The Walmart Blog

[Pizzamancer]

I came across this article today and it got me thinking. I am headed off to Singapore next month to re-vamp a local chain there, and one of the things on the list is to add some social media to the marketing mix. Does your shop have a blog?

I know from my personal experience that keeping them up is a real pain to do on a consistent basis. My (few) fans make it worthwhile though. It is obvious from my tracking results that there are a lot more people who pop in, read a few posts and navigate away though.

The following article on the Walmart Blog was kind of eye opening.

The Walmart Blog, A HUGE Failure, Here’s What We Can Learn

6-8 Years ago, you had to wonder about making a Myspace account. Today without a twitter feed and a facebook page, you look like a caveman. What do you think?

 

[wa_dave]

I am unsure of the amount of people who read our BLOG on our website. But a few things come to mind. Since we had our website and Facebook Fan page our sales have increased and there is a cross section of communication with our ustomers that wasn’t there before. Some mention things that may have been on the BLOG or Facebook and others just seem to be talking more about us than before.

Our BLOG is done by myself and I do abut 1 per week. Subjects have been about the hidden facts on the chains not really being cheap (extra charges etc that they don’t show on their menus, smaller sizing etc), quality of ingredients we use, testimoials (taken from comments left on Facebook with the names abreviated ie Danny G and the date it was posted). We use it to sell ourself without being overly obessed with ourselves, just simple and plain short facts that we think is beneficial to the customer and may sway their purchase intent (and slam the chains to boot :twisted: )

My son has a printing brokerage business in Melbourne, Australia and he has an active BLOG. He pays computer geeks in India about U$3 per hour to write professional blogs for his site. He has a weekly cap of $15 and gets excellent quality ongoing blogs written from briefs he has given them. He says it is cheaper for him to get it done rather than allocate his time. His business is only fairly new and is flying - well above any expectations he had.

I guess with BLOGS we are uncertain if people are reading them or not as to date only 2 people have ever commented on the web site, but again the communication with customers seems to have increased, so go figure.

One thing I have learnt is that people are web curious and if they see a website address they haven’t seen before they look at it just for the sake of surfing the web. If you have a BLOG that is short (unlike this reply :roll: ) but informative they will probably read it. Comment on it ? That is another question.

All in all we live in the times of social media and for a little bit of time per week you may snag a few more customers for no actual money outlay.

Dave

 

[Piper]

We just got into Facebook - both with a fan page and ads. I don’t have any statistical proof to back me up here, but sales have been up since I started about two weeks ago and it seems like I have a higher percentage of new phone numbers coming in. I can’t prove cause and effect, but there’s a correlation.

No, we don’t have a blog. For me, personally, I would probably never spend time reading a restaurant’s blog even if I were a customer. As a result, I don’t see myself doing one myself. I may be in the wrong, and maybe I’m a 31 year old caveman… I just don’t see the point. Life is busy enough with a job and family - I’m not going to spend my free time reading what’s going on down at my local Mexican restaurant as I just don’t give a s*it. I bet 60% of my online time is spent here at PMQ or some other website geared toward my business. The other 40% is spent reading news. My family shops at Wal-Mart, but am I interested in reading their blog? Absolutely not. I just don’t have time.

As for Twitter, I still haven’t found a point to it. The signal to noise ratio is extremely low and I hate to think people will begin getting information in 140 byte increments only. I guess I have more of a philosophical problem with it than anything. It seems like the majority of people on Twitter are trying to create a career for themselves where they teach everyone the importance of social media, and then they spend most of their time talking to each other. So again, I don’t see my restaurant using Twitter any time soon.

I believe the use of social media will be important moving forward and will (like anything else) consolidate into a few sources (with Facebook being an obvious one.) But I think the overall importance and value is being significantly overstated into a bubble.

Remember all of those companies rushing to set up shop on Second Life? Or rewind to about 1999, with Internet consultants predicting the end of brick-and-mortar businesses altogether. Why would anybody leave the house anymore? If you didn’t agree, you just didn’t understand the “new economy.” Social media is the same way - it’s in superhype mode right now and will eventually settle into something more normal.

The best interactions will still be face-to-face with your customers, and great food and great service will keep them coming back for more.

And yes, I understand the irony of minimizing the importance of online communication by posting online - so don’t bother pointing that out

 

[wa_dave]

Piper:

And yes, I understand the irony of minimizing the importance of online communication by posting online - so don’t bother pointing that out

Not Fair !!! You didn’t even give us a chance

Dave

 

[Wizzle_Wassell]

If you have on-line ordering then I really think that you should have as much on-line presence as you can, the more the better!

I’m not diminishing the role of face to face at all BUT an increasing number of people prefer to browse and order on-line so you should have as many chances of them seeing you on-line as possible.