True Twitter Stories: Behind the Tweet

I’m being a little silly with the title, but I thought I’d tell you a little story about how Twitter, social media, and really, this whole Internet thing can work to bring you closer to your customers.
What I’m going to talk about isn’t a big thing, but it’s an illustration of the difference between what’s possible now and what was possible in the pre-’Net days.

As you might know, I am personally the voice of Goldstar Twitter account.  (In fact, feel free to follow me here.)  Our following isn’t huge, but it’s in the top 1% of all twitter profiles, so we do have something going on.  It’s an area where we’ve put some focus, but not nearly as much as we do on Facebook.

Still, it’s a place where I have an ongoing conversation with thousands of people who are obviously interested in what we do.  Last week, I posted the following tweet:

Within a few minutes, I had Goldstar members sending me things like this:

And other much zanier (and more dangerous) ideas.  And then I got this:

Kiss My Bundt is a Goldstar supplier who not only sells Bundt cakes, but also has bundt and other baking-based events and classes.  We actually sell those on Goldstar, to the delight of many.  Well, this idea seemed like a good one to me, and a few minutes later, here’s what showed up:

Well, we thought that was pretty cool, so on St. Patrick’s Day morning, Marni of Goldstar picked up a few dozen bundts and some frosting tubes from our friends at Kiss My Bundt in Hollywood.  We posted that on Facebook:

Yep, you read that right.  73,000 impressions to this post.  16 comments from Goldstar fans, including things like “I want to work at Goldstar. You all have so much fun there.”

So finally, the decoration contest began.  We did it at the tail end of our regular monthly employee meeting, and, silly as the whole thing was and was meant to be, our employees loved it.  We filmed some and whipped together a short video about it, which you can see here:

By next week, this video will probably have around 1000 views.  Naturally, we also posted it to Facebook, where this happened:

Again, 69,255 impressions.  But more than that, look at the comments.  Not only are people interacting with us in a way that frankly, is very flattering, but we have employees in the mix too, talking about how much fun they had.

Altogether, this was probably about 4 to 5 hours of total staff time, not counting the contest itself, which was part of an existing meeting and was only about 20 minutes anyway.  It wasn’t exactly planned, but it was, because if you’re in a conversation with your fans/audience, you put yourself in a position to do things like this.

And I think I speak for most managers when I say that it sure feels good to hear someone say something like “I wish I could work for a company as awesome as Goldstar.”  We’re very flattered and appreciative of the way people respond to us in these situations, and while we didn’t exactly sell anything by doing this, here’s what we did do:

-We promoted a valuable supplier partner in a unique way

-We reached hundreds of thousands of people with the message that Goldstar is populated by human beings who like to have fun

-We strengthened our bond with some of our better members, prompting them to praise us in ways that make us blush a little

-And we built employee morale

Each one of these things has direct dollar value.  Companies pay to do them all the time.  Sure, we put a little work into this thing, but no real dollars, and really, not even that much work.

I wanted to tell this story not because it’s such a big deal (it isn’t), but because it illustrates very nicely the power of conversation and listening and how they can strengthen your business or organization.

And if the “Yacking Irishman” becomes a big hit, just think of the royalties we’ll earn…

PS-Thanks to all Goldstar members, FB fans, Twitter followers, employees, and of course Kiss My Bundt for playing with us.  I hope everyone had a good time!  Erin Go Bragh!