How social listening got us a celebrity customer
Do you have systems in place to alert you when your business is mentioned online or in social media? And no, performing a Google search every once in a while when you think about it doesn’t cut it. I mean a SYSTEM. Ideally multiple methods of social listening with some redundancy, like:
Yes, I do use all of those. It’s through monitoring mentions of our company name that I discovered this post on Alicia Silverstone’s blog:
Actress Alicia Silverstone, a vegan, posted looking for vegan options and things to do in Atlanta. We’re a vegan establishment, we’re in Atlanta, so this was of interest to us. Because I have Google Alerts set to email me when our name is mentioned, I got an email because someone mentioned us in one of the comments on this post. And by the time I clicked through to have a look, I could see a couple of our customers had already posted comments. The fact that Alicia Silverstone was going to be in Atlanta is the kind of content that would be interesting to our customers and they would likely want to help her discover the best vegan options in Atlanta, so I shared the link on Twitter, Facebook & Google Plus.
Alicia Silverstone is coming to Atlanta and is looking for your recommendations http://t.co/PPgWSNuQRV pic.twitter.com/4xVPU7qboW — doughbakery (@doughbakery) September 24, 2013
We didn’t tell people to recommend us, just gave them the opportunity to tell her their favorites. And we did happen to get mentioned a few times. Fast forward about a month. Alicia is about done with her stay in Atlanta and posts that she’d like to meet up with Atlanta fans. 
What a fun opportunity! Of course, we put that out to our followers also. Again, not asking them to suggest us as a meeting spot, but because we thought this was something our customers would love. But we did get suggested quite a few times. And a few days later we were asked to cater the meet up!
Keep in mind, none of this was an overt ploy to “stuff the ballot box” so to speak. Paying attention to our mentions combined with our habit of posting content of interest to our customers, not just “hey, come buy stuff from us” created this opportunity for us.
If you’re curious, here’s what else Alicia did while in Atlanta.
Great story, Laura! Saw you today in #HubSpot TweetChat and liked what you said about researching where your clients hang out. Good advice. Thanks! Not a vegan but a small business owner like you.
Aww, thanks Grenae! The TweetChat was really nice. I can’t believe I’d never done one before. Just going back through right now to follow folks. Hope to make that a regular thing!