Either way, this is a day to test the waters, see what buzz you can start and hopefully gain more attention by doing so. Here at The Dealio we are a daily deal company serving Southeast Idaho and we are also a digital marketing firm providing Social Media, Google PPC and other digital services for a variety of clients in Utah, Idaho and Texas. We wanted to join in on the April Fools hype. The town we are located in is Rexburg, Idaho. You will find most of the college kids complaining about the lack of food establishments here. There are plenty, but just not a lot of options. Well we run deals each day for most of the food establishments here and around Rexburg, so we wanted to start something big. We promote our deals through a text, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, our website and email subscription. Instagram has been one of best tools to use because majority of college and high school kids use Instagram. We created a picture announcing the approval of "In-n-Out" being built in Rexburg. We announced that the city has approved the lot and that it would be Idaho's first In-n-Out establishment. Well can you imagine what happened? Remember, on an average day we will get 25 to 40 likes on a picture. Well within an hour we had 140 likes on the picture and right now are sitting at 240 likes. We have also gained a lot of comments. Mostly people saying, is this April Fools, and so on. at first we would delete any comments from people who predicted it, so that it seemed legit. Eventually people starting tagging their friends, we have gained over 10 new followers from the area and caused a buzz. People were even taking screen shots of the post, reposting it, tagging us, asking if it was legit. We have heard from multiple people that the local high school was freaking out about it. College students were taking to twitter to spread the word, just to find out it was a joke. The local newspaper wrote and asked if this was legitimate. Our owner is a local here and knows a lot of the business owners, who were also starting to wonder. He has been getting texts all day making sure it was just a joke.
Now this is a pretty mean joke, people would KILL for an In-n-Out here, but we also made sure to pick an announcement that would be pretty far fetched. In-n-Out prides itself on its ability to be a crowd pleaser because it is limited. We all drool over the fact that we could have some if we visit the West Coast, Utah or Texas. But what we have learned from this is that it is ok to have some fun on April Fools Day and that potential good news travels fast.
Content has the ability to reach thousands of people and make an impact. The picture we shared (above) looks legit. With mock ups and blueprints, it seemed legit. The timing of when it would be built seemed realistic and people are always excited about new things or news. Being creative enough to create that content is important. We would LOVE all of our posts to get that type of hype, but that will not always happen. That is why we shake things up, that is why we joined the Prank Day hype. And although In-n-Out is not coming, we gained from this fun little prank.
-Curtis
