What started as a marketing gimmick by a man who owned two Subway franchises in Miami has turned into a national phenomenon and pumped up the restaurant chain’s profits, said an article in Business Week.

Stuart Frankel decided to offer $5 footlong sandwiches on Saturday and Sunday, which was about a dollar less than the regular price. “Plus I like round numbers,” Frankel told Business News. And suddenly, he had lines out the door.

Other franchisers were wary to adopt the promotion because they thought it would drive up food and labor costs, negating any profit. But some individual restaurants created their own $5 footlong campaigns and saw the number of customers, and profits, soar.

The national Subway headquarters finally picked up on the idea, built a catchy ad campaign around the $5 footlong and generated $3.8 billion in sales from that concept alone, proof that the best ideas can come from small places.

Small businesses should begin taking social networking more seriously, says a new study by Business.com.

The 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study shows how and where businesses and business people are using social media.

Some employers ban the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, believing that they are simply time wasters. But the study points out that these sites can be a terrific resource for marketing, lead generation and increasing web site traffic. The study also touches on how businesses can use the video-sharing site YouTube and search engine optimization to their advantage.

In his blog on ContentMarketingToday.com,Newt Barrett gives six compelling reasons why you should jump on the social networking bandwagon now. He says that old-school marketing techniques don’t work as well anymore as more customers make buying decisions online. Online marketing, like creating a blog or Twitter feed, costs little or no money. And since many small businesses haven’t adopted social media, you can get a jump on the competition.