Many small business owners still think they can take a pass on the power of online social media tools, particularly if they reside in seemingly low-tech industries such as plumbing, fishing or lawyering. I found this case study about Jason Brown, a 23-year old co-founder of Brown Lures. Brown Lures sells fishing lures to guys and gals that probably don’t call hanging out at Web 2.0 conferences a good time.
But Brown credits his blog with changing the way people find him. He created a podcast that gives him great “fishing stories” and loyalty from guides up and down the Gulf Coast; he uses RSS and content tagging to automatically produce fresh blog content; and email marketing to blow his competition away at trade shows.
Using social media in industries that are still slow to adopt it is the killer competitive advantage.
In Brown’s words:
“We have been running waiting lists for products for about a year now, and no one has any clue how we are doing it without spending big advertising money.”
Alas, we still hear cries from the cynics:
“We don’t need no stinkin’ social media, we just need more sales.”
Ugh.