It’s been a very exciting week for me, as it has been with the select few of you who were lucky enough to snag one of  the 100,000 invites for Google Wave.  Being an early adopter, I have been ecstatic trying to get my hands on the next new shiny object. The hype that has gone on for months billed it as the next generation collaboration platform, an email replacement, a Facebook and Twitter killer, and the list goes on.

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So what exactly is Google Wave?

You could classify it as a real-time collaboration tool that enables communication between a group of people. The environment enables a multitude of media that can interact within a wave or be embedded, such as  text, photos, videos, maps, gadgets, bots and more. It’s also  a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves. Just as with Twitter, it’s the developer community that will make or break Google Wave. It’s very early in the game, but product innovation potential is there.

What a typical wave looks like:

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A wave is  conversation with multiple participants. You can add as many people as you like to the wave to participate and collaborate. Rich content can be added to the wave by anyone is who part of the wave. The content can consist of gadgets, games, maps, video, photos, files and more. Similar to a message board, participants in the wave can reply any time and anywhere within a wave to anyone. Replies are threaded and can be edited anytime. You can also keep replies private and  select the participants that should see it. The real in real-time in here is watching the other participants in the wave type every key stroke,  and of course every spelling error right in front of your eyes.  Think before you say it applies here, because there is no comfort zone as there is with typing an email.  In an odd way, watching the other person type in real time changes the experience too.  To some extent this has existed already in some instant messaging platforms, but if I recall correctly,  it would only say ” the other user is typing”, and not broadcast the other users text in real time.

A wave with a simple gadget embedded in it. Diving a bit deeper into the wave you will notice on the navigation bar it has some of the characteristics of an email. Reply, archive, read, unread, spam and playback. Play back lets you play back each part of a wave so you can see exactly how everything unfolded, in chronological order. Above the navigation bar you see all of the participants in the wave. You can easliy add a person to the wave as long as they have a Google Wave account, it also populates contact list based off your Gmail contacts. Currently there is no way to delete a person from a wave.

I added the Tweety bot to this wave, allowing me to easily broadcast a Tweet.

Waves,  extensions and bots, oh my!

Extensions are the plugins that will allow you use gadgets in wave. Gadgets are shared applications that run within a wave and to which all participants have access, such as real-time games and voting tools.  In the above screen shot you can see the Yes/No/Maybe Gadget in action. Out of the box others gadgets that can be installed are a, map gadget, Sudoku, Conference, and itinerary gadget.

Then there are are Robots. This reminds me of IRC on steroids. Depending on the bot, they can do numerous things in a wave. They can automate tasks, but they can also function as a participant in a wave, interacting in the conversation based on their capabilities.

To use a bot add its email address to your contacts list. Create a new wave, then add the bot to the wave.

Some of the bots I have come across are:

• Polly the Pollster (polly-wave@appspot.com): Creates and distributes multiple choice poll questions.
• Yelpful (yelpful@appspot.com): Adds an in-wave interface to Yelp.com
• RSSyBot (rssybot@appspot.com): Adds an RSS feed to Wave.
• TwitUsernames (twitusernames@appspot.com): Links @usernames to Twitter.com.
• Blog bot (blog-bot@appspot.com): Publishes waves to blog posts.
• Emoticony (emoticonbot@appspot.com): Turns smiley faces into images.
• Eliza the Robot Shrink (elizarobot@appspot.com): Talks to you when no one else will.

A more comprehensive listing can be found here.

Final verdict:

Google Wave is intended to be a powerful collaboration tool. As a tool for collaboration, I think it has great promise and once the rough edges are worked out, it’s something I would see myself using in a controlled environment perhaps with coworkers.  I think it will evolve into an enterprise tool at some point, and for it to become a true collaboration platform it needs full integration with Google Docs. This in no way represents a new social networking tool, and I think using it as such would be rather cumbersome. The beauty of it is, the user can control the experience and dictate its purpose. When the bugs are worked out, and the developer community fully embraces the Wave protocol, and integration with Google Docs is seamless, this will undoubtedly be a game changer.

This post was intended to give a brief overview of Google wave. I barley scratched the surface with the capabilities and technical aspects of what Google Wave can do. In the future once I have had more time to use it, I will do a thorough deeper examination of the inner workings of Google Wave.

A big thank you goes to Eric Logan and Ted Pedersen for inviting me into Google Wave.  Before you ask, my invites are all gone, sorry.

Other points of view on Google wave:

Google Wave Hits Shore. Flash Flood Warning In Effect. via @louisgray

Google Wave’s unproductive email metaphors. via @scobleizer

The Point You’re Missing About Google Wave. via@bluecockatoo

Related posts:

1. Owning my name in Google

Apple says they want to control the user experience and limit users from malicious software and other types of trickery.  To that point I agree, but at least give users the bare minimum to customize their phones. If I want a picture of my daughter on the home screen meaning, I should not have to jail break my phone to do so.

There are thousands upon thousands of applications in the official Apple app store. Most suit my needs, but with jail breaking my iPhone I have access to the official unauthorized app store called Cydia.  Cydia, for those unfamiliar with it is the store for applications that have been denied approval for what ever reasons to the official Apple app store. As with the official Apple app store, there are paid and unpaid apps. It’s currently the only place to find the Google Voice app or QIK application just to name a few. There are plenty of borderline garbage applications as well, same as the official Apple app store. The core difference is any developer can code an application for the iPhone without any limitations and have it distributed via Cydia. It’s also buyer beware.  Apple has safeguards in place to protect users against malicious software, hence the strictly controlled user experience.

Welcome to the world of Cydia:

Some of the most innovate applications are only available via Cydia.  I’ll outline just a few that I use futher down the post.

The screen shot above gives you a sample of just some of the paid applications. These range from $2.99 to $10.00. Some are novelty applications, but others serve a practical purpose and only enhance the iPhone’s exisiting hardware.

Jail breaking your iPhone will allow you to use it on another carrier, such as T Mobile or Verizon. Once the phone is jail broken there is an app to download in Cyida to unlock the phone. Personally I have no use for this as I’m quite happy with AT&T, but it’s nice to know I can make the switch in the future and still use my iPhone on one of those other carriers.

There there’s Winterboard:

Winterboard goes hand in hand with Cydia. WinterBoard is a theming tool used to customize and transform the look and feel of the iPhone. This application runs in the background and handles everything from basic SpringBoard themes (Wallpaper, Dock, StatusBar, & Icons) all the way up to complete themes that customize the entire system UI (Buttons, Backgrounds, & Sounds).

For me it’s all about customization.

I like a little personality to my iPhone. News flash Apple, It’s not just teenagers who like to  customize their phones. Every type of theme imaginable is available in Cydia mostly for free too. While the underground selection of applications are nice, the ability to customize my iPhone is the real winner for me. You’ll also notice in the screen shots, I’m using an app that allows you to display five rows and columns of icons as opposed to the standard four.

The other must have application is SB Settings:

This app give me access to the phones core functions in one swipe of the screen. It allows you to kill processes, quickly toggle Wifi, Data, SSH, hide apps and fix permissions and other services that are normally controlled by Settings. You can add additional toggles for just about any setting feature on the iPhone. I mainly use it to kill processes, turn the phone off, and turn on Wifi.

Then of course comes applications like iRealQuickSMS:

Using the default text message application is a thing of the past. I can simply send a quick text message by pressing the home button twice, even when the phone is locked. These are the real innovating apps for the iPhone because they enhance the phones existing hardware and software.

How about downloading YouTube videos?

There is just about an unauthorized app for any type of circumstance. MxTube lets you download any movie that is hosted on YouTube.com directly to your iPhone.

Was is worth Jail breaking my iPhone?

At first I was hesitant, I heard about the stories of phones becoming bricks and I’m well aware it voids my warranty. FYI the phone can be restored via iTunes to its non-jail broken state if all hell breaks loose and thus under warranty again. The phone has been jail broken for about two months now. There is no issue with stability whats soever and it works perfectly fine.  So if you want to be able to fully customize your iPhone, and truly take advantage and unlock the phones real power, yes by all means jail break it.

Set your phone free, it will thank you for it later!

Related posts:

1. Free at Last… Thank You iPhone!
2. The Quick on QIK

Internet marketing primarily consists of a few categories in various stages of consumer engagement. Search engine marketing, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, banner/text ad marketing, email marketing and please use whatever buzz word you want for the sixth category, new media marketing/Web 2.0 marketing/, okay I’ll say it, social media marketing, and there’s probably another stage or two of marketing I left out.

The end goal with all of these methods is to drive traffic to a Web Site and convert a consumer into a sale. Remember those  two points traffic and sales. I’m not talking about branding or other components, because in different ways all of the above  categories mentioned achieve this, some more obtrusive than others, some more effective than others. I’m strictly talking about the four Ps here: product, place, pricing and promotion.

Product and pricing is pretty much self explanatory. The place in this case is an online point of purchase, but it could also be an offline point of purchase. Lastly we get to the final P, Promotion.

The principles of social media marketing are the same as everything else, with the exception of communities that ultimately form conversations. Social Media marketing in general is a  two-way marketing method, where as the rest are all one-way marketing methods.

Promotion → Communication → Online Communities = Social Media Marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking platforms are the core tools of social media. These facilitators of the message  are used to create conversations and  build communities around a brands product or services. Brands that foster, encourage, and contribute to the conversation are the ones who are creating brand awareness, brand identity, and ultimately increasing sales. Brands that create content that tells a story and enables a community to rally behind it, and spread the message are the ones who understand the essence of social media marketing.

Key aspects of social media marketing.

Content created by and published by the user for the user is social media marketing. Brands can be the catalyst for the content starter, but it’s the consumers contribution that will carry the message.

Creating buzz in the form of video, tweets or blog postings that enable and drive consumers to share and spread the message. Content that is replicated by the end users is priceless word of mouth marketing. Re-tweets is a good example of this. Buzz creates virility, and this is the core element of social media marketing. Create the message that will get people talking and rest assured it will spread like a wildfire.

Build the platforms that enable conversations and form communities. Facebook fan pages are a good example of this, so is Twitter, and blogs as well. These platforms enable the end user, your consumer, and your brand to promote your message. Communication always two-way is the glue that binds social media marketing. Contribute to the conversations, never try to control them because it can backfire. The last thing you want is the wrong message spreading, and once it spreads off your platforms it can be a fire that you can not put out.

Empower the crowd!

Create compelling content, tell a story and contribute to the conversation. Empower your users to rally behind your message, spread it, share it and talk about it, and you will have the anitodte for a sucessful social media marketing campaign.

Image courtesy of James Cridland under Creative Commons.

Related posts:

1. Marketing On The Social Web: A Few Key Ingredients
2. Best Practices in Social Media Marketing
3. Best and worst practices in social media marketing

Spotify is a lightweight desktop client that gives you access to millions of artists and their songs. It’s as simple as searching for your song and playing the track. The library of audio is quite impressive. On most searches I find almost every track and or album ever made. The sound quality and clarity is on par with just about any CD. Songs que up almost instantly, no lag or delay.

This in no way, shape or form compares to Last.fm. This puts Last.fm to shame and has completely replaced last.fm for me. Last.fm is not an on-demand music service, it’s more of a radio station where if you are lucky and cycle through 500 songs, the song you are looking for might play.

I love all genres of music and one of my favorite bands is Steely Dan.  I was pleasantly surprised when I found 455 tracks listed, pretty much every song the band has ever recorded and then some.

Being a big electronica fan, the first name that I searched for was  DJ Tiesto.  No surprise there, 347 track listings found. I found the majority of the Tiesto songs I was looking for, however there were a few I did not find, but the rest made up for it.

Armin Van Buuren,  another favorite of mine has a whopping 727 track listings. I also found 553 track listings for Paul Van Dyk. Did I already mention how solid and impressive Spotify’s song libraries are?

The nuts and bolts:

Spotify is not available in the United States, yet. Thanks to a special friend I was fortunate enough to get a press version for testing. Sorry I have no invites to hand out, you’ll just have to take my word on how great the service is, or read Louis Gray’s recent review of the service.

Spotify has two service offerings, a freemium version which displays ads in between songs and a premium ad free version which comes at a cost of 10 British pounds  a month. There is also an all day 24 hour pass available for one British pound. I’m curious to see what the premium version will cost in US Dollars.  Is this a service I would pay for? Absolutely!

Why Spotify will be a game changer:

Spotify’s library of songs is close to four million. The desktop application is fast, responsive and as with iTunes  it gives you all the pertinent track and artist info. You can easily create and manage play lists. There is a social component that will allow you to share your favorite songs out to Facebook or Delicious. The streaming rate is approximately 160kbp, premium subscribers get a bit rate of 320kbp.

It’s on-demand only:

If a song is in the Spotify library, you can easily play it as many times as you like. You can not download the track, nor buy it (at least in the press version I tested). There is a purchase now link when right clicking over a song, it’s my understanding this feature only works in a few European countries.  Once Spotify comes to the United States, it’s probably safe to say you will be able to purchase songs on the service via iTunes. It’s only a matter of time before these two companies break bread and some type of licensing deal is put in place. Spotify also has an iPhone application,waiting for Apple’s approval, though the chances of Apple approving it are slim at best.  If a song is not in the Spotify library then you are out of luck, but in my testing, and only with big name bands, I found that they all had songs on the service. The music on Spotify is fully legal and licensed before it makes it to the service, so you can imagine when I searched for The Beatles I found no track listings, as with iTunes. The Beatles catalog of music is off limits for the time being due to licensing issues.

It’s not often a quality product like this comes along, but when it does, it’s like a speeding train that no one will be able to catch, that’s Spotify. The service is hands down the best on demand streaming music service on the internet.  That’s all folks, over and out.

Related posts:

1. Social media.. Your privacy going down the drain.
2. The Essential Guide to Social Media.
3. What does your digital fingerprint say about you?

Chances are that if you are a restaurant, especially a well known, recognized one, people are talking about you online. Make no mistake that there is chatter happening. The question is what type of chatter is it? Good, bad or in between, and how do you plan on dealing with it?

Note: Although this post is about how restaurants can use social media, the tactics and strategies I outline can be used for any industry.

Look and listen first: who is talking about you and what is being said?

Talk is happening everywhere, forums, blogs, comments, review sites, Twitter and so forth. Starting with the basics, Google Alerts should be setup to track any keyword/brand mentions.

The next step is monitoring Twitter. Twitter is the real time watering hole for all types of chatter. It is often the first place that a rant or rave will be mentioned, and from there it can quickly go viral in no time. Once something starts to spread on Twitter, it’s often hard to do the right damage control. It’s imperative that Twitter is monitored heavily and should be priority number one for brand monitoring.

Automation is key, let the tools do the work.  Set it and forget it.

Search Twitter for your brand’s relevant keywords and set up RSS feeds to track them in Google Reader. You should also utilize Tweet Beep, a free service that will automatically email you hourly updates when a specific keyword or URL is mentioned on Twitter. This is a tool I heavily rely on for brand monitoring, it works extremely well and allows me to bypass going to Twitter’s website to search.

Conversations are everywhere, that’s where BackType fits into the mix. BackType is a free service that indexes  millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media platforms. You can search the BackType website or set up email alerts, it’s not real time but it’s close enough.

These are at the very least the minimum  amount of tools you should be using. There are plenty of other tools out there, but they all pretty much do the same thing. My personal preference is using Google Reader or NetVibes as my social media dashboard. The other route is paying for a reputation monitoring service.  One that I use and highly recommended is Filtrbox.com. The service monitors a wide scope of the social media sphere, and sends me daily email reports with mentions of the brands that I’m tracking. They are reasonably priced compared to their competitors as well.

Additional platforms and services to be monitoring:

The services I mentioned above cover most of the social media landscape, but not everything. It’s also a good idea from time to time to scan the services mentioned below. The last three on the list monitor pretty much the same social media platforms. They are popular, their user interfaces are different, and they are definitely worth a  notable mention.

• Search engines,  the main one being Google
• Google Blog Search
• Technorati advanced search
• WordPress.com search
• Micro-blogging applications such as Posterous & Tumblr search
• FriendFeed advanced search
• Delicious search
• SocialMention.com
• Social Media Firehose (Yahoo Pipes)
• Spy.appspot.com

Now that you have  looked and listened, it’s time to learn:

So what about all this Twitter chatter?

People who are talking about you on Twitter or any social media network are mainly two things, existing customers or potential customers. Follow back everyone who talks about your brand in a positive manner. After all, these are brand evangelists, it’s word of mouth marketing, and it’s not costing you a dime. Reciprocation shows that you as a brand have taken interest in your customer. Be responsive to this and when applicable engage them in a conversation, or at the very least send them a quick thank you note. You should also identify and develop relationships with  your loyal brand endorsers because these people are essentially an extension of your online marketing dept.  In addition to engaging these people, reward them with a gift card to your restaurant. Tokens of appreciation go far and are always remembered. If you think they are talking now, just wait until that gift card arrives in the mail. The positive stuff is pretty much a no brainer, but always remember  social media is all about the conversations, unfiltered at that. Responding to negative chatter is equally important as well, use these social media tools wisely to handle crisis situations, and avoid a PR nightmare. In the online environment, word spreads at an alarming high frequency, and once it does,  there will be very little that you can do no matter how much you try to correct the situation.

Twitter for the most part is a customer service tool as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but it can also be used for marketing.

• Announce the new menu or drink specials of the day
• Promote a happy-hour event or special restaurant event
• Start a promotion called Twitter Tuesday (or tweet ups)
• Solicit ideas for new menu items or specials of the day on Twitter.
• Offer a special prize for people who follow you on Twitter by a specific time and date, to be entered to win a free bottle of wine or gift certificate.

Brand your restaurant’s menu and marketing material with your Twitter account url. Take it a step further and have your Twitter url printed on customer receipts.  If you are a QSR (Quick service restaurant) brand your social profiles at your POP (Point of Purchase).

Start a company blog:

A blog can be used for the same things as Twitter, only in much greater detail. Twitter has limitations where as a blog has none. Pictures and videos are just two examples. Use your restaurant blog to showcase customer testimonials, pictures from a specific event, menu items, food & drink recipes, employee bios and over all anything and everything that relates to your restaurant.  The possibilities are endless on what you can use your blog for. A suggestion I give to clients in the industry is to start a weekly “Ask the expert” series on your blog.  If my restaurant was a Sushi restaurant, I would encourage my customers to ask a Sushi related question and let our star Sushi chef answer them on the blog. The other purpose of a company blog is to generate new content, content that will get indexed in search engines and give potential new customers a way to find you on the web. Every blog post is a gateway into your website, so be sure to optimize your content with the correct keyword branding, post titles, tags and so on. Encourage your patrons to subscribe to your RSS feed and to share your blog’s content. Install ShareThis so that your patrons have an easy way of distributing your blog content.

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Chances are your restaurant is already on review sites like Urbanspoon and Yelp. If it’s not, be sure to encourage your customers to post a fair review. Ask your brand endorsers on Twitter to leave a review, as well as customers in your restaurant. Remember nowadays everyone is a food critic. These online review sites are a big source of customer information and they are global reaching. There will be negative reviews, not everyone can be pleased, no matter the caliber of service you provide. If there is a negative review left, try to reach out to that customer and correct the situation if possible. The goal with a negative review or reviews is to get them buried on page 10. The only thing you can do for this is to provide good service atmosphere and food in the hopes of getting good reviews in front of it. Your brand endorsers will always leave a great review, encourage all of them to visit these sites and post a review as often as possible.

Food is visual, visual, visual!

Your restaurant should have a YouTube channel and photo sharing channel, ideally on a site like Flickr. These social media platforms have two important things, search, and passionate communities. You can use video to showcase restaurant events, provide a visual of your existing menu or new menu items.  Do a biweekly show on some of the menu items you serve in the restaurant. Showcase your kitchen talent and break open the kitchen doors.  The possibilities are endless, use your imagination. These videos can be embedded on your blog and shared throughout the social media landscape.  The same goes for photos. Take pictures of your guests, let them share their experiences with images on your blog. Take pictures of your menu items, signature drinks, kitchen staff, and everything that represents your restaurant.

Embrace and prepare for mobile, it’s here and it’s not going anywhere:

With the advent of the iPhone and the  mobile digital revolution, it’s essential that you pay attention to this. Starting with your website, make sure its optimized for mobile devices. We talked about review sites earlier, well guess what, they have iPhone applications, and they are very popular at that. That’s why it’s essential that your restaurant be on these sites.  The bigger picture depending on the type of restaurant you operate would be to develop an iPhone application, one where people can easily view your menu options, contact information, and more specifically to place orders. Just look at  how much success Pizza Hut is having with their newly released iPhone application, with over 100,000 downloads in the first month. The bottom line is embrace mobile every which way possible.

Get as much data as possible from your customers:

Online this mainly refers to email addresses. Your website should be collecting people’s email addresses. Encourage your existing customers and potential customers to sign up to be notified about any upcoming events at the restaurant. Send out a monthly newsletter informing customers about what’s happening at the restaurant, new menu items, special events, new store openings and so forth. Reward people for subscribing to the newsletter with a gift card or free glass of wine when they come in. Include quality information in your newsletter such as the recipe ingredients of an upcoming or existing menu item, maybe accompany that with a link to an  online video or photographs of the dish. I have only touched upon the surface here, but I’m sure you get the picture by now.

In closing:

I could go on and on with this post but I will stop here. Restaurants have an advantage over a lot of other industries that use social media. Why you may ask? Social media is about story telling and visuals. Food is very visual, both physically and emotionally. Food evokes conversations, experiences, memories, and stories that people share. This is what social media is all about.

Related posts:

1. Netvibes: The New Social Media Dashboard
2. Five Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Social Media Marketing
3. Best and worst practices in social media marketing

In my last post,  I hinted that Dairy Queen would be joining FriendFeed. Dairy Queen recognizes how to leverage social media, they also realize that it’s about going where your customers are and establishing a presence. Dairy Queen engages their customers and fans through their blog, their Facebook page, Twitter account and now finally on FriendFeed.

How will Dairy Queen be using FriendFeed?

Dairy Queen currently uses FriendFeed for brand monitoring, something every brand already should be doing. The offical Dairy Queen room will be used to aggregate Dairy Queens blog posts, tweets, pictures and videos. Dairy Queen encourages conversations about anything and everything DQ related. Jamie Guse, Dairy Queen’s Web Site Manager will be involved with monitoring the room and answering any DQ related questions.  Dairy Queen is truly excited to be joining and particpating with the FriendFeed community. To celebrate this and the long, hot days of summer, Dairy Queen is giving away free ice cream to the FriendFeed community throughout the month of August.

DairyQueen is giving  away 100 $5.00 gift cards to the FriendFeed community. Free ice cream! It just doesn’t get better than that.

Here’s the scoop:

Week one starting August 3 to August 10:

1) Subscribe to the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room.

2) Follow Dairy Queen on Twitter.

3) Make a post in the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room, 100 words or less on why you deserve free ice cream. The top 25 most compelling posts will win a $5.00 gift card redeemable at any Dairy Queen location.

Week two starting August 11 to August 17:

1) Subscribe to the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room.

2) Follow Dairy Queen on Twitter.

3) Help Dairy Queen by raising awareness about Miracle Treat Day. Tweet the following message starting August 10: ” Support Children’s Miracle Network on Aug 13th by stopping by a local Dairy Queen and buying a blizzard http://bit.ly/1cGPL0 #DQFF “

4) The top 25 people with the most re-tweets will win a $5.00 gift card redeemable at any Dairy Queen location.

Week three starting August 18 to August 24:

1) Subscribe to the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room.

2) Follow Dairy Queen on Twitter.

3) Take a picture of yourself or with others at a local Dairy Queen and post it to the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room.

4) The first 25 pictures  posted will win a $5.00 gift card redeemable at any Dairy Queen location.

Week four starting August 25 to August 31:

1) Subscribe to the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room.

2) Follow Dairy Queen on Twitter.

3) To be announced on FriendFeed.

Please note:

Winners will be selected at the end of each week. Gift cards will be mailed the first week of September. Winners will be announced on the Dairy Queen blog and the Dairy Queen FriendFeed room. Winners will be contacted via direct message on FriendFeed. Please make sure you are following DairyQueen and myself on FriendFeed. If you are not following DairyQueen or myself, we have no way of contacting you for your mailing address.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Case Study: Dairy Queen
2. 10 people to follow on FriendFeed for the month of Nov
3. (Weekly Recap) – Social Media, FriendFeed & Twitter

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It’s no surprise that in this digital age corporations are actively engaging their customer base through social media. I can list hundreds of companies who successfully quote on quote “get it“. I thought I would focus on one, Dairy Queen.

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Dairy Queen, for those of you who are not familiar with the brand, is an ice cream company at heart. They have been around since 1940, and have established themselves as the leader in the soft serve and fast food restaurant industry.  Fast forward 70 years, 5,600 + domestic store locations, and internationally are in more than 20 countries, the brand is a well recognized icon all over the globe.  Dairy Queen by nature is a very social brand. Like many other major corporations they rely on and still use traditional media for advertising. In 2008 that all changed. They embarked in the world of social media and never looked back, thanks to my predecessor, Adam Singer,  former Director of Digital Strategy at Pierson Grant PR, where I currently work. Adam was the catalyst and driving force behind Dairy Queen’s involvement in social media.  I’m simply running with the torch that Adam lit.

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While I can’t speak for other companies, I can speak for Dairy Queen. Everyone in their corporation starting from their CEO, John Gainor, down to their Chief Brand Officer, Michael Keller, understand the impact of social media and truly embrace it. Their motives are pure and transparent and they are truly excited to be engaging their potential and existing customer base and beyond in this medium. They understand the implications of social media and how it affects their brand, that speaks volumes in and of itself.

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How is Dairy Queen using social media?

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1) Dairy Queen Blog:

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Dairy Queen launched the Official Dairy Queen Blog in February 2009. They realized it was a great way to humanize their brand and connect with their customers. The blog is written by Dairy Queen employees. The goal of their blog is to ignite conversation and have fun with a brand that has been around for more than 70 years. The blog is used for anything and everything DQ related which includes:  stories, news, products, events, promotions and advertising in the community, and around the world. It’s important to note that their blog is NOT used as a mechanism to post press releases. All to often corporations start up a blog solely to post and re-post press releases. Blogs are not a PR robot. DQ has clearly demonstrated a successful formula for their corporate blog.

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Key takeaway:

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• The story of the DQ brand is told through the eyes of their employees
• Dairy Queen’s Chief Brand Officer actively contributes to the blog
• They reached out to 250 bloggers with a creative contest

Fun facts:

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• Blog officially launched in Febuaray 2009
• Blog has had more than 50,000 visitors since it launched
• Blog has more than 560 comments since it launched

2) Podcasting:

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Dairy Queen’s Chief Brand Officer is a very articulate speaker. He is a powerful, brand story teller, so what better way to convey that than through a podcast. Vocals as well as visuals often can convey a story better than text. Listen to Michael Keller share his insights about the Dairy Queen brand in the digital space and you will see what I mean.

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3) Facebook:

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Dairy Queen launched the Official Dairy Queen Facebook Fan Page in May 2008. Dairy Queen realized that establishing a Facebook Fan Page was not an option, but a necessity. Facebook is an essential platform for Dairy Queen consumer engagement and also serves as a content aggregator for all things Dairy Queen.  In just over one year, Dairy Queen fans responded to the tune of 100,000 + fans. The Fan Page continues to grow at more than several hundred new fans a day.

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Fun facts:

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• Fan Page at the time of this writing this has 158,707
• 62% of their fans are female
• 54% of their fans are ages 18-44

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4) Twitter:

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Dairy Queen launched the official Dairy Queen Twitter account in February of 2009. This was an obstacle at first because a name squatter was using the Dairy Queen name. It took a few months of contacting Twitter through the appropriate channels for Dairy Queen to get the name back. Success came in late May when the name was given back to the Dairy Queen corporation. The Dairy Queen Twitter account is run by Jamie Guse, Web Site Manager for Dairy Queen’s digital assets.

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How is Dairy Queen using Twitter?

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• Reputation monitoring
• Customer service
• Platform for promotion for all things Dairy Queen
• Identifying and rewarding brand endorsers and evangelists
• Re-tweeting Dairy Queen follower’s tweets
• Follows back Dairy Queen customers on Twitter

Fun fact:

• Dairy Queen Twitter account has 1,657 followers at the time of writing this.

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5) Embracing Mobile:

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Dairy Queen is well aware of the growing and emerging mobile market. They know their customers are increasingly on the go, therfore using a mobile device to locate a Dairy Queen store is quite beneficial. Realizing this, they created a  DQ store locater application for iPhone & iPod users soon to be avaible in the iTunes app store.

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6) What else is on the horizion for Dairy Queen in social media?

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FriendFeed is next on deck. FriendFeed is more then just a powerful social media content aggregator. It’s a passionate community of users who conversate around the content. FriendFeeders are also Dairy Queen customers, so it’s only fitting that Dairy Queen joins the conversation.

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Being a diligent Digital Strategist, I would never reveal my full deck of cards. Did you think I would? Dairy Queen has quite a few interesting initiatives coming to the horizon in the digital space. I’m positive you will be hearing about a few of them later this year, and coming first quarter of 2010.

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I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into the social media world of Dairy Queen. They are just one corporation of many who understand how to leverage social media and understand how it impacts their brand. They got off to a late start with social media, but that’s irrelevant, what’s relevant is that they recognized it, embraced it, understand it and use it.

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(Disclaimer:  DQ is a current client of the firm I work for. I advise DQ on Digital Strategies)

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Related posts:

1. Dairy Queen is Now Officially on FriendFeed. Ice Cream Time!
2. Social Media Marketing: Empower the Crowd!
3. How Restaurants Can Use Social Media

Social Media:

News:

Streaming audio/video:

Tools:

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If you are looking for a smartphone that does just about everything other than cook you breakfast, the iPhone is undoubtedly the way to go. Nothing on the market even comes close to it. Most of you already have the 3G iPhones and maybe the “newness” enamor has worn off, but for me, being a first time iPhone owner, I’m still in shock and awe at this remarkable piece of technology. I have never been an Apple fan boi, but I certainly have become one now. The line is drawn with the iPhone though, as I’ll alway be a windows user when it comes to my desktop computing

Related posts:

1. Jailbreaking My iPhone: It’s All About The Customization…
2. The Quick on QIK
3. Do you surf the information social highway at work?

Catalogs.com, the premium domain, and leading Internet source for mail-order and online catalogs has been successfully operating for more than a decade. Having learned quite a few things along the way, they realized early on through trial and error that optimizing for search is a crucial and key element for organic traffic generation.

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I sat down for a Q&A session with Leslie Linevsky, who is the founding partner of Catalogs.com, along with Matt Craine, who is the Information Services Director and in charge of their SEO. I wanted to find how they got started, and any insights, tips, or tricks they could share on search engine marketing and optimization.

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1) What prompted you to start catalogs.com?

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Leslie: Recognizing the untapped potential of aggregating and indexing a wide array of catalogs that shoppers might not know about or have access to, we developed an ingenious way for internet shoppers to select and receive catalogs of their choice all in one place.  Allowing catalogs to be conveniently delivered to consumer homes at no additional cost while giving consumers the opportunity to shop online from “well known” as well as “niche” catalog companies is how Catalogs.com makes its mark.

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2) Have you always owned the domain catalogs.com, or did you acquire it?

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Leslie: We acquired the domain name only.

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3) With the ever growing “green” conscious consumer, how if any is this affecting the Catalog industry?

Leslie: It’s a GREAT TIME for Catalogs.com because we provide only qualified leads from consumers who have specifically requested the Merchants Catalogs.com. As our mission statement says:  Part of Catalogs.com’s mission is all about helping people find the goods and services they need

- By request ONLY.

- The overwhelming majority of catalogs consumers receive were never requested.

- Unlike receiving random catalogs just because you are on some mailing list…

- Get only the catalogs you request

- Catalog shopping (and internet catalog shopping) can and should be one of the most environmentally green ways to shop. After all, it eliminates trips to the store – and that saves time, trees, money and reduces the amount of gasoline we burn.

- It’s funny but this has been our goal from day one.

4) Where do you see Catalogs.com in 5 years?

Leslie: It’s difficult to say, because our growth percentage has been double digit, in terms of traffic and revenue. I can only hope that we continue doing everything right to sustain our growth.

5) How much organic search engine traffic does catalogs.com receive monthly?

Matt: Between 600,000 and 700,000 unique per month.

6)  What are some of your best practices for optimizing search?

Matt: Well written unique copy on every page of the site. Researched and unique key-phrases in the Title Tag, and the Meta Description of every page. Proper use of the H1 tag and proper internal linking of pages. Thematically related pages and groups of pages interlinked. Incoming link building is very important as well.

7) What advice would you give people who are just starting to learn SEO?

Matt: Don’t over think it.  There is tons of information out there on the web about the basic, and best practices in SEO that every site should be doing.  Start there.  Proper tagging, keyword copy, and good interlinking – will get a badly optimized site a huge reward.  After getting your foundation in place, you can then start to worry about higher end fine tuning – and of course, nothing beats links in.

8 ) What SEO tools do you regularly use? What if any tools should people avoid, and why?

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Matt: Google tools (analytics, webmaster tools, adwords keyword tool) have become probably my most important.  Studying your sites performance in analytics and webmaster tools and then making adjustments is key.  We use the adwords keyword tool for research these days as opposed to Wordtracker ,or Trellian. I found them to be inconsistent and unreliable – plus they don’t report on a very large sample of user data as opposed to Google. I also use many of the tools found at seobook.com including Rank Checker and their Competitive Research tools.

9) What areas of SEO do you most enjoy? What is the most difficult aspect of SEO?

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Matt: Crafting a perfect TITLE tag that optimizes the key phrase for that page perfectly, and also satisfied the client with their business objective is always fun. The most difficult is steering clients and internal resources towards the long term goal, when they know just enough SEO to be dangerous.

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10)  What are the most important on-page elements for search engine performance and how would they rank it in order of importance? E.G. Is it Title tag first? Description tag? Headers? Text?

Matt:

1) Title tag

2) H1 tag

3) Copy and keyword density

4) Meta Description (disputed, but I have evidence it has helped us)

(Disclaimer: Catalogs.com is a client of Pierson Grant PR, the firm that I work for.)

Related posts:

1. Owning my name in Google
2. 10 tools for listening in social media.
3. Netvibes: The New Social Media Dashboard

Related posts:

1. Five Reasons Why Businesses Should Use Social Media Marketing
2. Best and worst practices in social media marketing
3. Marketing On The Social Web: A Few Key Ingredients