I have been ambivalent about Parking Today’s foray into social media. Facebook is for kids, I said, and getting involved is distracting. A friend opined that the main reason for Facebook was so adolescent boys could meet girls without actually having to see them and risk embarrassment. I thought he had a point.
However, cooler heads prevailed here at PT central and last year about this time we were off to the social media races, Facebook races, that is. I told my crew that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right.
We committed ourselves to putting information up on our Facebook page. Every day we post a dozen articles about parking, gleaned from the news media, worldwide. We have attracted some folks who seem to like to comment on those stories and some even post articles of their own. All this was great.
We had a “Facebook Page.” But were we reaching an audience? As of a couple of months ago, we had around 200 “fans.” Not exactly earthshaking. We realized that we needed to let the world know about our Facebook activities. We researched the alternatives and decided to invest a bit. After all, we are in the advertising business.
We began a program of including references to Facebook in all our publications. We started a program of ads reaching out to Facebook members world wide. I now ‘drive’ people to Facebook by making references to articles in my blog. There are email blasts that go out to our subscribers promoting Facebook. And guess what. We proved advertising works.
Our numbers in the past couple of months have doubled. Is it Magic? Nope. Just good old marketing.
First – Have a product that is attractive to a segment of the population
Second – Begin a consistent program of telling folks about your product.
Third – Use every possible means to communicate your story. Print, Net, Video, Email, Word of Mouth.
Fourth – Keep at it. Every day, every week, every month. Don’t stop. Don’t let up. Marketing works only if it is like the Energizer Bunny – going and going and going.
Fifth – Adapt. Check your product constantly and ensure that it is still filling a marketplace need. If not, make course corrections – You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.
Check us out: PT Facebook.
JVH
One Response
Social media is a great idea for a lot of business entities, but I’m not so sure about parking meters. I noticed a couple of my competitors have Facebook links, but only 2 people like them. Let’s face it, parking meters are hated by most people and loved by few. Sadly, I fear that if we had “Hate Us” and “Like Us” buttons, we would have more haters and people posting whenever they received a ticket at a meter.