Social Media Efforts Pay Off
Entrepreneurs say they've found early indicators that their social media advertising efforts are paying off. "The people coming from social media have been buying," says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer. As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company's Web site from Twitter. Some free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, a blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.
Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot's Web site about kayaking. Folbot has been hand-making folding kayaks and folding boats since 1933.
Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience. "I didn't find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands," she says.(excerpts from wsj.com- Sarah E Needleman)
