At 11:02 PM Sunday night, Arizona time (just past midnight Monday in Iowa,) I received my regular Monday Midnight Madness e-mail message from Sam at Pendemonium. This format is a great example of how a regular online promotion to e-mail subscribers can help niche sellers create sales, brand recognition and customer conversations by including non-sales focused content that is relevant and engaging.

Sam and Frank Fiorella, serious collectors and purveyors of vintage writing instruments, run both the Pendemonium, a "full time writing equipment shop" and companion Web site. Pendemonium, described as "one of just a handful" of such shops worldwide, deals with the oldest type of social media tools.

This week, along with the Midnight Madness sale items, the e-mail message (delivered two minutes past Iowa Midnight with Woot-like precision,) included a link to the 2007 Travelogue, the account of Sam's road trip down Route 66 to the 2007 LA Pen Show last month.

(Just to let you know, I'm not being paid to write about Pendemonium and have never met Sam. My only connection to the site is my opt-in subscription to Inky Greetings the Pendemonium e-mail updates. I've been "just looking," a former Iowan who appreciates Pendemonium's vintage writing instruments.)

The Travelogue was an engaging account of the leisurely road trip from Iowa to LA down Route 66 that I've always wished I could make, but couldn't those the times I've driven parts of the route traveling between Iowa and Phoenix. Sam has posted pictures and descriptions of her visits to spots along the route I'd not seen, and of some I've noticed but never visited on the way. (I wish I had noticed Sam's offer to mail a real postcard from a stop along the route in time to send him my address--Social media in action using paper and pen!)

On a site about writing instruments that are hundreds of years old, Sam is connecting in a way that represents the best uses of social media, using a mix of Web 1.0 and offline communication to carry on the conversation. Even though the tools used are not the social media sharing and social network sites those of us writing and talking about "social media" might consider the infrastructure of Web 2.0. Sam's conversation with customers and e-mail subscribers is a particularly vivid representation of ways that social media already exists and works.

Pendemonium's the kind of store I would love to shop at or even run if I still lived in Iowa. It's situated in downtown Fort Madison, in a historic district overlooking the Mississippi River (which incidentally is a great place to spot bald eagles,) a scenic hour-long drive down river from where I grew up.

People trust people with whom they perceive they share characteristics, experiences and opinions. One of the things I found interesting in the Travelogue was the way the conversations described in it touched on common themes. In Albuquerque, for instance, Sam shopped at a store similar to hers in that it serves a niche market by specializing in books about the local area rather than competing against big chains.

Describing this bit of face to face social networking, Sam wrote:

"We still spent a couple of hours wandering the shops and an especially enjoyable time talking to the owner of the local book shop - not just about books but about how interesting it is to be in a niche market these days. He carries 99% local books instead of trying to compete against the big chains. Easy for us to relate to the niche market!"

By the way, Sam chronicles her pen seeking quests regularly. I pictured her painstakingly editing the HTML flat files and uploading the photos each day as she shared her road trip adventures and arriving home in time to send out the Midnight Madness message after days on the road.

I couldn't help but think that Sam would be delighted to discover how easy the process could become using Blogger, Twitter and Flickr. I'd sure love to subscribe to her Travelogue by RSS.

Labels: branding, community, content.management zeitgeist, conversations, e-mail.marketing, entrepreneur, events, niche.marketing, Pendemonium, pens shopping, Route66, small.business, social.media, travel