This morning I started seeing a message repeatedly hit my Twitter stream from friends. “Just requested an invite to @Yobongo, a new way to chat with people nearby. Join me! [LINK]“. So I clicked through.
Genius. Read More
There’s a great article on ReadWriteWeb today titled Why Most Facebook Marketing Doesn’t Work by Peter Yared, who is the Vice President and General Manager of Webtrend Apps. In the article Peter explains why promotions and consistent, lightweight engagement works consistently, and more importantly, why the following strategies generally fail: Read More
Note: The following article is a guest post I wrote for Rahvalor, an online creative agency in New Jersey that I work with on varied projects. The post takes 5-10 minutes to read and provides a detailed overview of the thought process any business owner should follow when evaluating their online strategy, and is designed to help them get a quick, broad awareness of the potential costs, effort and issues they need to consider before going digital. Read More
A few weeks ago, Joe Sorge showed us how he used Foursquare to get a flash mob of 150+ people into his restaurant, AJ Bombers. This Friday, with a little help from Milwaukee’s online community, he pulled together the most successful Foursquare-based event run by a restaurant to date in a 24 hour period, and proved that his Foursquare formula truly works for restaurants, and that it’s repeatable. By the end of the day on Friday, 231 people had checked in at AJ Bombers’s “I’m On A Boat!” badge party, and Joe had done more business at lunch in one day than he ever had. In this post, we’ll share some media and stats from the gathering, discuss exactly what it takes to pull off one of these events, and Joe will share some lessons learned and tips for using Foursquare to drive business. Read More
Restaurant owners are quickly discovering how to use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp to their advantage and drive customers to their tables, but there’s a guy in Wisconsin doing it better than almost anyone else.
Joe Sorge, who runs a burger joint in Milwaukee called AJ Bombers, shot me a tweet yesterday to tell me about a Foursquare party they had this week that brought a flash mob of 161 Foursquare users to his restaurant. My eyebrows shot up when I read that number. 161 check ins in one day?! How could that be? There are only about three or four hundred Foursquare users total in Milwaukee?! Over 150 of them were in the same place, on the same afternoon?
When I called him up, Joe explained. They came to earn the highly coveted and elusive Foursquare “Swarm Badge” – something you can only get when 50 or more Foursquare users check in at the same place at the same time. I hadn’t heard of it, but apparently the promise of this coveted Foursquare badge can really draw a crowd. Read More
If you sell online, pay attention to the data trail your customers leave. There are golden nuggets of information about what your customers are like and what they want everywhere; Some really good stuff can be found in customer reviews, automated “customers also bought” or “you might also like” recommendations (just to name a few). Paying attention to these details can lead to great insights about what your customers actually want, how they use your product and what their other interests are. If you’re an author, what other books are they buying when they purchase yours? If you’re selling electronics, what are customers bundling their purchases with? You’ve got to ask yourself these questions. It could tell you a lot about services you should be offering, where your product might be lacking or even what partnerships and opportunities you might seek for win-win promotions.
This (above) is just one example. I’ve talked about how tons of people are hacking their Flip cameras because the company isn’t listening and offering a wide-angle lens adapter. There are a ton of blog posts and YouTube videos about how to glue-on wide angle lens adapters to make the Flip more useful…and these lenses only cost 30 bucks. If the company was listening, they’d be partnering with a lens maker (or making their own) and offering a premium version of the Flip with an adapter included. The trail of breadcrumbs around the Flip already shows that people are willing to pay for the parts and go through the extra hassle to get the improved performance, so this is a no-brainer.
What’s the trail of breadcrumbs around your product telling you about your customers?
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This short video was posted by Chris Brogan a few days ago. I love finding real-life stories about how small business owners are successfully using social media to increase their business. Joe Sorge, who runs AJ Bombers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin shares how he uses a tool to humanize his business and keep in touch with customers.
I’ve heard the advantages of shifting from traditional marketing to social media marketing strategies articulated many different ways, but Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer at Eastman Kodak Company, does it best in this short video. His Four Es – Engagement, Education, Excitement and Evangelism – are spot on. It’s a smart, pithy way to articulate the big picture and what the shift in strategy is all about. The second video highlights another key advantage to marketing on the web – the ability to be agile, and to respond quickly to feedback.
