Social Media Case Study: Comodo

It doesn’t take a big brand to do something innovative that warrants a social media case study!

If you’ve ever scrolled through the images of Instagram, you know that food is a pretty popular subject on the photo-sharing network. Comodo, an independently-owned restaurant in New York City, recognized the app’s popularity, and decided to integrate the food photographing hobby into their establishment.

Essentially, the idea was to allow users to share their experience in a very natural way that not only promoted diners’ experiences in the restaurant, but also provided user-generated publicity, virality and some pretty nice images of dishes to a wide audience.

The video below does a great job of outlining the premise of the campaign:

The Lessons

This is a simple, cost-effective concept, but there is a lot that marketers can take away from the study.

Make Social Media a Part of Your Brand

There should not be a distinction between your physical brand and the one you have created on social media. What Comodo did was integrate their social media efforts into the dining experience. Thus, the same friendliness, fun personality they were aiming to establish online was personified in the restaurant itself.

There needs to be fluidity in all of your marketing efforts. Consistency is how you will be identified by markets that are both familiar and unfamiliar with your brand. The marketing team behind Comodo realized that and the proof is in the campaign.

Provide Clear Avenues for Engagement

You’ll notice in the video that Comodo’s menu offered the hashtag for sharing images on the bottom. Direction is something that many brands often forget to provide, and the result is a less than optimal social media campaign.

In order to see the greatest benefits from your efforts in social marketing, you need to let people know how, where and with what type of content they should be engaging. Don’t rely solely on organic engagement, help the conversation get started. Two examples of this are Best Buy’s Twelpforce and Comcast Cares. Both are Twitter channels that provide nothing but support, and that is made perfectly clear everywhere they are mentioned.

Adapt Your Marketing Strategies to Your Audience

It’s hard to believe how unique this case study is. It was simple to execute and the results have been outstanding for Comodo. Yet, we still see more billboards and bench ads than we do hashtags when it comes to restaurant marketing.

Comodo’s success arose from the very simple fact that they adapted their marketing for a new generation of consumers. While not all of their customers will be using Instagram to promote the restaurant and the dishes, imagine how much they would lose out on if there were no social media initiatives in place! The opportunity cost of not engaging in social marketing is far greater than the cost that goes into such a program.

Although Comodo is a small, local restaurant, they managed to do something innovative, creative and successful. Social media marketing provides avenues down which anyone can create a viral sensation out of their business.

Do you know of any other small businesses that have used social media to create a viral effect? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!