Lightburn

Photo via Streetza

With nearly 1000 FourSquare checkins AJ Bombers (AJbombers.com) is dominating the social media game in Milwaukee. Milwaukee’s king of the burger has embraced and utilized social media like few others have, and they have received well-deserved recognition from The Wall Street Journal and CNN (1:02 into the video) because of it.

Aside from using FourSquare like a pro, they’ve got a huge following on Twitter. @AJBombers has more than 2100 followers, which is a respectable follower count for Milwaukee’s small market.  The interesting stat about their Twitter usage is their use of @reply messages. According to TweetStats, 63% of Aj Bombers tweets are @replies, which is a very high percentage, and it could be off-putting to some potential followers. However, if you can cut through the heap of reply messages and actually follow them, you will be rewarded with a sense of being part of a community; and one of the best things they do is interact with the burger-loving community. Their customer engagement level is through the roof.

You Get What You Give.

Sure it looks like AJ Bombers sends 100’s of @replies to random people; but that’s how you build a community such as theirs. Less than 12 hours after The Wall Street Journal published their article, AJ Bombers received over 200 @reply messages from their loyal followers and even a heartfelt message from a Twitter superstar, Tim Ferriss (@tferriss). It’s publicity like this that can give the priceless, and free, attention that businesses need to flourish.

Ok, So Which Social Media Expert Did They Hire?

AJ Bombers must have a pretty talented Social Media Expert, Guru, or Specialist behind this. Right? Wrong. They are responsible for their own results. Not one expert consultant helped them with their social media campaigns.  They deserve a round of applause.  I am so happy to see a company do this on their own. Sure, some companies may need some advice on setting up the various accounts. They may even need a few example Tweets or Facebook posts to see how it’s done. But ultimately, the real content and hard work should come from inside the company. There is no self-proclaimed “Social Media Expert” that can do as good of a job as someone who is with the company every day.

Congrats AJ Bombers! It is great to see a local business get the attention they deserve for all of their hard work towards building a better burger community.

I have to give proper respect to some of the original social media mavens in Milwaukee, StreetzaPizza and BlatzLiquor. Both have done a fantastic job embracing the online community and really impacting their own businesses. They have received national media coverage and I hope they continue to thrive and build their communities.