Social Media

Social media is a great marketing tool if utilized effectively. This means knowing your target market and knowing your "insights" - meaning what days and times they are online, where they are, what they are using to get online (ie PC, Mac, iPhone) and what types of posts get the biggest response. When I ran social media at butters&beans, I mainly focused on Facebook as that was the form of social media that my target age group used the vast majority of the time. We have 712 current fans on Facebook, often with an interaction rate of 60%+. We also have 540 Twitter followers, as Twitter has the second highest social media popularity within our target market. For a small specialty business that is highly local, this is quite a high following. Most of this following was built in a year via this very data-centric initiative.
I took much care in analyzing the data and doing research surrounding usage and set up a schedule that I utilized on a weekly basis. My schedule was as follows:
Monday: I referred to this as "Monday-Funday". Every Monday I did a giveaway of a small item with a cost under $5. I would pose a question to my fans, and those who answered it in the comment field were entered to win the item shown in the giveaway.
Tuesday: A link to an article with interesting information regarding parenting or children.
Wednesday: A picture of an entire outfit I put together from the store including accessories, or a baby shower gift basket picture...something in that genre.
Thursday: A quote about children. I typically picked a funny quote.
Friday: Celebrity baby or pregnant mama sightings to talk about what they were wearing.
Saturday: Pose a question as "Like this status if....." so all they had to do is either click on or not click on the "like" button.
Sunday: A deal of the week. Most often it was 10% off a particular item if the client mentioned Facebook.

Here are some screen shots (click to enlarge for clarity of text):

A giveaway in the right column

In the left column, a fan posts a picture of her son modeling for us...

Shows 32 people talking about us, even on June 24 of 2012, months after close of business. This is because I still have relationships with my clients, and I still communicate with them via Facebook.

Detailing recommendations on Facebook written by clients - there were more, but only three fit on screenshot.

Keeping our clients updated as to store happenings at all times...like when the reindeer arrived before the Holiday party!

The welcome page that all fans are directed to as opposed to the wall before they "like" our page. I had to teach myself new coding (FBML) to be able to create this.