Does Your Dry Cleaner Really Need To Be On Social Media?
Simon Veksner examines the Instagram account of his local convenience store.
Nowadays it seems everybody from your dry cleaner to your local fish & chip shop has a social media account, and they all want you to follow them.
Type “Follow us on Instagram” into Google and you get 887 million results.
Logically, if we followed every pet shop, petrol station and party planner that wanted us to, and ready every one of their posts, we wouldn’t have time to brush our teeth or go to the toilet.
Has it all gone too far?
The other day I was walking past my local convenience store, and I saw that even they have an Instagram account.
Now why in the hell would I follow my local convenience store? For news of their latest special offers on biscuits? A chance to win an icy pole?
Out of curiosity, I checked the account – fully prepared to unload a dump truck-sized load of cynicism onto them.
But as it turns out, I should ask if they stock humble pie. Because the Redfern Convenience Store, amazingly, has 7,182 followers.
The owner, Hazem Sedda, is clearly a natural community-builder. He loves taking pictures of his customers, and his customers love being in them.
@redfern_convenience_store
“These are my beautiful customers who are a part of my life,” runs the description at the top of his feed.
And the whole account is like that; shot through with a genuine warmth and sincerity.
But Hazem is also not afraid to deploy humour, frequently describing his business as “The Greatest Redfern Convenience Store on Earth.”
He’s also fabulously supportive of his fellow local traders, captioning this photo: “he owns the dock pub which is one of the best places to be in #redfern any night of the week!”
Okay, so the dude’s clearly a hipster, but Hazem can’t help what neighbourhood he’s in.
He’s worked in that same convenience store for 15 years, since he and his parents arrived in Australia from Palestine. For the first seven years, he worked 18 hour days. Now apparently he’s done well enough to be able to make several real estate investments. Good on him.
Friendliness, hard work, and a commitment to your community.
If you want to achieve success, isn’t that a model that every brand should be following, in every social channel?
P.S. here’s a picture of a girl eating pasta, from the Instagram account of my local pub.
564 likes.
- Simon Veksner is the founder of social media agency Hungry Beast
I could be wrong – but I think CBA did a content piece on Hazeem for their Australian of the Day campaign (or whatever it was), top bloke!
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The same question could be applied to 99% of business social media accounts.
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There’s been a lot of press coverage of Redfern Convenience Store, so in many respects I feel, “Good on him.”
However, he’s lost me as a customer. I’ve been going to that store regularly for 10 years, so I’d been loyal since long before Instagram was even a thing and always had a bit of a chat with Hazeem. It’s galling that I’ve never been customer of the day, and he even told me “you have to be very special for that”. So I haven’t been there in the past couple of months.
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Simon, this piece is not exactly informative. You raise a fair question. However your explanation and opinion is lost because all you did was stumble onto one, we may find, unusual local business. Your question as to the efficacy of social media for small business is valid and needs a better quantitative exclamation. Or are you simply playing a Simon Veksner PR game?
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“Does Your Dry Cleaner Really Need To Be On Social Media?”
Did you *need* to write this article?
If a local store wants to be on social media, and the founder of social media agency wants to spend/waste/invest their time writing a superficial article about it, thats fine. I want/I’d prefer more rigour and analysis. I’d like more of these opinion pieces to deliver on the expectations created by the headline – whether I need it or not.
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For crying out loud, chaps! Does every article – and this is an opinion column not a news story, remember – need to have a “quantitative explanation” and “more rigour and analysis”? Can’t some pieces just be entertaining?
Anyway, there IS a serious point in there. Which is that if you’re prepared to put time and love into your community, it pays back many times over.
Yes, Hazem has done exceptionally well. But so could anyone.
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“For crying out loud, chaps! Does every article – and this is an opinion column not a news story, remember – need to have a “quantitative explanation” and “more rigour and analysis”?
No, of course not. However there is very little empirical demonstration of ROI in these pages. A bit more would be good … subjectively. (He said and ready to be hoist with his own petard because he didn’t present a table of quantitive vs qualitative articles …)
“Can’t some pieces just be entertaining?”
Yes. and yours was.
“Anyway, there IS a serious point in there. Which is that if you’re prepared to put time and love into your community, it pays back many times over.”
Which is an opinion/anecdotal unless backed up with ROI evidence. And this is an opinion section for this august publication so, ipso facto, that’s all right them.
Yes, Hazem has done exceptionally well. But so could anyone.
Good on him. And good will to all 🙂
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“if you’re prepared to put time and love into your community, it pays back many times over.”
I couldn’t agree more. If you rock then your clients will market your business for you. Amazing restaurants do not spend money on marketing. (Time goes into social media, however that’s all they need…)
Condescending Corporate’s are being held to task, which is a good thing. Community is something that was driven out by corporate greed, however the futurists will tell you that it is going to make a very big comeback.
Middle men are not needed.
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@And there lies the science
“If you rock then your clients will market your business for you”
You speak an important truth.
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