Aaron Weiche

“People ask me if we have ‘made money’ with Twitter. Absolutely yes. But not how most business think. We have solidified loyalty and have our name out there, front of mind. Because of that, many social media meetups use our place. Patience! One has to believe that increased loyalty and awareness are a key to business growth.”

That was the last paragraph in a recent Mashable article on How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media For Real Results.  The quote was from Joe Johnston of Arizona restaurant Liberty Market.

I'm singling it out because of it's value and accuracy.  So many businesses look to make their mark with marketing that translates into an exact dollar amount (or so they think).  Joe points out the efforts you take on that build loyalty and awareness are keys to business growth. That's what makes money.

I can also identify with his "front of mind" comment.  I often seek out businesses and places to eat that are on Twitter or Facebook first because I know more about them and see them engaging their audience. I like a business interested in interaction with it's customers.

So here is the answer you are going to get from me if you ask "Can my business make money on Social Media?"

Yes, your business can make money by enhancing customer loyalty and awareness online, using Social Media. It's that simple.

Nothing comforts a broken heart like food. Punch Pizza, with seven Twin Cities locations reached out to passionate Vikings fans on Sunday on various social media sites offering a free pizza the next night to help them deal with the devastating NFC Championship loss to the Saints.

The result was nearly 10,000 pizzas given away (number from Punch Pizza), customers lined-up out the door, local TV news coverage and thousands of mentions on the web. Genius.

Few restaurants in the Minneapolis / St Paul area have been as savvy or active with social media as Punch Pizza and their latest interaction produced some incredible results. 

Let’s look at a few of the ingredients to Punch’s most recent online success (they’ve had a few).

The Method:  Punch has been socially active on the web for some time now. They use Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Flick and their website. With over 5,000 Twitter followers of @punchpizza and 7,000 Facebook fans, Punch has plenty of customers to interact with. 

Timing: I loved the fact that they were prepared and jumped into the mix at a time when social sites were busting with chatter from the game.  Overtime has just ended, fans were crushed and Punch offered a small bit of light. Timing matters, Punch knew this.

The Offer:  Punch was ready to roll with 2 offer options, one to celebrate a Vikings win, the other to comfort the masses with a Vikings loss.  The Vikes lost and so Punch sent out a tweet and posted the offer to their Facebook page, free pizza was the cure.

The offer/coupon was posted to their Flickr page. All you had to do was print or show it on your phone to get a free pizza for dinner on Monday night.  Punch has carried out multiple marketing campaigns that integrate all of their social tools together, which is always a great move.

Conversation Effect:  Punch leveraged their community, network and customer base to turn a ripple into a wave.  One offer, one tweet and one Facebook update created well over 3,000 clicks to their coupon.

This Twitter mention graph from Squawq shows how they generated over 370 tweets in 2 days, a massive spike form their normal mentions and activity.

Their Facebook status update gathered interaction from a few hundred in the form of “Likes” and comments. See a few of them below, wouldn’t you love this conversation about your business?

You can also factor in they gathered new followers and fans on these accounts thanks to the mentions and interaction.

Traditional Coverage:  I haven’t been able to pin down from Punch Pizza if the local media was contacted or they picked up on the buzz from the social networks themselves, but Punch was featured on the 10pm news on KARE11.  30 seconds of air time showed sad Vikings fans getting cheered up waiting in line at Punch Pizza locations. (photo below from Kare11)

As one Vikings and Punch fan shared on camera: "I am really sad about yesterday because I thought this was the year and the pizza will definitely help because there is no better pizza. So, I'll get over it real quick and we'll put on our purple for next year," says Tere Haas as she waited in line in the cold.

Outcome: I don’t know how you could ask for anything more out of a promotion like this.  Social interaction, branding, traditional media coverage and 10,000 pizzas in the hands of your faithful and newly found customers is a huge win.  I think you can measure this social media marketing and I'd bet they are pouring over the data generated past what I've outlined. ;)

Punch Pizza and their marketing minds (agency and/or internal) are commended for putting together a great social promotion. My only issue was that I wasn’t able to get to the Wayzata location last night and get my free pizza.

When you follow hundreds of great people that are constantly putting out valuable tweets, links and conversations, of course you want to try and stay up on as much of it as possible.  For most of us, our Twitter stream is more like a raging river.  For that reason I use the favorites tag, mostly when I'm on Tweetie on my iPhone to tag tweets and links that I want to make sure and read later.

It's my own must read or "to-do" list. The feature serves as a great tool for me, helping me build a list I can get to later. When I'm done writing this post I'm going to catch up on 3 different tweets regarding Foursquare, all caught my eye earlier today.

What about you? Do you use the favorites tag at all on Twitter? Do you use another method, service or tool to file away potential gems?

Bring a visual and creative guy, I'm a huge fan of data and information communicated with more than a chart or via tables of stats.   This fusion of design and data is known as an infographic.  Webdesigner Depot posted a great collection of infographics and the Facebook vs. Twitter example really caught my eye.

 
View the full sized layout here. It was created in April 2009, thus not accurate with today's numbers.

This infographic also made me remember and miss the print magazine Business 2.0. It was a favorite of mine and always had solid infographics.

The web and social media gave Dominos quite a headache earlier this year when a YouTube video circulated of a couple of employees "contaminating" a pizza at work.  A nightmare fully disclosed to the entire web is not a fun incident to address and correct.  It's not the type of buzz you want to garner online.

Now Dominos is back in the buzz of the social media world and this time they are controlling the vibe with a great campaign to reach current and new customers.  Dominos has released their Pizza Turnaround website addressing some of the often received complaints of their product. Here is a video that sits front and center on the website, addressing concerns and showing what they are doing about it ... creating a new pizza.

The video starts right out with highlighted Tweets, emails and focus groups dogging the pizza for it's crust, sauce and overall taste.

I think it's great to see Dominos just come right out and embrace this. The website also integrates a Twitter feed for any tweets with #newpizza or @dominos, bringin real-time feedback and conversation right to the mix.

They could of gone the "New & Improved" route without showing any of this, but they did and cut right to the chase. They are showing they are listening and interested in what their customers have to say. Simple, often missed, but brilliant.

The same way small business owners run into their customers on the street or the grocery stote and have full exposure to the good, the bad and the ugly; social media brings this aspect to the big brands.

This is where marketing is headed. The diminish of marketing spin and ignorance and the increase of honesty and transparency. I applaud the Domino's campaign and it's effort to interact with EACH customer, not just the target market as a whole.

Props to Dominos for their honesty and the time/money they are using to communicate it. I'm a big fan of it.

Say what? A recent post on Noupe.com highlighted where the web will be in 5 years and has 15 different ideas/predictions to consider. Social Media Optimization may become the focus of online marketing, not SEO.

All 15 of them are possibilities and the article provides a ton of links and additional information on each one. Here was one that caused me to ponder.

#12 - Search Engine Optimization Will Be Less Important - In a nutshell it introduces the idea on how Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels help answer peoples questions or point them in a specific direction.  So are we really looking at less Google searches and more "Does anyone know a ....?" on these platforms? Could be a big yes.

As someone who spends a lot of time on search engine optimization and the social media space, when will social media optimization be the buzz? The two already work together on a few fronts.

Many SM experts are already out there helping businesses of all sizes understand and navigate the social web. 5 years from now it just might be common place to be social media friendly if you want new customers. Sounds fun to me. You?

Free, easy and one more way to communicate with residents, Twitter can be a great tool for cities. I live in Buffalo, MN and noticed that they took the plunge onto Twitter last week (@BuffaloMN).

For someone like myself who spends plenty of time on Twitter, I'll likely be better informed.  If they use it to listen to what residents might have to say as well as talk, I'll be even more impressed.

The obvious big challenge will be in the number of Buffalo residents using Twitter and I'll be interested to see if the city promotes it via other tools.  These days it's important to find ways to bring your message where the people are, not try to get them to the message.

Is your city on Twitter? Is it helping you as a resident?

Sub sandwich chain Jimmy John's offered up $1 subs today for a customer appreciation promotion.  Not only do customers get a great deal, Jimmy John's gets a ton of buzz and more business for free.  Here are just a few Jimmy John's related tweets (& photo links) from the hundreds today.

Social media networks offer an easy way for consumers to share deals with each other and Twitter has plenty of tweets bouncing around about the offer.  In our case, we found out about it via Twitter and drove 15 miles to the nearest Jimmy John's to take part.  Without the social media buzz, we wouldn't of known about it.

Sometimes you don't have to buy marketing, you just have to be worthy of being talked (tweeted) about.

Jimmy John's on Twitter:  @jimmyjohns

I'll take any compliment I can get from web and Internet talent Ed Kolher.  Ed recently posted on his own list of Social Media Innovators in Minnesota and I made the list.

3. Aaron Weiche does a nice job balancing work related and social tweets for his web design firm (Five Technology) and has measured the revenue per tweet that he’s generated.

Thanks for the nod Ed (Twitter: @edkohler ).

I posted on my value of Twitter in dollars.  It has been an incredible tool for me to connect, interact, learn and even earn business from.

You can find me on Twitter via @AaronWeiche.