Small Business Saturday at Penn Station/MSG

Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express/Amex was on the Today show this morning to promote Small Business Saturday.  He appeared passionate about the new movement as he says there is room for everyone; you can shop at the Big Box retailers on Black Friday, online for Cyber Monday and now “Shop Small” on Small Business Saturday.

Taken from their Facebook page, Amex describes the mission of Small Business Saturday as follows:

First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday. This year, November 27th is the first ever Small Business Saturday, a day to support the local businesses that create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country. Small Business Saturday is a national movement to drive shoppers to local merchants across the U.S.

A couple of weeks ago I teamed up with Jeff Namnum and his LITweetup group as we joined forces to help spread the word of Small Business Saturday to the local Long Island, NY community.  Nearby New York City was the first city in the nation to proclaim November 27th “Small Business Saturday” as Mayor Bloomberg and American Express encouraged other cities to participate.  So with very limited time, we reached out to our own networks and helped spread the word and educated those on how they can promote their Long Island small business through Facebook and other Social Media avenues.  I was able to reach out to John Chae at Yummy Sushi Huntington to utilize Small Business Saturday to raise awareness and promote his restaurant gift certificates.  I was also able to get the Small Business Saturday promotions implemented quickly for my husband’s photography e-studios: Furry Paws Pet Portraits and Real Portrait Images.

At that time, Small Business Saturday’s Facebook page only had a mere 100,000 followers.  According to AllFacebook.com, The Small Business Saturday Facebook page is the fastest growing new page on Facebook. More than 850,000 ‘likes’ in just over two weeks.  With the multichannel advertising support including Facebook Cost Per Click, full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, television ads, on Penn Station/Madison Square Garden’s big board, plus word of mouth from folks like our group, they now have over 1 million.

Throughout the past couple of weeks, they updated their Facebook page wall with interesting statistics and great reasons to shop small such as:

• For every year over the last decade, 60%-80% of new jobs were generated by small businesses. Another great reason to shop small!
• For every $100 spent at a local small business, $68 returns to the community.

Amex even offered $100 worth of Facebook advertising support for small businesses that applied before the November 18^th deadline and who qualified. We applied to support Furry Paws Pet Portraits/FPPP e-studio and received the acceptance email a couple days later…

“Your ad has been reviewed and approved to run between November 12th and 27th*. Within three weeks after your campaign’s completion you will receive a report via email detailing your ad’s performance.”

Although we will not see ad performance statistics for a while, FPPP is already seeing a significant lift in traffic/daily post views on the Facebook page, with a lift in orders on Thanksgiving and Black Friday from last year. We shall see what happens tomorrow, and the results in a couple of week, if any lift correlates with the Amex/Facebook ad.

As if this campaign wasn’t big enough for a “small” cause, Amex on top of all this is donating $1 up to $1,000,000 for each like on their Small Business Saturday Facebook page to Girls Inc., a charity that helps empower young women to be entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Oh and one more great thing, Amex is offering  a $25 credit to the patron who “shops small” with their pre-registered AMEX card on Small Business Saturday. So these small businesses are able to offer a great incentive to shop with them, while it doesn’t affect their already fragile bottom line.

What do you think of this local community economic support promotion?

Photo Credit: Real Portrait Images

That is an image of Adam Hirsch, COO of Mashable and creator of the Summer For Social Good conference and online charity sponsored by Zappos and MailChimp. Over 400 attendees filled those seats at the 92nd Street Y auditorium and with donations still coming in topping $30,000, Adam was a great builder. Both an educational day and a day of giving, all proceeds went to four charities: Livestrong, WWF, Oxfam and The Humane Society. As an attendee, it was quite an enlightening experience and somewhat spiritual. The room was filled with giving people, and those who wanted to learn how to effectively raise awareness and funds for the non-profits.

An example of build it and they will come is Drew. Tomorrow is 9/9/09. Neat huh? Well tomorrow is also a day of blame. The event, Blame-a-Thon is organized by Drew Olanoff, one of the speakers from last month’s Summer for Social Good Conference. Drew was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma on May 20, 2009 and ever since then has been blaming everything on his cancer. Then it became a community blaming random things on drew’s cancer. “I am a geek so I started a website”. Blamedrewscancer.com is now partnered with Livestrong, a Lance Armstrong Foundation and has succeeded in getting big corporate attention with the Taco Bell truck being the first to donate $1 for the first 1,000 tweets with the dedicated hashtag #blamedrewscancer. They are now partnering with Drew on tomorrow’s blame-a-thon.

Presentations throughout the day included an engaging keynote speech by Randi Zuckerberg, Marketing Director, Facebook. I know, this blog is called TwitterCoach, but ever since FB integrated a Twitter feed on their fan pages, I feel I can get away with sharing their story. And boy did Randi have quite the announcement to share, the launch of charities on Facebook. Now you can purchase a donation to a charity of choice for someone’s birthday. They launched the gift shop, with virtual real charity gifts for Project Red, Kiva, Toms and WWF. If all goes well, they could open to all.

There was so much wonderful insight in the non-profit arena but I realize this is a blog post not a book. I will try to mention the key shout outs in good ole twitter style:

“If you have a voice or a platform you have a responsibility to voice your word” Randi Zuckerberg Facebook

“Our CEO is a twitter addict and we have 6 people out of 25 dedicated to social media.”…”We have buy in and resources to leverage social media. Our CEO visited Michael Vick in prison, we let the conversation happen but made sure it was taking place under our roof.. We were prepared for the twitterstorm” Carrie Lewis The Humane Society

“The more people that are engaging, the more leaders will feel pressure to do the right thing”… “Why social media?…best way to reach supporters, quickly trend people checking Facebook and Twitter more often than email” Andy Ridley of EarthHour

So build it, because they will come. No fear, no shame, don’t be afraid to tell your story and to ask for support. Lastly, it feels good to be a part of something, it was a Summer for Social Good, it was damn good!

Drew’s cancer is pissed, make it more pissed on 9/9/09. Raffle tickets are available for those who cannot physically attend blame-a-thon.

Summer may be over, but social good is still accepting donations

To join the conversation and to see what others had to say about the event, you can search #socialgood

To find out more about these charities and the social good conference, visit the Mashable event site here

Images of the presenters, attendees, cocktail reception and Adam’s shocking feel good proposal can be viewed on Real Portrait Images Facebook Fan Page