How To Grow Social Media Community With Limited Budget For Small Business? - Just Climb, Hong Kong

I see a lot of questions by Marketers on Digital Marketing discussion board/forum on "how to grow social media community with limited budget for small business?".  There aren a lot of case study on big brands in growing social media community where these brands have marketing budget to "buy" the initial community base, create content, and do larger scale interactive campaigns.  I can't find much example or best practices for small business with limited budget.  

I came across this campaign at a climbing gym in Hong Kong call Just Climb.  This is a perfect example of doing something fun and interactive that your target customers would participate because it is cool, relevant and fun that they will be happy to spread the word among their friends like them (this is viral using your customer to find more target customers).  A little competition with incentive is always the nugget to give a little motivation for people to participate.  Incentive doesn't have to be expensive but it has to be relevant and valuable to your target customers.  How does this tie to growing social media base?  Use social media as a platform to enter the competition!  Give them a way to spread the word.  Once these people find your company/brand cool and fun, they will naturally be a fan.

For Just Climb,

• they joint a few other climbing gyms created a platform call, Climbio, for climbers to share climbing routes.  This is fun and make their customers have more fun climbing problems than what they set in the gym and something to bond climbers online - get them talking so they comes back frequently (=stickiness)

• then, they threw out a competition where anyone can enter a draw once for every 2 videos they post on Climbio, and anyone can get a chance to enter the draw once per 5 routes shared.  Not only does this drive participation on social media and this create content that the community values (=stickiness, interaction, content)

                                                           

• that's not it, to drive people to come to the gym more and get those who already come to the gym but hasn't join they FB, they give out a chance to enter the draw for every time they check in on FB when they come to the gym

•  What about prize?  sponsored equipments, gym pass of participated climbing gyms for 1 month or day passes

Now Climbio has less than 500 likes and Just Climb as about 4500 likes.  Let see how many likes this competition can bring Climbio and Just Climb.