Scottsdale Airpark News: Social Media Profiles: China Mist

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Aug 4th, 2009 | Comments

China Mist Pure
Kiley Biggins, China Mist Brands
Photos by Seymour & Brody Photography Studios

This year, we launched China Mist Pure Bottled Organic Teas, six varieties of pure natural flavors. We took the same great fresh-brewed tea you find in your favorite restaurants, resorts and upscale grocery stores and put it in a contemporary hourglass-shaped bottle.

This isn’t your average bottled tea, and we just couldn’t enlist average marketing avenues to promote it. We needed a new kind of plan, so we plunged into the social-marketing world with a Facebook page and Twitter account. To date, we have 250 fans on Facebook.com and 1,391 followers on Twitter.com.

When we decided to tackle social marketing, we knew we’d need professional assistance. To devise a strategy and execution plan, we enlisted the help of Kevin Spidel of Activating Word of Mouth.

Take It to the Tweeple
Kevin sat down with me and China Mist Brands Co-founder John S Martinson many times to teach us a whole new language. We learned about Twitter, tweeps, re-tweeting and all kinds of important Twitter-y words that helped us promote our product. Getting information out by word-of-mouth advertising is considered one of the most viable sources for product information.

The China Mist Brands Facebook page shares news about China Mist Pure. Posts include new locations where the bottles can be purchased, free sa mpling events, photos of the marketing materials for China Mist Pure in Dubai, links to online voting for the bottled teas and much more.

With these outlets, we took that word-of-mouth advertising and amplified it by allowing it to be read online and spread more rapidly. As tweeters (people who post messages on Twitter.com) would engage in communication about the organic teas, we found an entire network of people who are avid China Mist Pure fans. They post photos, or Twitpics, of places they are drinking the teas as well as stores where the bottled teas can be found. Some of the followers liked the bottles so much they found ways to reuse them. We saw a Twitpic from a follower who reused her bottles as flower vases, and one who created a beautiful wind chime from the glass bottles.

Influential Friends
We hosted a TweetUp (a meet-up for our Twitter followers) to tour our manufacturing plant, visit with us and meet everyone face-to-face. We had about a dozen China Mist “influencers” attend. We refer to tweeters who are diehard fans of ours as “influencers” because of the influence they’re giving the community about our brand and products. Their tweets (micro-blogs) about China Mist help influence people to get out there and try the product, attend a sampling event at a grocery store and even dine at particular restaurants where China Mist Pure is served.

The reality is these influencers are fans of China Mist who attended the TweetUp to gain more knowledge of the brand they love: more info to tweet, more TwitPics to post, more positive word-of-mouth advertising to spread on Twitter.

Kiley Biggins is marketing manager at China Mist Brands, 7435 E. Tierra Buena Lane, Scottsdale. The iced-tea specialists manufacture and distribute specialty iced teas and hot teas to the foodservice and retail industries. More: www.chinamist.com; twitter.com/ChinaMistTea.