A Bakery can enjoy great success if it adds Social Media to it advertising recipe. As a matter of fact, the restaurants around the country that are making social media a priority are reaping the benefits of their efforts. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and more are where people are plugged in, and businesses who are there, are getting attention.
I spend a lot of time keeping up with the baking world, I get emails all the time about it. I read everything I can find. Yesterday, a bakery in California was featured. It was struggling with the daily challenges of inventory control, and then unavoidable loss that limited shelf life presents. Faced with those losses, they decided to try out an entirely different business model. They closed their doors to the public, and went online.
Sure it was risky, but it paid off big time. They now take their orders online & get paid when the order is placed. No more limited shelf life losses because they always know what they need to bake, it is brilliant! So how did they do it? They learned all the ins and outs of social media. The head baker became the head tweeter, sending out tweets about things in the oven. I wonder if that is the equivalent of the subliminal messages about popcorn they used to say were embedded in movies.
It is happening worldwide. This morning I read an article about two sisters in India who opened a home-based bakery.Their orders for cupcakes have grown from two or three a week to over three hundred orders a week. They have built their business with social media as well. They are on their fan page talking with customers daily.
Setting up a Facebook Fan Page
First you have to have a personal Facebook account, but from there you can add a Fan page for your business. That is where the fun begins. You invite friends to like your page and it can grow from there. I have a friend with a barbeque restaurant called New Market Bar-B-Q. Libby (my friend) is a social media fanatic and has done a great job using it to grow her business. I encourage you to click on the link and look at her website, and then take a look at her use of Social Media. On a daily basis her fan base knows what the special of the day is going to be.
In addition to the specials, she tweets out coupon codes for discounts to the first however many customers. By doing that she is setting up the need to be within the first customers in line to get the discount. Every time I visit her Facebook page I get hungry. That is because she is using mouth watering pictures on her page.
The sisters in India are doing the same thing with their cupcakes. They have pictures of the different designs they create for customers that highlight their creative talents. The conversations they have with happy customers on their page are great testimonials. They said their repeat business is a huge factor in their success.
Connect all your social media accounts.
Each time I write a blog, it is linked to my FB and Twitter accounts. In addition to that, I have it connected to a group on 48days.net where I have a group talking about getting a baking business started. That 48days group has just recently started, so I need to grow it to get some good discussions going there.Please stop by and join, it is free and there is ton of great information there. It was started by Dan Miller, and there are great conversations happening there.
Pinterest is growing so rapidly that everyone is joining to see what it is all about. It certainly behooves everyone with products to put pictures and videos on their websites and encourage others to pin those to a board in Pinterest. I am just starting to learn how to use it, but I will let you know more as I learn about it.
