to intrusive to the community.

This would also benefit the homepage of the Wraggamuffins website as there is a live Instagram feed.

Pinterest

www.pinterest.com/wraggamuffins/ - 337 followers, 2644 pins, 32 boards organised by category. This is the Monica Geller of Pinterest accounts! However, I spend a lot of time pinning other people's stuff and dropping my own in now and then. I see the sharing others and building a following as the jabbing, but I've been jabbing so long I forgot to put on the gloves and right hook!

Going forward the plan for Pinterest is to:

gather all content currently in my possesion, from Wraggamuffins tutorial videos, blog posts, showcase videos, and make sure they're all pinned, then repinned!
No links to the website are in the description of the pins, only the image is linked. Make sure that I follow the same format and pin all my stuff with clear calls-to-action in the description if it's a right hook, or optimised descriptions if it's a jab pin.
Make sure all pins referring traffic to Wraggamuffins is clearly labelled like the one I did during the project tasks - http://www.pinterest.com/pin/54887689182600040/ (although the description text is a bit crap, looking at it in hindsight)
Test different pin descriptions on different boards to find out which gets the most engagement from each group of followers to try and encourage more repins and visits to the website.

Tumblr

http://wraggamuffins.tumblr.com - 47 followers, low to medium reblog and likes on posts. Marketing the use of Tumblr as the place on the web where Wraggamuffins goes to 'goof off' so I really don't try and be too 'professional' on here, anything I find funny I post and try to tie it in with something to do with the brand or what orders I'm working on (click for an example).

Going forward the plan for Tumblr is to:

keep content unique on Tumblr, stay true to the reason I'm using it.
Jabbing all over the place with funny animated gifs (which really do get the most engagement) but no real right hooks. Try and incorporate right hooks in gifs
learn how to make my own animated gifs, maybe even starring myself to add that human touch.
I've been terrible and linking the images back to the website, will make sure this is done on all future posts and will take time to edit past posts to ensure they're linked!

Twitter

https://twitter.com/Wraggamuffins - 1922 followers, practically zero engagement (family and friends tend to be the ones who engage most). When sending out prompts and questions it's common to have no response.

Going forward the plan for Twitter is to:

engage more! I don't really talk, I just push push push my content out and share my stuff. I need to be less narcissistic :-/
take advantage of the advanced search. I have some saved searches set-up but rarely use them.
previously successful tweets have been non-branded, relevant, cute or funny content. Must incorporate jabs like this into the content schedule.
As per the Facebook competition, I plan to run the same on Twitter but with the hashtag #LoveMuffin. Using different images and a different prize each day (gift vouchers, #LoveMuffin box, etc.) to promote retweets and sharing.
Listen more and join the conversation, over time this will increase engagement.

And Finally...

One thing that I plan to start for all platforms is a content calendar. Now I feel I have a good grasp on what needs to be done across the different accounts, I should be more organised and plan good quality content in advance and stop flying by the seat of my pants!

Wraggamuffins - image 4 - student project

Selina Wragg

Growth Hacker

3

4