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.

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?

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.

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.