The following is a really good example from a social media marketing test that Entrepreneur.com did for a local BBQ joint. Moral of the story, get your social media cranking or lose a valuable marketing avenue:
It’s been just over 30 days since we began our Social Media Challenge for Big Papa’s BBQ in Denver. Turns out, “challenge” was the perfect word for it. There was no online barbecue conversation to speak of in this city when we started. There were no followers for Big Papa’s. They had no brand, voice or marketing plan. The winter was bearing down — hardly BBQ season. And as for Big Papa’s experience in social media? Nonexistent.
But, in Denver’s Best BBQ Battle — the social media campaignLeeReedy/Xylem Digital created, we’ve built a brand, a following and, most importantly for those who doubt social media’s value, an increase in revenue for the restaurant.
To our reporting detriment, it took three weeks for Big Papa’s BBQ to institute proper tracking mechanisms in its three restaurant locations. But we have two significant successes to share: the number of people walking into their restaurants who heard about us through our social media efforts and year over year revenue for December.
In one week:
- 516 people heard about Big Papa’s on Facebook, then went there to eat.
- 153 people heard about Big Papa’s on Twitter, then went there to eat.
- 64 people heard about Big Papa’s through email, then went there to eat.
Total: 733 people were driven to eat at Big Papa’s using social media in just one week.
In the first two weeks of December:
- Big Papa’s has year-over-year revenue gains of 7%.
What’s next? Facebook, Twitter, email, as well all ongoing promotion and dialogue on these venues, transfers over to the management team at Big Papa’s BBQ. Our blog posts will be less frequent for Entrepreneur. But each time we check in, we’ll let you let know how it’s going, and you can weigh in on how you might do it better.
| Progress Tracker | Week 0 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
| Online Media Mentions: | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Twitter Mentions: | 0 | 26 | 29 | 56 |
| Facebook Daily Post Views: | 0 | 3,142 | 4,983 | 73,969 |
| Twitter Followers: | 0 | 179 | 217 | 230 |
| Facebook Likes: | 210 | 363 | 428 | 491 |
| Email Subscribers: | 597 | 880 | 978 | 1,032 |
| Email Click Through Rate: | 0 | 0 | 14% | 14% * |
| Email Open Rate: | 0 | 0 | 35% | 35%* |
* The restaurant industry average for email click-through rates is 3.4%, and email open-rates is 26%, according to 2010 Marketing Sherpa Benchmark Guide.
by The National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce 
3 comments
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January 25, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Puerto Rico Dave
It is absolutely true to say that Twitter and Facebook help even out any SEO campaign, it’s all about having lots of string sin your bow, so that the search engines see that you are being talked about by real people, from plumbers in Puerto Rico to Holiday companies – everyone needs to get involved in social media.
January 25, 2011 at 5:25 pm
The National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce
Well put Puerto Rico Dave. Comments like this prove his point precisely! Now we are talking about Dave’s Puerto Rico vacation site in the UK on our website and all he was technically doing was commenting on a page. Whatever ulterior motives he may have had, he handled it in a classy way, which has helped out his SEO campaign. Combined with a good FB and twitter campaign and “Puerto Rico Dave” is well on his way to kickin’ some tail online! http://www.puertoricoholidays.co.uk/
February 9, 2011 at 9:03 pm
Francisco Rodriguez
http://www.Boritweeter.com Boritweeter is a website, owned and operated by Boritweeter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called Boritweets. BoriTweets are text-based posts of up to 200 characters displayed on the user’s profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict message delivery to just their followers. Users may subscribe to other users’ tweets—this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. All users can send and receive Boritweets via the Boritweeter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. The website is based in Puerto Rico.