Social technology in business can be a bit of a minefield. Get it right and you stand to reap the benefits of engaging your customers, get it wrong and you will feel its wrath. For a good example of what not to do have a look at the Black Milk social media fail here and here.
Rather than do a case study on an organisation from an external viewpoint, I thought I could share some experiences from a small business that I am lucky enough to be a part of. This is a business that is just starting to hit its stride with social media and I will try and give a peek inside what we have done right, and what we can improve upon.
GEAR SHOP
staff: 2
social media coordinators: 2
retail assistants: 2
chiefs: 2
indians: 2
floor space: 23m²
frame capacity: 53
Summary: it’s a small shop with small shop problems, storage, resources and time.
Gear shop started roughly 6 years ago. Its owner, Erik Van Genderen, had just migrated from Amsterdam with a young family and realised that he could bring some of his Dutch influence to Brisbane in the form of a lifestyle store centred around his passion for cycling.
The shop has gone through 3 layout iterations in its time, and has changed its focus from being an all encompassing lifestyle store offering clothes, accessories as well and the odd bicycle to a thriving cycling specific space.
It specialises in custom single speed and track bikes, which are built to order from a large selection of parts that are sourced globally. Gear also supplies a selection of high quality items for the cycling fraternity in the form of wheels, bags, clothes and accessories that would otherwise be absent from the Australian market.
Gear’s market spans a customer base within Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, which means that successful communication through non verbal channels is key to the shops
survival.
SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY @ GEAR
Over the last two years, social media has been a main focus in terms of technology within Gear, so much so that their website is still flash based and refuses to run on any Apple product. I say this because the vast chunk of time is spent updating the stores Blog, Facebook and Instagram rather than the website.
Internally the shop runs using the Google ecosystem to coordinate its ordering, finance and marketing strategies.
HOW EACH TECHNOLOGY IS USED
(I'm going to switch tense here)
THE BLOG
The gear blog is something that we never realised how valuable it was until we started getting consistent feedback from customers that they visited it on a regular basis. They would look past the rudimentary design and minimal screen real estate due to its content being so varied and diverse. We would know when it was time to blog when our regulars would ask why no new content was up. These customers would be regulars dropping by in person, via email or through Facebook. The blog content is predominantly media which we find interesting, it ranges from cycling specific videos and press releases, to articles about street culture with a good pinch of reggae/dub soundcloud mixes thrown in for good measure. There are no specific content guidelines rather than being interesting, relevance to cycling is overlooked.
THE FACEBOOK
Facebook at Gear is a funnelling device, where blog content, Instagram pictures, and wall posts meet. We try to utilise facebook’s ability to consolidate multiple media streams as a hub for all our content. Wall posts are typically updates on what is going on at the shop, from new stock coming in, to interesting custom builds we have done. We regularly get customer enquiries through facebook.
THE INSTAGRAM
The Gear Instagram is only young, its just over a year old and is still finding its stride. Both myself and my colleague have started to coordinate our posts to have a consistent look and feel. We have found Instagram to be a great platform to showcase available custom builds we have done at the shop, and to show some of the builds that we have done for customers who are out enjoying their bikes. We get a surprising amount of sales or sales enquiries from posts. because of this we have started to provide full write ups in the descriptions of our posts including build lists and pricing.
As we don't have any space or decent lighting within the shop, we have been taking our photos on the road outside due to its lighting, darker backdrop of the asphalt and that big bonus of being free. Guerilla marketing on a budget at its best.
USING THE GOOGLE ECOSYSTEM
As a small shop, we do not have the ability to service expensive software overheads. 2 years ago we experienced a considerable growth period and needed a way to coordinate out financial data, stock flow, timetabling, media write ups and customer orders. After some investigation, we decided that the google ecosystem allowed us to achieve what we needed through their spreadsheeting and document creation programs, with the added bonus of allowing remote collaboration. Since being implemented the shop has been able to better accommodate its operating costs and product costs into its pricing, minimise ordering errors due to double handling and communication errors and allow for collaboration on marketing strategies.
RELATING GEAR TO THE MCKINSEY LEVERS
(back to past tense)
There are two main organisational areas where gear can leverage value within the McKinsey theory detailed in McKinsey’s report entitled, The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.
The first is in Marketing and Sales, where Gear is able to turn a simple image or section of text into a possible sales lead. As the shop services a large market from a single location, the ability to keep the market updated on developments and products releases keeps that market interested. Through feedback in the form of comments and replies the shop is able to derive customer insights with regard to product popularity and interest in new potential product offerings.
The second organisational area is Business Support, where Gear has leveraged the features of the Google ecosystem to improve its communication between staff members and the owner and allowing for remote collaboration. It also allows each staff member to contribute, and review the others contribution, which produces a better final product.
The real value in this is that the shop is able to function with staff members contributing remotely. Whilst one staff member is dealing with a customer, another staff member can be at another location processing orders and uploading products to the POS system.
HOW GEAR CAN IMPROVE
After taking INB346, I have been able to take a step back and identify areas where Gear can improve on its use of social technology.
Firstly, the website needs to have a complete overhaul, there is zero social interaction through the website and this needs to change. There is no targeted selling, no online purchasing metrics, and no way to showcase particular products and no online payment facility. This is a pressing matter as the website is losing the shop potential custom due to its age and lack of functionality.
The same criticism is true of the blog, for such a popular online resource for customers, it is suffering an ancient design and layout and rudimentary interface. Although some customers are able to look through this and focus on the content, I would imagine there are those out there that are turned away by its shortcomings.
You will be happy to know that in the near future this will all change. There are plans for a brand new website with all the bells and whistles. unfortunately with such a small staff base, this takes time.
I love hearing about small businesses and Gear even though not quite Woolworths, it is using the social media tools to its advantage. All the sites look professional and Facebooks seems to have a good following. I believe that social media is the way to create business, especially for small businesses as the costs that Woolworths put into their marketing is way beyond what a small business could afford. But the large corporations have also entered the social media sphere, it is where it is happening and as you have pointed out where you are deriving customer insights. How cool would it be as part of a unit assignment that we collectively helped small businesses in what we learn in INN345 and apply to their business and see what the outcome would be?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback Anne ! You are right, I believe social media is a great way to create business, especially when you have a scenario like gear where you know most of your customers either directly or through social groups. It allows us to get to know our market a lot better. It is however hard to always be on top of keeping everything current, not missing out on opportunities and keeping it above all else interesting. The reason I took this subject was to better inform myself on how to use these tools and I'm finding a great amount of crossover to my job as well.
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