Business Feature: Red Cedar Cafe

“If your name is Amanda or Andy come in for a free cookie today!” As seen from a twitter post earlier today, Red Cedar Café tweets daily to draw customers in with this clever name for a cookie special. What a great way to get customers anticipating the day their name is the lucky winner, and attract attention to the business.

 

The Red Cedar Café is located on the corner of Hagadorn and Grand River Ave in East Lansing. A perfect café for a campus town serving homemade baked goods, soups, salads, sandwiches and coffees. Their menu serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. “We are more than just desserts… we also cater!” said owner and operator, Angie Anderson.

 

Owner, Angie Anderson, in front of the delicious homemade baked goods.

Just opening up around a year and a half ago, this cozy café has already boomed with success. With the use of social media, Angie has creatively and effectively attracted loyal customers. With the RCC’s Twitter page having 954 followers and their Facebook page having 643 “likes”, Angie has really created a following for her company. It was her idea to start the daily tweets with names to receive free cookies a couple weeks ago, and it has already proven to be a great success! Besides Twitter and Facebook, Angie also uses FourSquare, QR codes, and texting to reach out to her customers notifying them of the soups of the day, new items, gluten free options and the infamous free cookie name of the day. Angie’s active use of social media has proven to be a great success, so much that she just today hired in an MSU intern to help advance the social media for the RCC even more.

 

The atmosphere at this spacious café is so welcoming and friendly. The artwork decorating the place is actually all done by Angie’s mother-in-law, who comes in seasonally to change out the photography pieces she’s taken for the café. This keeps the customers interested in what new pictures they’ll see hanging as the months pass and adds a personal touch to the café. All the employee’s welcome customers in with smiling faces, and Angie recognizes her regulars by name. With Valentines Day coming up, signs announcing personalized Valentine orders are hanging. Heart-shaped cookie cakes are a must for that special someone!

 

Come in soon to experience the Red Cedar Café for yourself! The creative social media is what will draw you in, the taste and smell of the treats is what will make you stay.

Marketing Segmentation

Segmenting your local market can be a difficult and daunting task. This post will hopefully provide you will a few tips and tools to make this process easier for you and your business.

” Market Segmentation is a classification of potential private or corporate customers by one or more characteristics, in order to identify groups of customers, which have similar needs and demand similar products and/or services concerning the recognized qualities of these products, e.g. functionality, price, design, etc.” – Wikipedia

This process of segmenting your audience is very important. Knowing your audience is one of the best things you can do for your business. They more you understanding and feel that you can relate to your customer, the better your business and sales team is going to function. Here are a few examples of normal segmentations.

Hot Spots in the 5-1-7

Warm weather is approaching, and we’ve come up with a few ideas to get the most out of the spring and summer in Lansing. Listed below are our favorite five outdoor events, one rainy day activity, and seven spots you can’t pass up!

5 Outdoor Events

East Lansing Art Festival- Peruse the streets to of East Lansing during the Memorial Day holiday, and check out the beautiful creations from more than 200 artists. This festival also provides live music, kid’s activities and an international-style food court.

Source: CiesaDesign

Get your burger on at Bagger Dave’s

With the temperatures rising in Michigan, hamburger season is upon us and one of my favorite places in East Lansing for a great burger is Bagger Dave’s. Their menu offers a variety of options from building your own burger to their signature recipes. They also cater to those who would want something else but no matter what you order their addicting fries are a must to any meal. Not only does Bagger Dave’s have amazing food, they also have an outstanding and engaging social media presence. I suggest checking them out not only for entertaining posts but for a really good burger!

An East Lansing Manager Answers My Social Media Questions

First off, if you didn’t read the last interview I did on Hungry Howie’s owner Don Corpus, you should take a look. If you are a business owner, or are about to start your own business, Don gave me great insight on how Hungry Howie’s uses social media to their business advantage and the challenges they faced getting started.

I thought the idea of a local business owner was great because it gives you a break from all the, what sometimes seems like “crap”, ideas online. It’s also nice to hear from a local from time to time.  Anyways, I did another interview with the same questions, except this time I interviewed Heather, a manager at Applebee’s in East Lansing, who controls some social media for the company. I asked her at a busy time so her answers are short but to the point.

Note: If you read my first blog that contained the interview questions, Heather wasn’t around when they introduced social media into the company, so I disregarded the first question.

Here is what she said:

Q1: How do you measure your success with social media?

Likes (hits) to our page compared with other stores.  I try and post every day but it’s not easy. As long as I keep up with it on a regular basis I expect to be ahead of our competition.

Q2: Assuming I knew very little about social media, was maybe even a little hostile to it, and I was starting my own business, what would you say to convince me to use social media?

Technology is an everyday thing today. It is way to hard to ignore. How could you ignore it, it’s the fastest most accessible way to reach mass people.

Q3: Do you perceive social media differently on a personal level than on a business level?

Yes – I use it on a personal level more than on a business level but I am not proud of that. I still get caught up with friends and family on Facebook, which I think is good, but I do wish I spent more time with our Facebook page.

Q4: Does a certain person within your company handle strictly social media? If not, do you think it will ever be necessary for you to hire someone for this?

I do handle our social media but that is not my main job. I am mainly in charge of maintaining the restaurant and handling customer complaints.  So no, we do not have someone to strictly handle social media. Yes, it will be necessary to hire someone just for

Thanks, Heather, for your great insight. Business owners, have now heard it once again, social media takes time but can not be ignored. Those who wish you had more time to spend on your social media sites should read a previous blog on spending less time as a social executive!

How an East Lansing Business Owner Makes Use Of Social Media

Every business owner should know that knowing your customers is the key to success. Once you know them, it becomes easier to reach out to them and create brand awareness by increasing your visibility. Social media enables you to connect directly to your customers and get a clear idea of what they want, where they are, and what makes them connected.  I recently got the chance to get in touch Don Corpus, a business owner of the very successful Hungry Howie’s pizza in East Lansing, and he gave me some insight into how they use social media to drive sales.  He also touched on some challenges they’ve faced and how they overcame them.