Welcome back to another issue of Louisiana’s Online Lagniappe, our weekly highlighting of companies around Louisiana who are doing a great job marketing themselves through digital means. First, we point out what they’re doing great, then we note how you can apply it to your own business.
This week, we’re striking it rich with organizations where a little luck could go a long way.
We’re highlighting Coushatta for one small but often overlooked reason: they update their Facebook cover photo to highlight the next event at their location. It’s as simple as that. While putting a new picture up there might not seem like very much – it offers a changing face for your profile, and gives visitors another reason to go back to your page (rather than just hoping they’ll see you in the news feed.) It’s a small, simple gesture, that could go far in helping promote specific events at your organization. Are you using social media not only for branding, but specific promotion as well?
No matter what you think of the Lottery, it’s always interesting to see how they market themselves – after all, their business is in making money off of you, so they typically pay great attention to ensuring significant ROI for their ventures. Which is why I was excited to see that they have a Club Lotteaux set up for “super-fans” of the lottery. Not every business is going to need their own social club for their clientele, particularly since it is a rather costly and time-consuming thing to do. But consider creating something unique for those customers that are in your top 5-10%. Everyone wants to feel a little special, and customers who believe they’re being treated differently (and better) than the rest will want to spend a little more time with you. How can your business reward its “super-fans?”
We felt it only fair to provide at least one resource for dealing with addiction after sharing two companies promoting gambling – interestingly enough, we found Townsend – the fastest growing company in Louisiana, according to the Inc. 5000. Now we’re sure there are a vast amount of reasons that they’re growing so quickly, but one of the explanations that we see is how simple it is to contact their organization. Many companies, for some reason, make it as hard as possible to find the phone number or email address to get in touch. Please never do that for your organization. Instead, follow Townsend’s lead. A huge phone number is included in their header, along with links to all their social media profiles and the call to action “get in touch.” In addition, every internal page has a contact form included at the very top on the right side. Is your company making it as easy as possible for potential customers to contact you?
And the Lagniappe’s Lagniappe
Our extra shout-out this week goes to these crazy funny Harlem Sha… oh, you say the Internet is already sick of its newest meme? No kidding, that was fast (here’s LSU’s if you still can’t get enough.) Instead, lets highlight someone being awesome with social media: Lance Thomas (@slangmagic on Twitter.) After costing Hornet’s fans their free McDonald’s fries by missing a free throw, he decided to make amends and tweeted an apology of sorts (see below,) promising free fries to those who came out with him the next day.
Sixty medium orders of fries, and numerous thankful tweets later – he had gotten himself the kind of positive press and honest-to-goodness praise from fans that most Agents could only dream of. Makes you wonder how your company could go the extra mile, doesn’t it?
Send In Your Lagniappe
Is your Louisiana-based business doing incredible things online? Send Flynn Zaiger of Online Optimism a note at Flynn@onlineoptimism.com and it might just be included in next week’s column.