While this plan is in the very early stages, Mayor Tim Burchett’s office is actively studying a plan to use social media to directly help small businesses. The wildly popular Mayor with over 7,000 followers on Twitter is looking to harness his social media reach to help the business community.

The plan is to have a #followfriday where the Mayor will select one Knoxville/Knox business on Twitter and then create a “force multiplier” effect having his followers retweet and add the business.

Interestingly enough, a quick check of the Knoxville Chamber of Commerce Twitter page and they it appears they do not widely promote businesses using this model. However, after reading about a month worth of tweets, the Chamber does promote themselves a lot!