websense

If you read my last post, you know that the power, both positive and destructive, of social media has been on my mind. As a web developer, I like to think I am a fairly cutting edge guy. Not so cutting edge that you fall off the ledge into the abyss – where none of our customers want to go – but enough to stay at the head of the game.

I recently came across a post on Mashable.com that seemed almost like an answer or follow up in some ways to my post about Price Chopper and how not to use social media. This article was centered on empowering your employees with social media. Giving them the freedom to handle customer issues using social media, reworking the way we network, advertise, address problems. I think this idea has a lot of merit. The ability to have TKG’s employees reach out the the public to address questions & concerns, publicize the company, events or products is really appealing. Think about it – we’re a web firm – all of the folks here either blog, tweet, use Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on, and most use a rather large combination of social media platforms. Think of the people we could reach on a minute by minute basis! On the other hand, I would want to make sure that everyone who was speaking for TKG was prepared to answer questions or know where to direct them when they didn’t have the answer. Unlike many other industries, the Group here are entirely too tech savvy, and would blend into this business model quite well.

You have to know by now, I am not one to jump immediately on any bandwagon, but social media has been around a little while now. It’s blending and integrating with both traditional advertising as well as SEO. Most companies are using a reasonable blend of these elements, but more and more, businesses are seeing the value of SEO and social media as the best value for their marketing budget. They are turning to the more targeted, more on topic versions of advertising found in the search industry, rather than the advertising to the masses of print ads.

The article I mentioned above is called How Businesses are Unleashing Their Employees’ Social Media Potential. I found it really interesting, and if you go read it, be sure to check out the comments. Some very interesting discussion going on over there. If you want a jumping off point, Mashable has another great post on some of the emerging social platforms for businesses.

If you really want to learn how to use social media to your business’ best advantage, head on over to TKG’s Breakfast Bootcamp page and send us an email – the classes are currently full, but we occasionally get a cancellation – and if we see a class with lots of interest, we might be persuaded to add another! After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

So, how about a tutorial on how NOT to use social media to promote your business? You might have seen on Twitter or Tumblr this week a story about a woman shopping and tweeting her less than enthusiastic opinion of the store.

The store turned out to be a Price Chopper. The incident was one that we have all probably done plenty of times. A shopper went into the store, was dissatisfied with the produce section and Tweeted it. What she wasn’t expecting, I am sure, is the store to take notice, track down her Twitter profile, use the info on it to contact her employers. The email sent described this shopper as “destructive and negative”, if I recall correctly. Really? Destructive? I happen to find it much more destructive of the social media folks at Price Chopper to track down this woman’s employer and rat her out for something she did on her own time, with a private Twitter account. They even went so far as to insinuate that relations between the two companies would be compromised if action wasn’t taken against the shopper.

You have got to be kidding! I think we should start offering a Breakfast Bootcamp on how NOT to use social media. In this instance it was clearly used in the worst possible way. This story is of course all over the web, and I would not be too surprised to see Price Chopper suffer some internet backlash on this. It was inappropriate at best, and downright stupid at worst.

It wasn’t like she used profanity, under her company name, with the knowledge that it could cause her job to be in jeopardy. She merely stated that :
Every time I go to @PriceChopperNY I realize why they r not @wegmans . Tonight -bare produce area & this sign (twitpic).

She did compare them to a competitor, and nobody likes a negative comparison, but she’s a consumer, entitled to her opinion. It’s one of the reasons people like Twitter. How much you wanna bet they stocked some fresh produce as a result, and are trying harder to keep it that way?

As a business owner, you have to make sure the people in charge of your social media are smart about it. Make sure they know that you don’t run down a consumer, you Tweet them back to find out how to improve their experience with your establishment. You might want to offer them a coupon or something. I bet if that had happened in this case, the Twitter user would have tweeted the good outcome, and Price Chopper would not be receiving the web backlash it is now.

There are a couple of interesting posts up about this, so if you’d like to read on:
http://www.blogworld.com/2010/09/20/social-networking-fail-price-chopper-lashes-out-about-negative-tweet/

http://pricechopperfail.tumblr.com/post/1156969465/price-chopper-attacks-customers-job-over-negative-tweet

While I’m not one to clip coupons, just hasn’t been something I’ve ever done, I do like a discount; offering them as marketing tools, and using them, too. Our world is becoming increasingly mobile, with an application for everything from scanning checks directly into your account to letting people know where you are at all times with different location apps.

How about mobile coupons? Coupons downloaded onto your iPhone or Blackberry or Android or whatever device you have. There are plenty of apps such as Mobile Coupons or Yowza , that allow you to register your business and upload coupons but I think we’ve come to an all new level of advertising when you can pull into a place, your device recognizes where you are and automatically searches for coupons in the area.

Even better, location based coupons that are automatically downloaded onto your device when you arrive at a location that supports the service. Pretty awesome.

How do you, as a business owner utilize these services? I think part of being one of the “it” places in your area might include easily downloadable coupons. Someone arrives at your shop, and there ya go, a coupon. Coupons and discounts often entice people to spend money they weren’t planning on spending. It’s too hard to resist. “Saving” is big – even if it means spending to do so. So, take advantage of one or several of the services that provide downloadable coupons. They are a great little addition to all this mobile location app stuff. Are they the thing that is going to be the next big thing? Probably not, but they might boost your sales a bit, maybe even a big bit – and that’s a good thing. I do think that local search will benefit from the coupon apps, and mean that more users will be searching for a deal online, en route (hopefully not while driving). If it were me, and I had to decide between lunch destination A, with no coupon, and lunch destination B, with a coupon, I’ll probably go with B, because it’s effortless (or nearly) and who doesn’t like to save money?

Are you using the coupon apps? How are they workin’ for ya? If you do print coupons as well, I’d be interested to hear which type you get more of…

So, Twitter revealed it’s redesign this week. While I am a fairly infrequent Tweeter, I try to stay up on these things. It only took me three or four days to comment, not too bad, right? I know, it’s a thousand years in Twitter time. In any case, while they have revealed the new Twitter design, they will begin rolling out the changes over the next several weeks.

This, of course is being discussed all over the Web. Everyone has a comment, and most of them seem to be good. Some of the changes that are being made seem to be adapted to help businesses with marketing. Other changes are for better functionality, such as the ability to see mini profiles when you hover over a Tweet, without leaving your page, being able to see video and photos right on Twitter.

Check out the Twitter blog for a run down of all the changes. There is also a nifty little video on YouTube, that lays it all out for ya:

If you Tweet, you are probably pretty tickled at the changes coming. If you use Twitter to market your business, I’m thinking you’ll like the changes and options the new plane on the right side of the page will offer for ads. Go check it out…

Businesses have always bartered. It saves money, since you eliminate the middle man. Bartering deals are often easier to make and keep, since there is usually no cash involved. TKG has bartered since the very beginning and sometimes, have formed lasting business relationships that continue to benefit us, as well as our bartering partners.

With the current economy, and the taxes that are coming, I think bartering for goods and services needed by small businesses could become invaluable. There are sites that are devoted to setting up bartering between companies, and I’ll get to those in a minute, but I think the best way to handle this sort of thing is to try and keep it among businesses you know and trust. Sure, you will probably come up against a time when you need something and want to look elsewhere, but if at all possible, use the people you know. For one, it keeps your business local, and therefore you and a neighbor are helping each other out. For two, the pressure of a deal with a community member makes it more likely that both parties will fulfill their obligations.

As I mentioned, there are many sites on the web that provide a way to set up a barter. I have a few here, but use your best judgment.

SwapRight.com
https://www.bizx.com/
http://www.itex.com/
http://www.bartersys.com/index.asp
http://www.barterco.com/index.php

Fox News Small Business is running an article if you are looking for more information.