SmartBlog’s Megan Conniff has published an interview with David Rutkauskas, the founder, president and CEO of Beautiful Brands International, who is responsible for the successful launch of worldwide, franchised restaurant brands, including Camille’s Sidewalk Café and FreshBerry Frozen Yogurt Cafe.
Rutkauskas reports that, in the last 90 days, Freshberry has increased its Twitter followers from 750 to more than 9,000, while Camille’s follower count has increased from 900 with Camille’s to currently more than 12,000. With Facebook and Twitter alone, FreshBerry and Camille’s now has potential digital connection with more than 45,000 consumers.
More interestingly, the brands’ engagement and Web mentions have grown from less than 1,400 per month to more than 21,000 digital mentions, including Retweets, @mentions, Facebook posts and Web mentions in the same period. Rutkauskas equates this with massive success in store openings and local store marketing.
The company recently leveraged its new social network to when the Orlando Sentinel ran a poll asking readers “Where do you plan to buy your next cup of frozen yogurt?” In spite of having just opened its first outlet in Orlando, and in spite of competition from established local and national brands, Freshberry was able to leverage its social network to top the poll–simply by reaching out and asking them to vote.
