“Like” Your Local Jeweler

For independent jewelers like Dan Gordon, Twitter and Facebook are shiny new toys that help get consumers fired up about jewelry and diamonds on Valentine’s Day and beyond.

These ladies joined Samuel Gordon Jewelers’ Friendzy promotional event, through which friends receive discounts for referring one another.

Ever since the late 1940s, when it occurred to a clever copywriter working for De Beers that “A Diamond Is Forever,” young men in love have been walking into jewelry stores to buy diamond rings that will change their lives.

One such destination is Samuel Gordon Jewelers, established in 1904 in Oklahoma City, where the marriage-minded have a very good chance of meeting 39-year-old company president Dan Gordon. If they have never laid eyes on Gordon, there is a very good chance that they “know” this fourth-generation jeweler through Twitter or Facebook, venues that are to young jewelers what country clubs, golf courses, and the Rotary Club were to jewelers of past generations: places to see and be seen.

“Having a Facebook page, having a Twitter account: We’re all turning into our own media machines,” says Gordon, a tech enthusiast who first engaged customers with a Today show-like wedding contest on the company’s website back in 2004. “For jewelers, there’s so much to pull people in, to engage them.” Read more at www.portfolio.com