Every year the Chamber recognizes small businesses for their outstanding achievements and contributions to the community at its annual Small Business Excellence Awards program. This year’s winner of the Small Business of the Year 1-4 Employees is Confidential Shredding & Recycling.
“Confidential Shredding & Recycling, Inc. is the premier mobile document shredding service which values client’s privacy and time. Our mobile unit is equipped with a hydraulic lift system, which instantly feeds your confidential materials directly into the shredder. With this state of the art equipment, our bonded professionals are able to shred your sensitive materials, hands free. The shredding process may be viewed on our security surveillance camera system. Clients’ are then provided with a Certificate of Destruction.” csrshredding.com
CSR gets it. Do a Google search for Confidential Shredding & Recycling in Tallahassee and you will find many reasons why they are deservedly the winner. Take one look at their digital footprint and the evidence is clear: Social Media is an essential component of their marketing strategy.
Winner Small Business of the Year 1-4 Employees:
Website: Confidential Shredding & Recycling, Inc.
Facebook Fan Page for Confidential Shredding & Recycling
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CSRShredding
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/confidentialshredding
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/confidentialshredding
Trusteria.com: http://www.trusteria.com/csrshredding/contact
Blogger: http://csrshredding.blogspot.com
What makes CSR a winner in my book is not just the fact that they have tackled Social Media head on, but that they are very involved in the Tallahassee community. Within the same Google search, one can see CSR’s involvement with the Tallahassee Red Cross, Keep Tallahassee Leon County Beautiful and the Children’s Home Society.
Congratulations Confidential Shredding & Recycling! I am a big fan and a follower.
Best wishes and prosperity to you and your staff!
#1 Tallahassee Small Business Leveraging Social Media
In difficult economic times, the reaction of many businesses is to panic. Rather than cutting, dropping, and/or eliminating your product lines or services, think about how you can enhance them.
Examples of this line of thinking:
1. Enhance your purpose; rethink how you define it
2. Enhance your prospects; rethink where you find them
3. Enhance your public profile; rethink how you think of others
4. Enhance your business alliances; rethink how you slice up the pie
5. Enhance your client relationships; rethink how you talk with them
6. Enhance your services; rethink where you provide them
7. Enhance your tools; rethink what you create with them
8. Enhance your market; rethink the channels of revenue
9. Enhance your digital space; rethink how people use it
Before you toss one of the essentials of your business, give the most creative people in your organization a shot at rethinking the who, what, where, when and how. If you are about completely give up, bail out, or kick to the curb one of your products or services, go to the most positive, energetic person in the building (maybe the mail guy/girl) and ask them to pull out their 64 pack of Crayola Crayons and scribble as far outside the lines as they want.
When they are done, take off the glasses of the status quo and look closely at what they have come up with. You might be surprised at how they see value in what you were about to hit the delete button on!
If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential. I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!
I could write an endless blog about this one image because it says so much about what it looks like for a business to have a digital face. I’ll start by sharing some stats of what it means to have your best business profile on Facebook. Check out these very interesting facts:
Facebook has some very limited stats on their own website, view here, Facebook, often updated 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. Facebook is used in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories. Source: Mark Zuckerberg, Jan 7, 2009 Facebook has 54.5 million monthly unique visitors, says Comscore, with a growth rate in the U.S. averaged 3.8% per month over the last year. Source, Comscore via Techncrunch, Jan 13, 2009 175mm users, with 600k daily growth of users, with the fastest growing segment “45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.” Inside Facebook, Feb 15th, 2009. Compare the dominant Facebook vs MySpace traffic, stickablilty, and engagement, Compete, Feb 27, 2009 Despite those that have over 100 friends, most only communicate with a smaller subset of friends, and the rest is broadcasting to others. Now there’s not enough data presented to see if if content actually can still spread across those that do not interact. Source originally from Facebook’s sociologist, Feb 2009 This graph from Compete data shows Facebook has more users than MySpace, note the ‘crossing of the streams’, Compete, March Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March “Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March. Facebook Ranks as Top Social Networking Site in the Majority of European Countries. Facebook Captures #1 Ranking in Spain for the First Time in February, comScore, April
So what does all of this data mean? Ask a few local companies like Bianca’s Pizza & Pasta, Fermentation, Tuscan Sun Coffee, Tallahassee Student Properties, or Proctor Honda how their business has benefited by placing ads and/or creating a Facebook fan page.
What’s the difference between ads and fans? Ads are something that appear in strategic places in the circle of your regular planned activities. Fans are loyal friends, clients, or customers who are saying, anytime you want to let me know about your new promotions or services, please fire away! Both methods can be effective, but the second can have exponential results.
If you would like to ask questions but would rather keep them confidential please indicate “Just between you and me” in your comment and I will keep your questions confidential. I have had several people contact me and I value your comments, thanks for keeping the conversation going!
