Innovative small businesses and social networks: a match made in heaven

The explosion of Internet use in Turkey and its enormous young population -- dwarfing many European nations’ populations -- has pushed Turkey up to the third largest user of Facebook in the world, behind only the United States and the United Kingdom. The use of other networks like Twitter, where users send out short “tweets” or messages into cyberspace for their friends, or the professional pseudo-resumé and profile maker LinkedIn is also gaining popularity, as social networking becomes deeply embedded in everyday life in Turkey.

Large businesses in Turkey are quickly grasping the usefulness of social networking, with giants like the Hilton hotels in İstanbul using tools such as Facebook to “share news, promotions and product information about our hotels with our customers, old and current employees, and the media,” as Marketing and Public Relations Manager Burcu Yatmazoğlu of the İstanbul cluster of Hilton hotels said. Noting that their Facebook fan page -- a page with information about the hotels and promotions – had gathered 4,800 fans in the span of only two months, she noted that although it was too early to say whether Facebook had amounted to any monetary gain, the number of phone calls and comments coming to the hotels after posting a message showed that it was likely that it would create an increase in customers and therefore income.

Although businesses similar in size to the Hilton group are widespread in social networking sites -- Starbucks is Facebook’s eighth most populated fan page, with over 5 million fans, and threatening to overtake actress Megan Fox’s page for seventh place -- it shines when it comes to unorthodox small businesses with innovative ideas looking to form a closer relationship with their customers.

Hülya Bereket is one of the social network pioneers of the Turkish small business world. After becoming frustrated with the lack of personalized gifts for her wedding guests in 2008 and being forced to order from across the Atlantic, she took her extensive marketing experience and started up Caramel İstanbul (www.caramelistanbul.com). With the co-founder of Caramel, Davut Köse, Bereket started what is arguably Turkey’s first Web-based personalized gift ordering store for special occasions. In a country where online shopping has only recently become mainstream, having no bricks-and-mortar store is a risk for customers unwilling to jump the gun for items they can’t see or feel on the Internet. Bereket, however, has achieved all this and more as a small business, thanks to social networks.

“We started our business in September, and in the first 10 days we had over 500 fans on our Facebook page. We’re only a four-month-old brand, but through word-of-mouth marketing avenues like Facebook, we’ve grown tremendously,” said Bereket. Caramel İstanbul’s fan page now hosts more than 800 fans and is frequently updated with new products and comments by users. Noting that they have used targeted advertisements on Facebook, Bereket noted that a fan page brings customers closer to the brand, much more than advertisements can.

“If people are, of their own volition, becoming your fans on social networking sites, this means they are adopting your brand and internalizing it, therefore spreading the name of your brand by word of mouth. This allows you to reach a much wider network of people much more effectively,” said Bereket. Noting that word-of-mouth advertising is their focus, Bereket highlighted that sometimes traditional marketing is not the way to go: “Facebook never had any television advertisements, but yet everyone knows about it -- it spread by word of mouth.”

Tasty propositions

Ansel Mullins, Yigal Schleifer and Jonathan Lewis, like Bereket, filled another void: a void involving İstanbul’s food. These two Americans and a documentary photographer hailing from Wales recognized the lack of information on dining in İstanbul -- especially in English and catering to expatriates -- and decided to start the İstanbul Eats blog (www.istanbuleats.com). The now-famous blog hosts reviews of many of the smaller and slightly hidden jewels of this bi-continental city for hungry expats and citizens alike. In Lewis’s words: “We started off as three expats all with a love for Turkish food. We enjoy the small, family-run businesses because those are the places we used to go to when we were growing up.”

Social networking, however, is turning this “hobby of love” into a small business. After attracting more than 500 fans on Facebook within a year and with a 1,400-person newsletter list (“People want to be told these things,” says Lewis), Lewis and his partners are transforming a simple blog into something that can feed their own indulgences in Turkish cuisine.

While currently in metamorphosis, İstanbul Eats plans to create a business side to their blog. “We will be starting culinary tours of İstanbul and are currently collecting a recipe each from the restaurants featured on our site to make into a book. We’ll also be holding food-based events as well. At the moment, we’re building contacts through social networks whilst we develop our business strategy,” said Lewis. Adding that many foreigners coming to the city temporarily regularly send the İstanbul Eats crew emails asking them for food recommendations, Lewis revealed that there is a Turkish site currently in the works.

Artists networking

Donutstore is a shop specializing in materials for graffiti artists and the official distributor of one of the sector’s leading spray paint brand: the Spain-based Montana Colors. The store lacks a Web site and instead has a MySpace page along with a Facebook fan page littered with videos and pictures of graffiti artists showing the world their art. A representative from Donutstore noted that they do not see social networking as a marketing tool but rather as a tool for the owners dedicated to this art form to support it. “People send us pictures and videos of their work, and we post them on our Facebook page. This is how we use social networking. We use it as a tool to get in touch with university students and artists and have them send us their work,” said a representative from the store.