Itai Boublil

There is a revolution taking place in NYC, and for once it does not involve fashion nor celebrities.

What is common to Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, Bistro Truck, and Holton Farms? They are all using trucks to sell food in the streets of  NYC, and they all do it by using Social Media!

Equipped with a laptop, wifi, and a twitter/Facebook accounts, these revolutionaries are changing the way NYC famous food carts are doing business.

Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, for instance, is using Twitter to promote specials and tweet its location at any given moment so people will know where to go when in search for an Ice Cream.

Bistro Truck is taking online orders via email, and uses Twitter to tweet its location, and new dishes, adding pictures such as “soup of the day”, to instill hunger in people’s mind (quite smart if you ask me). In addition, they use Facebook as a publishing platform for articles and some PR. The owner of Bistro Truck , Yassir Raoull, claims that 10-15% of their sales come from using Social Media. Not bad.

Holton Farms uses Twitter and facebook in the same way, and have people waiting in line minutes after they tweet to get some of their delicious sandwiches.

What I liked the most about their interaction on Twitter is that they really get personal with their clients. Inbound Marketing is about building relationships with your clients and engaging them to build trust (which at the end create leads), and these guys are mastering it like true marketers.

I find the fact that these vendors are using social media in such a brilliant way exciting. By using social media, these revolutionaries managed to reach out to a new market, and create a niche in their industry.

So next time you are in NYC, make sure to check their Twitter account and get to learn about the Ice Cream of the day :)

What do you think? Are you familiar with these vendors?

Queen Rania Al Abdullah

I love the way Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, is promoting her country. Her latest video offers a swapping contest that is absolutely  genius. The concept is quite simple: “2 people from Jordan will swap locations with 2 tourists for 1 week. How? Well, if you’ve never been to Jordan, we’ll pay for you and a friend to come and visit the country. If you live in Jordan, we’ll swap you and a friend (temporarily!) with the other winners and take you on a tour of their country. It’s cross-cultural dialogue with air miles!”

This is where the genius (for a marketing geek such as myself) part lies: it is all pure social media approach!

These are the rules: upload a video to TwitVid saying why you’d like to visit Jordan, and post it with @queenrania #TwisitJordan. If you live in Jordan, tell Queen Rania why you love your country, again with @queenrania #TwisitJordan.

Once the contest is over, four videos will be chosen, and two people from abroad will be swapped with two people from Jordan with full expenses paid by the Kingdom (talk about an incentive! full expenses paid!).

What I like the most about this initiative (beside the fully paid trip of course) is the way Queen Rania is using Social Medial to promote the contest. She is using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flicker, her website, and Twitvid to reach every corner of the social media sphere. Now that is a smart marketing approach! Kudos!

What do you think? Do you see yourself posting a video to win a free trip to Jordan?

You can watch her video below

Social Media ROI

These are some of the Social Media numbers Moore mentioned:

Below is an excerpt of his statment:

Generation Millennial

In a survey conducted by Pew Internet and American Project Life about the future impact of the internet, a solid majority of experts said  that “the Millennial generation will lead society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing using new media”.

From a marketing perspective, the data presented is good news to any Inbound marketer. At the rate of which generation Y is using social media, it is easy to see how it will be more reseptive to online interaction than traditional marketing (TV ads, radio commercial, billboards, etc).

The marketing take:

Companies who use traditional marketing to deliver (read: push) their messages will need to reassess their marketing approach, and learn how to effectively communicate online. It is no wonder we see more and more companies embracing social media and inbound marketing tactics to better engage their audience.

Where do you stand on the subject?

Pew-Internet And American Project Survey

Social Media Business Cards

Business cards are cards bearing information about a company or an individual, and they are usually printed on some form of card stock. They are not interactive, they cost money, and they waste a lot of paper.  A lot of companies seem to agree on this, and built products that function somewhat as virtual business cards.

A few examples of the first buds of virtual business cards:

• SMS: Contxts; TextID; DUB
• Mobile Web: MyNameIsE
• Email: Dropcard; WeaveMet
• iPhone: beamMe (app)
• Social Networks: LinkedIn; Xing; Facebook
• Google Profile
• Twitter

With so many options to choose from, how do you combine all this information together, use vanity URL, and describe yourself with more than 140 characters?

This is where Card.ly comes into play. The company’s goal is not just to get you a phone and an email address, but to create a beautiful, shareable social media business card.
There are a few (very easy) steps to follow before you can create your (Free) embed-able, shareable social media business card. The end results is a simple, clean and useful webpage that you can use as a virtual business card.

My Card.ly Social Media Business Card

Itai Boublil Social Media Business Card

You can also embed it on your Website

Embed on Your Site

A few tips about choosing your username:

It is important that you choose your username based on your first and last name (if possible). This makes it easier to remember, and also it will show up in seach engines. Mine, for example, is card.ly/itai. Simple enough to remember, and share.

What do you think? Are you already using Card.ly as your Social Media business card?

Social Media Cards

I can go ahead and rant all I want on how disappointed I am with Bluehost, the company that hosts my website, but this will only bore you. Instead, I want to use this opportunity to emphasize how wrongly Bluehost is using Social Media Marketing (SMM). I am being sarcastic of course, but allow me to enjoy the moment.

It all started about a week ago. I started having problems logging on to the wp-admin (WordPress control panel) almost every single day. At first I didn’t know what was going on, but when I tried to log on to the C-Panel (Bluehost main control panel), I noticed that it wasn’t working.

This happened around 8:00AM, which was a crucial time since I needed to publish a blog post and didn’t have time to wait (had to go to work). When I contacted Bluehost I was told that there is some kind of technical problem, and it should be fixed in the next few hours. This incident repeated itself almost every single day during the past week, which, understandably, increased my growing frustration with the company.

What are Bluehost mistakes?

Customer service is not just about picking up the phone, or chatting online to solve problems. Customer service in this day and age is also about connecting to your audience by using SMM. Two channels that come to mind are Twitter and Facebook.

Bluehost does have a Twitter  account, but they don’t keep it active. The last tweet was mentioned on Feb 24, which was also the first and only tweet the company tweeted! Also, they currently have 235 followers, but they only follow 2 back.

Bluehost also have a Facebook account, which , you guessed right, is not active. No messages, no interactions with clients, nothing.

(The images below show both their Twitter and Facebook accounts. You can see for yourself that they are not active. Click to enlarge the image).

To sum:

1. They have social media channels, but they are not being social.
2. They never followed any of the followers on their Twitter account.
3. When a technical problem occurred, they never took the time to tweet about it, or apologize for it.
4. They never responded to the hundreds of angry tweets that took place during this past week.
5. They never fixed the problem, and if they did, they never announced it to their online audience.
6. When you have 235 followers, you HAVE to follow them back.

The marketing tip:

If you are a company or a small business owner, you need to understand that jumping into the SMM water is barely enough . You must keep these channels active, and you constantly need to keep building relationship with your online audience. Remember, the secret ingredient in SMM is ENGAGEMENT!

Bluehost is not using its social media cards correctly, and its quite surprising coming from a company who claims to have the best customer service in the website hosting industry.

Do you use Bluehost? What do you think?

(Click to enlarge the images)

Bluehost Twitter Account

Bluehost Facebook Account

Browser-Size

If you are a marketer, you are already familiar with the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Optimizing a website to be found via “organic” search is an important element of any website/content strategy plan, no doubt, but what about optimizing the way your website is viewed by the user?

Let’s say  you are creating a website with the purpose of collecting donations, how would you know where to place the “Donate” button so your viewers will see it right away and click it?

Browser Size is a free tool that helps you optimize the way your content appears on the website, which is important especially if you have (and you should have) a “call to action”plan .

This is how it works: On the example page that you see when you first visit the site , there is a “donate now” button (A call to action) which falls within the 80% contour. This means that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page. 20% is a significant number, especially if your goal was to raise money for a new kidney transplant operation. Knowing this fact would encourage the web designer to move the button much higher in the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

It is very easy to operate, simply type in your website URL and click “Go”. Try if for yourself.

Changes

You are probably tired of me ranting about Facebook by now, but this topic is so dear to me (I don’t like it when a corporation acts as if it owns its clients) that I had to share with you one more “episode” from the Facebook vs The Users saga (I promise to “slow down” with the Facebook posts :)

I mentioned a new competitor to Facebook in my previous articles, one that will force Facebook to change its policy (it’s already happening), so I decided to share with you a video that introduces this young group of entrepreneurs and their ambitious goal to present an alternative to Facebook.  The name of the project is Project Diaspora.

Click the picture below to watch the video:.

Statistics

I came across this very insightful article today titled The Ultimate List: 300 + Social Media Statistics. I enjoy reading statistical data (especially one that deals with what I’m fond of , Marketing), because I find it an accurate tool to analyze almost everything in life. I post this mainly as a reference link for future use, but I thought that maybe some of you would find it interesting as well. And yes, I know these numbers will change, and probably already did, but it still gives a good estimate to what is going on in the Social Media Sphere. :)

Chavez Twitter Account

There is a funny story for you:  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is on Twitter. Now there is another funny story for you: He intends to take over Twitter, and become the most “followed” Twitterian. Frankly, I do not really care for Chavez’s new ambitious social media goals (good luck by the way, he has about 4.7 million to go before he catches up with Britney Spears).

But, I do care about  two important things:

1. is what NOT to learn from Chavez attempt to become a Twitter dictator.
2. is what people really think of him now that he joined the world wide web.

What NOT to learn:

A. if you have 120,000 followers (with or without a gun pointed to their head), make sure to follow more than 5 back.

B. When you tweet, keep your egocentric personality aside, and try to say less about yourself. In the case of Chavez, maybe something that might help his people (oh wait, forgot, “No puedo entender” on this end).

What people “really” think about Chavez:

Chavez is going to realize that he is not alone in the social media world, and people, like it or not, can and will express (luckily for him only in 140 characters) what they think about him, and “list” him in what they think fits best to his description . And boy did they ever!

Before I jump into what people had to say, or rather how they listed Chavez, let me just give a quick explanation of what “listing” on Twitter or Facebook are. Simply put, “lists” offer a way for you to bunch together other users on Twitter into groups so that you can get an overview of what they’re up to (e.g. CNN, Fox News, NPR and NY-Times will fall under the “News List”).

Now that you understand more about “lists”, these are some of the “lists” I collected about Chavez (Note: as of today he was listed more than 3000 times).

Take a look:

dictators

Jackass

Rats

Welcome to the Social Media World Chavez!

Facebook Is Acting A Bit Evil

Facebook announced this week about a few major changes to their social media service.  I am still a novice to most of these changes (too many of them), but one change in particular grabbed my attention and that is the “What your friends can share about you through applications and website” privacy feature.

According to the description, your friends on Facebook, who visit a Facebook-enhanced application or website, will be able to share “certain” (read: ALL information, unless you change it) information about you to make the experience more social (this is, btw, Facebook’s new approach to their service. They want to be more “social”).
In other words, your personal information can be shared by your friends without you knowing about it, and without your permission. These are the guide steps to reverse this on your Facebook profile page:

Step 1
Go to Privacy Setting and click Application and Websites.

Privacy Settings (Click Image)

Step 2
Click the “What your friends can share about you” Edit Setting widget. .

Applications and Websites (Click Image)

Step 3:
Uncheck what ever information you are not willing to change. I unchecked almost all of them, with the exception of work, education, website, and notes.

What your friends can share (Click Image)

Facebook played an unfair move with their decision to become “more social”. There is a fine line between going more Social, and exposing your information to other corporations, like Microsoft, Yelps, Docs.com, and of course thousands of applications.

What are  your thoughts about this move? Do you think Facebook’s move is ethical?

Blog

Today, as I was going through my RSS reading, I came across a great article from Hubspot that vindicated my point. As you can read from the chart below (Chart Credit: Hubspot awesome Marketing Blog), “85% of users ranked company blogs as useful or better…”.
This is to show that Blogging can be, and should be, included in all small business social media marketing plans.
As I wrote before, it takes time, effort, and dedication. But, the ROI is much higher than any other social media sites!
If you are a small business owner and not yet blogging about your expertise, you are missing a great (cheap) opportunity to connect  with your customers.

Hubspot Chart

Social Media Hierarchy

I read an interesting article today titled “How Small Business Is Using Social Media”. The article presented data about social media sites that business owners choose to use to interact with their customers. What struck as odd in this article is the fact that having a Blog represented only 39% of what Business Owners choose to use as a way to communicate with their customers. I mean, what is a better way to educate your customers about your services and products than writing about it in a way they can understand?

As the chart below shows (copied from source itself), the most popular social media tools that are being used are also the easiest to create. It does not take more than 20-45 minutes to create a (good) Facebook page or a LinkedIn account (45 minutes if you have a lot of information to upload), but does it mean you are actually educating your customers about your products or services? I doubt it. Facebook, and LinkedIn can serve as a good distribution, customer service and listening platforms, no question about it, but what you really need to ask yourself as a business owner is this: what value am I adding to my costumers? Most likely not as much as writing a Blog about your area of expertise will.

How Small Business Are Using Social Media

The reason I think the percentage number of starting a blog is low is quite obvious. Blogging means hard work, period. First, you need to develop a good content strategy, then you need to optimize each page for keywords, and after that you need to find your “writing voice” (and also keep this “voice”), and to top all this you need to find your audience and create GOOD content. As you can now see, starting and maintaining a good Blog is a not an easy task if you have a busy schedule, but so as spending hours on Facebook, and LinkedIn every single day to monitor your clients activity.

The percentage number of starting a Blog is low, yes, but  I reckon that if the chart were to examine the ROI of each of these three social media approaches (Facebook,  LinkedIn and Blog) in the long run, starting a Blog will stand on top of the pyramid.

The Hierarchy of your Social Media approach as a small business owner should place starting a Blog on top, ahead of other social media channels. When people talk about ROI in the social media world, Blogging, in my opinion, can be a significant factor.

Remember this: content is king, no doubt, but creating value for your customers is the entire kingdom.

What do you think? Do you agree that Blogging can provide a better value to Small Businesses than Facebook,  or LinkedIn?

Google Chrome is my favorite browser for many reasons. One of the main reason, though, is the ability to install Chrome Extensions that can make the experience of using the internet to a fun (and addicting) experience.

There are thousands of extensions available on the Chrome Extensions website, and many of them are worth mentioning. Today, however, I am only going to cover one extension that really turned my Gmail into a Social Media central command. The extension is named “Gmail Facebook Integration”, and can be found by clicking here.

This extension will allow you to see friends notifications and newsfeed updates by simply staying in your Gmail Inbox (see photo below, or click here to see full photo). Furthermore, it will allow you to update your Facebook statues and share links on your wall without, again, leaving your Inbox. With Google Buzz, Facebook and Twitter already in my Inbox, I now have total control over my Social Media channels (well, some of them). The extension is fairly easy to install. Once you download it, all you have to do is allow it to connect to your Facebook, and viola! You have Facebook in your Gmail (Note: it will only work if you are using Google Chrome as your browser).

I want to mention that the Extension is not perfect, and there are many Facebook features it does not support yet. But, for the purpose of checking newsfeed updates, commenting on friends status updates, and updating your status it actually does very well.

Click the image blow to see the full description:

Gmail Facebook Integration