Case study: How social media can help you broaden your business

Companies big and small are flocking to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Foursquare. These platforms can not only promote business and customer exchanges, but also through the provision of discounts and coupons to promote sales.

Well-known brands like Starbucks (Starbucks), Virgin and Levi have been on social networking for some time, and the proportion of small businesses using social networks is growing. A recent study by the University of Maryland (University of Maryland) showed that the proportion of small businesses using social media increased exponentially from 12% to 24% last year. But while these companies look forward to keeping in touch with their customers through Facebook and Twitter, they find that while some strategies are effective, others don't. We will explore these issues at the July 30 social Currency crunchup Seminar on social media and business. We found some effective use of social media for local and international businesses, from Levi ' s to cheese carts. The following is a case study of these enterprises.

Cheese Merchant: The food on the street carts has become the favorite of the Gourmet in San Francisco. Food carts move from house to house to serve local gourmets. But the car does not have a fixed position, how do customers know where they are? Of course it's through Twitter. Curtis Kimball, the boss of a warm-welcome cheese cart in San Francisco, has had more than 12,000 followers in more than a year on Twitter. He knows that most of his business comes from people who focus on Twitter, because Twitter is the only way to find the location of the day's carts, "That's why people pay attention to me." "he said.

Another use of Twitter is to tell people what kind of cheese they offer that day. Kimball also said Twitter enabled him to build personal relationships with his followers. He asked his followers for advice on cheese taste and cart position to attract his followers.

Kimball says he has no sales budget, and Twitter is a great way to gather fans. He rarely does Facebook, and he's not sure Facebook is as effective as Twitter. "On the Twitter, it's effortless to attract more users than Facebook," he said. , Kimball added. For entrepreneurs, Yelp is also a valuable source of customers. The cart already has 224 reviews and 4.5 stars.

Joie de Vivre:joie de Vivre is a company that operates 33 luxurious hotels in California. The company uses a variety of social media platforms to expand sales and markets. The hotel group's strategy Center is to offer discounts and coupons to Twitter and Facebook followers and fans. Every Tuesday, Joie De Vivre and Twitter accounts offer exclusive offers to close to 10,000 followers. The person who is interested must book a room within a few hours to get the big discount. For example, in Tuesday, the group's Galleria Park Hotel in San Francisco had only 79 dollars for rooms in November and December. The company also offers similar discounts to more than 5,000 of Facebook fans every Friday.

In less than a year's time, Joie De vivre has already booked more than 1000 of the room nights-otherwise the rooms will be empty. The company has also started a partnership with the coupon website mobile spinach to offer coupons for the group hotel. At the same time, the company has and Foursquare become partners, for the various hotels to sign up for customers to provide concessions. The company also cooperates with tourism websites such as Jetsetter and LA. Given good sales, Nadeau says these deals are doing well.

The company's marketing director Ann Nadeau told me that, because of economic reasons, the tourism sales budget has shrunk, social media marketing has been proven to promote sales and build customer loyalty is a good way. Corporate social Media marketing is not just about offering discounts. This summer, Joie De vivre encouraged clients to participate in the M.I. Trippin ' California Contest, which required people to submit videos on YouTube to share their reasons for liking California State. Of the 270 videos submitted, three of them stand out as winners, and the company will provide them with travel California State and free company hotel rooms.

The use of social media for customer service requires that every hotel manager be responsible for tracking communications and reviews on Twitter, Facebook and Yelp, Nadeau said.

Stone Korean Kitchen: Last November, chef Terry Lin and LinkedIn staff Robby Kwok and Kan Yoo jointly created the stone Korean Ketchen to bring modern Korean cooking to the San Francisco financial district. Yoo told me that when the restaurant was set up, he started appearing on social media sites such as Twitter, Yelp and Facebook. However, the challenge for many small businesses in social media is to gather traffic on the right social media channels rather than spread them across different sites. Yoo says the interconnectedness of individual homepages has helped us get Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Currently, the hotel's Twitter homepage has 65 followers, and Facebook page has 107 fans. Many of them are repeat customers. For a small restaurant, these loyal customers do not make the cook too busy to spend.

Yoo says he has been following the comments on Twitter and Facebook and has responded. Of course, he also stressed the importance of managing Yelp reviews on social media platforms and responding to customer complaints.

But it is Groupon that really plays a decisive role. Yoo said the hotel's sales, as well as the traffic on both the Yelp and Facebook pages, were significantly enhanced when the April hotel registered a Groupon deal. Stone Korean kitchen sold 2,600 deals a day, making lunch and dinner full for 2 consecutive months. Yoo says 5-10 deals a day instead of 30 or 40, but the hotel still gets a lot of repeat customers from the group buying deal.

In addition to increasing sales, one of the important roles of Groupon trading is to spark a Yelp reviews boom. The company took 6 months to get 80 reviews on Yelp, but after taking a group deal, 90 reviews were received within three months. Yoo said that after the Groupon deal, Foursquare Check-in was also growing steadily.

Of course, because Yoo and Kwok are LinkedIn staff (Lin Cooks manage the day-to-day business of hotels), they brainstorm ways to use professional social media to promote sales. Using LinkedIn's advertising target tracking capabilities, the hotel began targeting lawyers and bankers in the San Francisco area as the two sectors were at the heart of the financial district. As a result, the demand for individual meals and group meals has increased greatly. Yoo said that in the future the hotel will be committed to Foursquare promotion. At the same time, he is talking to Twitter about a new business earlybird with social networking.

Dr Irena Vaksman, Dentist: Social media and dentistry are not necessarily linked, but a San Francisco dentist has improved the understanding of her new clinic by creating an impressive social media campaign. She has a Twitter homepage, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel and a website. Vaksman's husband, lawyer Robert Vaksman, has become a behind-the-scenes strategist for her social media marketing. Robert says it's a great challenge for her to have hundreds of dentists in the building where his wife's clinic is located, and most doctors ' clinics are old clinics. He says he has found a lot of social channels to do marketing effortlessly.

The Vaksman said that although the clinics had just been established, they had started to look for patients and potential patients on Facebook and communicated with them, and now their Facebook page has 70 fans. Vaksman will post a patient's Yelp comment on the site, as well as a YouTube video containing oral health education content. Robert says Twitter is still a relatively new forum for patients, and he is still trying to find the best way to get potential customers online.

Last October, Vaksman registered for a Groupon deal in San Francisco and got 320 new patients to check and X-rays. The Vaksman said the deal was driving in the right direction for 5 months of big business, with a surge in patient numbers. Robert is also seeking to work with wildfire, a Facebook marketing start-up, to launch a lottery in her clinic's Facebook page.

Levi ' s: More and more retail brands offer discounts on social media and organise events to attract customers. Levi ' s jeans was one of the first brands to use Facebook as a sales and marketing tool, and it held a series of high-profile events on Facebook.

As one of Facebook's first partners to use the new features of social networking, Levi ' s allows Facebook users to Levi's online stores like the Facebook page (which already has nearly 500,000 likes), and share their favorite products with their friends. Inside Facebook said that in the first week alone, Levi ' s got more than 4,000 likes.

The jeans giant joined the SXSW festival this year to launch an important event, while working with the Fader, the music magazine, to promote a musical event. The company Involer with brand marketing platform to put music and video into their pages, hoping to make music fans buy Levi ' s brand jeans. Recently, Levi ' s began using geo-targeting activities to promote its products on Facebook.

On Twitter, Levi's recently recruited a "Levi ' guy", the 23-Year-old University of Southern California (USC) graduate Gareth, who contacted consumers on the microblogging platform. He already has more than 6,000 followers. He is responsible for answering and participating in Twitter's talk about Levi's brand. The company is currently looking for a "Levi ' Girl" service for women who will act as Gareth's partner.

Levi's digital marketing manager Magan O ' Connor tells us that we are working with Twitter and Facebook to create brand ambassadors to promote our sales through their actions and Word-of-mouth.

Starbucks: Most experts agree that Starbucks is one of the best social media strategies. It can provide free WiFi for use, will inevitably attract a large number of people carrying notebooks to and fro. Starbucks now has 10 million fans like Ludy Gaga. The company has held a number of promotional campaigns on Facebook pages to attract customers. Starbucks, for example, held a free dessert promotion on its Facebook page, sending coupons to customers for a free dessert when buying a cup of coffee. Advertisements on social networks also boost the flow of Starbucks pages.


Twitter says Starbucks is also very active on the microblogging network, with nearly 1 million of its followers. Corporate Twitter not only serves as a tool for talking to consumers of Starbucks, but it also spreads the latest news from Starbucks. Starbucks is also involved in Twitter's tweets program, where tweets allow advertisers to buy sponsored links on Twitter.

Combined geo-positioning and social networking is also a Starbucks boulevard, one of the first well-known brand partners in the popular positioning of social networking Foursquare. In March, Starbucks provided a special ' barista ' badge for the Foursquare Lord, and customers with the badge were able to enjoy a discount when they bought drinks and food. Starbucks has also recently worked with mobile social networking Bringkit to offer its members special discounts on drinks.

Pictures from/flickr/snickclunck

Chinese version by her Rao

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