A "wingman” is an old Air Force slang expression. He’s the buddy you bring with you to a bar who’s adept at meeting women. He gets the conversations started for you if you happen to be shy or awkward around members of the opposite sex. Sometimes, he whispers tips in your ear on what to do next.
Thomas Edwards Jr. was in an Austin singles bar during the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) multimedia festival. Like many of us have experienced, he had hit one of those plateaus in life when you wonder about what you should do next.
At that moment, a guy down the bar who was admiring an attractive young woman turned to his friend and asked, “Dude, can you be my wingman?”
It’s not clear what happened that night for the young man who stated the line. But what is certain is that it became a watershed moment in Edwards’ life. Before the night was over, he had registered The Professional Wingman URL and quickly became the first dating coach.
Naturally, social media became a vital component of how he became known and grew his unique idea into a successful small business. In his case, the tool that would make the difference was a YouTube clip. Let me back up for a second...
After registering the site, Edwards started getting active on the social networks with a blog and with other popular social tools. He started demonstrating his knowledge and expertise on the issue of dating.
His focus wasn’t like the traditional online dating sites who mostly match people up for a first date. Edwards focused on what happened after the first date.
Pepsi, whose online marketing efforts in recent years have been known for their edginess, caused his big break.
In this case, Pepsi managed to offend many people with a mobile messaging campaign supporting an energy drink called "Amp UP Before You Score."
Edwards could see why it was offensive, but he took a different viewpoint.
He argued that people should ease up a bit and enjoy the humor. He recalled, “Basically, it was a funny cheat sheet of how you can ‘score’ with ladies of certain personality types.”
He then posted a YouTube video defending the Pepsi. When the Wall Street Journal picked up on the Pepsi controversy, Edwards was quoted in the article as Pepsi’s sole defender.
The brief mention generated a surge in inquiries and requests for Edwards’ consulting services. The Professional Wingman as a viable new business was on its way.
The Journal mention elevated Edwards to the short list of people editors would contact when any dating-related issue was in the news. He has been interviewed well over a dozen times and has favorably been covered on CNN and in Reuters.
Edwards’s consulting service has just passed its second birthday. It has grown to a four-person organization. He is active in all the popular social media sites including Twitter—where I met him, Facebook, blogging and YouTube.
He estimates that social media accounts for 20 percent of new business, more if you count the word-of-mouth endorsements that come in, and more still if you take into account that traditional media would never know he existed if it had not been for a three-minute forty-five second video that has been viewed a mere 201 times as of this writing.
There’s another aspect to this story, that seems to me, would not be possible without social media. Edwards is more of a motivational coach than the founder of other online dating services. He has taken self-improvement and brought it into a new sector where there is clearly a demand.
A decade ago, this would not have been possible. The Professional Wingman would have needed a significant advertising and marketing budget to get going in a national marketplace.
Now, you can take a good idea and turn it into a profitable undertaking with a tweet, a Facebook post and a brief-and-free YouTube post.
web hosting seo experts search engine marketing sem experts search engine optimization
No comments:
Post a Comment