Social Media in the Sticks

Lately we’ve been thinking a lot about the advertising and marketing applications of social media here in the rural South, the “sticks” if you will.

Fairly recently, social media has become a major force in shaping marketing activities for just about every service and product there is. Case in point, Clorox has a Facebook page with over 21,000 fans. Clorox!

The goal in using social media for marketing purposes is to move past the one-sidedness of traditional advertising and engaging in a two-way relationship with customers and prospects. But why—here in the sticks where in a week’s time you’re liable to run into 80% of your customers between trips to the grocery store, church, and your lunch counter of choice—invest time and effort in social media? Doesn’t our close-knitted-ness and diminutive population already promote building and maintaining relationships? The answer is yes, but social media still has its uses.

Take, for example, your typical ribbon cutting. You attend, shake hands and pass out a business card or two. Relationship established. Maybe, if your personalities hit it off or if you immediately require one another’s services, the relationship may develop a little quicker and further, but probably not. The majority of the time, the story would end at the card exchange.

Instead, after the card swap you can return to your office and, utilizing social media, send a connection request to your new contact on Linked In and trade “fan” statuses for your respective businesses on Facebook. You may not see this person on a recurring basis in the real world, but I guarantee—depending on how often you visit and update your personal and corporate pages—you’ll run across one another in the virtual world often. And it’s those glimpses of status updates and corporate culture tidbits that can help you to form a deeper connection.

-Sarah, Emogen marketer