I have made my career in online customer acquisition, loyalty and retention for large enterpises.  Dealing with budgets of $1 million and mass communication channels with large audiences.  In the last 2 years when OI have been working on social media analytics, the solutions have also been pretty universally targeted to the mass online channels and meaningful metrics seem to be only available with a critical mass of consumer comments.  This experience has lead me to the central question:  Do the tactics and methodologies for online marketing social media engagement and measurement scale down?

My guess is that it does.  About a year ago I started working with Bruce Wagg on his phenomenal Oakland Real Estate business. We sat down for about three hours and discussed the outline of an SEO, content and social media strategy for his East Bay real estate business. Bruce proved to be an apt pupil, because from the humble beginnings of that project, he now enjoys very favorable placement on the highest volume relevant searches and has terrific compelling content online.  I can't take any credit for Bruce's success, but pretty much every thing Bruce has done with his site and electronic channels is contemplated in that strategy session a year ago. 

So now I want to try something new.  A new lounge is opening up in the space occupied by the former Amber.  With a cool new concept and a remoelling.  This new club should be a welcome and popular addition the scene in San Francisco.  Over the next 6 months, I am going to track the online mementum of the club and in the process test out the applicability of social media monitoring tools to help guide the effort.

The grand opening is this Friday January 15, 2010.  We'll see where it goes from there.  To kick it off here is a review that I wrote for Yelp.