Finding the Crowds

Blue Collar Joes Become a Fan on Facebook (Tell ‘em Dean said hi)

Lets talk about competing in this space we call Social, don’t worry, you will love the details ahead…

Even if you are a small Brand, and most importantly, if you are competing against Big Box Retailers or organizations with bigger marketing budgets, you can still make an impact.

We take a look at the power of Reach (just for examples) but I will also mention ways to find audiences, on less than a few bucks for marketing budgets, at home in your pajamas, at night, after a long day of running your business. So let’s get started.

First, let’s run a few exercises to see who is talking about your brand today, within a localized area, to see what you may be up against.

Open Google Insights (http://google.com/insights/search) to see what you can find here as Insights are concerned. Here’s a look at a local business, that I am friends with (selfish plug for Daniel and Pru – love those guys):

1. Pick your location first – yes even my town has a search in Google: Here’s is an example of what we are looking for

2. Next, I searched for “Food & Drink” to get a flavor (yes I said it) for overall keyword terms

This chart reveals that some key searches have resulted in a lift in people looking for this term but a forecast shows a slow down, which means that either Google’s “rhythm’s” predict that Social is going to have an affect (my opinion not data driven) and you may want to look into increasing your online and social presence to make up for the lack of “Google” specific keys tapping away to find you.

3. Now let’s take a look now at “What” (Most Important here) people are really looking for inside this category:

Interesting you might be asking… Hummm…. Recipe, Recipes come up as a top search in the Food Category and may just hold the key to an online, Social play to garner some Fans, or some new trends to discuss. Say for instance, you have built a Facebook Fan Page. What if you offered your audience Free Recipe Downloads, if they sign up for your email list, all within Facebook, using the “FBML Static” Tab on your Fan Page with a Sign Up Feature that keeps them right in the Community they want to remain in, because they love it. Wallah, many ways to play the game here, just need to find the right mix.

4. Another look at a favorite of mine is this one that reveals a “Peek in the Box” of Google’s Search Forecasts

This may not be a shocker here, but does give insights into some interesting things. Is Rachel Ray coming to my town soon? (Rachel-hit me up if you are, have your people get in touch with my people, we’ll do lunch). I need to look at Events of upcoming possibles here, especially if I am in the Food Business. I would want to reach out to the Food Network, Rachel Ray and others to see if I could supply them with FREE food from my Restaurant, in this case a Doughnut from Blue Collar Joe’s (If you haven’t had one, they are the best I have ever had) and see if there may be a way to get a mention (there’s that magic word) on her Blog. (Free PR and big PR too).

So, the net of the story is there are ways to do some fairly sophisticated marketing online, with limited budgets, and effectively.

Let me hear back from you on how you may have been able to use Social in ways not mentioned above (so we can all learn).

If you are looking for Blue Collar Joe’s (not a client):

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Tagged as: FaceBook, Facebook Fan Page, Facebook features, FBML Static, Google, Google Insights, Search Engines