Marketing Makeovers #2

Yesterday afternoon, the following post appeared in the (my) @LeesburgMag Twitter stream:

LolaCookies Whole Wheat Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. OK, I admit, I ate the first one out of the pan. Yum! http://fb.me/TFp472gw (the link is live, just come back and finish reading the article please) 2:12 PM Mar 23rd via Facebook

By clicking the link I was taken to the original Lola's Cookies Facebook post which included a mouthwatering photo of the muffins, straight from the oven, in all their chocolate chip bespeckled irresistable charm.  Could practically smell them. Whole wheat? Banana?  Practically health food, can't go wrong here.

Fortunately for me I had an appointment to make on South King Street.  So I replied with the following post of my own:

LeesburgMag feel a food review coming on! RT @LolaCookies Whole Wheat Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. Yum! http://fb.me/TFp472gw (RT is Twitter lingo for "retweeting" a post to your "followers")

Fifteen minutes later I was at Lola's Cookies, my whole wheat banana chocolate chip muffin posing for its beauty shot right before being bagged and on its way to the 7-11 to pick up its little friend "chilled whole white milk".  That left me 10 minutes for the food review before my 3pm appointment.

The muffin was every bit as good as its advertising on Twitter and Facebook.  Wonderfully moist, scent on banana in car the as I tore it to bite size.  The whole wheat gave it a slightly nutty flavor. The best part of course, little chocolate chips...all over the top and throughout the entire muffin.

While considering verbage for the muffin missive, I realized that the story was really was less about an exceptional muffin and more about exceptional marketing. 140 characters or less that in about 15 minutes had transferred some of my hard earned dollars to a small business. And in the process, that small business earned a repeat customer.

In this tough economy most small businesses are going to find themselves hard pressed to spend thousands of dollars a year to advertise in the local paper.  Direct mail, another way to get a message out, is also expensive, results doubtful.

But in this 21st century savvy small business owners have ways to advertise that are, well, FREE! They are called Social Media and include the likes of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and many other.  By far Twitter and Facebook are the most mainstream.  They are large and growiing rapidly.

Twitter claimed 100 million members at the close of 2010.

As of this writing Facebook may have 1 Billion users by the end of 2011 (http://bitshare.tumblr.com/post/2061881391/facebook-will-reach-1-billion-members-in-2011)

These are pools of potential customers that no business can ignore.   While they are both free to join they do require a bit of sweat equity in order to successfully communicate with that pool and gain fans or followers.

I'll leave the details on how to best use these new media I'll leave to your research. Numerous books and blogs are being written on them.  But let me give one guideline...

Neither Twitter or Facebook should be considered your personal megaphone for exclusively talking about you and/or your business.  Yes, there is a time and place for that, but do it too often and you'll just turn people off.  In true sandwich board fashion I think it's perfectly acceptable to tell your followers about your restaurant's lunch special or next weekend's sale.  To me those are more of like public service announcements.

No, Social Media is just that, a place to be social, to learn about others, what they do, what they are involved in, where they got a great deal on some "Skins" tickets.  Like any other networking medium it's about building relationships. The by-product of good relationships is good customers.

And that's all I'll say for now, gotta pull up Twitter and see what today's lunch specials are...