July 26th, 2011 | Interviews | 
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Visco, the owner of both?TheBestOfFood.com and PJ?s and Coffee Social Media Marketing. With PJ?s and Coffee, her team doesn?t only market your business on the internet; they build and maintain client relationships for your business. According to a recent HubSpot study, nearly 2/3 of US internet users regularly use a social network and that number isn?t falling anytime soon. This makes Visco?s business ever more important and beneficial to the small business community. She discusses her business and gives tips for the future of small businesses in our KikScore interview of her.
1.?Tell us about PJ?s and Coffee and who you focus on serving?
PJ?s and Coffee is a full service social media marketing agency. We manage the social media accounts for all sorts of businesses. PJ?s and Coffee is the blog for and social media management branch of our main website, TheBestofFood.com. We used to focus mainly on restaurants in the Philly area, but as more businesses sought our service, we expanded into helping small and medium businesses in a variety of different industries.
2.?How did you get the idea for PJ?s and Coffee?
Essentially, we promote local restaurants by providing them with reliable and candid reviews on our site. This assists locals and travelers visiting the Philadelphia area with dining recommendations. This was the idea behind TheBestOfFood.com.
After using social media to promote these restaurants, we realized the value of social media and the cost savings involved with it. With the emergence of Twitter, we talked to restaurants, explaining our desire to promote them. They also saw the benefit of using social media outlets and asked us to manage their Facebook and other accounts. We started out by operating Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare accounts. After engaging many clients using these sites, others approached us about our service, including mortgage companies, dispatch providers, dentists, and others, expanding well beyond the food industry.
Being the food blog for TheBestOfFood.com, the name behind PJ?s and Coffee came from the idea that people want to sit and relax at home in their pajamas with their coffee in hand, and have the intimate feeling of reading and talking about food. We then took the name and rebranded it to the social media division, envisioning people sitting at home in the PJ?s and interacting with others through social media outlets on their computers and phones. Thirty-one percent of people between the ages of 18-35 check social media sites before getting out of bed in the morning so PJ?s and Coffee seemed like a fitting, more casual name. We put the ?social? in social media. Many businesses fail because they don?t understand that it?s about people, not products. We engage their target audience and promote them using our research media. Companies that engage their target audience have a higher success than those who ?talk AT? people online.
3. What is PJ?s and Coffee focusing most of its energy on this year?
Obviously with the recent release of Google+, we are going to see how successful it is and how to best use it from a marketing standpoint. We will continue focusing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. though it depends on the business model and which company represents the brand the best. We look for where we can reach the most people and make the most valuable connections. For example, we represent a collision repair company that is equally successful on both Facebook and Twitter, though not as much on LinkedIn and Foursquare. For B2Bs, Twitter and LinkedIn are most successful, while Facebook and Twitter are best for C2Bs. Also, for companies that are targeting women and mothers, mommy bloggers are really influential and we try to engage with them.
4.?If you had 2 lessons learned from your business that you could pass on to others, what are those lessons?
First, engagement is critical. Businesses that don?t engage with their target audience become white noise. Secondly, practice makes perfect and not all strategies work for all business so you have to be ready to adapt and change. When we first started, we were very Facebook driven but then we started expanding when we saw other outlets were more beneficial. Some strategies aren?t as successful so you should learn and read as much as you can and if one doesn?t work, move onto the next.
5.?Based on your experience as social media strategist, what do you see as 2 new trends for small business?
One new trend is the increased use of video marketing. Fifty six percent of online users are likely to view videos through social media websites, and we?ve seen the success of Youtube videos over the years. Talk Fusion is a new service for email media marketing and allows you to send video emails directly to your client?s inbox.
Another trend will be the redevelopment of websites for social media use. Many websites get more hits and visitors through social media outlets than web searches so because social media sites are driving web traffic, websites are becoming more social media friendly. It?s not easy to facilitate with many current websites and they will be redeveloped, allowing you to login through Facebook and Twitter accounts and shooting out business-related alerts, similar to the news feed of Facebook. In addition, they must become more photo rich to draw attention to their sites on social media outlets.
6. What is the biggest challenge that PJ?s and Coffee faces as a small business and how do you work to overcome that challenge??
Quite honestly, the number one challenge is finding people that are able to engage others online. It seems easy to just go on social media sites and chat, but finding quality marketing professionals to actually engage people is difficult. The instinct to promote online is to just shout out your business promotions. For example, by just shooting out listings and links to your website, businesses and their posts become white noise which consumers will tune out quickly. The key is taking your ego out and making it less about you and more about the customer, which takes a lot of discipline and training. I?ve engaged in a business (social media marketing) that requires a lot of time. It takes 20-30 hours per month per social media outlet, so my challenge is balancing profitability while also bringing in people who take a lot of time to train and learn.
Also, another challenge is dealing with businesses that need to adapt their methods for the long term. While there will be no immediate result, those companies need to realize that they have to be in it now to be profitable in the longer run.
7.?If your business/store could be any movie or movie character, what movie/movie character would it be and why?
The Social Network for obvious reasons.
8.?How do the folks at PJ?s and Coffee let loose after a busy day working?
With a glass of wine at a favorite local restaurant. The thing about what we do is that anything can happen at any point during the day. It is 24/7 work because consumers are online at all times, whether it be 1am, 6am, or 11pm, and there are no afterhours, social media sites are being visited every second.
9.?Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers and the small business community?
I believe all businesses should have a social media presence. Businesses need to learn that it?s not just about promotion, but it?s also a customer service tool. If someone has a complaint or a raving review about your business, they?re most likely to go online and post about it somewhere on the internet. You need to be on these sites to immediately address your customers and their issues regarding your business.
I?d like to thank Chris Visco again for a great interview! If anyone has any questions or comments for Chris, please leave them in the comments.
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Source: http://blog.kikscore.com/2011/07/26/putting-the-social-in-social-media-a-kikscore-interview-with-chris-visco/
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despite having grown up in boston, after 11 years in tennessee, i feel pretty darn southern. the culinary traditions of the south, particularly fried green tomatoes + fresh collard greens, make me incredibly happy. the one food/drink tradition i haven?t gotten into? sweet tea. we grew up drinking unsweetened tea with a little lemon, + that?s still what i enjoy now. the crazy sweet stuff my husband drinks? my teeth start quivering in fear as soon as it approaches.
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