Small Businesses That "Get" Twitter | Small Biz Marketing Specialist
Small Biz Marketing Specialist
small business using twitter

Small Businesses That “Get” Twitter

Does your small business use Twitter?

140 characters – it’s not a lot of space to get your message out to the world. Most small businesses who come to me for social media help are doing it wrong. They #hashtag the wrong #words and retweet random nonsense.

How can your small business use Twitter to succeed with your social media goals? Here’s some real-life examples of small businesses who “get” Twitter:

1: @VoodooDoughnut

small business social media marketingLocation: Portland Oregon, Denver, & Austin
Followers: 26,200

Whether you love doughnuts or not, you’ll love what these small business owners are doing on Twitter. Their description summarizes it succinctly: where the magic is in the hole and good things come in pink boxes. Now how could anyone NOT love that???

Although they have been growing and expanding, they have not forgotten their roots and the experience of their original location:

This is what makes Voodoo, a shop which is almost on the cusp of no longer being a small business, still feel like a small business. They treat their original location like the epicentre of their world. Never forget where you came from when your small business starts to grow.

Besides tweeting about their roots, and the experience of their original store, what else do they do well? They adapt their products very well to trends on Twitter. Here they are with stacks of doughnuts ready for July 4th weekend:

They couldn’t possibly miss out on #NationalDonutDay, and they were ready with this MASSIVE custom doughnut with the holiday written on it:

They do great stuff for the their local NBA team:

Last, they do celebrity tributes well. You have to be careful when tweeting about a celebrity death as a brand, no one wants to feel like you’re exploiting their passing. But Voodoo do it properly with tributes that clearly show love by again creating custom products for the moment, and doing it with style and art:

You can see that they earned quite a few retweets for their efforts. You can also see that these were artists which they truly cared about as they put real effort into creating these doughnut-sized pieces of art. This trend may give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘eating your feelings.’

Sample Marketing Plans Ada

2: @RSHotel

Location: NYC, NY
Followers: 16,400

The Roger Smith Hotel in New York City has the advantage of being a hotel in one of the most visited cities in the world. It also has the distinct disadvantage of, well, being a single hotel in a city full of the largest hotel chains in the world.

The Roger Smith did something that more and more small businesses should do: They went directly to social media influencers, invited them to stay at their hotel, and had them tweet about their experiences.

When these people ran out, after some great success, they decided yet again to use influencers. They regularly tweet out their own Tripadvisor reviews:

Do they get tremendous retweet numbers from these tweets? No. And they don’t need them, that’s not why they do this. They do it for the influence it exerts on someone looking through their Twitter timeline trying to figure out if they want to book with them or not. With social proof being so powerful online, any business can use this tactic in some way.

3: @PactCoffee

Location: London, UK
Followers: 18,000

small business social media maarketingPact Coffee is another example of a small business using influencer marketing as effectively as anyone ever used celebrity endorsements to build their Twitter followers. The difference is that they have done it by connecting with other big brands, rather than people, in their area.

Each @mention you see below will be of a local brand in their area, who is also related to their industry in some way:

That last one, from Jamie Oliver magazine, would have been big for them. Jamie Oliver seems to own, approximately, every other restaurant in London. Those who follow his Twitter account, where this article would have been tweeted from, established their brand in the mind of people who like to go out and eat. Many people like a coffee after their meal, so it’s a perfect partnership.

All of this started from them simply taking the time to look at local Twitter accounts, and give them a @mention. The more your business reaches out, the more accounts there will be that know about you and help grow you, and the more you can help grow them. Have more conversations on Twitter!

4: @KogiBBQ

Location: Mobile
Followers: 148,000

In all my years of studying Twitter marketing, one of the world’s most mobile platforms, nothing has been quite like KogiBBQ. This account only tweets out one kind of thing: Where their mobile food truck will be that day, and what hours it will be open.

How cool is that? Their followers know that they have to follow them on Twitter to see where the truck is going to be. It’s so perfect for Twitter’s ‘what’s happening right now’ mentality that every mobile food truck has got to incorporate this into their business.

What’s that? You’re not a mobile food truck owner? Well you can still use this same tactic for pop-up shops, events you’re attending, appearances at other businesses, or anything else that involves your business moving around.

5: @Shakespeare_Co

Location: Paris, Fance
Followers: 25,700

Shakespeare and Company may be the most famous book store in the world, but they’re still just one bookstore, in one city, in an industry which is struggling. They have stayed relevant on Twitter not by clinging to their (incredible) history, but by embracing what’s going on in their store right now.
They frequently have guests stop by:

They even have live music in front of the store:

They’ll pretty much live tweet about any old thing going on:

They don’t ever wait to tweet it out later. They tweet everything as it happens, or just before it’s about to happen, letting people know that they need to get there even if they don’t want to buy a book. But seriously, how can you go to Shakespeare and Company and not at least have a little browse?

And that’s where their ‘what’s happening now’ Twitter marketing captures you. It creates an urgency, and it brings feet in the door.

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The five businesses above aren’t international conglomerates. They’re just like any other store you’ll find around the corner where you know the owner, likely because they’re working behind the counter! The 5 tactics they used, which you can use too, were:

  1. Participating in trending topics by customizing their products to fit the event artfully.
  2. Working with individual influencers, and tweeting the experiences of guests.
  3. Connecting with other local businesses which are related to them.
  4. Live tweeting their changing locations.
  5. Live tweeting what’s going on at their store in real time.

You may not choose to use all 5 tactics, but there are certainly at least 2 in there which will improve your small business on Twitter. Try a few out, see how your audience reacts, and keep tweaking until you’re no longer a small business!

The 5 examples shared here appeared first on Small Businesses Do It Better.
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About Stacey Riska

Stacey Riska, aka “Small Business Stacey” is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small business and rebuilding Main Street. She helps small and local business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients, MORE sales, and MORE money. Stacey is the founder of Small Biz Marketing Specialist, THE go-to place for marketing tips, techniques and strategies that get results. Stacey is also the creator of the Daily Deals for Massive Profits Training Program, an online video training program that teaches small and local business owners how to use daily deal sites like Groupon to skyrocket their business growth and get massive profits. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn’t!) and spending time with her amazing husband.

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About the Author smallbizmarketing

Stacey Riska, aka "Small Business Stacey" is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small - and not so small - businesses one marketing plan at a time. She helps business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients/patients, MORE sales, and MORE profit. Stacey's in-demand "Small Biz Marketing Success Coaching and Mastermind Program" is transforming the businesses - and lives - of those who want wealth, freedom, and market domination. Her highly acclaimed book "Small Business Marketing Made EZ" lays out the 6-simple-step plan to get your marketing into ACTION - literally and figuratively. Stacey is also the creator of Cups To Gallons, the place where independent coffee, smoothie, juice bar, ice cream, dessert and snack shop owners go to learn how get into lucrative catering so they stop selling by the cup and start selling by the gallon. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn't!) and spending time with her amazing husband.

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