Create Goodwill for Your Small Business with Community Involvement

For any small business to succeed, whether it’s a single location or a few franchises, it must build goodwill with the surrounding community. You can have Facebook fans or catalogue customers all over the world, placing orders by phone and email, but if locals aren’t walking in the door, you’re doomed.

Branding your business as a “hometown hero” can make a huge impression on your customer base and serve as an important differentiator in the marketplace. Here’s how to do it:

Promote local vendors and distributors. If you’re satisfied with work done by local workers or businesses, let them know! Announce how much you like them on your website and social channels, and even on your storefront. Such efforts cost nothing and generate enormous goodwill – and even lead to partnerships down the line.

Join all the local trade organizations, including the Chamber of Commerce. These are great ways to network, but many such groups put out directories or give their members some sort of seal of approval. In a sense, these organizations are doing your marketing for you.

List your business on Yelp and Foursquare, and encourage customers to “check in” when they visit you and to write a review. An easy to way to use Foursquare is to offer a discount or prize for the “Mayor” – the person who checks in at your business the most. This triggers the best kind of competition: Who can visit your business the most often?

Image courtesy of Tom Edwards (@TheBlackFin)

Participate in community events. These can be holiday events, charity fundraisers, county fairs, or events tied to the local school or college. You can simply donate money to get your business listed as a sponsor, or “go big” by becoming the sole sponsor of an event or local youth sports team. Go even bigger by hosting your own event, whether it’s just for fun, like a Fourth of July barbecue, or to raise money for a (preferably local) charity.

The inverse of that idea is to hold a contest among your employees that benefits a local charity. Give a prize to whichever employee can sell the most candy, bring in the most cans to recycle, or raise the most money. Prizes can be as simple as an extra vacation day. Again, there’s no point in keeping this a secret; tell the charity, post updates online, and display a leaderboard so your customers can see your efforts.

You can also encourage employees to volunteer at the charity of their choice, perhaps giving a paid (or non-penalized) personal day to allow them to attend weekday events. You yourself can also join the board of a local charity, which will guarantee your name in their marketing materials.

Photo courtesy of D'Anna Associates

Finally, take pride in your community. Decorate your workplace with photos of local heroes, celebrities, or important events. Try to get endorsements from the local TV anchors. Congratulate local teams on their victories and let nearby schools post flyers for their events. You can even make the community part of your tagline: “Proudly serving Plano since 1997,” for example, not only shows your commitment to the community but also helps with your SEO.

These strategies make goodwill and community involvement part of your brand and differentiate you in the marketplace. Organizations from local banks to TOMS Shoes have successfully incorporated the spirit of giving, which creates a strong emotional connection to their brands. And that makes customers want to spend money on your products or services instead of your competitor’s.

For the latest on social media, online recruiting, mobile marketing, and other branding trends, please like Brandemix on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and join our LinkedIn group, Your Digital Brand.

The Most Popular Blog Posts of 2012

As the year comes to a close, I’m looking back at this year’s most popular blog posts. The topics range from examples of the best social media to some of the worst, and from internal branding to external. In case you missed them, here are the BrandeBlog’s five most-read posts of 2012.

Employer Branding Numbers Everyone Should Know

2012 brought us a number of recruiting studies that turned conventional wisdom upside-down. How many employers said they had an employer branding strategy? How many employees leave a company for reasons other than money? How many companies plan to increase their investment in employer branding? The answers may surprise you.

Social Media PR Disasters: #McDStories

Sometimes you can learn more from a failure than a success. That was certainly true of our story on McDonald’s Twitter debacle, in which an innocent hashtag was taken over by critics and pranksters in a matter of hours. See how McDonald’s reacted and learn what to do (and not to do) when your brand encounters a similar social media crisis.

What’s Foursquare Really For?

The best social sites have stated goals: Facebook is for friends, LinkedIn is for business, Instagram is for photos. But what about Foursquare? Is it for sharing local finds with your friends? Posting reviews for strangers? Competing for discounts with other customers? Discover Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley’s answers to these and other tough questions in this post.

Social Media Marketing Simplified

Ever come out of a social media planning session with your head spinning? New forms of marketing have created new buzzwords like optimize, reciprocity, and engagement. But you don’t have to learn all the jargon to have a successful social media campaign; you only need to answer three basic questions.

Why State Farm is a Social Media Superstar

The most popular post of the year was an exploration of State Farm’s social media recruiting. The insurance company has a dedicated Facebook Page and answers questions and comments within 24 hours. The State Farm careers site features videos testimonials from interns, a rarely seen part of a company’s workforce. Finally, State Farm’s interactive website takes online recruiting to a whole other level. See how your brand can attain “Superstar” status here.

What do these posts' popularity tell us? That there a lot of people with an interest in – and a need for – social media trends, marketing, and branding. As it so happens, they are also specialties of ours! 

Put Brandemix on your to-do list for 2013; we want to be popular, too. 

Social Media Fun Facts

In honor of my appearance on HR/NY’s Social Media in the Talent Environment panel (moderated by Brandemix founder and CEO Jody Ordioni), here are some interesting facts about social media that I’ve learned in my recent branding research.

The record for most tweets per second is 25,088, which happened during 2011’s annual TV broadcast of Castle in the Sky in Japan. Viewing the 1986 animated film has become a national tradition, similar to Americans watching It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmas. (Geekosystem)

The previous record for most tweets per second was 13,684, which happened during a Champions League soccer match between Barcelona and Chelsea in April. Before that, it was 12,233, which took place during the New York Giants’ game-winning drive in Super Bowl LXVI in February. (CNET)

Image courtesy of Infographic Labs

Zynga, creator of games like Words With Friends, Cityville, and Indiana Jones, was responsible for 12% of Facebook’s total revenue in 2011. (Forbes)

Searching for the phrase “How to land an airplane” on YouTube brings up 171 results. (YouTube)

The five most popular YouTube videos of all time are music videos, including “Baby” by Justin Beiber at #1. The #6 most popular video is “Charlie Bit My Finger – Again!” (YouTube)

The most followed pinner on Pinterest is Jane Wang, with more than 1.5 million followers. She is Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann’s mother. (Zoomsphere)

Image courtesy of Kate T.

In February, the most repinned image on Pinterest was a photo of a woman’s closet. The tenth-most repinned image was a photo of a bookshelf. Two of the top ten were pictures of cookies. (Pinfaves)

The top three brands on Facebook are Coca-Cola, Disney, and Starbucks; all consumer brands. The top three brands on Google Plus are Android, Mashable, and Chrome; all in technology field. (Pardot)

Two people join LinkedIn every second. It’s the 36^th-most visited site in the world. Its fastest-growing demographics are students and recent college graduates. (Business 2 Community)

The location with the most Foursquare check-ins is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, with more than 632,000 check-ins. It’s followed by airports in Los Angles (LAX), San Francisco, and New York (JFK). By comparison, Disneyland has 200,000 total check-ins. (Foursquare)

Image courtesy of Coasttocoast

Disneyland is, however, the second-most photographed location on Instagram. The first is AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants baseball team. (Instagram)

On Instragram’s list of 15 most photographed places are three New York City locations: the High Line, Madison Square Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Empire State Building and the new World Trade Center did not make the list. (Instagram)

Want to learn more about these and other social media sites, and how Brandemix can use them to help your consumer branding or employer branding campaigns? Drop me a line. 

Insights from the BDI Social Consumer Conference

I recently attended the Social Consumer 2012 conference, presented by the Business Development Institute. Representatives from major brands discussed how they used social media to connect with customers. There were five fascinating presentations (and one entertaining interview, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal’s Simon Constable) followed by roundtable discussions hosted by experts in numerous fields. A very educational experience.

If you couldn’t attend, here are some highlights.


JetBlue on Twitter -- Drinking From the Fire Hose
Jenny Dervin, VP of Corporate Communications, called customer service on Twitter “drinking from the fire hose.” She gave a recent example of how JetBlue uses Twitter to handle complaints. A passenger had a carry-on bag that held a folding bicycle. The ticket agent ignored the fact that the bag was the proper size and weight for carry-on, and charged the passenger JetBlue’s standard bike fee -- meant for bikes that take up valuable space in the cargo hold. Unsurprisingly, the passenger complained about the fee on social media and got his Oregon-based bike club to join in. Dervin’s team saw the problem on Twitter and issued a refund within 24 hours. Now the entire bike club are JetBlue fans.

The Lesson: Dervin put it best: “A service failure is an opportunity to build loyalty -- if it’s done well.” When a customer has a problem, “you get credit for publicly saying ‘We agree with you and we will look into this.’”

Fun fact: JetBlue has 15-20 people monitoring Twitter and other social media channels using CoTweet; six are on duty at any given time.


MultiVu -- Brands As Storytellers
Tom Miale, Director of Multimedia Engagement at MultiVu, said that the #1 issue at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive was that brands must become storytellers to be compelling to customers. As an example, Miale presented the Facebook Page for Captain Morgan. The company uses the Timeline feature to post events all the way back to 1635, the real Morgan’s birthdate. In the 1800s section of the Timeline, you’ll find photos of Morgan’s crew, accompanied by jokes and stories in the captain’s sly tone. This is a fun and innovative way to take full advantage of the Timeline feature by creating stories that involve customers and keep them on your Facebook Page.

The Lesson: Not every brand has the adventurous history of a pirate. But you can still say a lot about your company and your product, from your humble beginnings to the challenges you’ve overcome. Your employees undoubtedly have interesting stories; ask to share them to help create a personal, emotional connection to customers. 

Fun Fact: Miale told us that, in 1965, three 60-second commercial spots could reach 80% of American adults. Today, you’d need 117 commercials to accomplish that feat.


Tasti D-Lite Swirls Around Foursqaure
BJ Emerson, Vice President of Technology for Tasti D-Lite, may have been the hit of the conference -- and not just because he was giving out coupons. He showed how the frozen-treat company allows customers to connect their store TreatCards to Fourquare. When the clerk swipes the card, the customer is automatically checked in on Foursquare (which gets posted on Twitter and Facebook if the customer chooses). Emerson cautioned brands to “go beyond the mechanics and look at the dynamics.” He cited an example of a Tasti cashier who knew to push the “Foursquare discount” button on the register, but didn’t know what the customer meant when she said “I’m actually the Mayor.” Our social media tools seem straightforward, but you have to make sure you train your staff how to use them in face-to-face situations with customers.

The Lesson: Emerson had the most retweeted line of the conference: Referring to the fact that brands now know where their customers are in real time, thanks to Foursquare and Twitter: “We used to call it stalking; now we call it location-based marketing.” Luckily, most brands are using that knowledge for good, by giving instant discounts and prizes.

Fun Fact: Emerson recommended creating a Google Alert for online mentions of your brand. Make that alert an RSS feed and send the feed to Outlook. That way, you have an offline archive of all your mentions and can search back through years. It’s more efficient than combing through the archives on Twitter or its various applications.

This was only a small part of the great information given by knowledgeable speakers. Thanks to BDI’s Sponsorship Event Coordinator Jennifer Brous, Director of Events Maria Feola-Magro, and CEO Steve Etzler for another informative conference.