Guest Blog: America's First Viral Restaurant: Kogi

Jamie Varon spends her days writing on her blog, intersected. Intersected is that place where work, love, and life all meet and you wonder, “Where the hell do I go from here?” She is also currently looking for a job (any takers?) and resides in the Bay Area. Her goal is to one day achieve world domination through her blog, but for now she’ll settle for a decent readership. Jamie is a writer, a marketer, a graphic designer, and on her good days, a comedian.

By now, I think most of us have heard about Kogi BBQ. It‘s been said to be “America’s first viral restaurant” because the Korean BBQ taco truck tweets where it will be headed to in LA and hundreds of people show up at the location they post on Twitter. It’s buzz and viral marketing at its best and even Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was impressed at how the taco truck had utilized his micro-blogging platform. What’s interesting about this company, beyond their “buzziness”, is that there are two very fundamental things to learn from them in regards to how small businesses can utilize social media.

1. There is no right or wrong way to use social media

No one could have predicted that Kogi was going to splash onto the social media scene and become as successful as they have. I’m sure many people would have thought Kogi’s idea was ridiculous: “You want to use Twitter to do what!? To tell people where you’ll truck will be? Yeah, like anyone will show up.” But now, it seems brilliantly simple. This mysterious and elusive taco truck can only be found through word of mouth; the Easter egg/scavenger hunt aspect of it only makes it more… cool. They utilized Twitter in a way that no one else had. And, that’s the essence of social media: make it work for you.

The internet and the landscape of social media has become intensely diverse that you’d be hard-pressed to find a niche that is not represented somewhere. For small businesses, that’s perfect for marketing your company. Find out where your niche is hanging out online and saturate that area. Be creative and mold what’s already available within social media into something that works for your business. Be inspired by what Kogi has done and how they have morphed a simple networking site into a legitimate cornerstone of what makes them successful.

2. Small or large business: there’s a place for you here

With over a million users on Twitter, Kogi isn’t attempting to reach all of them. Their audience is fairly narrow, because the only people that can visit the truck are the ones in the LA area. So, although Twitter far surpasses just the LA area, Kogi has found a way to reach their market within the broadness. They’ve found a voice within the interminable noise of millions of users. Small businesses can do that, even though social media can seem intimidating.

There’s a way for even the internet to feel local. There’s a way to shrink down the scope of social media, so you can have the “what a small world!” moments all the time.

Be creative. Be relevant. And find ways for social media to work for you.

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