My lessons in micro-business marketing in the social media world

According to my twitter profile I've been tweeting since July 9^th 2009, I started the account in 2009 when I first decided to start the business that would eventually become wheeling chef. I started my cookie business in a small Michigan town with very few outlets and thought twitter, along with a website would be a great way to get the word out about my cookies. I created wheelingchef.com and started my @wheelingchef account. Things should have started rolling right? Yeah no. I made a few good showings at some local craft shows and handed out countless cards, still no business. Some things occurred in my personal life and in October I found myself starting over in Atlanta. I still had my shortbread idea and during the holiday season I tried to drum up some business on my personal facebook page and website, but the only sales I made were to friends and family, so the idea got put on hold to maybe come back to someday. In July 2010 I decided the time had come to resurrect my cookie idea, the question was how would I get the word out that I existed, and not break the bank doing so, then I remembered that I had started a twitter account the year before My first tweet was that I had decided to try a local Irish Pub for lunch, that started a twitter-sation between myself and the social media guy for the pub, the next thing I know I was picking up followers in the Atlanta area, then came the moment when I realized I needed to start tweeting more, but the question was; what do I tweet about? I'm a micro-business whose business was started as a way to supplement my income so I could be able to participate in wheelchair fencing.

I found success at craft fairs by engaging my customers talking with them, telling them my story by just being myself, so I figured I'd try the same strategy on twitter, and it worked sales started picking up and I started making enough money to start paying for registration fees, food for the trips to tournaments and more importantly, new gear. My swords and cookies story was picked up by the friend of a friend who is a very talented writer, she decided to blog about me. Something she said started me thinking that I should tell my story and share it with my tweeps and on my wheelingchef facebook page. Others picked up on my story and I was interviewed by a local radio personality and then by a local ezine. Things were going great for wheelingchef I was even asked what I was doing to get all the attention the simple answer was nothing, I just did what came naturally I was myself.

Things were going well but for some reason I decided that I needed to change what I was doing and switched from talking about my daily training runs, my fencing adventures and misadventures and the occasional sales pitch and went straight with the “hey buy my stuff” line. I forgot that people want to know who they are buying from, not just what they are buying, in short I started to disengage with people and not engage them. Using that technique I lost followers, and sales bottomed out. Now that I've re-centered and remembered that the key to success in the world of social media for a micro-business, is to engage people, its really no different then selling my product at craft fairs the venue is just bigger!