We live near a college town and it’s interesting to watch how some businesses communicate with the students.  Of course, all the students are on Facebook and at least some are on Twitter.  I’m sure there are other social media platforms that they use but Facebook is the big one.

Pizza X has figured out they can reach their target market (college students) via Facebook and Twitter and they do it well.  By being a bit creative, they engage their audience and generate excitement about their restaurant and their promotions.  Not only that, one of the promotions also gives other businesses in the community some recognition.  I think this one is great.

This promotion is something they call “Fun Photo”.  First, I should say they have generated some exited with their plastic cups.  Their customers like the cups they serve drinks in and choose to collect all the different colors.  These cups, of course, have their logo on them.  Anyway, they take one of their cups to other businesses in town and take a picture in some obscure spot around the building.  They then put a tweet out, along with a Facebook post which includes the picture, that it’s “Fun Photo” time.  Guess where the cup is and win a Pizza X hoodie, frisbee and pizza meal.  They only give 20 minutes for people to figure out where it is.  Because their customers know they do this promotion, they are there at the time of the competition and participate.  Their fans interact with each other by throwing out thoughts and ideas of where it might be until finally someone figures it out.  At the end of the 20 minutes, they congratulate the winner (if there is one) and let them know their prizes are at the store waiting for them.

There are three things going on here that are great.  First, they are engaging their customers and creating excitement on a regular basis.  After all, who wouldn’t want to win the prizes?  Second, is that they are getting a mention out about other businesses in town.  What a great way of developing a sense of community with local businesses.  And third, every week they add someone else that is wearing their logo around town doing Pizza X’s advertising for them.

This is just one of the creative ways in which Pizza X uses social media but I must say they are doing a great job.  Pizza X can be found on Twitter by clicking here and on Facebook by clicking here.

What kind of creative ways are you using social media?  How do you engage your customers and generate excitement?  How do you help your customers advertise for you?  And, what do you do to help develop your business community?  We’d love to hear your success stories and be able to share them with our community.

There is a car dealership in town that I occasionally do business with and as a result, I am on their email list.  They send out information on promotions and new “used” inventory that comes in from time to time.  They don’t send out information often and so I haven’t taken the time to opt-out of their list, although I should.

A month or so ago, I received an email from them saying that Mircrosoft was going to pay me (and them) for every friend I could forward this email to.  The request was “Please please please  forward this to everyone on your list.  This time it’s true and they really are going to pay.”  Ok, I can be pretty gullible at times but even I didn’t believe this one.  It seems, however, that about 1/4 of the people on their list were.  Maybe it was because the request came from a business rather than an individual that made it more believable.  I don’t know.

You are probably wondering how I know that roughly 1/4 of the people on their list were convinced to send this email out.  Well, their list showed the email addresses of everyone they sent to and, as a result, I received the same email from about 1/4 of the list.  All of them believing they were going to get paid great sums of money for all their friends.  I guess I was one of their friends.

I knew the car dealership was sending their emails this way when they first started sending them to me but didn’t think too much about it.  I didn’t much care for it but didn’t think that anyone on their list cared about my email address and I certainly didn’t care about theirs.  After receiving all of those emails though, I cared – a lot.

Almost immediately, I sent an email to them letting them know what I thought of how they handled their email addresses and that I did not appreciate being spammed by them.  If they couldn’t learn how to handle email addresses correctly they were to immediately take my name off their list.  While I was surprised by the fact that I did not hear back from them with an apology or something, the next email from them came through an email service provider and did not disclose everyones email address.

The point of this story is simple.  We all need to realize that our lists are very valuable assets.  Our customers have entrusted us with their personal information and it is our responsibility to protect that information as though it were gold.  That means doing everything in our power to make sure their email address doesn’t get out to anyone else.  It also means having enough respect for those on your list not to send junk to them.  We all get enough of that from our real friends, right?

As we have discussed before, your list can be a very powerful asset of your business.  It is advertising that is focused like none other.  Take good care of it.

What are your thoughts on this?

Photo credit:  cindy47452