Social Media Success Stories Identified

It never hurts to have a role model, and this morning, small businesses that use social media were pointed towards not one, but five.  Kogi BBQ, the Marsh Cafe, Duke of York’s Cinema, Wiggly Wigglers, and Howies have all made great strides in this area.

Credit goes to Lauren Fisher, the cofounder of Simply Zesty, for identifying the firms.  She started by writing, "Kogi BBQ is a mobile Korean BBQ trust that travels around Los Angeles selling Korean tacos.  They’ve built up an impressive 45,000 follower base on Twitter by tweeting where their truck is going to roll up next.  The company also recently ran a crowdsourced t-shirt competition, with fans voting on their favorite t-shirt design."

Next came the Marsh Cafe.  This establishment promised "the Foursquare mayor" – essentially an online fan – free drinks, and ran other specials for Foursquare users, too.  It’s received a ton of media coverage and increased foot traffic as a result.

Then there’s the Duke of York’s Cinema.  Between a Twitter account and a Facebook page, it’s accumulated about 1,900 followers/fans, and a blog’s also proven effective at engaging customers.  Wiggly Wigglers, for its part, has all sorts of success using videos and podcasts.

Finally, Howies has more or less covered all of the social media bases, with Fisher writing, "There’s barely a social network that Howies doesn’t have a presence on – they’re even on Last.fm, maintaining an active company playlist. And they’re sharing an impressive amount of content on these channels, having built up over 2,000 fans on Facebook."

Hopefully this list will give you some ideas or help with your social media goal-setting.