Sophomores Pat Larkin, Sara Londo and David Zosel have set out to help local businesses use social media with their entrepreneurship assignment they call The Lemon Network.
The three students aim to help manage local companies’ social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to help the companies get more buzz.
“We want to promote local businesses to St. Thomas students,” Zosel said. “We figured since we know that crowd, we can target that crowd.”
Though they haven’t sealed an ideal first client yet, Zosel said they are working on the social media sites for two car dealerships, a couple car washes, a liquor store and a sports store.
Zosel said the group is negotiating with Trotter’s Café, located just a couple blocks from campus on Cleveland Avenue.
“If it snows out, and hopefully there’s lots of snow, we’ll have a snowman making contest,” Zosel said. “Everybody is going to be asked to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ (Trotter’s) on Twitter, and the winner with the best snowman gets a free meal on The Lemon Network.”
The class group was expected to think of a business idea for their 200-level entrepreneurship in an assignment called the Lemonade Stand. The student-created businesses are required to include lemons somehow and produce revenue at the end of the semester.
“Growing up in a world where social media has changed the way you get news or hear about things, we really felt that we could connect with that,” Londo said.
Associate professor of entrepreneurship Alec Johnson believes The Lemon Network is doing well with the class project and said the idea is a hard one to tackle in the half-semester allowed for the work.
“I hope they accomplish inspiration to pursue whatever dreams they have, an understanding that they can create their own path, and to have confidence in choosing it,” Johnson said.
Larkin said the proudest moment of the entrepreneurship endeavor was getting it from paper to the web.
“My biggest (accomplishment) is just getting this business up and going,” Larkin said. “I’m looking forward to what the next step, trying to find a client.”
Laura Landvik can be reached at land7854@stthomas.edu.