Create a Social Media Whirlwind about Your Brand by Engaging Consumer in the Real World

• Good deeds can have a lasting impression

It’s easy to get caught up in all the different ways you can establish your online presence through various social media sites. However, it’s important not to forget about the small actions you can take in the real world that can have lasting impact on your brand. We recently came across a couple stories that can give you an idea of idea of how this works.

Steve Woodruff, a pharma marketing and training consultant who runs the blog StickyFigure, recently posted a story on his blog about when he and his wife first visited Nashville. They went to a restaurant that did not accept traveler’s checks, which is all they had at the time, since they had just moved to the city and did not even have a bank account set up yet. When it came time to pay, they were embarrassed and unsure of what to do. The waitress politely told them that it was no big deal, and that when they eventually settled in and got their account going, that they could just send them a check then. That was 28 years ago, and Steve continues to recite the story today. The restaurant is still there, and you can bet that each person who reads Steve’s blog and visits the city is inclined to visit the establishment. Read his story at  and how it is still generating discussion today.

Think that these sorts of anecdotes can only have an impact on small businesses? Think again. The second example recounts a successful branding campaign for a little search engine site called Yahoo! (you may have heard of it before). During the past holiday season, the company sent out reps to two California airports and picked up the baggage costs for all travelers. As one blogger put it, the “simple but wildly effective effort is experience-based branding at its best: surprising, memorable, and entirely newsworthy.” The story was picked up by all sorts of media outlets, and even though it only affected a limited amount of people, it still generated national buzz. The point is that social media can definitely help your business – one way is to be active on the sites and to engage your audience online. The other way is to engage them in the real world; sometimes in our fast paced, technologically driven world, it’s easy to lose focus on how powerful these types of interactions can be. And if you have any skepticism as to how much buzz can be generated on social media sites due to marketing campaigns like this, then think again. Twitterers are still talking about the Yahoo! stunt over a month later – just do a quick search on “Yahoo baggage” and you’ll see. That kind of longevity over a simple gesture that affected only two airports in California is well worth the effort.

Read all about how Yahoo! was able to drum up a national discussion here.