Why Maewyn's just might make it -- with the aid of social networking

Recently, a guest post on the Freakonomics blog written by economist/Harvard professor Ed Glaeser pretty much writes a review of his own book, "Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier." That greatest invention, of course, being the city.

Here's an excerpt from the post, explaining what makes cities work:

Cities are people, not structures. All the subsidized building in the world is never going to bring back a single Rustbelt burg. Cities only succeed if they have enough smart, entrepreneurial people. The best predictor of which older, colder cities came back from the doldrums of the 1970s is the share of their citizens with college degrees in 1970. Boston reinvented itself by connecting scientists, like the decidedly freaky Itzhak Bentov (who invented both diet spaghetti and the steerable catheter) with entrepreneurs, like the decidedly un-freaky John Abele (who turned Boston Scientific into an innovation powerhouse). Minneapolis is the wealthiest Midwestern metro area because its smart people make smart companies like Target and Medtronic. Being near smart people matters: people's wages typically rise by about 8 percent as the share of their fellow urbanites with college degrees goes up by 10 percentage points.

OK, so this particular post isn't so much going to discuss the education level of people in the city, but rather the entrepreneurial mind of one person in the city and his restaurant, and how he's using that entrepreneurial mind to stay competitive by using people, not his structure, to stay in business. (Like I mentioned earlier, I just use the general Freakomics logic I get from the posts and generously twist it to apply it to everyday life).

Maewyn's opened about a year ago, filling the vacancy left by the Harp & Fiddle at 110 N. George St. I'm not going to review the taste of the food or the arguable aura of Irish-ness because that's been done before by a couple of other YDR staffers and that's not why I'm writing this anyway.

Rather, I'm going to take a look at what Maewyn's is doing from an entrepreneurial and competitive, outside-the-restaurant standpoint and why it's taking the right steps to attract people to and through its doors.

This past Sunday and Monday, the Daily Record/Sunday News ran a two-part series comparing downtown York vs. downtown Lancaster. In a nutshell, the series explores what Lancaster is doing right and why York isn't yet at the same level as its cross-river counterpart.

The general manager of Maewyn's, though, seems to get it. Here's an excerpt from the second part of the series:

That grassroots enthusiasm was what attracted Paul Turner to the York area. A New Jersey native, Turner turned an internship with the Walt Disney World Resort into a management job out of school, but after reading a story in Forbes magazine that listed the York/Lancaster area as one of the best places for young professionals, he decided to move north.

Three months ago he landed a job as general manager at Maewyn's on North George Street in York.

One of his first moves at Maewyn's was to begin tracking the demographics of the restaurant and pub's Facebook followers.

About 65 percent of people who visit Maewyn's are from Harrisburg or Lancaster, not York County. That should be two to one local residents, he said. Turner blames the stigma that York garnered during the race riots in 1969. He's been here only three months, but he hears about that part of the city's history all the time.

"I've been to Lancaster. It's a cool area," Turner said. "Everyone is walking out downtown, and I heard that was a really bad place just three or four years ago. I don't know why that can't happen here."

Whether people will be walking out around downtown York in Lancaster-like numbers anytime soon is debatable, but the part Turner seems to be doing is right is the social networking. Not only does he have a Facebook fan page that as of writing this had 930-some "likes", and not only does he utilize it to track the demographics of his customers (which is brilliant), but he's one of the surprisingly few businesses that regularly updates its fan page (White Rose does not).

Social networking, while relatively still in its early stages, is a marketing tool some companies seem to understand more than others. And the ones that do understand it are the ones capitalizing on the younger crowd and their wallets. Simply having a Facebook fan page isn't enough -- it needs to be updated oh-so-frequently where a regular Facebook user will regularly see it on his or her news feed, reminding that user of food and drink specials or of special events like bands coming to perform at the bar.

The same goes with using Twitter, which Maewyn's also does a good job of Tweeting those specials on a regular basis.

As more and more younger people carry iPhones and Droids, pretty much any free moment they have goes to checking Facebook or Twitter. They could be standing in line at a Starbucks, pull out their phones for 30 seconds and see Maewyn's come up on their news feed and know that "this Friday is 'Pour Your Own Pint' which means one thing: FREE GUINNESS from 5-7pm!".

If we can learn anything from the York vs. Lancaster series, it's not so much the restaurant or bar in York, but the lack of people going there that's killing business. Remember the Freakonomics logic I'm going by and that Harvard economist's line of "cities are people, not structures."

Yeah, Maewyn's is a pretty nice place for dinner or a drink, but those kilts and cozy fireplaces won't set it apart enough from the other bars around downtown. It needs the people to keep the business going, and Turner's use of social networking to promote Maewyn's puts him on the right track to keep his business relevant, profitable -- and, most importantly, open.

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In all fairness, I could have written an almost identical blog post using Bistro 19, because they do a great job of social networking just like Maewyn's. I only picked Maewyn's to write about because a friend took me there for wings and beer earlier this week for my birthday. Later, I looked up a few things about a "ghost wing" eating contest they're putting on this summer (yes, I fully intend on participating and getting my photo on the wall) and noticed they do a fantastic job of social networking.

That's not to say other downtown bars don't use Facebook or Twitter. Like I wrote earlier, White Rose has a Facebook fan page, but there's not a ton of info on it that gets out regular updates.

And here's a recent Tweet from one of my favorite York bars, Cobblestones: "We've dusted off our Twitter Account. We promise to bring you all the latest special updates and such via tweets for you Twitter Heads! ; )" They've made one Tweet since, marking just their fourth in 2011. Dusting off doesn't mean much if you're just going to let the dust keep collecting again.

(UPDATE: White Rose has a group page, which seems to have a pretty good following and gets out some good info. And Cobblestones has a good following on its fan page. Apologies for the confusion.)