Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars is a nine year old, fast-growing franchise serving high quality, healthier pizzas through more than 50 stores across the Eastern Seaboard.

Keep Left PR was briefed to devise a social media program that would support the new website development, integrate with the online loyalty program and allow the business to engage and interact with its customers online.

Crust’s presence on social media channels was launched through Twitter and Facebook, using a ‘give to get’ strategy, which involved using attractive competitions and giveaways to recruit an online audience.

Once a critical mass was established, a series of engagement campaigns were released.

Campaign 1: Crust Free Pizza Friday: Every Friday, Crust’s Twitter followers were asked to tweet I’m entering to win #CrustFreePizzaFriday to go in the draw to win five free pizzas. The campaign is effective in driving recruitment of followers with the number of entries increasing each week and the competition is constantly the most popular trending topic on Twitter every Friday morning. The main aim of this competition is using widespread brand advocacy to drive followers to think about pizza prior to the weekend.

Campaign 2: Crust Pizza Party: Facebook users were invited to become a fan of Crust pizza and enter to win a free pizza party for 20 friends hosted by Crust’s head creative chef, Peter Augoustis. This campaign was effective in engaging the Facebook fans and providing strong content once the competition had taken place, profiling the winner and some great images of the party.

This strategy has recruited more than 4,000 Facebook ‘likes’ (fans) and over 3,000 Twitter followers. Crust’s customers immediately began to engage with the brand online. The most talked about topic was the competitions (66 percent), demonstrating high level engagement through these methods. Seventy-nine per cent of comments on Twitter were directed at the official @Crust_Pizza handle indicating broad awareness and engagement with the official online presence.

Each week the number of entries for Free Pizza Friday increased on average by 50 per cent and the competition was so popular it has been continued to date, now attracting over 500 entries per week.

The dos and don’ts of social media

• Do have a constant supply of content to share with your audience that is relevant and insightful
• Do make sure a strategy is put in place before embarking on a social media program
• Do have an issues management plan
• Don’t mix your personal profile with a business profile – this can create a wrong impression of the brand to customers
• Don’t bombard followers with private messages, this will only create negativity
• Don’t ignore difficult questions or complaints about the business, this is what the issues management plan is for
• Don’t delete negative commentary or posts unless it is defamatory or offensive and make it clear that this is your policy