Social Media Analytics: Marmalade Café

The following is an analysis of the social media performance of Marmalade Café, a small business offering gelato, espresso drinks, and crepes. The data was collected from Marmalade's Instagram from May 2025, when the account was established, to September 2025, when it had completed its busy season.

Primary and Secondary Success Metrics

Goals:

• Increased brand awareness
• Boosting reputation within customer base

Primary Metrics for Success:

Reach: Growing brand awareness will require us to gain attention from as much of the potential customer base as possible.

Views: Similarly to reach, Marmalade needs to make contact with customers frequently enough to be recognized and remembered.

Secondary Metric for Success:

Followers: While reach and views will grow awareness, followers will indicate the quality of our product and content.

Reach and View Potential of Boosted Content

Over the period of May to September, there was a single post that was boosted on Instagram. It had a budget of $30 over 3 days. The post announced the debut of Marmalade serving crepes on July 4th weekend.

When comparing the success of posts by content type (images Vs. reels), the boosted post was a clear outlier from the performance of organic content. It was viewed over 1,000 more times and reached 1,500 accounts than the next highest performing post. Given the relatively low budget for achieving these results, regularly boosting would be a cost-efficient way to expand brand awareness.

Organic Content: Differing Success Metrics

When considering only organic content, there are two primary trends to consider.

First, images and reels differ in the metric in which they excel. Images generally have more views, but a smaller reach than reels. This is to be expected as Instagram prioritizes reels for reaching new audiences. Utilizing greater variety of content would effectively target both metrics.

Second, trends within reels may indicate an issue in the quality of content. From August to the end of September half of reels were animated photos rather than full video reels. The reason for this emphasis is to take advantage of the greater reach of reels while being significantly more time-efficient to produce. However, the views/reach performance took a downturn compared to both past reels and images.

It should be noted that the the peaks in organic content performance in July coincided with the boosted post. It is likely that the boosted content lead to users seeking out more content from Marmalade. Additionally, the simultaneous increase in followers at this time would lead to higher organic content views. Because of this increase in followers, the subsequent sharp decrease in post performance is concerning.

Follower Correlations with Content Releases

Three days were tied to a clear increase in the single day increase in followers. These days were associated with the following content releases.

• 7/5: After the boosted post (crepe debut), a drink reel, and flavor image (berry trifle).
• 7/10: After a reel about the crepe making process.
• 7/23: After a flavor image (pear) and on the day of another (campari marmalade)

Although we may dismiss the 7/5 event as an outlier based on the boosted post, the content of the latter two events may give some insights into the types of successful content we can continue offering.

The reel linked to the 7/10 spike was a longer and higher quality reel than other content. Beyond this, up until the release of crepes in July, staff reported near daily questions from customers about the addition of crepes to the menu, as it had been promised since Marmalade's opening in December 2024. Based on this, it would be expected that most content about crepes would be well received.

The activity on 7/23, by contrast, was unexpected. Because images have a smaller reach, we had predicted that images would have less of an impact on gaining new followers. This was particularly true in the case of new flavor announcements, which prioritize quick releases in a relatively uniform design. Fully understanding if this was a causal effect of the posts (and if so, what set these posts apart) will require further comparison with other flavor posts when more data is available and follower growth has stabilized.

Key Takeaways

Going Beyond Organic Posts:

• Dedicating a small budget to boosted content will be impactful in spreading awareness and ultimately attracting more customers.
• Boosted content is linked to much higher views, spikes in our follower base, and a reach well beyond current followers.

Stabilize and Vary Content Release Schedule

• Target both views and reach by creating a balance of reels and images.
• Find a middle ground between the frequent post releases in the first half of the period and the reduced number in the second half.

Next Steps

Boost Posts

• Set a monthly budget for boosted posts.
• Decide which types of content to prioritize for boosting.

Schedule Content Releases

• Develop a schedule allowing content creation and release 2-3 times per week.
• Create a content backlog to maintain consistency during busy periods.

Expand Online Presence

• Actively monitor and curate Facebook, Google Maps, and Yelp accounts.
• Reach out to Seattle food influencers for cross-promotion.