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Taking the New Media plunge! Why Northeast Cooling Uses Social Media for Business

Northeast Cooling LLC has scaled back on traditional media and is now going full steam ahead with new media!

After years of committing most of our advertising budget to traditional media we realized there was a diminishing Return on Investment (ROI).  We received only a handful of calls from people using the phone book each year, and the cost of the actual ads far exceeded the business generated. What surprised us was the fact that the pricing on these ads never dropped, even when the books started to shrink.

Northeast Cooling also tried radio advertising for six months, however that was not the right channel to reach restaurants and hospitality venues in need of commercial refrigeration service.  We were running a quarter page ad in a local bar magazine for over two years. In all that time we received less than ten leads. Of those only five resulted in actual business. We have also been in several local map ads and have yet to see results from them.

In 2008 we  noticed most of our leads were from the search engine listings.  The web site was optimized that year and we started to get most of our calls directly from internet leads. Our focus then shifted to social media. We started a twitter account called @refrigeration and a facebook fan page, please join us there too! We began to engage and connect with the local community. The past year we have made many new connections and friends through the use of social media sites, and attending social media events.

Social media events can be a way to network with new people and social platforms such as facebook and twitter allow us to interact with Chicago area restaurants, bars, hotels, parks and recreation departments, and really cool people too!  The real time engagement and ability to participate in an on-going conversations with current and prospective customers is a perfect fit for our business.

I invite you to join me on the social networking scene,please let me know if you’d ever like to go to an event together.  My favorite social media events in Northern Illinois are the LCTU (Lake County Tweet Up) and the Chicago Social Media Club events, which are held at various downtown locations on a monthly basis.  The January 2010 event was a night of Networking Fun and Games held at The Q Room on Quincy.  I was asked to speak on camera about Northeast Cooling’s use of social media for business, my cameo is 6:10 minutes in!

Social media has been an excellent addition to the Northeast Cooling marketing mix, not only has it been great for business, but I have made new friends and professional connections, and had fun along the way!

Please let me know how your business is using social media…


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