Background: I’m a middle aged mom. Currently, I don’t work outside the home, due to a series of family needs, but my professional background is food service, sales and marketing, and media.
Two of our local grocery stores were acquired by a small chain out of Alabama somewhat recently. The company operates about a dozen stores in two states. I shop at the 2 local branches a lot - one is smaller, but very convenient, and the service there is very good. The larger outlet offers more variety, and is next door to the bank, so I stop in there at least 2-3 times per month. Prices are excellent compared to the other local grocers.
I’m a cook, a marketer, and a mom on a budget. I use social media. And I notice that my favorite grocery stores have almost zero social media presence. They don’t engage their audience with advertising or social media or their website. I’m not bragging, but I could help fix that. Seriously. (“Here’s what’s on sale this week. Here’s a great recipe for your family on a budget.” “Organic and vegetarian? Check out these new products!” “In a hurry? Our deli can feed your family these favorites - cheaper than the drive through! With vegetables!”) It’s a niche job, but it doesn’t seem to exist within this chain. And it should.
Would you consider the audacious step of sending a letter to corporate, describing the job they should create, and nominating yourself as the woman who can do it?
This isn’t really an “employee” type of job. It’s a local grocery store – they’re not going to have an office for you to sit in. It’s also not a role that lends itself to a full-time schedule (only so many tweets you can make in an 8-hour period before people block you). Sounds more like a case for selling your services as a social media consultant/contractor. Similar to a website designer, for example. To succeed in this field, I expect you’d need to have a history of social media advocacy – a successful blog, a strong existing social media presence, a portfolio of work you’ve done for others, a Youtube channel wouldn’t hurt. It’s also very difficult to pull this kind of work off without sounding like a shill.
Maybe not a letter. Most business communicating is done via email, followed up with a phone call.
Rather than just “writing to corporate”, you want to find someone specific to try and set up a meeting. Relatively senior such that they can actually allocate budget to your proposal.
But otherwise, yeah. There is no downside to taking audacious steps to try and land a job you are interested in.
You may have to follow up multiple times (a general rule is 10 “touches” to close a sale). My general rule is that it’s ok to continue to follow up until someone specifically says “no”. Particularly because at the corporate level, even if there is interest, there is often timing around budget and other projects and whatnot.
All of the negatives are reasons that I’m asking here. The corporate office is 8 hours away, by car, and about the same time by air (given the TSA clearance time, layovers, etc.) It’s a job that I could do well, with minimal supervision, and I could make the position and salary pay for itself. But is there any realistic avenue for convincing a company to make the investment? Or am I just indulging in a silly idea?
Another option would be to just start a blog and begin doing this. Develop your own credibility, and audience, and then seek sponsors or advertisers. This would give you some sample work to show them as well, and give you a chance to test your ideas.
There is actually more to this job than just sending a bunch of Tweets. I would imagine much of the day is spent researching content to post on social media sites.
But otherwise you are correct. This is the sort of job one might position oneself as a contractor. And setting up a social media presence would be important to establishing credibility.
That is quite my assumption. The job itself, as I see it, would be creating an on-line presence, which the chain lacks, marketing their products, and directing customer complaints and feedback to a local level, and creating a report of trends from the customers for a corporate office. Perhaps (for the right amount of money) designing ad campaigns. Nothing that requires a 9-5 office job in Alabama. A contractor position. (The company has doubled in size in 2 years. They actually have a good growth strategy, I think. They simply haven’t addressed this particular corner of their market.)
We have a fairly large regional grocery chain which has absolutely no social media presence other than a fan site which posts their weekly circular. The chain deliberately does this because their way of creating buzz is through word of mouth (seriously, whenever a store opens everybody living within that X-mile radius knows it). They’re known for a couple of things which the corporate chains in my area haven’t, and can’t truly touch.
That said, I think your idea here is probably the best scenario unless your chain runs along the same lines as I just described.
What msmith537 said. I do know companies which have people doing that job in-house as part of their “public relations” teams and others which subcontract (like any other form of publicity, after all).
This is weird…my business partner has a good friend who owns a small grocery chain in Georgia. And they have no web presence. And just last week we were talking about me proposing myself as the web & social media guru for their chain. I have 20 years of web experience and some dabbling in social media. We haven’t come up with a proposal yet, but we don’t see it being terribly lucrative. Just some scratch with a promise of X hours per week.
I don’t see why you couldn’t propose a plan and send it to corporate. If you look at the Aldi site that’s all they have - just some info and recipes. No reason why every store can’t have this. I say go for it!
You may be a whiz on social media, but that is not what they are looking for.
They have a simple question: Can I make more money WITH this person than WITHOUT this person?
Can you read a business proposal? Do you know what one is?
Do you know what their plans are to grow the business?
Do you know that they WANT to grow the business?
Saying their “social media presence” sucks is not a business plan.
Can you prove that even having “social media presence” will benefit the business? Given that they even want a “social media presence”, what does that have to do with YOU?
You’ve got several dots to connect before you write that email, followed by a business letter.
I think this is a good idea - it’s totally worth asking. All they can do is say no, and then you’re out a bit of time that you spent thinking about it and putting a proposal together, but nothing more. They may come around later, too, even if they’re not keen right now.
I agree with others that this is more of a freelance/contractor job (at least to start with) - that also might make it more attractive to them, since their commitment is less. Perhaps they could hire you on a trial basis for X months (maybe 6 months?) and see if it makes a difference, before making a long-term commitment?
I’d have a think about how you phrase your proposal - you obviously want to show them that you can help them, and that this will make them more money than you will cost. But you need to have a good idea of how much time this will really take you, and so how much you need to charge them, so you’re not losing out on the deal either. It might well take more time than you expect it to.
But I think it’s definitely worth doing, if you can put together some sensible numbers and they work out. It’ll give you experience in a new field and help them out - the worst that can happen from you asking is that they say “thanks but no thanks”, right? And it may be that they’ve been thinking of hiring someone to do something like this for a while, but aren’t sure where to start/haven’t found the time. So your proposal might be just what they need. Do it! Good luck!