Media Badger, Social Media Research & Consultants

A Hyper-Local Social Media Crisis

Much emphasis on Social Media crises is focused towards large brands – JetBlue, United, Motrin etc., and there’s plenty of them. But what about the small local business? You’ll have to forgive me for not revealing the name of the client – I’m not into bringing my company down in one fell swoop, I have kids to feed after all.

It was early 2009 and a “tweet” came through my feed from someone I follow locally. They’d had lunch at a local restaurant, but were soured by the service. They said this on Twitter. Over the next 2 hours over 50 people within the city, and over 20 from outside, had engaged over this “discussion” with many relating their negative (and a some positive) experience with this restaurant. After the third “tweet” I started to follow the discussion, then started to track if it went elsewhere (most of our clients are large and in the US and UK, so this local one was of keen interest). It did. It hit Facebook and by 3PM that afternoon it had reached 3 bloggers within the city, whereupon several readers of those blogs also commented. The discussion ran to more general comparisons of bad gustatory experiences locally and other fine establishments were bashed as well. Yet the focus remained on this one particular establishment.

Our estimate of reach by 5PM that afternoon was about 4,000 eyeballs in Nova Scotia with 90% of them in the Halifax area. Now, we’re a highly connected city with 5 universities of international renown and a strong financial sector and economy. But we’re only about 400,000 people. Small next to New York city.

But that in itself shows how Social Media is becoming hyper-local and can have an impact at a very local level. When I went to see the owner a week later and presented my findings he was shocked to say the least…I had some serious explaining to do. The sad fact was, he noticed a 50% drop in business in that time period.

Fortunately the issue wasn’t quality of food, simply the speed of service. A change of the menu, some staff retraining, a little PR and some advertising and now their lunch servings are up 15% over last year. He recovered. But the impact was there. For a small business within a fairly small market.

Social Media activity can have a local impact. Negative and positive.