Despite the Promise of Social Networks Local Businesses Struggle with Marketing ROI

I have long felt that social media was grossly underutilized by local businesses. Unlike most corporate social media efforts local businesses have the ability to solidify Online relationships with real life relationships.

Twitter seems to be breaking that barrier faster than any social network to date. Facebook ,like MySpace before it, has been employed but has yet to demonstrate it’s effectiveness. Twitter has some good local examples, I think that one reason is the immediacy and timeliness of Twitter.

Chances are, if you’re like me, several local restaurants, coffee shops and even your local car wash have added you on Twitter. But let’s be honest most of them are not getting the kind of results below. That’s because local businesses are usually really bad at marketing themselves and even worse at measuring it.

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that’s hoping to go national — Mark Cuban is a backer — has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day’s business.

“Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful,” said Jeff Leach, the restaurant’s co-founder. “Sure, there’s the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. … But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?”

Continue reading here: Study Finds Facebook Pages Can Increase Customer Loyalty by 36%

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