Local Donut Shop Grows to 60k Followers Overnight

One Good Tweet Was All it Took

The past few years, the conversation about social media marketing has changed dramatically. What was once considered a massive source of free owned media exposure for large brands has become, for the most part, just another paid media channel, thanks in large part to Facebook’s algorithm update last year.

That said, a story has been trending this week that shows there is still ample opportunity for owned social media to serve as a transformative channel (at least, for small local businesses).

A local donut shop in Texas saw a huge shift in its fortunes after a tweet was sent which said “𝗠𝘆 𝗱𝗮𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗮𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 😭.”

The gallery showed our hero and his empty store. It was honest, authentic, and told an engaging emotional story with a real human at its center. That emotional story generated enough pickup for the tweet to eventually be RT’d by Twitter’s official account — leading to the shop picking up 70,000 new followers online and rapidly selling out of donuts.

The story has since been covered by everyone from ABC, to Mashable, to USA Today, and Good Morning America, and is currently trending on LinkedIn.

The whole ordeal just goes to show the power of a relatable, emotional story for a brand — even one that doesn’t have a huge, Hollywood budget.