#ShopWOO: Old message finds a modern medium
A recent version of the #ShopWOO page on Twitter.
Last October, Worcester's local businesses were gearing up for their annual holiday-season rush, and Amy Chase found herself in a lot of different rooms talking with a lot of different people about the same topic.
Chase, who runs the Crompton Collective antique mall on Green Street, was already involved in Worcester Local First and Destination Worcester. Then she signed up for the Worcester Cultural Coalition's Woo Card program. And she started thinking about all these organizations working from different angles, but ultimately for the same goal: promoting local Worcester businesses.
“I was getting invited to all these meetings about Worcester and how to make it better,” she said. “We're all trying to push the same message.”
The notion of encouraging people to support the local economy and get to know merchants in the community is nothing new. But Chase's solution for promoting the idea was distinctly of the moment: a hashtag campaign. So, #ShopWOO was born, giving Worcester restaurants, shops and craftspeople a free, simple way to broadcast their messages on Instagram, Twitter and the rest of the social media universe.
Even after the holidays, the use of the tag kept growing, reaching nearly 3,000 photos on Instagram alone last spring.
Chase said social media is an obvious way for small businesses to promote themselves. Of the 82 vendors at Crompton Collective, she said, at least half use sites like Instagram, Facebook and Etsy to promote themselves. The mall itself doesn't do any traditional advertising, depending instead on a combination of old-fashioned word-of-mouth and newfangled photos on smartphones.
Among the local businesses adopting the #ShopWOO tag is CC Lowell, which happens to be the oldest art supply store in the nation. Owner Kristen Sciascia said the hashtag is less a brand-new marketing strategy than an extension of a longstanding effort to develop mutual support among small stores and restaurants.
One voice for independents?
“I feel like it's a good way to unify the independent businesses in Worcester,” she said. “We get out to other like-minded people that want to shop local and want to support local.”
Sciascia said social media is both an inexpensive mode of publicity and a way to develop a connection with customers. CC Lowell uses its Facebook page to feature customers who are doing good work in the city.
But Sciascia also said doing social media well requires significant effort and attention. For the past year, she said, the store has made a push to do more on various social sites, but keeping everything updated and making sure the different staff members who use the sites are on the same page can be difficult.
“We have a really small staff,” she said. “We're always pressed to find the time.”
That's why the store recently hired a consultant, Jessica Walsh, to handle its social media strategy. Walsh, herself an independent photographer, also does social media work for two other independent Worcester businesses, The Corner Grill and Jeffery Robert Salon. She said social media gives those who run small businesses a way to distinguish themselves from corporate rivals by bringing customers behind the scenes, showing off the goofy side of an owner's personality or the careful selection of produce that goes into making a great meal.
“It's kind of like everybody wants to look in the medicine cabinet,” Walsh said. “It's voyeuristic, almost. It lets people see things they wouldn't otherwise see, and I think it makes them feel more involved in what's going on in the community.”
Walsh said that kind of connection reduces the sometimes intimidating process of getting to know a local store. For example, she said, the #ShopWoo campaign seems to let more people see that CC Lowell has events for kids and craft supplies for amateurs, not just fancy products for professional artists.
More generally, she said, the campaign lets locals see the scope of what's available in the area.
“I think most people don't even know that Worcester has all these things, and that's a problem,” she said.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments