This is going to be long so just bare with me, I'll try for some sparknotes at the end.
Basically I've wanted a camera for quite a long time, and I'm actually decent at photography from using other people's cameras (portfolio:
http://bit.ly/m6g1fm). It's high time I got my own though, and I decided to get myself a camera early this summer. Unlike normal people however, I have a habit of thinking around conventional means of getting a camera like "how can I make money to buy a camera", and thinking more along the lines of "what can I do to have them give me a camera for free?" and this is what I came up with:
There is a local family owned camera shop that I'm focusing on, called Kerrisdale Cameras (KC). Like most small, local, and family owned businesses they do not have much if any social media presence. This is the same case across the competition board, with none of the 10 local shops all not having anything on Twitter or Facebook. I believe this is an untapped opportunity for KC to establish an online presence, which would: drive sales, provide improved customer interaction and customer relationship management, and create an effective and simple avenue for focused, targeted promotion.
The best part is that this is all free to establish and maintain for KC. Now how this deal will work, is that I will establish and maintain (for 6 weeks) a Facebook page and a Twitter account for KC. I will also set certain "success" benchmarks that if reached, I get compensation. For example, if I reach 300 Facebook fans
or Twitter Followers I would get a T2i, if I reach
both 300 Facebook fans
and 300 Twitter Followers I would get a Canon 7D.
The catch is that
I only get compensated if I reach those benchmarks. If I don't, then the shop gets what I did for free. Why do I think this is a good deal for me? Of course it is a bit of a gamble, but this makes it risk-free for the shop to say yes, and forces me to get creative and work towards a specific goal. What happens to all my work if I don't succeed you say? Well I wouldn't get the camera, but I would take it as a learning experience — just by taking this on I would learn many lessons about how to utilize social media, and how to run a customer relationship management model online.
The Questions
1) Am I nuts? Does this make sense, and how do you think it'll work?
2) If your local camera shop had Twitter and Facebook, how would you expect it to operate? What sort of services and features would you like offered through those mediums?
3) For what purposes would you follow the Twitter account, or Facebook Page?
4) Any other suggestions?
Sparknotes I'm offering to set up and manage Facebook and Twitter pages for my local camera shop for free. The deal is, if I get 300 fans/followers I get a camera. If I don't reach it I'll just take it as a learning experience and give my services to the shop for free, thus making it risk free for the shop.
Also it'd be great if any shop owners on here (ski and other shops included) could give me feedback; how would you react if someone came into your shop and proposed a similar deal?
