The Food Network has built its whole business around basic social concepts since its beginning in 1993.

Fans of different shows are often drawn to the host instead of what types of food they cook or how they cook it. I love Mario Batali because he comes across as knowledgeable and funny, . . . → Read More: Check Out “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” as a Social Media Case Study]]>

A Checklist of Must Eating

The Food Network has built its whole business around basic social concepts since its beginning in 1993.

Fans of different shows are often drawn to the host instead of what types of food they cook or how they cook it. I love Mario Batali because he comes across as knowledgeable and funny, in addition to the fact he’s the Italian cook (my favorite food). I am very confident that a night on the town with Mario would be the night to remember.

The Best Thing I Ever Ate is a wonderful case study on how the Food Network capitalizes on the appeal of their people instead of generic subject-specific content. The premise of the show is very simple. A number of the stars from different shows tell viewers about their favorite dishes and the places to find those dishes while sitting in front of a white background.

If you need inspiration about how to talk about your subject in an interesting way, check out a few episodes and listen carefully to how they talk about things.

They use specific and descriptive language. When each person talks about their favorite, they use very specific language to paint the picture of the awesomeness of each dish for you. They discuss textures, spices, cooking techniques and other details to give you a real idea of exactly what they love about their favorite.

They are full of confident passion. Each chef or host also seems to feel a responsibility to persuade you to do what ever it takes to experience their favorite place and dish as soon as possible. The passion they have for their favorite garlic noodles or wood-fired pizza is obvious and very contagious. Do you inspire people in your field like that?

I spent U.S. Independence Day weekend in the Colorado mountain town of Frisco. My agenda included fireworks, grilling and Odell’s 90 Shilling. A fun time was had by all.

Before we left, we decided to drive around and explore the town. The yellow banner on the Ramada Inn caught my attention because . . . → Read More: The Key to Marketing Success: Testing (Maybe the Free Waffles Work)]]>

Free Waffles In Frisco, CO

I spent U.S. Independence Day weekend in the Colorado mountain town of Frisco. My agenda included fireworks, grilling and Odell’s 90 Shilling. A fun time was had by all.

Before we left, we decided to drive around and explore the town. The yellow banner on the Ramada Inn caught my attention because of the inclusion of waffles as a part of the advertised free continental breakfast for hotel guests.

I initially posted the photo you see to the right with a slightly snarky comment to my Twitter account and then began the drive home. However, something about the banner stuck in my brain. As I thought about it, I like it more and more.

1. The waffles set Ramada’s continental breakfast message apart - It’s something specific. Free waffles means their breakfast is not just a stale box of cereal and some milk. Someone needs to cook those waffles. While it may not be foie gras and truffles, it’s a step up.
2. Maybe waffles tested well - If I was the marketing manager for the hotel and thought my breakfast menu could be a draw, I would get a few different banners made and see if waffles performed better than “Free espresso drinks” or “Free omelettes” for attracting highway drivers to my establishment.

What part of your marketing mix can you strategically change to see if your current tactics are still top performers?

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.

While Tarantino and Rodriguez are great role models for creating content their own way and staying true to their unique voices, I LOVE the beginning of the video where Sam Raimi talks about DOING something related to making . . . → Read More: Advice on the Creative Process from Sam Raimi, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Guillermo del Toro]]> How do you become a filmmaker, writer, artist, etc.? Grab a camera, notebook, paint brush, etc. and get started.

While Tarantino and Rodriguez are great role models for creating content their own way and staying true to their unique voices, I LOVE the beginning of the video where Sam Raimi talks about DOING something related to making a movie every damn day and, if you stick with it, you’re going to end up with a movie in no time. May not be a good movie. That’s okay.  Take what you’ve learned from what you’ve just made and do it again.

To Robert Rodriguez’s point about more competition: If you want to make a movie that grosses $200 million, he’s right. The competition is still overwhelming.

But, making movies (or comics or whatever) that are seen by a few thousand people and working toward eventually making small living doing it is completely possible with computers and the web for distribution and marketing.

You just have get off the couch, get started and be willing to suck for a while as you figure out which ever medium appeals to you.

I am sure Mr. Ogilvy would have loved all of the data that comes with online and social media marketing and the ability to get feedback straight from the customer.

Here is a piece of his . . . → Read More: David Ogilvy Talk on Direct Response Marketing]]> Interesting keynote from David Ogilvy for a direct response conference (I assume that is the context). I love the line about “…tasting blood.”

I am sure Mr. Ogilvy would have loved all of the data that comes with online and social media marketing and the ability to get feedback straight from the customer.

Here is a piece of his obituary from DIRECT Magazine:

According to Phillips, Ogilvy’s interest in DM stemmed from his background, which included working for George Gallup’s Audience Research Institute in Princeton, NJ.

“He was interested in measuring the results of advertising,” Phillips explains, adding that it is easier to measure results in DM than in general advertising.

Ogilvy also insisted on using research to create effective campaigns.

“He believed things that worked were the best kind of creative,” says Andi Emerson, founder of the John Caples International Awards.

A lot of marketers, PR people and corporate executives spend a ton of time and energy writing a shiny mission or positioning statement every few years.

According to author and blogger Jeff Jarvis, figuring out which questions you or your business answer is probably a more important . . . → Read More: What Questions Do You or Your Business Answer? Google and Jeff Jarvis Want to Know]]>

Some Questions Can't Be Answered By Google by Mykl Roventine

A lot of marketers, PR people and corporate executives spend a ton of time and energy writing a shiny mission or positioning statement every few years.

According to author and blogger Jeff Jarvis, figuring out which questions you or your business answer is probably a more important exercise. Why? Easy. Because of Google.

In his outstanding new book, What Would Google Do? Jarvis outlines all of the ways Google is causing a radical shift in the way people interact with their world.

One of the main points I took away from reading the book was how people are starting to think in questions. While pondering questions large and small is not new to humankind, what is new is expecting to get immediate answers to questions because they can ask Google on their iPhones.

Next time someone at your office suggests updating the mission statement, make it your job during the discussions to figure out which questions everyone thinks your business answers and then compare what you come up with against your website analytics to see if your customers agree with you.

I found The Bacon Flowchart on Twitter yesterday. As it’s dated December 22, 2007, I seem to be a little behind the times, but it’s funny stuff (even if you don’t actually like bacon). I immediately retweeted the link to my Twitter friends. Still, I felt incomplete. This was . . . → Read More: How to Save Money on Marketing – Let Me Distribute Things For You]]>

The Bacon Flowchart by shutterbug from incredimazing.com

I found The Bacon Flowchart on Twitter yesterday. As it’s dated December 22, 2007, I seem to be a little behind the times, but it’s funny stuff (even if you don’t actually like bacon). I immediately retweeted the link to my Twitter friends. Still, I felt incomplete. This was really funny. I needed to share.

I went to Facebook and added the link to my profile. The Bacon Flowchart generated nine comments in about 18 hours (and my Facebook Friends tend to be a stoic bunch, so this is a lot). A friend in Seattle liked it enough that he re-posted the link on his Facebook profile 25 minutes later and his friends immediately began to comment on the joys of bacon.

If I were a marketing person at Hormel or Jimmy Dean, I would be talking to the creator of this little gem about how I could help spread The Bacon Flowchart love. I would not hard sell. I would just stick a logo in the corner and let it run on its own.

Make your promotional stuff clever, fun and useful and your fans will do to the work of telling others for you. And when we do marketing for you, it doesn’t feel like selling to us or to the friends we’re sharing your stuff with.

Do you have a secret family recipe that you bust out for parties or holiday dinners that everyone tells you would sell like crazy if only you would market it? With Twitter and other social channels, floating a few trial balloons into the social media universe is an easy way . . . → Read More: Real People I’ve Connected With on Twitter: Interview with Vanessa Hughes]]>

Vanessa Hughes - Spice Rub Entrepreneur

Do you have a secret family recipe that you bust out for parties or holiday dinners that everyone tells you would sell like crazy if only you would market it? With Twitter and other social channels, floating a few trial balloons into the social media universe is an easy way to see if your creation has legs.

As I was looking around on Twitter for interesting people to follow, I stumbled on @vjhoneycut, the profile for Vanessa Hughes. She is a self-described “spice rub entrepreneur.” Just the kind of person I wanted to learn more about, as the last item in the tagline for this blog is BBQ.

Nothing that makes me happier than barbecue done right. What makes great barbecue? Spice rubs. A killer rub is what separates good barbecue from “HOLY SMOKE THAT’S GOOD!!” barbecue.

After chatting with Vanessa over a few Twitter direct messages, it dawned on me that she would be a perfect interview for my humble blog. Vanessa is a social media success story and her spices rubs are the perfect way impress your friends at your next cookout.

Business Name:
RedBone Rib Rubs

Best Way to Contact Vanessa:
Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook

When did you start using social media?
I really started to use social media when I began working at LinkedIn back in June of 2007 and from there I was hooked.

Any good success stories with social media to share?
I just recently started to post on my social networks that I am trying to market my husband’s award-winning spice dry rub and I have gotten hits from all over the United States. It’s great. I didn’t think people would really notice. I am in the process of evaluating how to get our product out there.

What tips would you have for someone getting started on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.?
1. If you want to be remembered while using social media, make sure to use the same name for each account. That will build your personal brand.
2. Be honest and straightforward.
3. If you don’t know what you are doing – ask for help or even a consultation. If you do your research, you should be able to find someone who will guide you though building up your profile.

Who do you follow on Twitter that you look forward to hearing from?
I follow a lot of people. One of my daily rituals is to look and see what kinds of social media David Spinks has been tweeting about.

What is the first thing I should buy from you to make my barbecue better?
As long as you know how to properly grill or smoke your meat, the first thing to do would be to start with a good rub, like my husband’s recipe for RedBone Rib Rubs. Having hung out with him at cook-offs and watched him cook his award-winning masterpieces, I think the secret (once you get a good cut of meat) really is your dry rub. That is why we started our spice rub business.

The main points I liked: