What the hell can social media do for me?

Written on July 10, 2008 – 8:39 am | by Shana Albert |

This Featured Guest Post is by Mark Hayward of MyTropicalEscape.com.

Why am I asking - because your clients want to know! How do I know - because I am them.

image source: azrainman

I am a small business owner in the purest sense of the term, in fact, it’s just my wife and I who run our bed and breakfast here in the Caribbean and marketing dollars are NOT plentiful.

Of course, most people who read Social Desire are social media or SEO experts. Therefore, there is no reason for me to extol the virtues, power, and inherent value of social media to you.

But, what about the small business (non-social media expert) perspective?

Recently, I had a discussion with a really great guest who runs his own business-to-business trade magazine for the wedding industry. Out of curiosity I asked him if his magazine has a website or any type of online presence.

And I almost fell out of my seat when he said, “NO!”

The guest then went on to explain to me that they have run the magazine successfully for over twenty years and he pointedly asked,

“Why should I change now?”

I highlight the above statement because I assume that this is the type of pessimistic attitude that most of you in the social media profession face on a daily basis.

My Small Business as a Social Media Example

Because he was a paying guest I had to politely disagree with his hesitance to establish an online presence, and furthermore, the next time you come across a skeptical client I would like you to feel free to use my business as an example.

You see, the bed and breakfast that my wife and I purchased a little over a year ago had no real financial records and essentially sat empty with no marketing or promotional activities for over two years. In essence, even though we purchased the business structure, we had to build up a clientele base from scratch.

So with the ink still fresh on the mortgage papers and a new mountain of debt, I thought –

“Oh $hit, what now?”

Paying for advertising in traditional print media was financially out of the question for us, so I only had one option, the internet. From an expertise perspective, I had never run a business before, nor had I blogged, or been into social media and online networking. Pretty much, I assumed blogging and social media were for pimply-faced kids and people with too much time on their hands. But I was desperate and decided to jump in and learn.

What did I do?

I started two promotional websites (culebra blog and MyTropicalEscape) to support my primary business the Palmetto Guesthouse
I began to dabble in social media (StumbleUpon, Twitter, Plurk, etc)
I read a lot of websites (particularly – doshdosh, seth godin, skellie, and problogger)
I began networking online (via Twitter and some online marketing forums)

The Fruits of My Labor

For the short-term thinker I believe that the concept of social media, as it relates to small business success, can be a very difficult one to grasp.

I know from my own experience when I reached my seventh or eighth month of blogging and trying to promote my business online I was frustrated by my perceived lack of progress. I was ready to give up. In fact, I was so disillusioned that I decided to put my site [MyTropicalEscape.com] up for sale at SitePoint.

Then something crazy happened!

Literally, the day my site was going to go into escrow I received an email from an editor at a fairly large U.S. travel magazine. Turns out that she was working on a story regarding, “The Ten Best Islands to Live On” and she wanted to interview me about my experience on Culebra. When I inquired as to how she found me, she replied,

“Why I just happened to StumbleUpon your blog.”

The interview, which you can see online at Islands Magazine, would have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 if I had paid to advertise in the magazine. Because it is currently summer in the northeast US I have not noticed a huge spike in reservations just yet, but the article has already sent well over 2000 visitors to my bed and breakfast’s website, who might not have found us otherwise.

Additionally, just when I did not think my online efforts could net any better results, about two weeks after the Islands Magazine writer emailed I received an actual phone call from a freelance writer for Conde Nast Travel Magazine who wanted to interview me.

Amazingly, the Conde Nast writer was also doing an article on my little island home. During her research phase she just happened to get pointed to my blog from one of her Twitter contacts, which for this former non-social media believer meant I was able to chock up another $25,000 worth of complementary promotional advertising.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the Conde Nast Traveller print article made it online at cntraveller.com but if you have the July issue you can go to the “Word of Mouth” section and you will see my that my business has been written about in a very positive light (and they also included our phone number and a website link) and it did not cost me a dime.

How do I think social media can help (really) small businesses? Pretty much the same way social media can assist large business and mega-corporations:

promotion
networking
branding
as catalyst for collaboration

However, you must think long-term and be persistent, consistent, and proactive if you want your online efforts to help support your business activities.

(Editor’s note: Mark is getting ready to launch a fairly significant online project with some blogging friends. You can follow him on Twitter or visit his site MyTropicalEscape.)

Share and Enjoy:

20 Responses to “What the hell can social media do for me?”
By Matt Hanson on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply

Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..

Matt Hanson
By Michael Tighe on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply

Awesome article, not only have you made me interested in visiting your B&B, you have shown me a great perspective on how an ‘end-client’ can view SEO.

I plan to link this article to a lot of my clients.

Thank you for sharing.
By David-Gerrard on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply

Great Post, and highly interesting-It does show that persistence was the key and I am truly happy that things have gone your way-Great Job!

It also helps that you have a great knack for story writing, to make your article a joy to read.Not sure that many people can nail those kind of writing skills.
By Kelly@SHE-POWER on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply

Mark

This is a great story and a very helpful lesson for other people in your circumstances. It also goes to show what I have always known, sometimes a lack of money actually strengthens your marketing efforts because you are forced to be more creative. I have worked for big insurance companies and consulted in IT and Energy, and big budgets often make marketing campaigns flabby and uninspired. Some of my best work was done for medium sized firms who wanted to achieve results on a lean budget. They were more willing to experiment and often this meant completely unexpected reslts could be achieved.

Congratulations on seeing results from your efforts.

Kelly
By Steven Snell on Jul 10, 2008 | Reply

Great story Mark! I read Conde Nast Traveler sometimes so I’ll have to track down the July issue.
By Saad Kamal on Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

Good post.

There is one dead link in the article though:
http://www.palemttoculebra.com/

Is the site down?
By mark on Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

*Hi Matt - thanks for adding my site to your reader. Glad you liked the post.

*Hey Michael - I would be very interested to hear what your clients think about the post, or if it helps them to see the ‘power’ of social media…

*Hi David - seriously, thanks for your kind words! As someone who does not consider himself a writer your comment has made my morning.

*Hi Kelly - I, too, was very surprised with the results. And I can’t wait to utilize social media for my next project.

*Hey Steven - thanks! I will be quite happy if the post helps even one person understand what social media can do to assist their business.
By Garrett Pierson on Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

Thanks for the story and question Mark. I think social media is a very important channel that small businesses need to take advantage of and everyone needs to remember that SEO and other online marketing doesn’t go away but that Social Media is simply another important tool!!!
By Brian Wallace on Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

Hey Mark,

I enjoyed reading about your recent success with mytropicalescape. It’s also good to see that you are stressing the long term, as many try to dip a toe in the water and quickly get frustrated enough to stop their efforts. Even when you achieve success through social media, it’s important to remember to keep building on it - great post!
By Shana Albert on Jul 11, 2008 | Reply

@Saad Kamal - Thank you for letting us know about the broken link. I have fixed it and it is working now. Thank you so much.
By Harshil Karia on Jul 14, 2008 | Reply

Interesting post. Im a great believer in Social Media and spreading the buzz as well. Like you, i have a friend - he’s made a project management tool called Deskaway — so he has a blog and he’s quite tech savvy but now he has just stepped onto the social media bandwagon. His videos on Youtube have been linked to a couple of blogs, his twitter page is active. He comments on a few blogs and has been building relationships with a few bloggers so he - like you got featured on certain prominent blogs like WebWorkerDaily, ThinkVitamin, WATBlog, and a couple of others as well. Paid placements in those vehicles would have cost a bomb. His own blog is used to channel casestudies. So i would say he’s integrated social media quite well. I think you personally should use Videos and use ur video channel to do something around ur resort to sell the experience better. Get Google Lively on ur blog to better the experience. ..

I’m going to start using Social media to market my solutions as well…
By Edward Beckett on Jul 16, 2008 | Reply

What a post … Awesome.
By Ryan Kazinec on Aug 6, 2008 | Reply

Thank you for the uplifting story. I am in the midst of learning the hard way just how difficult marketing a website/business can be. Just as Mark said in the post, things didn’t happen right away, it took time and the right chain of events. I knew that it wouldn’t be a simple process but at the same time hoped that it would be. I have never doubted my will to carry on but frustration has become a common occurrence in my life. Thank you again for the positive story and quite honestly , after things are a little better financially my wife and I may look into taking an adventure out that way, we love B&B’s.
Sincerely,
Ryan Kazinec
By B. Croom on Aug 7, 2008 | Reply

I love this post because it is true. It really does take persistent, consistent, proactive efforts in order to realize any real gains with social media. I started my own website specifically catering to small business owners for the same reason:small business owners thinking there’s no reason to engage in social media.

I appreciate your post and look forward to more.

Sincerely,
B.Croom
Social Media Stepchild
http://thesocialmediaconsumer.blogspot.com
By Kasumi on Aug 19, 2008 | Reply

What a great story to highlight the benefits of social media, very inspirational. “think long-term and be persistent, consistent, and proactive” if only more online business owners thought like you.