A More Sociable Social Media

Four Firkins is a specialty beer store in St. Louis Park that’s so small—floor space is 900 square feet—that you’d miss it driving by it if you didn’t pay close attention.

But more and more people are finding Four Firkins. And it’s not because of a phone book listing or other print advertising. Sure, it’s largely because the store carries a deep selection of fine craft beers. But driving new traffic to the little store is an online “social hub” developed mostly in the Twin Cities.

While buying some beer at the store last summer, Alex Hawkinson—CEO of SMBLive, a software development firm based in Minneapolis and Reston, Virginia—suggested that Four Firkins owner Jason Alvey try a new SMBLive platform called CloudProfile.

CloudProfile provides a standardized online template that resembles a Web site. But a CloudProfile site allows a business to also “follow” and update its Facebook site and Twitter posts, respond to e-mails and text messages, even return phone calls. And a CloudProfile site has search engine optimization built in so that the site can be found on line more easily.

“In August, in our first month, we had over 1,500 visits” to the Four Firkins CloudProfile site, recalls the affable Alvey. “In September, we were over 2,000. To date, we’re over 11,000 unique visits to [the CloudProfile] Web site.”

Before using CloudProfile, “I did use social media—Twitter and Facebook—but they were separate and time consuming, and I rarely did the same post on each separate account,” Alvey adds. “It was kind of random. But now that it’s being pushed to both those sites, I’m getting much more visibility in terms of Web site hits—searching visibility.

“But the best thing is, every post gets pushed through to Facebook and it now has a whole bunch of people clicking ‘Like’ or writing comments and I’m able to write back to them. Every post has a ton of feedback on there, which just didn’t happen before.”

CloudProfile isn’t the only recently developed social media management tool available that’s been made in Minnesota. Four51, a Bloomington company, specializes in platforms that facilitate online business transactions. It has developed a product called Fantools, designed to make companies’ Facebook fan pages more marketing and commerce oriented.

Christine Fruechte, CEO of Minneapolis-based ad agency Colle + McVoy, has compared the fast-evolving realm of social media to “the Wild West.” Bringing some sense of order and civilization to that frontier is what CloudProfile, Fantools, and others are trying to offer businesses that are looking for new ways to reach customers.