Speaker 1: Hey, good afternoon, Michael Nguyen, Chief Digital Officer of Digital Ops, a division of RB Oppenheim Associates, and today we're going to talk about sharing the love. Yeah, I'm talking about social media cross-promotion. You know, so the idea is, and I hear this question a lot, is how can we really take advantage of getting free, for lack of a better word, promotion using social media? Well, cross-promotion is the way to go, and what I mean by that is leverage the power of your reach for the benefit of another local business that you collaborate with or have a reciprocal relationship with. Maybe they're next door. Maybe they provide services or they're a vendor of yours, and so for you guys to kind of share in each other's likes, fans, followers, and reach is a great way to cross-promote and at the same time expand your reach beyond what your customer reach normally would be with the people who have liked or followed your own business page. You know, so what that might look like is you would log into your social media platform, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, for example, and type in the name of the business, pull up their page, and like or share their content as your business page. Now, of course, you can do this on your own personal page as well, but the viral effect or the boost, if you will, not talking about paid boost, but just the additional oomph that you might reach by doing that is really powerful. We see it all the time where Seminole Football might retweet Nike Athletics, and that's a win-win because obviously there's Nike products being worn by the players. But on a smaller level, I think some people think about it in terms of, well, gosh, if I'm sharing content from another business, doesn't that distract or take away from or water down my message? And in fact, no, it doesn't. What it does is that it actually allows you to sort of share in this local community economy social capital building when you promote these other businesses. And I think that when you like or share or retweet positive promotion of another company, what happens is the followers and fans and people who like that other company, they're going to get excited about, hey, look, here's another local company that's recognizing my favorite band, so they like it. So the opportunity there for sort of that little viral boost is something to really leverage. Now, I think sometimes we have a hard time connecting those business-to-business relationships, and maybe the first way it needs to start in your own world is creating a little sort of network or a little group in the real world. So the idea would be to reach out to other local business owners who may or may not be in the same space that you're in or the industry segment that you're in, but who you recognize provide a good service or have a great product, someone that you would want to align yourself with and potentially share ideas and growth strategies as local businesses. Because quite frankly, as local businesses share best practices with one another, that only creates a positive environment where those businesses can learn from one another without having to go through and experience the pitfalls or the mistakes. So creating that little network, and whether you get together on Tuesday mornings for coffee or whether you get together at lunch at maybe one of the places or your own business, or maybe you get together after hours, maybe it's a happy hour get together. But the idea is that it's not just, hey, let's get together and share business cards and that kind of thing. It's really getting together and listening to one another and trying to learn from each other's stakes, whether it's human resources or whether it's marketing or whether it's operations, all the different facets of running a locally owned business because it's tough. And when local businesses get together and share these ideas, then it creates a great opportunity for each of those businesses that are a part of that little network. So it can start there with those little groups. And I actually was invited to a small little group that meets once a month, and I want to share a little bit of love with one of the guys that I met, loves product, loves the service. And that's my good friend, Chip Evans, who is, what, can you see that? Yeah. So he's the owner of Willie Jewels Bar-B-Q. Alexa, where is Willie Jewels Bar-B-Q Tallahassee?

Speaker 2: I found a Willie Jewels Old School Bar-B-Q in Tallahassee. It's 9.1 miles away on Thomasville Road. It's open now until 9 p.m.

Speaker 1: That's perfect. They're open until 9 p.m. So where can we go for dinner tonight and get some delicious Old School Bar-B-Q? Well, hey, we can go see our friend Chip Evans at Willie Jewels Bar-B-Q on Thomasville Road. Now here's the thing. They have a difficult entrance. If you're heading north on Thomasville Road from I-10 or from in town, you're headed towards Glarne or Golden Eagle, you have to do that little U-turn. Or you can make a left-hand turn, like you're going to Walmart, and then turn left again and go back around CVS and back through ABC Liquors to get into their parking lot. That's a struggle, and Chip was sharing with us that. It's a logistical obstacle that his business has to overcome, but you know what? Here's a guy who served in the military, who has opened a locally-owned business, who wants to look into expansion, has a family to support, has children that are going to be part of public schools here in Tallahassee. So these are the kinds of businesses that really need our support. So if you're wondering about what you're going to do for dinner tonight, I hope you'll go visit my good friend Chip at Willie Jewels Bar-B-Q on Thomasville Road. Tell him Michael Wynn sent you there and share the love. So that's the message today, is how to get a little extra social media boost and go viral. And that's through cross-promotion of other brands and pages that you support in your local business and local community. My name is Michael Wynn. I'm the Chief Digital Officer of Digital Ops, a division of R.B. Oppenheim Associates. Thanks so much for your time, and we'll see you tomorrow.