The Brave New Marketing World

<!–Saxotech Paragraph Count: 2
–>

Stout Home Furnishings

In late June, Stout Home Furnishings hit 1,000 likes on its Facebook page, less than two years after the longtime Hurricane business first established its Facebook page.
Jed Stout, the store’s 33-year-old manager, initially had some help from Creatus, a local marketing company, to establish his business’ social media package but now he manages most of it himself.

“Once I got a feel for how it works it’s not hard at all,” he says. “It’s just a matter of communicating with folks.”

Now the only aspect Creatus still does for Stout Home Furnishings is a weekly video commercial, which also appears on the store’s website and on its YouTube channel. Otherwise, Stout himself updates Facebook with information about new products, special deals for Facebook followers and even just friendly “hello” posts. Among the deals are first dibs on clearance items before they are announced on the showroom floor.

“I think it’s fair to give them an incentive and reward for paying attention to our posts,” Stout says.
Although he says Facebook is an excellent way to get the word out about sales, he believes social media does not work by itself. He uses a multimedia approach that still includes newspaper and radio advertising. While he does reach people of all ages through Facebook, most of them fall within the 25 to 35 age range.

Like Burgess, Stout also has a Twitter account for his business but hasn’t seen the same strong results that Facebook offers. Because his Twitter account is linked to his Facebook account, though, it doesn’t take any extra work to post the same information on Twitter.

As with all social media it’s important to cross promote so the business’ Facebook page has a link for its website and vice-versa.

“The website gains us some Facebook fans because there’s a link where you can click and join our Facebook,” Stout says. “The two kind of help each other out.”

Fargo’s Drive-Thru

Fargo’s Drive-Thru has only been open two years — including about six months when it closed because a fire gutted the building — yet the restaurant already has more than 2,100 followers on Facebook.

Share and Enjoy