I read a ton of newsletters each day and besides Health Care Reform and the economy all everyone wants to talk about is social media and how it can be used for business.  As the title states our country has gone Twitter crazy and Facebook mad.  Yes I participate in all of them so I can better understand how to use them in the media world and the business environment.  Social Marketing is like any other marketing, understand your audience and you provide them with information and offers that will help drive traffic.  Here at WKYT and WYMT the sole purpose for using social media is to keep followers(Twitter) and fans(Facebook) updated and if they see a story they like they will link back to our website which drives more traffic.  In turn we can sell more advertising located around these stories.  How do these social environments work for other businesses?  I am going to touch on two people and one business using twitter showing how they use it.

The first is one of the most popular Twitter sites in the state of Kentucky, John Calipari (http://twitter.com/UKCoachCalipari).  As a matter of fact his twitter page is ranked 198 out of the millions of twitter pages that are available.  He has Over 560,000 people following him.  The beauty of what Coach Cal is doing is using his influence to drive his followers to action.  My favorite example is how he used a contest to drive followers to purchase season tickets for the UK Women’s basketball program.  Coach offered a pair of tickets behind the UK bench for the UK/Florida men’s basketball game for anyone who purchased UK Women’s basketball tickets.  This guy has only been the UK Men’s basketball coach for a short period of time and he understands the power of that position and he used it to help the women’s program.  I don’t have data to show how many people have purchased tickets because of this contest but I would say more tickets were purchased because of the attention Coach Cal brought to it.  Yes contest work and Coach Cal has executed one to perfection.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that he has tickets to the most popular sporting event in the state of Kentucky.

I follow people who like to post a lot and the next example post a lot, she is in Kentucky also, Whitney Pannell (http://twitter.com/whitneypannell),  who is a realtor.  I am pointing her out because she knows how to use social media for her business.  The thing she does well is to highlight properties that have just come on the market and when prices have been reduced on a property for sale.  Social media is a great way to inform other real estate agents and home buyers about homes for sale.  The beauty of it is that it’s instantaneous so everyone who followers her knows and can capitalize on the information if they choose to.     Whitney has over 19,300 followers and see tweets like this; “Here is an awesome home I just listed! here is the link www.budurl.com/belmere check it out . In the popular Hamburg area of Lexington”(4:28 PM Aug 10th from web).   She is a professed social media user, here is her comment on an article at Web Pro News “My name is Whitney Pannell and I am a social mediaholic.”.  Watch the video of her talking about how she uses social media. (http://videos.webpronews.com/2009/08/11/do-you-depend-on-social-media/)  If you look you will see she uses Twitter, Facebook, her website(http://whitneypannell.com/) and her blog to get information out.  She gets it when it comes to using the internet and social media.  Great job Whitney!

The last example is how a retailer uses Twitter to let their followers know about specials.  The company is Naked Pizza out of New Orleans.  No the naked has nothing to do with nudity; this company is an all natural pizza place.  I started following them because of an article I came across showing how they use social media for their retail operation.  You can find them at http://www.nakedpizza.biz/, http://twitter.com/nakedpizza, http://www.facebook.com/nakedpizza?ref=ts.  I like getting tweets from them because they are little irreverent and they aren’t’ afraid to laugh at themselves.  They have over 5,000 followers and they are serious about social marketing that they added a Twitter billboard to the front of their building.  What makes them stand out are the offers they post each day.  Here are some examples; “Two for Tuesday!!”(9:25 AM Aug 11th from TweetDeck), “2 large 2 topping only $19.95. online ordering code 2FOR20 http://www.nakedpizza.biz/”(12:37 PM Aug 9th from CoTweet), “bust lunch today. good sign for a poppin night. c'mon peeps. large 2 topping $10.95.”(5:24 PM Aug 7th from CoTweet).  If you are a retail operation you will want to emulate Naked Pizza.  They get it and they are having fun while also making money.

Everyone is still trying to figure out how to use social media for business.  The game changer has been more people using their web enabled phones to get information.  My media consumption has changed dramatically because of my web enabled phone.  How does the introduction of social media and the increased use of cell phones effect advertisers?  It adds new layers to marketing.  The one thing I tell an advertiser is not to let social media consume too much of your time because you still need to be able to focus on your business.  As anyone who uses Twitter or Facebook will tell you they are a time-suck.  As such you can’t spend too much time on them.  Though everyone is crazy about social media you can’t forget to use traditional media to blast your brand in front of an audience.  This may sound like a shameless plug for WKYT/WYMT but it is a conversation that I have had with existing clients.  Social media has to be part of the marketing mix and if used correctly can grow your business.

*if you have other examples of retail operations using social media please them to Tim Coles at tcoles@wkyt.com or tweet it at http://twitter.com/timcoles.

**If you would like to learn how to use social media and traditional media to grow your business please contact me via email at tcoles@wkyt.com.  (This is a shameless plug)