From Start-Up to Sold Out in 4 Months
Today we wrap up our social media for small business series with Paul Edwards. Paul is the co-owner of Midnight Graphics, a firm with solutions for the web, graphic design, marketing, database development, e-commerce, and professional writing.
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You recently helped a local women’s flat track roller derby association, The Twin City Derby Girls, sell out their first bout in our area in only 4-1/2 hours by using a combination of traditional media and social media.
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You also roped George & me into this event…we got to announce the derby bout, something we had never done before, but really enjoyed getting to do.
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That was a blast! Let's look at the social media part of promoting this event. Back in January you set up their website and Facebook fan page, right?
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We came on in late January and we really had no time at all. They were really motivated to start fundraising and getting the name out, so we had to hustle.
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This group went from idea to their first bout in about 4 months which is an amazing accomplishment. How many fans does the group have now?
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Their hovering at just over 1400, but that's likely to grow by the end of the day. Everyone is very excited about the league and what they are doing to give back to the community through charitable organizations.
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I think the women in the league did a great job of getting the word out about their fan page and website, which goes back to the idea of having a central location where people can get more information, which Jay Ehret mentioned in our interview with him.
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That's where small businesses often get a little confused. They think that by simply putting up a website means their going to be successful, and we really try to quell that notion. It has more to do with passion about your product. We try to direct people to consider their web product as the final place where people end up, and that's where a business can do their traditional marketing communication. Use the social media platforms to be a little more clever to get people to respond to your product. That's where the TCDG excelled…they really believe in the product; their very excited about the product and that comes through. For instance, they don't talk about how in roller derby you skate in a constant left hand turn, instead they talk about their bruises and the fun they are having. That translates, and people do get excited about the product.
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Can you give our small business audience some more ideas on how to market on social media platforms?
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You have to begin thinking about who your customers are at a very visceral level, using social media. Find a way to talk to them at a very temporal level. Facebook is less platform for higher ideals as it is a repository for human feelings…frustrations, joy, curiosity…these are those temporal bricks from which a guerilla marketing fortress is made. Once you capture the imagination of individuals at that level, then you can drive them to your web product for more information, and get them to take action.
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How did you direct people to purchase tickets from the fan page…did you have something set up on the TCDG website?
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We joined it up with Twitter. A mico-blog is a very handy thing to have. So we linked Facebook posts into Twitter, and then fed Twitter directly into the website so that we had a constant update going on the website itself.
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Well I remember seeing the ticket countdown updates which motivated people to hurry up and get theirs.
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Right. And the linked updates were great because if you're on Twitter you could see those posts, but if you were at work on your laptop, you could also see those updates in your Facebook news feed if you were on Facebook, or on the TCDG website. This strategy is great because no matter where your customers are at in their day, they can get constant updates on what's going on from any of those online locations. So keep this formula in mind: set up your communications to go from Facebook to Twitter to your website so your customers always know what's going on.
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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00591-053110.mp3
