Seth Godin’s post, “Why celebrate Halloween?” is timely not only for the fact that today is Halloween, but for the fact that here at LOHAD we just came through a week of social media success stories.

Here’s the connection: When it comes to social media marketing, the first question many ask is: “Where’s the potential for success?” The next observation made is often: “Okay, so you reach some people, but I need to spread my message far and wide.”

Seth provides the relevant response: “Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message.”

Takeaway for marketers: Are your marketing efforts (online and otherwise) feeding passion or mediocrity?

“Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, ‘Never take candy from strangers.’ And then they dressed me up and said, ‘Go beg for it.’ I didn’t know what to do! I’d knock on people’s doors and go, ‘Trick or treat. No thank you.’ ”
—Rita Rudner

Today marks the final installment of this week’s four-part series on social media success stories, a “best of the rest” post that … well, let’s just get on with it.

Pooja Dhawan of Fashion Spy writes:

We are a small family-owned garment distribution business that has been around for many, many years … as a marketer, I send out postcards and emails like clockwork for trade shows and to debut collections for new seasons. But the response is almost non-existent. With the introduction of social media marketing however, suddenly customers that would never take the time to reply to my emails now actually comment on pictures I post on Facebook … In two months of being on social media networks, I have been able to generate an interest that two months or more of emailing and sending mailers did not. Social media is not a tactic, its a valuable tool. It gets instant and visible results.

Maria Peagler shares this experience:

I’m the author & publisher of a quilting book, “Color Mastery:  10 Principles for Creating Stunning Quilts,” and I conducted the industry’s first-ever book blog tour.  I visited 10 sites in 10 days, including international blogs I could never have easily traveled to without significant expenses. The result?  My book skyrocketed to #11 within the Quilting category on Amazon. Unheard of for an indie publisher.

Matthew Ray of Chatterblast Media writes:

My company … has designed  and done the social media strategies for two businesses you might be  interested in … (1) terra (small “t”) is a Philadelphia restaurant  for whom we operate  presence on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. We have found twitter and Facebook are great ways to spread the word on unique dishes, specials, hours, and even find and approach new customers.  We have created small video clips, housed them on YouTube  and our blog – and then sent them out through Twitter. In our first  few months – we are getting a great response. (2) Fusion – a Philadelphia boutique gym for which we operate a Twitter presence.  We have been able to retain clients by interacting with them during the day on Twitter, offering support and encouragement to their fitness goals. We have also attracted new customers to the gym through the same method.

Kevin Knight, the Director of Marketing and Sales for SeekingSitters, shares these thoughts:

I started with this company early this year. One of my first goals was to get us started using social media. All of our locations are franchise-owned and operated. I hold weekly social media meetings for our franchisees to explain Twitter usage, Facebook, blogs, etc. You can see our Twitter page here. All of our locations are small business … they don’t have huge budgets for PR or advertising. Social media has become a great way to get out and market to consumers without spending money and taking a lot of time.  We have received media attention from it, gotten members and sitters … Tactics-wise, I’m not so much concerned with the actual monetary return. We are in the child care business, and social media allows our local owners to be seen by their community. I look at it as validation for our business. Most of our competitors do not have the ability to do this. The owner and founder writes a blog that usually focuses on parenting tips and her experiences as a small business owner. This has lead to some great media leads for us. We don’t have a huge advertising budget so we rely heavily on PR. This blog shows her expertise and experience and is a great source of information.

As you can see by the examples above, and by the case studies presented all week, social media marketing means different things to different people. Which only makes sense, right? Because no two people are going to be trying to accomplish exactly the same thing in their marketing communications plans.

Finally, let me once again thank everyone who responded to my HARO query. This has been a great week of posts filled with some amazing ideas and results, and while it’s a cliche to say that I wish I could have used everyone’s input, it’s true: The information you all generously shared was truly remarkable, so much so that I actually looked into purchasing the URLs socialmediacasestudy.com and socialmediacasestudies.com with the idea of starting a new blog, but someone’s nailed them both down and is, unfortunately, doing absolutely nothing with them.

Takeaway for marketers: Social media is a set of tools. Do you need to be on Facebook? Well, that depends. Do you need a screwdriver? If you’re trying to hammer a nail, well, probably not. Social media success begins by defining what you specifically want to accomplish, then you can choose which items in the giant social media toolbox are most appropriate.

Continuing this week’s series of posts on small and medium-sized businesses (local and regional) who are using social media tactics in a way that’s delivering real return on their time invested, I want to thank Jill Harrison, who holds the title of Manager, Public Relations and Image Development for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber. She was kind enough to share this social media case study:

Here at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, we use social media heavily for our twice annual trade show called SchmoozaPalooza. There are two main ways we use it: 1) to drive event attendance and 2) to update followers during the actual event.

Our event, called “Business After Hours,” had declining attendance. We decided to re-brand it (and call it SchmoozaPalooza) and spread the word in a new way – through social media.

We set up profiles on Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, MySpace and Facebook. We started by attracting “friends” before we tried to sell or promote anything. We figured out what our followers were interested in, and informed them on a variety of events, not just about SchmoozaPalooza. This helped us build credibility.

After a period of time, we began to promote SchmoozaPalooza. The closer to the event we got, the more we promoted it. By the time the event drew near, we had 102 followers on Twitter, 441 friends on Linkedin, 209 friends on Plaxo, 117 friends on MySpace, and 568 friends on Facebook. During the actual event, we encouraged our attendees to “tweet” what they were doing, what was happening and what they thought. A large TV screen in the front and back of the event showed the scrolling “tweets” to passersby.

After the event when we did our evaluation, we saw that attendance had nearly quadrupled – from 200 to 725. Our revenue doubled. The best part is that we can utilize these friend groups in the future. Social media helped us reach a whole new audience.

Double the revenue. Quadruple the attendance. For an event that was experiencing declining attendance. Now that’s a social media success!

Tomorrow: The proverbial “best of the rest” as I dig into the 50-plus emails I received from my HARO query and pluck out some of the shiniest gems for our social media edification.

Continuing this week’s series of posts on small and medium-sized businesses (local and regional) who are using social media tactics in a way that’s delivering real return on their time invested, I want to thank Jonathan Kay, who holds the enviable title of Ambassador of Buzz for a virtual phone system company called Grasshopper.

Jonathan’s approach:

We have four company Twitter accounts (out of 45 employees), each that serves a different purpose and adds a different value to our customers/prospective customers.  For instance @GrasshopperCare, provides product knowledge / customer support.  @GetGrasshopper informs people about what our company does, and the benefits of a Virtual PBX.  @Grasshopper provides articles and information that might help entrepreneurs (as this is our target market).  Our co-founder David Hauser also tweets and tries to always connect personally with our customers from his @dh account.

Jonathan’s success:

Month over month from April 2009 to May 2009 we increased:

• Traffic from Twitter to our Web site 4,911%
• Traffic from Facebook to our Web site 3,286%
• 120 unique blog posts
• 210,000 YouTube views for viral video

Month over month April 2009 vs. June 2009:

• We increased traffic to our Web site from Twitter 10,255%
• 43 additional blog posts

Hard numbers and social media success: Don’t you just love it? If you want to dig even deeper into this one, there’s a case study on their site.

Coming tomorrow: More numbers as you’ll see how the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber doubled revenue and quadrupled attendance for a major trade show using social media tactics.