Chatroulette for Marketing? Not Unless You Want to See…

A few months back, Chatroulette was all the rage in the news. Every reporter from every national outlet was talking about the hot new social media tool, Chatroulette. (For a good laugh about all the news reports, watch the Daily Show’s take on the whole thing below… tee hee…)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Tech-Talch – Chatroulette
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

But if you somehow missed every one of those reports, let me fill you in. Chatroulette is a site developed by a Russian teenager still living at home with Mom and Dad that randomly pairs you for a video chat with people across the world. If the person who comes up isn’t of interest, you click “next,” which has created the term “nexting.” Fun, right?

Well, it pretty quickly went downhill, turning into a site that is “71% male, 15% female and 14% pervert.” Um, with the demographic being highly male, just use your imagination as to what you might see a lot of . Southpark also did a great episode (warning: adult content) making fun of Chatroulette.

But on to its marketing potential: is there any? Eh…

Pretty much not, unless you’re marketing to perverts, but I thought I’d show you a few pretty creative ways some different folks are using it anyway.

1) Improv Piano Guy

This is so funny! A guy did a video of himself on Chatroulette playing the piano and improvisationally singing a song about however who ended up with on the video chat. Even better, the musician Ben Folds did something similar live during a concert. Pretty fun!

2) The Travelocity Gnome

If you’re Chatrouletting, you just might come across the Travelocity gnome! He sits there, doing nothing obscene, with a little sign encouraging you to stop video chatting and start vacationing!

3) What’s Your Reaction?

Lots of people get on Chatroulette dressed up in a costume or doing a silly dance, etc. just to get people’s reactions. Might make for a funny marketing video if you can cut through all the unsavoriness.

4) Come Find Me!

We also heard tell of a comedian putting out the word on social media that he was headed over to Chatroulette and to come find him. We think that’s a pretty fun idea too, as it creates a bit of  a “hunt” to see if you can find him.

In Closing

Overall, I think that Chatroulette is best left to the 14% mentioned above, but if you feel compelled to do something really creative, I’d stick to coming up with a silly idea, hopping onto Chatroulette and getting people’s reactions. Get it on video and use a clean version of it later on your own site or YouTube channel.

Here are a few more good posts and websites on Chatroulette:

Chatroulette Being Used for Marketing? Say It Ain’t So!

4 Fun and Crazy Chatroulette Videos

ChatrouletteVideos.com

Got any ideas for marketing with Chatroulette? Share them!

Foursquare Ain’t No Fad and Here’s Why

I’m a big fan of Foursquare (just ask any of my co-workers ) and believe that it’s about to really take off. Check out my TwitterMoms post about why I think Foursquare “ain’t no fad.” Please weigh in and let’s a debate going!

Selling Social Media to the Boss

Getting your boss to sign off on a social  media campaign can oftentimes be about as easy as putting a man on the moon!

Check out this post on our client Spirit Telecom’s No Static Blog with tips on how to approach higher ups and sell them on the benefits of social media. First on the list: don’t use the phrase “social media”!

How did you sell your boss on social media?

Social Media: A Full Time Job

The good news about social media is that businesses are finally understanding that it needs to be a part of their marketing plans; the bad news is they aren’t allotting enough resources to make it really work for them.

If I had a dime for every poor PR person who I see straddled with the job of keeping the company Facebook and Twitter page updated, I’d be a rich woman.  I used to be the company PR person and I know how much that person is already carrying on their shoulders. Often their job entails: marketing, community relations, event planning, advertising, employee relations, government relations … oh, and that little thing called media relations, which by itself can be a full time job for a decent-sized company. Social media has now gotten thrown into the mix.

Now, if you had to pick an existing job to add social media duties to, PR is definitely the one I’d choose. Afterall, those people understand the company’s brand and message, and hopefully are skilled communicators and writers. But it’s matter of time – and social media takes a lot of it!

So what’s the solution? I whole-heartedly believe if companies truly want to do social media right (and to me, there’s no point in doing it any other way, because it just becomes a waste of money when the results don’t match expectations) they need to either 1) Add a new position whose job is entirely social media (and better yet, create a social media team) or 2) Hire a social media firm with proven success.

Adding it to a plate that is already full is a recipe for disaster and is the reason why social media sometimes gets a bad rap for its bottom-line results. You can’t expect that by posting to your Facebook page once a week, taking several days to respond questions and comments, and linking your Twitter account to Facebook, which always cuts off your posts because they’re too long for Twitter, to cut muster.

The only time it really works to add to an existing job is if you can find someone extremely into social media, who’s willing to be on at home, check in on their phone while out and generally be on all the time. That does happen occasionally, but you want to be sure that person doesn’t ignore their original job duties and that they don’t burn out.

The benefits of paying someone to do social media are:

1) That is their sole focus, so other duties aren’t neglected.  Social media is no longer a distraction.

2) They can keep accounts updated multiple times daily.

3) They can quickly respond to questions, comments and complaints.

4) They can proactively monitor tools like Twitter and Foursquare for mentions of the company and for prospective customers and interact with them, rather just be in reactionary mode.

5) They have time to brainstorm creative promotions.

6) They can stay up to date on the changes in social media (which goodness knows is a daily occurrence) and adapt campaigns accordingly.

7) They can put together a plan with goals, strategies and tactics.

They can compile and review metrics to see what’s working well and what isn’t.

What do you think? Should social media be added to an existing job? If so, who’s? If not, should you add a job? Hire a firm? In a future post, I’ll offer some tips on what to look for when hiring an outside company to manage your social media presence.

It’s Hip to Be Square: Foursquare Day April 16!

Because here at Step Ahead we love Foursquare SO much, we’ve decided to organize a Charleston get-together in honor of Foursquare Day, an initiative organized nationally to promote the use of Foursquare on April 16.

We’re hosting a “square up” April 16, 5:30-7:30 p.m., at the new Charleston Digital Corridor Flagship space in downtown Charleston, 475 East Bay St., with wine, beer and light appetizers.

But there’s more…. For every place you’ve “checked in” using Foursquare that day (up to 5) you will be entered to win a brand new iPod Touch, so you can, of course, use Foursquare on it . Just show us your check ins and we’ll enter you. Winner announced around 7 p.m. And you get one entry just for showing up (so newbies, you’re not totally out!)

If you’re not sure just what Foursquare is all about, that’s OK. We’ll have folks on hand to give you a quick tutorial, help you get it set up on your smart phone or iPod Touch and show you how it all works. Heck, we’ll even help you make your first “check in”!

AND, we’ll be giving away some silly prizes to regular Foursquare users like to the person who’s the mayor of the most places or who checks in at the most Starbucks, etc.

So join us April 16 at the Flagship from 5:30 -7:30 p.m. Be there or be square!

Magic Phone Lessons Learned

Last month, our team came up with what we thought would be a fun contest to help promote our client, Spirit Telecom, a telecommunications company based in Columbia, S.C. While you might not think of that as the most social media savvy of subjects, we’ve prided ourselves in our ability to come up with some really interesting ideas that have increased their visibility online.

For our latest promotion, we decided to take the idea of silly/fun hashtags (a way to categorize tweets on Twitter) that often pop up and turn that concept into a contest, as well. Since they’re a telecommunications company, we thought what if we asked people who they would call – past or present, living or dead – if they had a magic phone. We turned #magicphone into the hashtag.

A blog post on the company’s site noted that at two random times during a 24-hour period we would choose the person who had tweeted #magicphone closest to that time and award them a Kindle, thus, the contest.

Well, as you may or may not have seen, #magicphone really took off. However, after a staff post-mortem of the promotion and conversations with several Twitter buddies, we realize we may have created an unintended annoying side effect especially for locals in Charleston (where #magicphone got started): filling up your Twitter account with a lot of #magicphone posts.

So we wanted to issue a #magicphone apology on behalf of Step Ahead, Inc. We realize now that the way we chose to select the winner (by selecting a random time) encouraged people to spam #magicphone over and over in the hopes they would land on the right time. Creating a bunch of spammy repeating posts was certainly not our goal.

We wanted people, if they were interested, to tweet it once or twice, tag two others, and be done with it. But instead, lots of people just posted the same tweet over and over and over again. If you were following multiple people doing that, your Twitter account quickly filled up with #magicphone.

Sooo…. we’ve decided that for future promotions like this we’ll allow folks to enter once per day only via Twitter and hopefully reduce the spammy tweets so it’s a bit more manageable – and fun, like we intended. We’re all learning as we navigate the ever-changing world of social media and we feel like every time we do a promotion and tweak and refine, we’re helping our clients have the best social media presence they can have.

Overall, though, Magic Phone was a success, sending more than 4500 people to our client’s Web site and exposing them to their products. Heck, I even got Trista Sutter (oh come on, you know she was The Bachelorette!) to tweet it!

I hope that helps make up for our mistake, Charleston Twitterers. Please know we did not intend to be annoying and never want to aggravate our best Twitter buddies.

So if you see #magicphone again, don’t worry. Hopefully, you’ll only see it a couple of times and you can choose to participate or not without a disruption to your Twitter day.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Working From Home

http://www2.counton2.com/cbd/lifestyles/my_news_2/article/my_news_2_working_from_home/108331/

Starting your own business and working at home means you can wear pajamas at the office, but it also presents a unique set of challenges. Holly Fisher, who works at home as an account executive with Step Ahead Inc. shares her tips.

Do You Like Dominos? Cooking up a new PR Campaign … and a New Pizza

So if you remember, Domino’s faced a big PR fiasco last year when two employees made a video of themselves doing unspeakable acts to a pizza before they delivered it to a customer. While they were lucky enough to learn about it from a blogger/friend (not because they were monitoring the Web, please note), they chose to sit on it instead of acting quickly, resulting in nearly 2 million views of the video on YouTube, major media coverage and a public backlash.

Well, Domino’s did respond, but a little too late to repair the damage done. They created a Twitter account to answer people’s questions and also put up a video of the CEO on YouTube apologizing for the incident, noting the employees had been fired and explaining that is not what goes on behind the doors of Domino’s.

Fast forward about 8 months later. Domino’s has taken a hard look at itself in light of what happened last year. They’ve decided to be honest about their failings and are trying to regain consumer confidence in their established brand.

So when you think of Domino’s pizza, do you think yuck or yum? Turns out most people think yuck J. Domino’s took a look at what people were saying about their pizza offline and online and heard things like “your crust tastes like cardboard” and “your sauce tastes like ketchup.” And what do you know, Domino’s actually listened!

They’ve put together a new campaign courtesy of the creative folks at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (of Burger King’s “king” ads and other very innovative and different campaigns) called “The Pizza Turnaround”. The campaign acknowledges their criticism and shows how they’ve reacted: creating an entirely new pizza from scratch.

The Pizza Turnaround

They’ve put together two great little YouTube videos, one showing the company listening in to focus groups and coming up with a new pizza, and the second, my favorite, with the head chef showing up at the doors of some of the harsher focus group participants and inviting them to try the new pizza. Bold and real.

At the Door of Our Harshest Critics

I LOVE it! I wish I could get more companies to follow in their footsteps. They’ve turned a really negative incident with the employee video into a catalyst for change for the company. People can always identify with you when you acknowledge failings (we all have them) and try to fix them. I think this will be a turnaround for Domino’s … well, so long as the pizza is actually good. I haven’t tried it yet.

Oh, and by the way, I am one of the few people who genuinely liked Domino’s pizza the way it was . Yea ketchup sauce!

What do you think of Domino’s tactics? Smart or stupid?

Advanced social networking for travelers

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35149665/ns/travel-tips/

Got a travel problem?

Just tweet about your troubles, and the airline, car rental company or hotel will fix it. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. And while it’s true that travel companies are spending a lot of time online listening to their customers, they’re not necessarily paying attention to all of us.

“Travel companies pick and choose who to respond to in social media,” says social media expert Ryan Goff of the advertising firm MGH, Inc. “You better believe that a Web celebrity with 100,000 Twitter followers is going to catch a company’s attention over the casual Tweeter with only 10 friends.”

Even online, some travelers are more equal than others. Question is, how to become a somebody?

You should care, because even today, as social networking applications like Twitter and Facebook have come of age, being online can be the most effective shortcut to getting great customer service.

I see it every day on Twitter, as customers with questions are sent to the front of the line (sometimes literally) because they had a respectable social-media profile. Online travel agencies such as Orbitz have an entire team of employees dedicated to monitoring online chatter and helping customers.

I asked several social media experts about how to boost your online profile. Here’s what they told me:

1. Be interesting
Boring people don’t get a lot of followers. “Be engaging,” says Lyn Mettler, the founder of Step Ahead, Inc., which manages social media campaigns. “Don’t just talk, talk, talk about yourself all day long. Read what other people are posting and respond to them. Ask questions, answer questions. Truly interacting with people will help build your followers.”

2. Get a blog
One of the fastest ways to raise your online profile is to start blogging. “If you blog, that helps tremendously,” says Tim Massie, an adjunct professor of communication at Marist College. It helps if the subject matter is travel-related, but anyone with access to a credible blog is likely to come to the attention of a travel company faster than someone who doesn’t have one. Massie says being an active participant in online forums can help, too. “If you go the extra mile, posting photos, helping others understand the amenities of hotels, and providing insider information that a typical tourist would overlook, you will earn your reputation and be an influencer in the travel industry,” he says.

3. Join the conversation
“Post and tweet frequently about your experiences,” says Rick Gardinier, the chief digital officer for the advertising agency Brunner. “This will increase your relevancy and authoritativeness which in turn will boost your following.” How often? I try to tweet and post a few times a day, but you should be able to keep a respectable profile by publishing something a few times a week.

4. Offer good information
Building trust — and followers — takes time and work, according to experts. “Travelers can increase their social media influence by creating good content, consistently, for an extended amount of time,” says Chris Harrington, the technology director for the communications firm Luquire George Andrews. He says he’s likely to follow users who have positive things to say about the subject matter. “Negative comments can hurt the traveler’s social capital as much or more than the company in question,” he adds. That way, when you go negative — when something happens to you while you’re traveling that you need resolved — your followers will pay attention.

5. Check your motives
It matters where you’re coming from, say the pros. “Motivation behind using social media extensively will drive the behavior of travelers,” says Philippe Duverger, an assistant professor of marketing at Towson University. For example, if people think you’re trying to sell something, they may be less likely to include you in the network. Also, if you’re branded a “complainer” then that can be a turn-off. Being in it for all the right reasons is one way of attracting lots of followers and building your online credibility.

6. Speak up
The best way to get noticed by any company is to openly discuss your experiences. “If the company has an interest in social media as a marketing outlet, then they will be monitoring all conversation about them, both positive and negative,” says social media guru Dan Healy of Mason, Inc., in New Haven, Conn. Acknowledging an experience that you had on an airline, for example, on a public forum is important to the airline because it gives them insight about their customers, and the public’s opinion. Be sure to use proper shout-out etiquette by linking to the travel company’s blog (which is monitored by the company) or using their Twitter handle — @Jetblue or @Marriottintl — when you tweet about them.

7. Make a personal connection
Travelers tend to follow people they can relate to. “People trust contents from somebody they can identify with personally,” says Iis Tussyadiah, an assistant professor at Temple University’s school of tourism and hospitality management. Often, it’s as simple as posting a picture and a brief biography on your blog or Facebook profile. People are likely to read your tweets and posts when they feel they know you than when you’re a faceless, anonymous voice on the Internet.

Even if you only have a small number of followers, you can still make a difference. “The squeaky Twitterer still gets the grease,” says Dallas Lawrence, the chair of the digital and social media practice group at Levick Strategic Communications. “Like most travel related stories in the online space, companies have focused their efforts towards addressing critical commentary posted by dissatisfied customers who have posted damaging comment to the online space about a particular airline, hotel or travel provider.”

You’re probably wondering if these strategies can really work for you. They can. I’ve used them myself. (You can follow me on Twitter at @elliottdotorg, Facebook or on my blog.

Along the way, I’ve made some terrific friends – people I’ve never actually met, but that’s beside the point — and had lots of interesting conversations.

Next time you have a travel problem, you’ll be glad you did.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35149665/ns/travel-tips/

Memos & Distinctions

Step Ahead Inc. has received a Gold Award from the MarCom Awards, an international competition for marketing and communication professionals, for The Squeaky Clean blog, which it designed and maintains for Castle Keepers. Also, Step Ahead received a Commendation of Merit from the Society for New Communications Research for the Twitter Beach Bash it hosted for MyrtleBeachHotels.com.

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/jan/25/25memosanddist/

Next Page »