Making a trip to the soda fountain fun

Terrior is is a French term used in wine making that loosely translates to “a sense of place.” It refers to the fact that the same chardonnay grapes grown in different vineyards (or even separate parts of the same vineyard) can produce noticeably different wines . . . → Read More: Think Local for Unique Content Marketing Opportunities]]>

Making a trip to the soda fountain fun

Terrior is is a French term used in wine making that loosely translates to “a sense of place.” It refers to the fact that the same chardonnay grapes grown in different vineyards (or even separate parts of the same vineyard) can produce noticeably different wines because each set of grapes will absorb different amounts of sunlight, minerals from the soil, and be subjected to unique weather in each region.

The concept of terrior offers tons of ideas for social media marketing. What makes where you live or work unique and fun?

• Is your corporate office a 100-year-old converted sugar plant/movie theater/train station?
• Do you offer a product/service/meal/experience that’s truly one of a kind (be honest)?
• Is Wrigley Field/Empire State Building/Eiffel Tower up the street from your office?
• Can you get awesome green chili/cheese steak sandwiches/clam chowder/barbecue ribs from the hole-in-the-wall restaurant in your neighborhood?

What unique places do people go out of their way to track down when they visit your hometown? Share those insider tips with us. That’s interesting stuff we’re not going to find in the guide book from the airport bookstore.

The Best: After I screwed up as a kid and everything cooled down, my dad would always try to look for a lesson to be learned. It was a . . . → Read More: The Best of Times and Worst of Times: Nike Golf’s “Earl and Tiger” Ad]]> I have two takes on Tiger’s first new ad with Nike Golf after all that’s happened over the past six months. It’s a pretty even split for me.

The Best: After I screwed up as a kid and everything cooled down, my dad would always try to look for a lesson to be learned. It was a way to allow me close the book on messing up, dust myself off and move on. It’s powerful to listen to Tiger’s dad doing that same thing for him after he’s gone.

I also think it’s good that Tiger Woods finally looks human. Kind of tired and a little sad. He is no longer the tenacious winning machine of a few years ago in these 30 seconds.

The Worst: Earl is dead. Tiger messed up. Really, really badly. I know…let’s mash those two things together to pull on the ol’ heartstrings so we can keep selling Nike stuff!! I wouldn’t fault anyone who gets that “lawyer chasing after an ambulance” feeling from this ad.

If the users of Facebook were citizens of a country, all 400 million of them would make up the third largest nation on the planet. And with over 50% of them logging into the site every day, . . . → Read More: How to Market Your Business on Facebook]]>

Vintage Storefront from Vintage Collective

If the users of Facebook were citizens of a country, all 400 million of them would make up the third largest nation on the planet. And with over 50% of them logging into the site every day, developing a Facebook presence or maximizing your existing page is becoming an important part of the overall marketing mix for businesses of all sizes.

Not sure where to start? Here’s my two cents:

Create your personal profile: If’ you’ve not signed up for a personal account, visit www.facebook.com and create your personal profile right now. I can wait for a minute. If you’ve avoided joining for any number of reasons (privacy concerns, “I’m too old,” etc.) sorry…you need to see firsthand how the site works for the people you’re trying to reach. You don’t have to add tons of photos of your vacation or update your status every hour, but you do need to find your way around and the only way to do that is to jump in.

Now create your Fan page: While people have profiles, businesses and non-profits have fan pages. Because fan pages are public sites, make sure to fill out the requested information with as much detail as you can to get the attention of Google and other search engines. There are a number of smaller businesses using Facebook as a main web presence instead of building a stand-alone website.

Spread the word: Once 25 people become fans of your business, you can choose a custom URL for your page (www.facebook.com/YOURBRAND). Spend a minute thinking about your URL because you cannot change it once you pick one. When your custom URL is active, add that address to all of your customer facing contact information (business cards, email signatures, contact information on brochures, etc.).

Get to know the rules around contests: Facebook has set the bar fairly high for using their platform to promote contests and giveaways. Here are the rules straight from Facebook and here is a good take on translating the rules into plain English from 360 PR Blog.

Don’t SELL anything: Facebook marketing is a bit of a paradox. While people opt-in to receiving your content updates by clicking a button to become a fan of your page, aggressive marketing frequently does not work and can even damage your online reputation. Unsubscribing from your page is just as easy as was to become a fan, so make sure to keep things low pressure, fun and informative.

Share useful content: If you need to ease off the sales pitch to be successful, what should you do? Focus on delivering useful content for your fans. The content you share does not have to be original for Facebook (but some exclusive content now and then adds perceived value to being a fan of your page). Here are some possible content sources you can add to Facebook:

• Blog — If your business has a blog, you can easily repurpose that content by giving it a quick edit and manually reposting it or you can set up an RSS feed that automatically publishes new posts to Facebook.
• Twitter — Are you using Twitter as well? Again, there are a number of choices to republish your Twitter feed on your fan page. Make sure the option you choose to publish your tweets looks good in Facebook. Some Twitter RSS widgets include a lot of extra stuff that will clutter up your page.
• White papers — If you offer white papers on your main website or blog, those are great content offers to pass on to your Facebook audience.
• PowerPoint decks — If you have some presentations that can be understood without you having to talk me through things, consider signing up for www.slideshare.net and post your best talks as another perk for your fans.

Add photos and video: Always have a digital camera ready to capture stuff to share with your fans. Heading to a tradeshow? Post pictures of your booth once you’ve set up. Working a community event? Share some video highlights of the day. Photos and video will often be the content that receives the most views or comments from your fans.

Share other stuff you find online: If all this talk of creating content has you second guessing getting involved on Facebook, an easy shortcut is to share other content while you are taking time to create some of your own. If you’re an accountant, post a link to an interesting tax story from CNN/Money.com. If you run a landscaping business, share a YouTube video about how to keep your trees healthy between trimmings.

Get fans involved in content creation: Encourage fans to post pictures on your wall. Ask your community for feedback on existing products or invite them to give you their reactions to newer ideas that are still in development. And if a fan says or posts anything, make sure to reply as soon as you can. Especially if it’s negative. Other fans will be watching how you handle the occasional complaint.

What’s the return on investment? Great content is your ticket to the top of your fans’ consideration set.

If you were going to order a pizza for dinner tonight, which pizza places jump into your mind? Those pizzerias make up your pizza consideration set. And as the average Facebook user spends over up to 55 minutes a day on the site, the more you can become a welcome part of your fans’ Facebook network, the bigger piece of those fans’ consideration set you can capture.

Twitter encourages you to post short, 140-character status updates (“tweets”) that are sent to the people who have chosen to follow your messages and to the rest of the Web.

Twitter is a great way to stay connected with customers, vendors and colleagues and send brief bits of relevant information to those who . . . → Read More: How to Get Your Business Started on Twitter]]>

Rufous Hummingbird by brendan.lally

Twitter encourages you to post short, 140-character status updates (“tweets”) that are sent to the people who have chosen to follow your messages and to the rest of the Web.

Twitter is a great way to stay connected with customers, vendors and colleagues and send brief bits of relevant information to those who are interested in your business.

HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS STARTED ON TWITTER

> Sign up for a personal account: Twitter has its own jargon and social etiquette that you’ll need to become comfortable with before launching a business account. Make sure to fill in the bio, add a picture and then take a few weeks with your personal account to learn the ins and outs of how to interact in 140 characters.

> Become familiar with search.twitter.com: Every tweet posted to Twitter (unless a user chooses to “protect” their updates) creates an individual web page with a unique URL. The advanced setting of search.twitter.com allows you to analyze the mountain of tweets added each day by keywords, geography and more to see what’s being said right now about what you care about.

> Choose a desktop Twitter program: While there are a number of free Twitter programs available, the current choice of most Twitter power users is TweetDeck. The main benefit of TweetDeck is the ability to sort users and search terms into separate columns. The columns create a dashboard of current activity that you can quickly glance at throughout the day.

> Find other people and businesses to follow: Visit search.twitter.com each day for two weeks, run a search for relevant terms to your industry and then follow the other users that you find posting interesting content. Only follow between 5-20 people a day to avoid looking like a spam account.

> Post to Twitter on the go: Twitter’s power comes in the real-time nature of the updates. If you are in a tradeshow, send out a tweet with your booth location. Offer a discount to your Twitter followers if they place an order on your website in the next 48 hours. There are a number of Twitter applications for BlackBerries and iPhones that make it very easy to manage your account throughout your day.

WAYS TO USE TWITTER FOR YOUR BUSINESS

> Be interesting: One of the main objections to Twitter is the perception that it’s a big accumulation of chitchat. In fact, a study of 2,000 tweets from Pear Analytics in August 2009 classified 40% of the tweets gathered for the survey as “pointless babble.”

Combat this by sending out content and updates that position yourself or your business as an expert. Because other Twitter users need to choose to follow your updates, it’s important to present your business as smart, successful and useful. Become a resource your followers turn to, keep them up-to-date with new developments in your area of expertise and you’ll quickly stand out above the noise.

> Reach out to your local market: Naked Pizza in New Orleans used a Twitter promotion to set the one-day sales record for their two-year-old pizzeria. 41% of their customers on their “Eat Like an Ancestor Day” promo on May 29, 2009 came from Twitter.

Naked Pizza wanted to focus on residents who live within three miles of their store and have been so successful reaching out to customers with Twitter that they have replaced the phone number on the billboard above their store with their Twitter ID.

Use the geographic search feature in the advanced setting of search.twitter.com to see who’s in your neighborhood.

> Listen in on what’s being said and join in: If you see a tweet complimenting your business, post a quick reply thanking them for their kind words. Send an apology and an offer of help to a complaint. Add your opinion about news stories that apply to your field.

> Ask questions: Twitter is a very useful venue for asking questions – whether it’s a recommendation for a new vendor or troubleshooting a computer problem. Questions also engage your followers and get them involved with your account. Make sure to thank anyone who takes the time to reply to your query.

> Retweet posts that will benefit your followers: When you come across an interesting link or a funny tweet from a user you are following, add “RT” in front of the post and send it back out to your followers. This is known as “Retweeting.”

Retweeting is a great way to recognize someone you follow for providing good content and to add quality information to your updates that may be out of your area of expertise.

> Include your Twitter User ID everywhere: Once you’ve decided to get started on Twitter, you need to add your Twitter ID to just about every piece of forward facing communication you send out.

Add it to your email signatures; post “Follow us on Twitter” links on each page of your website; add your User ID to the contact information on your business card; post a “Follow us on Twitter” sign in your retail location, include a “Continue the discussion on Twitter” link to your email newsletter, etc.

Twitter makes a bad first impression. If you keep with it, post a few tweets and find a few fellow Twitter users to follow each day for two or three week, I’m confident you will soon be using this new tool to expand the reach of your business into social media.

Jason . . . → Read More: SyFy’s Ghost Hunters Offer a Great Social Media Case Study]]> If you’ve been thinking about getting started in social media but are not sure what to say, check out a few episodes of the SyFy Channel’s show Ghost Hunters for inspiration. Why? Because Jason, Grant and the rest of the TAPS crew are a great examples of being interesting by just creatively explaining what they do.

Jason and Grant are two Rhode Island plumbers who have turned their ghost hunting hobby into one of the most popular shows on cable television. All they do in each episode is conduct their investigation of different haunted locations and explain to the audience what they are doing as they try to capture proof of paranormal activity.

But what if you’re in a profession that isn’t as cool as paranormal investigation? I would say your success in blogging or social media depends on how you frame your content. Most people hire accountants because they don’t like to do accounting and if you focus on the mechanics of accounting, they will tune you out (unless they are fellow accountants).

But if your audience is made up of other business people and your content shows them how a trained accountant can save money, free up time in their day to focus on other priorities and protect them from an IRS audit, what you have to say suddenly becomes very interesting.

Highlights:

I’ve found that when businesses think about getting started in social media, a lot of time is spent debating and planning strategy.

Are we trying to build brand recognition? Is Twitter going to be a new customer service channel? Is the content for the Facebook page going to be . . . → Read More: Gary Vaynerchuk’s Secret to Social Media Success: Work Your A$$ Off]]>

Gary Vaynerchuk at Affiliate Summit West 2009 11

I’ve found that when businesses think about getting started in social media, a lot of time is spent debating and planning strategy.

Are we trying to build brand recognition? Is Twitter going to be a new customer service channel? Is the content for the Facebook page going to be strictly business or should we mix in some personal chit chat?

People want the answers to all these questions before diving in. Here’s the thing: before you can wow your fans, you’re going be awkward and goofy for a while as you figure stuff out.

So just get started. Today. Right now. Because the sooner you get the hang of things, the sooner you can actually knock all of your strategic goals out of the park.

But what if we are lousy? I think this little question is one of the main obstacles blocking more involvement in social media. Unfortunately the only way to get good at this stuff is to risk being bad at it for a while.

Case in point: Gary Vaynerchuk, the current reigning world champ of video blogging. Click here and here to get up to speed on who Gary is and why he’s so cool if you don’t know.

Why bring up Gary if he’s so awesome? He didn’t start out awesome. His first winelibrarytv.com video is a solid start but nothing spectacular.

You can see the glimmer of today’s superstar in this show but he’s clearly inexperienced talking to a camera. He’s not exactly sure what to say, but the desire to tell his story is obvious. Gary took his natural charisma, busted his hump cranking out content by doing a winelibrarytv.com episode almost EVERY SINGLE day since he started and is now a consultant, public speaker, author and all-around a$$ kicker.

As someone who’s been active with Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites on an almost daily basis since 2008 (to my wife’s sometime chagrin), I thought writing about what I’ve gotten out of my efforts would be a good blogging execise. (Tip of the hat to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh as . . . → Read More: Ways Twitter Has Made Me A Better Person – I Notice More Cool Stuff]]>

Daisy Refraction by audreyjm529

As someone who’s been active with Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites on an almost daily basis since 2008 (to my wife’s sometime chagrin), I thought writing about what I’ve gotten out of my efforts would be a good blogging execise. (Tip of the hat to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh as this post is my inspiration.)

First thing that comes to mind is social media has refined my “daily palate.” I notice more of the cool little details of life and have learned how to describe them in a way that’s (hopefully) interesting and helpful.

When people complain they don’t have anything to say online, I say aren’t paying much attention each day.  Here are two simple examples that provide great fodder for social media updates if you take a second to think about how to talk about them:

1. The last place you had lunch – I don’t give a #%!?! THAT you had lunch. What you had, whether it was tasty, the qualify of the service, if the specialty of the house is actually special, or a cool waiter to ask for are all things that could add value to my life the next time I’ve got to select a lunch time destination.
2. The last movie you watched – Again, THAT you watched a movie is not helpful or terribly interesting. What you thought of the plot (without blowing the ending), which actor surprised you with their performance, or a recommendation of another cool film by the same director are all things I could use as I surf through my Netflix account looking for the next movie to add to my queue.

Thinking about the “mundane” experiences we all have each day with this mindset has made me more involved in the present and I appreciate more of the simple details of my life.

Not the white suspension bridge…the other thing. Any guesses? A pile of calf’s livers? A collection of kidney beans shaped like a man’s naughty bits?

That is a sculpture called National Velvet by John McEnroe and is a recent addition to Denver, Colorado’s collection of public art.

Neat, eh? . . . → Read More: Does Public Art Have a Responsibility to the Public?]]> What do you see in the picture to the right?

Not the white suspension bridge…the other thing. Any guesses? A pile of calf’s livers? A collection of kidney beans shaped like a man’s naughty bits?

That is a sculpture called National Velvet by John McEnroe and is a recent addition to Denver, Colorado’s collection of public art.

Neat, eh? I can’t make up my mind. Let’s discuss what I have decided to call the “Beanie Weenie.”

Pros:

• It’s not boring.
• It’s…um…not boring.

Cons:

• It’s a big phallic symbol right next to the main highway in the largest city in Colorado.

While every city can’t have public art from Frank Gehry as cool as this or this, do we really have to settle for a Beanie Weenie? This takes us back to the question I asked in the title of this post: Does public art have a responsibility to the public?

I would say the answer is a qualified yes. I am not going to argue that we should limit the subject matter for a public commission to bunnies, rainbows and snowflakes. But I will argue that when your artwork is part of a public place, it needs to be something that doesn’t make me shake my head and mutter, “wonder how many of my tax dollars some idiot, pointy-headed bureaucrat spent on that.”

And what about the notion art should challenge the viewer and not everyone is going to like it? That’s cool when you’re buying art for your own living room. Buy all the crazy stuff you want. If you are going to put it up for all of us to see and enjoy, you do owe all of us something. Respect maybe? Acknowledgment of the trust being placed in you to make our city look good?

At least the Beanie Weenie isn’t the emaciated, demonic horse-thing the city stuck out at Denver International Airport to greet new visitors to the Mile High City. Having that sculpture be the first thing you see when you leave the airport is like having your angry, drunk uncle dress up in a toga and greet the guests at your wedding as they arrive. Not the best way to make a first impression.

The city is marketing itself to visitors and current citizens with public art. What exactly is the gang at Denver Pubic Art Program trying to say to all of us?

All of the traits that go into success . . . → Read More: Great Social Media Advice from the Food Network]]> This commercial on Food Network is pitching the newest season of The Next Food Network Star. As our pal Bobby Flay walks toward the elevator, various people (I’m assuming they’re contestants) hold up different signs describing qualities they possess that will make them the next superstar TV chef.

All of the traits that go into success at the Food Network are also great guidelines for anyone involved in social media. Have a look at the video and then we’ll break it down.

> I Will Have a Clear Culinary Point of View: This is vital in social media because things get so noisy. When there are millions of choices online, getting me to listen to you and subscribe to your blog involves standing out and having a clear voice.

> I Will Express Myself and Be Authentic: If your stuff sounds like PR/corporate-speak, that may be worse than not having a point of view. Consumers are too smart. They have developed an incredible ear for B.S. and expect people to sound real in social media. Compare the President of Domino’s Pizza and a multiple franchise owner from Chicago as they both issue apologizes for service problems. Guess which one I like more?

> I Will Make My Food Personal: This is a delicate thing to get right. One of the main complaints skeptics have about social media is that Twitter, Facebook, and other sites are just a collection of people broadcasting random details about what they had for breakfast. And that is boring. Think about ways your personal stuff can also add value to my life (because in the end, it’s all about me). Try this as an example:

• My cat barfed = BAD
• My cat barfed & I’ve found Kitty-Barf-Away is a great product for cleaning up messes = BETTER

> I Will Handle Pressure: Getting involved in social media may expose you to criticism. Don’t forget that getting a few rocks thrown at you goes with the territory.  The upside of social media is worth the occasional brouhaha.

> I Will Be the Next Food Network Star; “We’ll Be the Judge of That”: Bobby’s right. It’s all about the audience. You’ll quickly learn if what you’re sending out connects with people.