Last week, the Asheville contingent of corecubed waited with bated breath for an announcement of, for our area, epic proportions. As Beer City, USA, we love our brews, and over the last year the New Belgium Brewing Company, maker of the popular Fat Tire brew and ranked consistently in the top 3 among craft brewers, has been narrowing down the field to figure out where to build their East Coast operations. When City Council let slip that there would be a big announcement on Thursday, local social media went wild!

One local blogger and avid Twitter user took to the streets trying to find actual evidence that an old stockyard would be the site for New Belgium.

He then followed up with tantalizing tweets from the Chamber of Commerce’s economic development meeting.

All of which led to a grand announcement that, yes, Asheville would be the East Coast home for New Belgium. How many “Going out to buy some Fat Tire to celebrate!” tweets did I see after all that build up? Dozens. Why? Four words: Intrigue, Excitement, & Pay Off.

The beauty of social media is its ability to rally people together around a common cause or idea; in other words, create buzz. Have a new product coming out soon? Introducing a new service line? Want to get some interest in an upcoming event? Here are a few ways to use social media to create some buzz:

• Use Twitter to drop hints about your upcoming news.
• Create a contest on your company blog. Think of a giveaway that relates to your upcoming news or event and encourage people to comment on the blog itself, post the blog on their Facebook pages or tweet about the contest on Twitter. Then, choose a random person who has commented, posted, or tweeted (or all of the above) to be the winner.
• Make it visual. Pinterest is the #3 social network right now, which means focusing on visuals is becoming more and more important. Breathe Magazine has been having an ongoing giveaway from one of their sponsors, Planet Shoes, on Pinterest. Click here to see the campaign. The graphics for each giveaway link back to a form for people to fill out to enter the contest. As an added bonus, as people on Pinterest repin the graphics, the contest reaches more people, thus getting more and more buzz.
• Use all your networks. No matter which social media site you’re using to gain buzz, using all your social networks to get the word out will give you a wider audience and increase intrigue.

Want to get some buzz going about your company? Contact the social media experts at corecubed and let us get the word out.