Social marketing

I don’t follow many brands on twitter or facebook. Those that I do are local businesses we actually shop at. It’s been interesting watching these local groups use the social networks to market.
One is The Milk Pail Market in Mountain View. They have a reasonably active Facebook page. How have they been using social marketing?

  • Announcing specials “from now ’till close, come in and tell your cashier “Milk Pail Rocks” and get a free pint of ice cream.
  • Posting about special events and tastings.
  • Posting their weekly sales pages.
  • Promoting other local food related businesses.

Another is Gordon Biersch Palo Alto. They have a Facebook page and a twitter account. They regularly tweet about which bartender is working. As they are a brew pub and all their beers are made on-site, they also tweet the status of their current seasonal. It’s a good way for fans to keep up with the beer status.
The thing about both of these companies is they feel authentic. They really are ways for the companies to keep in touch with their regular customers. It’s not always about driving new customers in, but more about keeping the current customers happy.
 
 

Related Posts

Facebook Postmaster page

There’s still quite a bit of concern and worry about how the Facebook messaging platform is going to affect marketing. One thing that may help is the Facebook postmaster page. There’s all sorts of good information on those pages, reflecting the years of experience that their messaging team has in running large platforms.
Some points worth mentioning.

Read More

Another take on the emailpocalypse

One of the strengths of email that instant messaging lacks is asynchronous communication.  With email, you send someone a message and they may or may not respond right away.  Sending somebody an email means that you are not necessarily expecting an instantaneous reply.  In fact, that’s the whole point of not using the phone or instant messaging.  You are not expecting your target recipient to be at your beck and call.

Read More

FBox: The sky isn't falling

Having listened to the Facebook announcement this morning, I am even more convinced that emailpocalypse isn’t happening.
Look, despite the fact that companies like Blue Sky Factory think that this means marketers are NEVER EVER going see the inside of an inbox again this isn’t the end of email marketing.
Yes, Facebook email is a messaging platform that marketers are not going to have direct, unlimited and unfettered access to. I have no problem with this. Unfettered access to a messaging platform has been abused by marketers long enough, that I heartily approve of a platform that gives real control back to the recipient.
With that being said, there are a couple blindingly obvious ways to avoid having to give users control of their own inbox.

Read More