What Is Social Media | Letters From Dan

Turning your customers into a community

Posted By: DanRMorris | Posted in What is Social Media

There’s nothing better than turning your customers into a community of fans. That is the dream of most companies and bloggers on the net. It’s what has turned Facebook from a “reunion set-up” site to a community building juggernaut. With a community of fans comes more sales, more feedback, more interaction and fun. What could be better than that?

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to do.

What makes it hard is many companies want to create these “communities” on their own terms. For instance many groups who see a bunch of chatter on Twitter about them, will open up forums for those people to congregate and continue their “Chatter”. Most of the time, however, the attempt never catches on while the chatter on Twitter remains.

A local Chamber of Commerce group here is always trying to get their members to come to special “education” sessions, or networking meetings – but despite their membership of 300 businesses only a handful attend each event. Are they fighting against the grain?

Likewise a large internet marketing conference series has had a hard time getting their forum to catch on within the membership – despite lively conversations happening everyday on Twitter, Skype and Facebook. Is the forum lacking some “draw”, something exclusive or it is just inconvenient?

So what is the key to turning customers into a community?

There are a couple trends among groups who’ve created successful communities. The first is “be first”. The Virtual Assistant Group VANetworking created a group on LinkedIn for Virtual Assistants. Without knowing the group was flourishing, VANetworking had amassed a group of 7,000 VA’s in their LinkedIn group. They had merely created the place for a community to exist – and voila! it grew.

Another successful “community” is the type Lynn Terry has put together with her membership forum. While chatter about Lynn’s teachings is rampant on Twitter, and comments on her blog remain very active she was able to move that to the forum. From an outsider’s perspective it appears that the secret to her forum is the access she grants of” herself to the members. The “draw” is what you can learn from Lynn and the community comes from the shared experience.

Lastly, take advantage of the community that is already present. If there’s a bunch of chatter on Twitter, instead of trying to move that natural speak to a forum, why not join them there? The use of hash tags on Twitter enables “communities” of people to search for others in the same group.

In another case, I was recently involved in an online swim group where the focal point was a Google Doc Spreadsheet people updated every day with their stats. The head of the group did have a separate forum set up, but it didn’t get used much by our group’s members. What we did was leave “comments” in the spreadsheet. Instead of asking us to move our comments to the forum, the organizer began commenting himself and leaving comments. Instead of trying to remake the community – he joined it.

As to the Chamber of Commerce group, perhaps a community isn’t what members are looking for. Perhaps businesses have joined the Chamber to put the sticker in their window? Perhaps they have joined the Chamber to put the symbol on their business card. Perhaps the community the Chamber needs to build is not one represented by a forum or attendance, but through the reputation of its efforts.

Not every group has the ability to create a community.

Think about your cable guy, your plumber or your banker. Can you see yourself actively participating in a forum on their websites? For most people the answer would be no. But that doesn’t mean these groups can’t harness the idea of community another way. There are a myriad of ways local businesses can get their customers and fans together without the internet.

If you’ve seen a great example for us to learn from, please leave a comment below. We love success stories.

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Social Media for Offline Business

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Business, facebook, Ice cream, MaggieMoo's, marketing, My Twitter Clinics, myspace, social media, Social media marketing
Posted in What is Social Media

Being a social media for offline business guy, I take special note when anything local businesses are doing online and making visible to the customer. This weekend I had the pleasure of dining at MaggieMoo’s on West End in Nashville and thought I’d share that experience.

MaggieMoo’s is the first place I’ve been where their social media marketing efforts have gone beyond a Facebook sticker on the door. For the first time ever, an employee contributed positively to their efforts (unlike my example at Daily’s Gas Station).

Next to the register they have an 8 x 11 stand-up flyer suggesting customers “like” them on Facebook (as you’re about to do with the button at the bottom of this post :)) – but they didn’t stop there. The employee actually pointed out the sign, suggested that I “like” them on Facebook and added “Do so before March 15th because we’re giving away free ice cream that day”.

Social Media Marketing is about 2 things:

Engagment and Community
Driving Traffic to take action

What a breath of fresh air that was. Promotion, scarcity, likability and a knowledgeable employee. However, social media for offline business is still a leap. With 4 kids in tow, MaggieMoo’s was asking a lot of me to remember to go to Facebook and “like” them the next time I logged in. And since they didn’t gather my contact information, they didn’t have any way to remind me.

So at this point they’re relying on “hope”.

Unfortunately, hope comes into play again with their Facebook strategy as well. Since they haven’t uploaded any special, custom pages – they still don’t have a way to grab your contact information (which is the Gold in marketing). There’s no place to put your e-mail address or anything. And since you can’t message all your fans at the same time on Facebook – they don’t have a real good way to get me back to their FanPage – other than hope.

When you press “like” you’re taken directly to the wall where they pretty much post specials and promotions. I did find mention of the “free ice cream” down the page a bit, but there’s a disconnect immediately without seeing that promotion front and center.

That covers gathering contact information, but I’d also like to see them working to create more of a community on their page. I love that they posted a photo of one of their truffle cakes, but I would like to have seen them “tag” the person whose party it was eaten at. Maybe even start a “tagging” promotion for people who upload their party photos.

I’d love to see discussions about the best ice cream cake stories, or messy kids with their ice cream cones. Perhaps questions like what’s your favorite “mix-in” ice cream flavor, or name this mix-in recipe, or even stories of ice cream cakes that melted before they could get eaten.

Social media is about taking a group of unrelated customers and turning them into a community of fans. But a marketer must recognize the temporary nature of everything on the web. How good is 1,00o friends on MySpace right now? Without moving people from Facebook’s world to your own list – you end up with nothing for your efforts.

At least at MaggieMoo’s – you started out with great ice cream.

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Foursquare: the Future of Marketing

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: facebook, Foursquare Solutions, Grocery store, My Twitter Clinics, Pepsi, RadioShack, social media, using foursquare for business, Vons
Posted in What is Social Media

As a marketer of small businesses, I started using Foursquare with the sole purpose of learning how others were going to use it and make it successful. I checked-in to every place I was, places I wasn’t, got every badge I could find and every Mayorship. I really wanted to see how business was going to use Foursquare’s tools.

Guess what? Marketers are now seeing the true power Foursquare has.

Pepsi and Von’s Grocery Stores are really moving the needle. When you register for a Von’s card and sync it with your Foursquare account, they’ll give you a free 2 litre of Pepsi. So what? That’s nothing new, eh?

How about this then. . . when you swipe your Von’s card at check-out, you’ll automatically be checking in to Foursquare – which means all your online friends will see “Von’s”. That’s some great advertising for Von’s. And to keep you “checking in” Von’s adds free stuff to your Von’s card based on your Mayorships, Badges and check-ins.

Imagine becoming the Mayor of your local Veterinary Clinic (which means you visit there often) and getting a dog food coupon from Von’s – automatically! That kind of target marketing based on your social media preferences is surely changing the game.

The consumer gets rewarded over and over and over, Von’s gets publicity, Foursquare gets new users who check-in unconsciously, Pepsi gets word-of-mouth marketing like this and many times everyone gets a plug on Twitter or Facebook. Win! Win!

Scoot on over to the Bellagio in Vegas. The Bellagio has a team dedicated to monitoring social media sites like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter for mentions of their name. Guests who check-in on Foursquare, tweet their location or rave on Facebook get upgrades and rewards from The Bellagio. Mayorships and badges to them aren’t nearly the value of rewarding the “word-of-mouth” marketing guests do on their own.

Different from those two is Radio Shack and their holiday promotion. Instead of taking advantage of existing customers, Radio Shack and Foursquare created a “badge” that Foursquare users can earn when they go to Radio Shack and check-in. The incentive of the “badge” wasn’t enough to drive sales, so the badge itself gives users 20% merchandise during the holidays.

For Radio Shack, they not only get new customers into the door using the coupon, but have their name on a badge on all Foursquare user’s phones, the internet, every Foursquare related website, press releases and more. From a driving traffic perspective, Radio Shack’s promotion is much more traffic-centric.

The Pepsi / Von’s promotion is certainly the most cutting edge. Connecting your grocery card to social media as a means of getting the Von’s name out there hundreds of times per day is genius. But then rewarding users based on their Foursquare habits – that’s over the top cool.

Please. . . please tell me if you know of any cool Foursquare promotions. Leave a comment below. I love hearing how business is using these new social media tools.

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Aileen Bennett – Using People is well worth the read

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Aileen Bennett, book review, Business Books, forget people's names, how to remember names, Mastermind, recommendation, Using People
Posted in What is Social Media

Aileen Bennett’s newest masterpiece, Using People, is in print. Now if you know Aileen you’ll understand the significance of “newest masterpiece” – because she pumps out spectacular speaking engagements, masterful PR campaigns and engaging social media exploits all the time. This go ’round, her genius is on paper.

I should disclose that Aileen and I sit in a Mastermind together and thus this “recomendation” could be construed as somewhat expected of me, as a friend. But until I got through the first 16 pages, I had no idea how well presented, informative and necessary this information is for us, as marketers and business makers. To quell any thoughts that this recommendation is biased, I’m prepared to give you some concrete reasons why Using People should be your next purchase.

So let’s cut to the chase and talk about “Lie to Yourself”, one of the great chapters in the first half of the book. We already do lie to ourselves - every day – that’s one of the points Aileen makes in ”Using People”. We make assumptions all the time all the time about the way people are going to react to our proposals, about the way people feel about us and about what people are already expecting of us. Then we do everything we can to notice evidence to support these lies.

The point is we’ve got to learn to recognize that these assumptions and untruths exist. Since they aren’t real, and aren’t the real truth – planning and taking action with these assumptions leads to failed purposes. Aileen says emphatically, “. . . our assumptions say more about us then they do other people.” This is a lesson you can’t learn too soon.

In “Flip a coin”, Aileen uses a familiar coin toss trick to teach you that indecision is really just procrastination. I personally use the “regret approach” (which will I regret least?) to help make these indecisive moments clearer – but I fear my technique could be much improved with the simple coin toss. Aileen suggests when you lack clarity on a decision, “flip a coin”. When you flip a coin and vow to go with the result, you inevitably reap the mental sigh of relief when the coin lands on the side you really want and instant regret when it asks you to follow a plan you really didn’t want to do. This instant regret may have been hidden – but becomes clear with the toss. Use the tool – then do what’s right.

The short section titled “Never Forget a Name” had me writing this review before I was even finished. I was not only caught off guard in her insight, but it forever changed the way I’ll introduce myself and be introduced at functions and events. Her bottom line is this. . . many of us have problems remembering people’s names. So we’ve all heard of the many pneumonic devices and tricks to assist in remembering names . . . but when have you ever gotten this advice?

You need to go into every meeting knowing that the other person may have a hard time remembering your name. Not only that, but you can use that to your advantage. Unlike others around you, help new acquaintances remember your name using a few great “Using People” techniques. Wouldn’t it be great if your name is the only one people remembered from the event? Personally, I think paying that much attention to someone in an attempt to help them remember my name will inversely make it easier to remember theirs.

(If that’s not enough reasons, then I should mention that the most beautiful woman I think I’ve ever seen is pictured on page 98. ) :)

Now, that’s just 3 great reasons to read this book. If you found any of these ideas worthwhile – then know that there are atleast 12 more that are going to improve your business and bottom line. So if you like to wait before you get things, then got to Amazon and get this book right now. No one from Amazon is going to rush out and bring this book to you today, so ordering it today will insure that it will be in your mail box before you finally get around to “getting it”.

Oh yeah, I’m not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but my name is Dan Morris. I author Lettersfromdan.com :)

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Scott Stratten: The Humanity of UnMarketing

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Eminem Lose Yourself, Joey B Ellis Go For It, Lance Armstrong, marketing, Media, Nashville, Scott Stratten, Scott Stratten - Unmarketing, social media, UnMarketing book
Posted in What is Social Media

Tonite I got a chance to hear an accomplished, best selling author speak to us “social media folks” in Nashville. Scott Stratten, the author, owner and thinker of the ideas in UnMarketing, has a pretty strong grasp on what it means to be “present and authentic” in your own universe.

He spoke a bit about viral marketing, a bit about handling hecklers and even more about the perception and reality of your “image” across electronic wires. Despite all that good stuff, the one thing that struck me was his insight into “going viral”. His experience tells him that throughout the history of time, the only things that have gone viral have been the things that struck an emotional chord.

Now here’s the crazy thing about that. Besides retweeting his great quotes (like “engagement is unscalable on an authentic level”), the thing that struck an emotional chord with me was a story he told us. After an unsettling discovery on Twitter, Scott sat on the sidelines for a couple days wondering how to handle the situation.

After words from a friend, do you know what got him back in the game? Music.

Yep. Scott’s got a playlist that gets him pumped up and ready to go. What a silly thing for me to connect with, eh? I mean you see football players and athlete’s like Lance Armstrong sporting the iPod earbuds all the time. Perhaps it’s because Scott’s not a professional athlete, or because we weren’t talking about sports. I honestly don’t know.

But I can tell you I have a playlist, too. And the idea that his playlist brought him “back to life” mirrors the value I place in mine. Whether it was new schools growing up, the trepidation that comes just before a cross-country race or just low times, I’ve relied on my playlist to get me pumped up and back in the game, too.

Keep in mind that I went to hear Scott Stratten speak about UnMarketing, but what I walked away with was an appreciation for his humanity. Scott was a great speaker, but just as he said in his “viral” insight, people pass on what they have an emotional tie to. While Scott spoke about the need to engage at the business, social and entertainment level – his anecdote about his playlist has me “spreading the word” now.

So be yourself, because it’s sometimes the little things that connect us – and keep us engaged.

MY GET PUMPED PLAYLIST:

Go For It! – Joey B Ellis
Come Baby Come – K7
Boom Boom (Shake the Room) – Will Smith
Lose Yourself – Eminem (to which I really dig into these lyrics):

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Don’t build a Facebook page! (Unless. . .)

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 2010, Business, business model, customers, don't get a facebook page, facebook, marketing strategy, Page
Posted in What is Social Media

It’s true I’m an internet marketing guy who loves and values the proximity Facebook creates – but I’m telling you now, do not “get a page”. Stay away from it like the plague, like the green fuzz on old bread, like the highway during a construction project.

I know you’ve wanted to get a page for a long time and you’re thinking it will be a great place to post your real estate listings, or the status of your most recent client meetings. I know how valuable you think it will be to post photos of the new clothes you just got in stock – and you’re sure if you just do that people will flock to the door.

So if you’re thinking that getting a Facebook page would be a great addition to your company, you’re not even in the ballpark. In fact if “let’s get a Facebook page” is something your company has said, you’re missing the boat.

The biggest challenge I see small companies have with Facebook is they don’t completely understand the utility of it. “Build it and they will come” just isn’t a sound philosophy. In fact, it should probably be reworded to say “Build value and they may come once. Build a valuable community and they’ll be back.”

Facebook is not radio or billboards. It’s not a site to just post stuff. However, it is a great answer when you’re determining your company’s marketing strategy and you’ve reached the “how do we communicate with our customers better” section. Or perhaps answering the question, “how do we engage our cheerleaders and have them work for us?”.

There is a huge difference between “getting a page” and deciding to better communicate with your customers. Facebook pages can be great tools in your efforts to create a client community. However, you’ll hear crickets if you decide to “get a page” just so you can post your stuff for sale.

Once you decide you’re going to build a Facebook community, the challenge becomes content. How do you allocate the time? What content do you post? How do you stay engaged on a daily basis? And how do you determine what your customers really want to hear that keeps them coming back?

That’s a challenge you must undertake internally as a company. To some degree you’ll have to test what works and what doesn’t. As long as you’re treating your customer the way they want to be treated, your testing will come off just fine. Don’t get discouraged if the feedback doesn’t come right away. Engage. Engage. Engage.

To get back to the topic at hand. . . Don’t get a Facebook Page, UNLESS what you really meant to say was “Let’s create a customer community, and utlize the power of Facebook”.

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Coffee with Jason Elkins

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 100 cups of coffee in 100 days, customer service, facebook, facebook marketing, facebook marketing strategy, jason elkins, networking
Posted in What is Social Media

This week I had coffee with a friend, Jason Elkins. He’s doing a program he calls 100 cups of coffee in 100 days”. While his program is a relationship building program, it makes a great marketing program, too.

He and I spoke at length about our client’s, what we’re doing for them and how that’s working. Fortunately, though we’re both internet marketers, we do entirely different stuff – so it was a great learning experience. (If you’re interested in the ‘notes’ for that meeting, subscribe at the end of this post).

One thing that is clear is that no two clients deserve the same strategy, or should I say no two clients could be successful using the same strategy. And I’d be willing to pen even for similar companies in the same strip mall. The company’s goals, strengths and weaknesses change that strategy completely.

I was amazed at the vast array of things you can do on a Facebook Fan Page these days. Jason’s team have really come up with some great ideas and new functionality. I’ve been reluctant to suggest a Facebook Fan Page to my clients, but am now rethinking that.

My reluctance comes from seeing the great number of companies that have fan pages but no real reason to do so. Without a really good purpose, and one that brings people back to the site, they could become a liability without constant posting and social interaction.

I’ll put together my notes from our meeting expressing what we learned and how you doing these things for your business. No matter what you do, the goal has to be improvement to the bottom line. No questions about that. Whether the activity is exposure, branding, networking, relationship building, sales, customer service or technical help – make sure that you’re activity is supporting the ultimate goal.

What’s the goal of your business? And can you see the little things you do supporting that ultimate goal – no matter how minute.

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Can small businesses use Foursquare?

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Local Small Business Marketing, small business marketing, usfoursquare, using foursquare for business
Posted in Local Small Business Marketing, What is Social Media

I’ve been dabbling with the new “social media” app called Foursquare. It seemed, from the very beginning to be a great app to help small businesses reach new customers.

So I decided I’d not only try it out, I’d jump in and do everything you could do with it so I could really see how small businesses are using it, and perhaps be amongst the first to know of any changes or monetization ideas.

To some degree Foursquare is a game. For small businesses, that may make it hard to conceptualize as a revenue generator. But the game involves GPS in mobile phones, which means people must find you in order to play.

If you’re small business goal is to increase exposure, then Foursquare might be a small part of that strategy. From the game perspective, that only works if checking into your business contributes to the player achieving a Foursquare goal like attaining a new Foursquare Badge.

(By the way, it’s really a mobile phone scavenger hunt where “badges” are the prize and “check-ins” are the requirements.)

So far some big companies have been able to get their own badges, like Lucky Mag, Explore Chicago, Mountain Dew and Zagat’s. For the small business, that hasn’t been an option.

But the other side of Foursquare is where small businesses have made some headway. The person who checks in the most times at an establishment gets labeled as the “Mayor” of that location. Places like Starbucks are honoring Mayors with 15% off at the register. Get your customers competing to be the Mayor – and perhaps you’ll increase the number of times your regulars show up.

For some businesses (like this one), Foursquare has been a tremendous asset to their bottom line. But the ease of “check-ins” make me wonder.

In my quest to get all the badges being offered by companies and Foursquare, I’ve noticed a few things.

You can check-in without going inside and sometimes being as far a city block away. Occassionaly I ran into a pop-up that said “Whoa, you’re too far away to check-in”, but it is rare.
You can drive around like in a scavenger hunt and check-in at all the places you need to. (Though there is a pop-up if you check in to several too quickly).
If you’re GPS shows you to be somewhere else, because of a glitch, you can check-in wherever your phone thinks you are. But if your GPS rights itself and you check in again locally, you’ll get a “Whoa, you couldn’t possibly have traveled that fast” pop-up.
Finally, it’s hard to check-in if you’re business is in a building that inhibits your phone GPS from working. That’s the most frustrating part.

There’s little downside to listing your business on Foursquare. Probably the very best thing is knowing that anytime someone checks in within a 1,000 meters, they have a chance to see that you’re a nearby business – which they may have never known before.

If you’re “playing” foursquare and have some ideas for small businesses – leave them here and let’s chat about them!

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Last updated by DanRMorris at December 11, 2011.

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