When was the last time you were deciding on a new restaurant, cafe or pub and didn’t turn to the Internet (whether at your desk or on your phone) to get directions, a review or even see who else might be there? Since I’m pretty nerdy the answer for me is that it would be completely out of character not to do a little online reconnasence work about the place before I suggest it to a group of friends. While I am on the far end of the spectrum that spectrum has definitely tipped to the point where I believe the majority of us now look up a place online before making a decision to go there.

Therefore, I am often surprised when I talk with small business owners and specifically owners of restaurants, coffee shops, bars etc how few of them are really aware that they have an amazing opportunity to promote their business by simply making it easy for customers to write positive (the negative reviewers seem to figure it out for themselves cuz their pissed) reviews or encourage a “check-in” on Foursquare, Yelp or Gowalla. Of course most of these businesses are already to be found on Yelp (and other review sites) but too few business owners have taken the time to beef up the user generated content (that makes up their listing) with their own images, descriptions and announcements. Even less of them seem to realize that there is a real bottom line business benefit to using these sites as a marketing channel and growing their brand by making it easy for the customers that love them to say something nice in an online review.

While it would take a lot more than my personal surveying to put hard numbers to it  (one study by the Yellow Pages Association and comScore found that local search for businesses, products and services grew 58 percent last year and reached 15.7 billion searches, more than a tenth of overall search traffic) I’ve made mention of my theory of “check-in currency” in a previous post so won’t dive into it here but in realizing how few of these business owners are taking advantage of this new digital currency I thought I would share some examples of businesses that are taking advantage of social media and local search to drive retail business and leave you with some simple tips that businesses can and should be using to promote themselves via online reviews.

There are many great examples of companies that are really using social media and local search to their advantage. As I have shared before Tasti D-Lite has integrated FourSquare into their loyalty program but you can also look to Jeff Diamond, co-owner of Farmstead Cheeses and Wines as a leader who makes sure he takes the time to reply personally to every comment/review left on Yelp. In one case, a reviewer complained that the person behind the counter was rude. Mr. Diamond sent a private message to the customer, apologized and asked for details. It turned out the employee who helped this customer was hard of hearing. By the end of the exchange, this onetime critic had joined the store’s wine club. He has since become a loyal customer. Or how about Danny Leclair, co-owner of Studio DNA hair salons in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Calif., who uses Yelp and local search to promote special offers he said 50 percent of his new business now comes from Yelp, 30 percent from Citysearch and 10 percent from Google searches.

These businesses are not run by the most tech savvy individuals, but they’ve taken the time to invest a little bit of brain power in learning how to make the most of what are essentially free marketing tools. Telling you all this is of little value if I don’t leave you with some easy things you can do to boost your local and social marketing efforts today with $0 invested.

Starting at the very top of the heap lets talk Google and specifically Google Local which is now technically Google Places. The point is that you don’t want to miss having your proper store information, pictures, links etc on Google so that you show up when people try to find you specifically or even when they make a general search. Believe me your business seems a lot more important when it shows up on a Google Map and your competition’s business is nowhere to be found.

So visit Google Places and get your information in there. I would also recommend you ensure your listing at Bing is up to date

Head here at Yelp and take the time to watch their video and understand how to get your business online if it is not already there or claim your listing if someone else has review you.

Yelp also gives you some great tools to understand who is visiting your listing and offers you all the tools you need to respond to reviews. If you think you will have the time to consistently reply to reviews on Yelp I think that it offers an extremely personal way to let people know that your business is about people regardless of what it is that you sell.

Next go to FourSquare and claim your business and if you really want to be amongst the coolest kids on the block create some specials based on the number of check-ins at your location and of course reward the Mayor. Foursquare makes it very simple to do and you’ll be shocked how many of your iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android toting customers appreciate your way of recognizing them. FourSquare will even help you get some stickers to promote that you are a welcome place for users and a great check-in location. People who check-in buy things and in the end you’re the winner.

Not only does FourSquare also provide you detailed stats like Yelp, it also has a proximity based mobile ad network that you will be a part of by offering FourSquare specials. These tools are again free so really what are you waiting for.

Of course every business should be knocking it out of the park with Facebook and nobody has laid it out better than Mashable here and Tamar here.

Finally, I’d highly recommend you begin Tweeting if you are not already using Twitter you read this guide by Mashable and started right away.

Remember that social and local can be your best friends if you take advantage of a few free tools and follow through on the best practices you find.

Good luck and thanks for reading.

There is no doubt that people love loyalty programs and retailers love the fact that you come back time and time again spending hundreds to earn a free item or small value perk. However when was the last time you actually wanted to take the time to dig through your wallet for your loyalty card? How many of those little tags can one person actually carry on their keys? Basically the loyalty program was getting stale. Sure there were iPhone apps that stored your card and let you present it virtually but that doesn’t do much to advance these loyalty programs in a way that made them work for the new ‘connected’ and ‘social’ customer. So I was impressed earlier this month when Mashable reported on a story where Tasti D-Lite (a frozen yogurt chain) announced that they were rolling out a new program (called TastiRewards if you care) that incentivised customers that linked both Twitter and Foursquare to the store’s loyalty program. It’s an incredibly simple concept when you think about it and the idea of loyalty combined with location services and social networking has a ton of potential if Foursquare (or others) help build out the business and make it simple for retailers to get on board. It’s this last point about integrating and showing value (versus simply signing them up to get numbers) to retailers that I think Foursquare will need to concentrate its efforts in order to make loyalty programs a decent size revenue stream.

Foursquare Loyalty Requires Metrics & Analytics

To keep it simple I will use the Tasti D-Lite as my example throughout. Like most loyalty programs, Tasti D-Lite has a traditional card program where customers can use their TreatCards to earn points for purchases, however those that opt-in to the new social media part of the program will automatically earn additional points for their ‘check-ins’ which are shared on both Foursquare and Twitter. It’s brilliantly simple, customers register their cards on the MyTasti website and then enable their Twitter and Foursqure accounts to automatically send tweets and check the customer in (with a ‘shout’) on Foursquare. From the consumer perspective you’re pretty damn happy as you earn points just for showing up in the store and then get a bonus (on top of the regular rewards) for each dollar you spend.  Tasti D-Lite is also thrilled with this arrangement because they instantly get the best advertising possible, word-of-mouth and they get to tap into your social network without having to take the time to advertise or court any of them. It’s actually the epitome of a situation working for all involved.

Foursquare = Tasty Rewards?

So this seems to just work and kudos to both Foursquare and Tasti D-Lite for the innovation. However, I do believe that for this to be a sustainable revenue stream for Foursquare they will have to offer more value to the retailers than simply linking up with their existing loyalty programs. In order for Foursquare to be able to make some real money off this they will need to actively partner with someone to create a  back-end loyalty CRM system that retailers can log into and actually get some useful data from and will further have to help retailers utilize these loyalty programs. Let me explain…

If I am a retailer I intrinsically believe that it is great that my customers will now be telling each other of the rewards they earned and will help promote the business via tweets and check-ins, but if there are no metrics available it will be impossible for me to really attribute increased revenue with the loyalty program and to further know what pieces of the social media loyalty program are working (including at which locations) etc.  It will be tough for Foursquare to ever fully monetize because neither they nor the retailer will be able to objectively determine the value of non-tracked tweets and check-ins. Further without a good system for actively tracking metrics and actively monitoring (+ reporting on) the tweets (e.g. think CoTweet with some Salesforce built in) there is a risk that the program will become nothing more than an afterthought for retailers and nobody pays for an afterthought. Finally, by having a metrics and analytics system that allows for some decent reporting Foursquare would be able to aggregate information from all the loyalty programs and create a professional services/consulting arm with best practices etc.

Following this idea of professional services or at least some consulting, I also think that Foursquare will have to come up with a standard loyalty program for retailers with no current program and loyalty program ‘connector’ so that they can easily integrate those major retailers who have already invested time and dollars into their own loyalty program. I say this because while someone at Tasti D-Lite was obviously quite savvy and was able to work with Foursquare to implement this program it is apparent that the critical mass of retailers will not be approaching Foursquare, rather Foursquare will have to approach them (or at the very least have a sales person who is trying to sign them up) and explain why the program will work for them, how they get started and perhaps even hand-hold (e.g. create templates for emails to be sent to existing loyalty members or get tons of Moo Cards printed to hand out with a street team) through the launch process.

I don’t know exactly how Foursquare is planning on monetizing their business but loyalty programs seem to be an obvious source of at least some recurring revenue. You’d be surprised at how much money, time and even more money traditional retailers pour into loyalty programs. While they will be tempted to try out Foursquare, if it does not connect into their traditional program and/or Foursquare cannot offer its own metrics and analytics I just don’t believe there will be enough of a business case for retailers to see it as anything other than a gimmick.

In the Mashable article they raise a very similar point and they go on to point out that with a little effort Tasti D-Lite (or in my mind Foursquare in conjunction with any retailer) can use the data it receives from check-ins to  ”collect, analyze and apply to budget discussions around allocating resources to social media efforts.” However I think the analytics need to be a bit deeper than simply being able to get accurate accounts on the quantity of tweets/check-ins with card swipes – Loyalty programs are not new and those who do them well (e.g. Air Miles) know that there is a wealth of information to be gleaned from consumers through these programs. While Foursquare is definitely on the right track with this cool initiative it will be interesting to watch whether they really go after loyalty programs as a real revenue stream or just one that has netted some positive publicity.

If you’re a tech nerd like I am you can’t help but take note of the incredible hype building for the yet unannounced Apple Tablet. The speculation over whether Apple was working on such a device started really heating up months ago in the lead up to the last Apple event in which the iPhone 3GS was announced. Since that time the rumour mill has been churning at an astounding rate with coverage of everything from Apple’s patents that might be used in such a device to the recently held collective thought (hey if the NY Times says it’s so I think it’s safe to call it the collective belief) that yes this device is being built so we should now move to speculating on what it will be called. The ability of Apple to sit on the sidelines and not say a word yet have this much speculation and hype building says a ton about the passion people have for their products (more on that in this post) but it’s not just the normal hype and speculation around Apple products that we typically see -- it is more than just articles on TUAW and mocked up images floating around the Internet, rather there is almost a cry for the product coming from both consumers and very interestingly from the publishing world. It’s this last point (the desire from the publishing world) that I find really fascinating and want to explore a little further in this post.

The idea of the Tablet computer has been around for a long time, you can even go back to Apple’s Newton handheld to really find that it’s been tried by many pretty unsuccessfully to this point. Microsoft really tried to push the Tablet a few years ago even going so far as to have Bill Gates demo it in many spots. However it’s really never gained the traction that was expected -- people just couldn’t or wouldn’t adopt the new form factor and while I (I owned an Acer) always found the handwriting recognition and other Tablet features cool, there was just not enough reason for consumers to buy. Not enough software was created for the Tablet and while companies like Zinio were trying to start up with digital magazines there was not really any specialized media made for it -- at the end of the day it looked cool but not much more. Skip ahead to present day…

Today there are still Tablet devices available from multiple manufacturers but they’re pretty much the same as those from the last 7-8 years. The real difference is that while consumers definitely seem excited about a new Tablet and seem ready to buy an additional computing device (see the great Netbook and Kindle sales this holiday season) it is the publishing world which seems to be begging for Apple to launch a product to save them.

Print publications whether newspapers or magazines are dying -- readership + advertising is at an all time low, classified ads have moved to Craigslist, and only a very select few publications have been able to charge anything for their content online. It would only seem logical that these publications need to find a way to move their product to the digital space but the really interesting thing is that to do so they have basically thrown up their hands and said we need a new printing press to be invented and that printing press should come from Apple. Beyond a bevy of articles about the need and desire of these publishers to have Apple throw them a lifeline it was really a video from Time/Sports Illustrated that caught my attention. The video produced by Time and showcasing the potential future of Sports Illustrated (embedded below) looks great but caused me to step back and take a moment to look at what the message was to the business versus tech communities.

From a pure technology standpoint of course all of us (the tech nerds like me) are waiting with baited breath for the Tablet specifically from Apple and regardless of whether it really takes off like the iPod/iPhone or it’s considered a dud like Apple TV (just to show Apple’s not perfect) we’ll love that it’s out there and ushering in a new computing form factor beyond the Netbook. So I get that the video is a showcase of what could be. From a business standpoint though I really find the messaging of a video like this to be suspect.

What is Time trying to say with this video? From my standpoint it seems to be really giving the message that publishers are waiting for someone else to solve their business problems by inventing them a magical new printing press. I find that it signals that they feel they are unable to move forward or innovate at all on their own. While it is a very cool video indeed, if I’m an executive at Time I’d much rather my team be figuring out ways to make all of our publications more advertising and subscription friendly in the online space and less time creating videos full of speculation and conjecture. Don’t get me wrong, if Apple is indeed working on such a device (and pretending I still am an exec at Time) I would expect my team to have secured a partnership so that we had content ready at launch. We know Apple really knows how to launch a product so I’d want Steve Jobs to show our product at that launch, but Apple has not confirmed anything and so I’d expect to see a video like this presented to me (as an executive) internally but I wouldn’t want to announce to the world via YouTube that we’re waiting on a Hail Mary pass from Apple.

What do you think? Am I crazy or is there some real mixed messaging going on here?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSn7Za5SWng

If you live in Canada I certainly do not need to tell you about the level of anticipation, excitement, passion and collective hopes that were riding on yesterday’s men’s Olympic hockey team selection. For my non Canuck readership the things I can compare it to include the lead up to a national election or for the techies, speculation on the next product from Apple all with coverage more intense than that of the flight of Balloon Boy. Just the selection of the team is a national moment and one which I’ve decided to turn into 5 business lessons you can learn from Steve Yzerman and crew.

So here goes my attempt at 5 business lessons from Canada’s Olympic Hockey Team selection.

1. The Roster Announcement – Build Buzz By Being Quiet

Of course not everyone is able to garner the media attention that Hockey Canada achieved but one of the major take aways from Yzerman and crew is that regardless of the amount of speculation (again think Apple Tablet hype) surrounding the Team Canada roster there was a set time and place where the team would be revealed and nobody from Hockey Canada would remotely comment on the roster before yesterday’s press conference. The secrecy only lead to more people talking about the press conference and just like an Apple media event, the take away is that giving pre-interviews or sharing tidbits prior to launch might be appealing, if you can build a buzz by setting a firm date and time for the magic reveal, then allow your launch (roster announcement) to truly be an event by sticking to your guns and not letting loose lips sink your ship.

Take Away: Pick a launch date and stick to it, it might be tempting to talk to reporters or analysts about your product pre-launch but nobody’s interested in the launch of a product that you’ve already essentially launched via a collection of bits and pieces in multiple spots. Build a buzz and make your reveal the main event.

2. Players In Uniform – Show The Product & Have Media Available

People all across Canada were not only excited about today’s roster announcement but were instantly given a jolt of national pride by seeing all the selected players pictured in their red and white Team Canada jerseys. I can’t tell you the number of times I saw news orgs using these photos and of course they were flying around the blogosphere.

Sidney Crosby Will Lace Up For Canada

In the same way that people were clamoring to not only hear the Canadian roster but actually get a glimpse at what it looked like, you too should never launch a product with a flashy video or presentation and not have product shots and other media ready for press and blogger consumption. In fact, the more you can provide, the better. Taking a page from the playbook (and they’ve provided a good one) of the smart people @Hubspot, you want to provide as much media and as many inbound hooks as possible. Dropping a press release is simply not good enough, you should be prepared with images, a podcast (why not use video), something for YouTube, a blog post, at least a few Tweets (try CoTweet for the ability to allow multiple people to Tweet under your corporate identity – there is power in using different voices) and at least one custom landing page on your website.

Take-Away: If you want people – reporters, bloggers, customers etc – to talk or write about your product (and why wouldn’t you) then make it easy for them. By giving them media to share with their audience you not only make it easy for them to tell your story, but as importantly you get to have way more control over the way (wouldn’t you rather people see your high quality product shots than something a blogger shot on his iPhone) in which that story is told.

3. Balance Your Roster – Surround Yourself With Greatness

Looking up and down the Team Canada roster one of the things that becomes apparent is that there is a mix of young (Sidney Crosby) and older (Scott Niedermayer) talent, players with pure speed + finesse and those who don’t mind grinding it out with some physical play. The team is comprised of not only terrific players but also players that compliment each other’s skill-set and looking at your own management team, why should it be any different?

While the Olympic roster needed to be set by a certain date and is not supposed to change, in business you want to always be evaluating your team and it is important to get the right people on that team and get the wrong people off it – more on that in Jim Collins “Good To Great”.

Taking the analogy a step further, although the Team Canada alternates (in case of injury) have not been named yet, it is safe to assume that a couple of those spots will be filled by young up and coming players like 19 year olds Steven Stamkos and John Tavares. These guys are not quite ready to crack the roster today, but they’ll be counted on in 2014 and so giving them some experience now is in both the team and their best interests That same idea easily applies to business and your management succession planning. Evaluate your company and find out who your future 50 goal scoters are, who will you want at the table in the future? It’s not only an important exercise to identify these people but it’s more important to let them know you recognize their talent and to offer them experiences, training and other ‘perks’ that not only benefit them but will pay off for you and your company down the road when they’re ready to fill the shoes of someone heading out the door via free agency (i.e. another job), waivers (i.e. necessity when they’re not right anymore) or retirement. By recognizing this young talent today you signal to them and the rest of your organization that you’ll always reward top talent and will both cut the risk of losing that talent and have the benefit of more fruitful recruiting of other young budding superstars.

Take-Away: You can’t do it alone in either hockey or business and in both it’s extremely important to ensure your team has a mix of levels of experience and skill-sets. It is also vital to your business that you too identify your future superstars and start bringing them along today, in doing so you will be positioning your company as one that not only can challenge for your equivalent of a gold medal today but (like Team Canada) is a contender each and every time you compete.

4. Everyone’s A Critic – It’s Best To Have A Passionate Base

In the months leading up to todays roster announcement everyone had an opinion on who should wear the Maple Leaf and who should be watching from their couch. In the weeks from yesterday’s selection all the way to beyond the Olympics (especially if Canada does not win gold) the decision of Yzerman and Hockey Canada will be as hotly debated as the ongoing US healthcare reform.

My point being that whether you’re Barack Obama making decisions of national importance or Steve Yzerman picking a team that feels nationally important, people will always second guess you or be quick to point out what they would have done differently and it’s not necessarrily a bad thing. First, remember why you became the boss. At some point wasn’t it so the buck would stop with you and you’d be able to stand up and say this is my decison and I stick behind it? Second, I can’t imagine anything better than having passionate consumers (fans), employees and other stake holders. The people who comment on blogs, review your service on Yelp or converse with you via Twitter are your equivalent of Canada’s army of hockey fans – these people are the ones that will be first to tell you when you piss them off or they disagree with a decision you’ve made, but they’re also fiercely loyal and given the alternative of having people who just don’t care trust me when I tell you that you’d rather have a few pieces of opinionated feedback than a business that is full of yes men and women.

Take-Away: Creating a brand where your customers, employees and other stake holders are passionate is one of the biggest achievements you can strive for. With passion comes opinion and while you might not always appreciate being second guessed remember that it comes with the territory and it’s a thousand times better than nobody giving a damn about you or your brand.

5. Go For Gold – Second Place Is The First Loser

Go For The Gold

While we might be ok telling our kids that there are no winners or losers in life, let’s be honest and say that there is indeed a scorecard in hockey, life and business. Someone is going to win the gold medal (or be the global market leader in your space) and if you’re going to go to the trouble of putting together a team it should be with the goal of being number one. Yes I am sure there are teams (and businesses) that are content or even thrilled at just getting a medal, but ask any elite athlete (CEO) what they’re striving for each time they lace’em up and the answer will always be the same – “I (we) play to win”. Your business is no different, you should get up each morning with the goal of taking one step more towards the goal of market leadership.

The other major point to note here is that while Hockey Canada has not always returned with a gold medal that has never changed the goal for the next Olympics. Again this applies directly to business in that the recognized leader in a space today is not necessarily going to dominate that space forever – heck of the 500 companies on the Fortune 500 in 1995, less than half remain on the list.

Take-Away: Always go for the gold and strive to do better each day – you may not win today’s competition but you’ll certainly lose tomorrow’s if you’re not in the mindset of a champion.

I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t end this post in true Canadian fashion and let you know that it’s gold or bust for our boys in Vancouver so Go Canada Go!

Thanks for reading, your comments, feedback and Twitter retweets (here is the tinyurl – http://tinyurl.com/ybvmwz7) are always appreciated.

So you’ve got a business idea or maybe even for the most advanced in my readership, a business plan. You’ve heard a lot about your elevator pitch and the many ways in which to raise money. So the next step in your plan is to get mainstream buy in for your idea. Yet how do you do this if your idea is complex and new? You need to break down your idea into bite size and intellectually digestible pieces. The person you are pitching to must intrinsically get your business the moment after you pitch it or the pitch flat out was not worth it. So how to explain a tough concept? Why not spend a fair bit of dough (this was not entitled the “free way to get noticed”) and get some experts to help you tell your story. If you really want to go for the gold, how about the guys from Epipheo Studios who were good enough for Google, twice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwVX42Amcak

I’m not just talking about any group of talented individuals because if you need a guy who is awesome I’d just send you to Marc Lostracco, but if you need an agency who knows how to explain technology or even say Rosh Hashanah, go visit the kind folks at Ephipheo.

Given my propensity for nerdiness and specifically my passion for entrepreneurial businesses in the online world I often get asked by friends, family and tweeps about what company or service I would recommend for this or that related to the Internet or online marketing. I am happy to give one of advice but find myself recommending the same companies and services time and time again so I thought it would be worthwhile to break down months of recommendations into a usable list of technologies and/or services I use or recommend you use in your business. I’ve tried to include some brief information on why I use the company/service and what I find valuable about that particular company but there are two things that you can be sure are true of any company that makes my list. First the company must be hell-bent on customer service, if there is one thing that every company (online or offline) should be passionate about, it is customer service and creating customer evangelists (I think I qualify as example A with this list) so if a company has made my list you can expect that while they might not be Zappos, they’ll treat you with respect. Second, to make my list the company/service has to be one that does not require a second mortgage on your home to use, if it’s on this list then in my estimation the benefits of use far outweigh the cost.

I’ve tried to break these down into some sort of usable categories and would be happy to expand on my experiences with any of these companies so feel free to drop a comment or ask anything that’s on your mind.

So here is my inaugural list of companies that rock!

Collaboration/Communication

What good is working in a vacuum or not being able to effectively collaborate with team members regardless of whether they are in the next office or a different continent. As a company like WooThemes has shown, with some ability to be tech savvy and the occasional early morning (or late evening depending on time zones) video call you can create and run a successful (and profitable) company across geographic boundaries with people you may or may not ever meet in person. Most who read this post will not be in the boat of the WooThemes guys but they’ve proven that it can be done and done well. So here are my favorite companies and tools for collaboration.

Skype

Traditional communication through the telephone and ultimately the dreaded conference call can and should be replaced by a better and cheaper method, the combination of ubiqutous high speed internet access and voice over ip has made there many better ways to communicate and collaborate with your team than simply using the telephone but Skype is still the most user friendly.

I am quite sure I do not need to give you an overview of what Skype is especially considering Oprah seems to love it, but if you want to communicate with colleagues (or friends) in a free manner there is no reason to look beyond Skype. With the smooth video to video calling capability you can not only collaborate in real time from across the world but you can do it face-to-face. For people who feel that it is important to have that “face time” with clients or colleagues there really is nothing more practical than Skype.

Yammer and P2 Theme

There is no doubt that Twitter has exploded communication across the Internet and that if you could harnass just one small bit of that communication in your own business it would be a very powerful thing. With that in mind I have two recommendations.

Yammer is Twitter but behind the corporate firewall and P2 is a WordPress Theme that mimics some of the functionality of Twitter. I have included both Yammer and P2 in the same area because although I think P2 is an excellent (and free) alternative, it requires that you or a member of your team have much more technical knowledge (you need to at least know WordPress) and it certainly does not offer the applications (e.g. iPhone or BlackBerry client) nor support of a paid product like Yammer. Both offer your team increased ways to communicate and collaborate, it really just comes down to the functionality and support you require.

Yammer

I’ll start with Yammer which I have described as Twitter behind the corporate firewall. I am sure the company would list about a billion different ways to describe it’s features but at the end of the day that’s the difference maker that I see in it and the value of Yammer is really in that it is a private version of Twitter. In organizations where people are in at different times or where teams are trying to collaborate with people they don’t often get to see face-to-face, Yammer can be a good way to ensure that those teams are talking and sharing links, resources and ideas.

If however you (or a team member) has some technical knowledge and you don’t really need the full feature set of Yammer then I highly recommend you check out the WordPress theme known as P2.

P2

I was originally alerted to this WordPress theme through an article written by Matt Mullenweg (if you don’t know who Matt is, he is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web) entitled “How p2 Changed Automattic“. An article with that title from a person of that amount of knowledge and influence had it book marked in Instapaper (more on that below) for a long period of time before I got around to reading the article. With that said and if you’ve taken a moment to read Matt’s article you will immediately have a great use case for just what p2 is and why do I recommend it.

At the end of the day P2 is a free theme for WordPress that allows a traditional blog to to operate in a Twitter like fashion by supporting features like inline comments on the homepage, a posting form on the homepage, inline editing of posts and comments, real-time updates so new posts and comments come in without reloading, and more. I could do a more full job explaining the feature set, but there is a pretty slick video on the demo site that gives you all you need to know.

Go To Meeting

You really can’t talk about collaboration amongst team members without giving them a tool with which to collaborate or share documents in a conference or video call setting. With that in mind GoToMeeting is about as reliable and cost effective solution as can be recommended. The level of customer service and number of customers using the product (hence most problems are sorted out quite quickly) ensure that this is a service that will continue to advance. They’ll give you a 30 day trial and you can pay monthly so it’s a good service when you need it.

Rypple

Feedback is one of the most important things you can solicit from customers, colleagues and friends. The team at Rypple has made that pretty amazingly easy and slick. Using a customer acquisition model that seems to be based on employees at corporations falling in love with the service and then recommending it to their company – with the company paying to implement on a larger scale – Rypple is a company you should watch and get on board with.

Email Marketing

Mailchimp

For most small businesses email marketing or having a newsletter is one of those things they know they should do but don’t really know where to begin. I can tell you that email marketing works time and time again and getting started is not only easy, it’s also free. Sign up for an account at Mailchimp and you’ll be sending beautiful emails in no time. I can’t stress enough how much you should be working to get email addresses and beginning your email marketing. As you get more at ease read the Mailchimp blog and get some inspiration here.

Productivity

Perhaps my favorite items on this list can be found here, whether you’re a casual Internet user or hardcore these services will come in handy.

GetDropbox

Perhaps the most useful on the list, Get DropBox is a free service that will let you store files on the cloud and the retrieve them from any other computer or even your iPhone. It’s much better than emailing yourself and if you’ll have Internet it’s much better than any USB key. Go get yourself and account and you will not be sorry I promise.

Evernote

Whther you’re on a Mac or a PC, an iPhone or Blackberry, Evernote is another one that should be on both your desktop and your phone. We all have some method of keeping notes to ourselves, whether it is where you parked your car or your latest business idea, Evernote is the place to store them all. You can go so far as to take a photo with your camera and save it as a note with all the text shown in the photo searchable, it’s semi unbelievable. Notes sync with your desktop and phone and are basically available to you everywhere.

One non-business use for you is to save coupons as pdfs to Evernote and then have them available in store, the clerk can scan the upc from your phone.

Instapaper

This one is specifically for iPhone users but it’s an amazing and free little app that will allow you to access any web article from your phone while offline. You can all relate I’m sure, you’re working and come across an article you’d like to read but dint have the time. So you click read later and when you’re on the subway you’ve got a set of things to read. It’s a great app.

Twitter (Social Media) – Caveat, I do not know the customer service levels here

There are many who have covered the numerous Twitter clients and services better than I ever could (see this from Mashable, and this from Twitter) but I have a few services you should take a look at.

I’ll first say that my Twitter desktop client of choice is Tweetdeck and that on the iPhone I prefer Tweetie2 but here are some Twitter related sites and services.

Social Oomph

Previously known as Tweet Later, this company will allow you to schedule tweets days in advance and have them drop at a time of your choosing whether you are online or not. You can do some key word tracking using the site but that’s not its strong suit, it really is just a great service for pre-scheduling some tweets and then sitting back and watching them go.

Peashoot

There is no sense saying that you are going to use Twitter as a serious marketing vehicle if you’re not going to track your Twitter based campaigns and try to learn from them. Peashoot tracks your conversions and shows you how to improve your future campaigns. I’ve toyed with this but have not used it seriously yet but the company says it’s Audience Builder automatically follows people on Twitter who are relevant to you or your company. Over a matter of days Peashoot can increase your total audience size giving you more people to connect with and help spread the word about you or your company. More importantly the application lets you Measure ROI and respond to campaign activity. The company offers what it calls “Active Listening” technology whereby Twitter activity about your campaign is included in your campaign reports.

What The Trend

Trends on Twitter are a good way to keep yourself in the loop as to items which are topical and will hopefully draw visitors to your blog and comments if you hop on a trend and write something interesting. What the Trend is not one of those sites that you need to visit daily, but it’s a handy little place to get some topical blog post ideas.

I have to admit that I quite enjoyed my own open letter to Starbucks, so I thought I’d bring back the format in this my open letter to Motorola.

Dear Motorola,

I don’t work for you and to be honest I haven’t owned one of your products for a while, but I know enough to know that you are undoubtedly the leader in bluetooth headsets for mobile phones.  I say this not to flatter you but to remind you that your market dominance is always at stake and that you can and should use your power in the market to continue to dominate. To that end, I’m here with a little suggestion for you and it goes something like this.

With all the states, provinces and other jurisdictions enacting laws that prohibit the use of cellular phones without a handsfree option there are going to be a mass amount of people who need to get in the market for your products quickly. Now of course you could take the traditional approach and offer some deep discounts right around the same time these various pieces of legislation pass, and I suggest you do. But here is where I think you can use your deep pockets to both make yourself look good and garner new customers. First why don’t you reach out to every law enforcement agency that is going to have to hand out tickets and offer them a coupon for $25 off any of your bluetooth headsets and $50 off any of your in-car setups. Talk about Guerrilla Marketing, you end up making the boys and girls in blue your street team, literally! Now while, we’re at it, why not tell the same police and governments that you will do a joint awareness campaign with them and get them to foot 50% of the marketing campaign that you were going to run anyway?

Nobody (just ask Maria Shriver) is going to be happy getting pulled over for using their phone, but I’m pretty sure that those same people will be picking up a bluetooth device sometime shortly after getting the ticket. So there is a completely new customer base up for grabs and I’m happy to give you what I think is a leg up. Since you don’t pay me and I’m quite confident that I’m not going to get any swag in the mail from you as a result of this suggestion I’ll let you do the math on the budget and break-even for this type of campaign, but I’m a betting man and I’m betting you can’t go wrong.

So with that, I thank you for your time and if you’re feeling generous after reading this letter I am happy to take any and all payments for the marketing campaign suggestions contained herein. You know where to reach me.

Michael G. Cohen

With plenty of respect to Jason Schuller who designed the theme upon which this blog is built – and is amazing both as a designer and in the support realm – I will come right out and tell you that I am a WooThemes fan and you should be too. I work in the software industry and have been involved with my share of start up companies so it is not without some experience that I say these guys know what they’re doing. From collaborating with top notch designers (many of whom I’m sure they have never met in person) to outstanding customer support, the company is one that is certainly an example of a Web 2.0 mover and shaker.  Of course it’s not just a feel good story here, I do have some questions on how the brand is being built, so read on.I have first hand experience working with the themes provided by WooThemes and they are incredibly easy to work with out of the box, yet take one look at their showcase and you can see how someone with more talent than I can easily customize them. It’s the customer support when you are trying to tweak one of these themes where WooThemes more than excels. I am not sure if they pay every one who is a “support” representative in the forums, but there is a sense of community and I have posted an answer or two when I have known it. There is really nothing bad I can say about the company (I do not work for these guys) , so I invite you to check them out if your blog need’s an upgrade.

Where To From Here?

WooThemes - Antisocial

So I am not just espousing the greatness of WooThemes, I do actually wonder where to for this company and what kind of revenue they are making. On the revenue side, the themes cost $75 if you want one (plus one with their permanent promotion) and I would suspect that many who purchase these themes are semi to fully professional web designers who find that it is more cost effective for them and their clients to start from one of many many themes. So if your factor in the cost for a developer of $150 per theme (and I’m not including memberships just yet) there is a quick doubling of margins. I’m not sure what kind of revenue the subscriptions generate, you have to plunk down $200 to start, which is not very much if you are planning on selling your services. Another $20 a month and I guess all you really have to do is have 2-3 clients a year and it pays to be a member. So putting these numbers together the obvious question is what does demand equate to. I feel like I am a bit of an uber consumer on this front but I have to imagine this is going very very very we$$ for the team.

I’m extremely impressed with the company’s ability to collaborate with top notch designers from around the globe, but as a marketer I do wonder about whether a brand is being built. There is the WooThemes Twitter account which seems to be a bit personal, and there are all the individual designer’s pages – Adii Rockstar seems to be the biggest of these – yet if WooThemes was gone tomorrow or less drastic decided to change its name, would anybody care? Would much change? I don’t think that the world would crumble if any brand went in a different direction, but I think the indifference to the WooThemes brand is because of the fact that at the heart of it, it still feels like a company of individuals. Maybe I am just being picky, but I think that there could be more being done to build a Zappos like brand. After all, I have to suspect that regardless of the revenue numbers if the team could sell the company on more than just the revenue stream it would be worth sacrificing a little “rock star”
status.

Public relations is a funny business, many times you are trying to get people to pay attention to a press release or event you are holding and the job is really about creating a buzz. Other times public relations becomes more about either quelling some bad publicity or having the foresight to recognize an opportunity for good press. It’s not always so easy to spot the great public relations efforts (though a company like Zappos does pretty well) but it is certainly easy to spot when your public relations team has failed and even more easy if that failure is on a global stage. In particular I am talking about the utter failure of the corporate PR team at the Marriott Hotel Chain to react to a groundswell of poor press, tweets and blogs after staff at the Times Square location did not recognize that kicking the new fan favorite of the US Open out of their hotel would be a boneheaded move…Allow me to elaborate.

Even if you are not a tennis fan, it is hard to avoid the hoopla and hype surrounding the US Open.  As one of the tennis majors and hosted in Flushing Meadows, New York, the tournament is extremely well covered and televised both domestically and internationally. As there is almost every year in major sporting events,  this year the tournament provided fans with a real feel good story in Melanie Oudin. Oudin, the previously 70th-ranked 17 year old shocked tennis fans by defeating fourth-seeded Elena Dementieva and former world No. 1 Maria Sharapova and was only recently defeated by ninth-seeded Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark in a 6-2, 6-2 loss. However it is not Oudin’s remarkable tennis run that caused this post, rather it is a story making the rounds (and the news) about how Oudin was forced to leave her hotel and move across the street because Marriott wanted to jack the room rates.  The story goes this way…

Oudin was staying at the Times Square Marriott — because if you’re 17 and in New York, you want to be in the middle of the action – But because she’s never advanced this far in a major and her path was littered with high-ranking players whose last name ended in “ova,” Oudin booked her hotel room for one week. She shared the king-sized bed in the room with her mom. Then down went Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (ranked 36). Then Elena Dementieva (the 4th seed). Then Maria Sharapova (the former world number one). Then Nadia Petrova (the 13th seed). So Oudin, whose stay in New York had been elongated, needed a place to hang her racket at the end of the night. The Marriott Hotel made Oudin and her mom leave when their reservation was up or pay an increased (doubled) room rate.

Melanie Oudin @ The US Open

Now I can understand the front line hotel staff not having the foresight to realize that this was going to be a public relations disaster but doesn’t someone at the Marriott head office stand up and take notice when reporters start calling to ask about a guest. I mean shouldn’t your public relations team have heard of Twitter and started to see the buzz growing? Apparently not at Marriott as the hotel chain said it was shocked to hear the news of an ousted Oudin.

“We had no knowledge Melanie Oudin was staying at the hotel. There were no guests registered under her name. The hotel was absolutely shocked to receive this media inquiry,” a hotel spokesperson said.

Even if the hotel chain had no knowledge of Oudin’s ordeal, I find it tough to believe that when reporters started calling nobody thought to pick up the phone and call the manager at the Times Square location to confirm what had actually happened. Surely the people working at the hotel knew who Oudin was and recognized the fact that this 17 year old girl now had to employ security guards to protect her when she makes the short walk from the locker room to the practice courts or when returning to her hotel. Even if the front line staff did not recognize the poor move of having this girl leave their hotel, how could nobody at the corporate level recognize the opportunity to turn a PR disaster into something remotely positive. It would have been extremely easy to turn this situation around even after Oudin had found a room at another establishment. Here’s how I would have played it

First, once I realized that head office getting a call from a reporter about a teenage tennis player in the US Open was not a hoax I would have immediately made two phone calls. I would have the manager of the Times Square Marriott on one line and begin explaining to him that I didn’t care who was in the nicest suite in the hotel, s/he was to turn that sucker into a 17 year old tennis phenom’s dream. Lavish pillows, bubble baths and whatever else is saved for the top guests. Then (and I am assuming that there is some level of authority granted to the executives at Marriott) I would have made it my business to figure out who represented Ms. Oudin (which is not very hard considering for this article I found it in two minutes) and would have called her representative to not only offer apologies but to let them know that the hotel had prepared the best suite for Oudin and that of course her and her family were guests and did not have to pay for their stay. Of course that seems like the easy way to stem the negativity that was already brewing in the press. I probably would have even taken it a step further and paid Oudin so my  marketing team could whip up some quick viral advertisements that played on Marriott’s error in judgment. Giving the girl a lavish suite and showing that the hotel chain could laugh at itself would certainly be better than the absolute nothing that they did do.

Great job Marriott, now you have America’s newest sweetheart booked as a guest on “The Tonight Show” and “Ellen” where no doubt the easy story to tell will be about how big bad Marriott kicked her out of her hotel. Ya, that’s what you want. For a company that tries to espouse a commitment to community and family values I’d say you could mark this as a pretty complete failure.

I came across this article in Print Magazine and thought it was pretty interesting when you think about the design elements. Basically Print asked four design firms to come up with the design for packaging and branding a pack of dubes. Besides the fact that it is a cool idea in general, when you actually step back and think about it, this is uncharted territory. Nobody has ever really tried to brand Marijuana and so these guys were playing in a completely new ballpark. Of course you can go to Amsterdam where coffee shops have different names for their marijuana but even there almost nobody advertises and the closest you get to branding is the coffee shops themselves becoming chain-like. Therefore, it was interesting to me to see four graphic design firms get a chance at “building a better baggie.”

The four firms chosen for this little task were – Lust, a graphic design practice in Amsterdam established by Thomas Castro, Jeroen Barendse, and Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen; the New York office of Base, which worked with its branches in Europe; the Oslo firm Strømme Throndsen, winner of the 2009 Award for Design Excellence for its flour packaging; and The Heads of State, a two-man operation run by Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers in Philadelphia.  The brief was simple: What would a legal pack of marijuana cigarettes look like?

So here they are, let me know what you think. Personally if I was walking by the Heads of State would win. Base looks like something I could get today and put a sticker on, the one by Stromme I think is cool but it looks a bit too much like the packaging for an energy powder (or crack) to me. The one by Lust, well I guess it’s good to know what you’re inhaling.

As always, I am interested in your comments and please RT this if you’re on Twitter.

Base - Click To View

HoS - Click To View

Strø - Click To View

Lust - Click To View