IncSlingers » simonsalt

Jet Blue Takes off with Facebook Places

simonsalt — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:10:43 +0000

Jet Blue has launched a social location marketing campaign using Facebook Places called Go Places. There are several noteworthy features about this campaign. For example it is one of the first of its type to be created using the Facebook Places API. For the non-technical amongst you what that means is rather than simply having Facebook Places control the campaign, in the way that many of the previous campaigns have been run. Jet Blue, who partnered with Boston based Brand Networks to develop the app, are controlling the campaign directly.This gives them much better access to metrics about their campaign and better visibility to who is engaging with it.

How are JetBlue using Facebook Places?

Using the Facebook Places smart phone app, users check in at any U.S.-based JetBlue terminal location to unlock virtual and real rewards. Once they complete a check in task, the system will automatically trigger a request to reward their True Blue account. Of course to benefit from this you first have to have a True Blue frequent flyer account. Don’t have one? No problem, you can sign up from the app. Once you have signed up for the frequent flyer account you can join the True Blue community where Jet Blue provides information about deals, packages and other relevant information for travelers. You can also find other members to network with, according to the site there are 78047 current members, though the first few pages seemed to be mostly test data, (to be fair it is still in beta).

I reached out to Morgan Johnston, Manager of Corporate Communications at JetBlue to ask about the campaign:

Simon Salt (SS) : Why Facebook Places over the other Social Location Apps?

Morgan Johnston (MJ): Facebook certainly has a larger base than the notable social location applications out there, so it was a consideration as we looked to engage with a large section of our customers. We’re already active in Facebook so it was a natural evolution to continue extending that relationship with our customers in that community. Also, because Go Places is our own application, built with the Facebook Places API, it allows us some greater control over the experience while keeping the overall engagement in a social space our customers already know and are comfortable with.

SS:What are you considering as metrics for this program and how are you measuring them?

MJ: We’re hoping this application will continue to build overall brand awareness as customers share their JetBlue experiences with their social sphere. We also expect to see some incremental increases into our TrueBlue enrollment.

SS: Do you already have a sense of which your most popular terminals are in terms of checkins?

MJ:While we certainly expect to see the majority of traffic in our Focus Cities: JFK, BOS, FLL, MCO, and LGB we’re also excited to see what other cities lend themselves to a more ‘connected’ customer.

SS:Will this campaign impact other parts of the business and if so which Ones?

MJ: The Go Places application as a platform for promotions and engagement with customer gives it great potential for future uses, even past this promotion. We’ll continue to examine how our customers use the tool, and how various teams within the company can use that information to deliver a better experience for our customers.

A survey late last year by Invoke found that of the 302 people they questioned 62% were willing to share their location in return for some type of reward. Certainly Jet Blue offering free flights and other rewards through their Facebook Places app seems to be capitalizing on this. Are you using Facebook Places yet?

I'm glad you took the time to read this post.

If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

How Businesses Can Grow in Questionable Niches

simonsalt — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:10:48 +0000

Times are tough, so they tell us. The economy is in trouble and we are, for all intents and purposes weathering a depression. That is the word from the media and supposedly from those who know. It is certainly true that it is no longer business as usual, but does that really mean that we are all sunk?

I say not, what I say is that now more than ever, those who are willing to be creative, to look at things differently and search out the opportunities will win, just as they always have. The difference is that the opportunities are now existing in places that they haven’t before or at least they are in areas that previously businesses have shied away from. Those that did explore these opportunities were often considered akin to the “untouchables” or “scheduled caste” of the hindu system in India, outcasts from the mainstream of that business group.

I read a story today on NPR of some real estate agents, who against the general trend are achieving real success in a very down market. They are doing so by working with divorce sales. This is of course a highly emotional and difficult area to work in. The selling of a home during a divorce as part of a settlement is never an unemotional event and the real estate agent will often end up being drawn into the battles that are going on between the couple. Not an area for the faint of heart. Even with existing home sales recovering this is still a tough economy to be a real estate agent in and especially if you haven’t decided to focus on something specific.

The same is true for any business. Without focus, without being prepared to break new ground or at least to explore areas of your industry that others have eschewed in the past then you are very likely to find yourself losing market share and missing out on real revenue opportunities. The question you have to ask yourself is are you prepared to get your hands dirty? Are you looking for the opportunities that your peers have decided are outside of their comfort zone?

Which niches are you exploring for new business?

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And The Winner Is..

simonsalt — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:10:48 +0000

Last week I posted a competition book giveaway for readers to win a copy of Peter Shankman’s new book Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World. I was very pleased by the number of entries that the competition received and I’m very pleased to announce the winner is Amanda Quraishi.

I used the Random Name picker at ClassTools to select the winner so as to make it totally fair.

Having been technical editor on this book I know Amanda and the rest of you will enjoy this book, whether you run a “just me” business or are employed by a Fortune 500. The point is Customer Service is now something that is in everyone’s job description, not just those who happen to work in a department with that sign on the door.

I strongly recommend that you go out and get a copy of this book and make sure that you read it, don’t just do the usual business book thing of having it sit on a bookshelf somewhere.

Got a new book that you think I would enjoy and think I should review, let me know in the comments.

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Shop Your Network

simonsalt — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 15:10:37 +0000

How Shopping your network helps you

Networking is something that many of us are involved in today. We have different motivations for it, some are trying to establish connections for their career, some are establishing networks in the hopes of selling something, others are establishing networks of people with common interests. Whatever the motivation, tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have made it incredibly easy to build large networks of people, some of whom are only connected in an online way.

One thing that you might not have considered yet is that your network probably includes many individuals who operate what I call “just me” businesses. Solopreneur’s is another term for them. Often these are people with incredible skill sets that run very successful small businesses that have skills that can meet your needs but you just haven’t discovered them yet. I am extremely fortunate in the network that I have. From it I have been able to find a Technical Editor for my book – Tom Myer, who is himself a best selling author. A Graphic designer – Ilene Haddad who has done great work for IncSlingers on some of our client projects and most recently Jennifer Cunningham who creates wearable art and has an etsy store who is making me a Twitter pin so that I don’t have to keep writing my Twitter handle on conference badges.

Without my network I would never have met these and many other very skilled people. When I have either a personal or professional need my first thought is always “who do I know”. The great thing about shopping your network is that often people will then return the favor later, either by buying from you or recommending you to others in their network. I’m not saying that is the only reason to go shopping your network but it is certainly a benefit. I find that because you have a connection with those individuals they try harder put more effort into a project and you see great results. Usually you have already communicated with them at some level and therefore established a rapport that takes a lot longer with vendors that you arrive at via Google or some other non-personal search.

Are you shopping your network?

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The Bus Stops Here

simonsalt — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:06:53 +0000

I’m very happy to announce that my Social Location Marketing book tour is kicking off. I am taking requests for city stops for the tour, which will start in Dallas on Feb 17th and then move on from there. Fort Worth is currently the second stop on Feb 24th.

As with most book tours these days, it has to be self funded – contrary to popular belief, publishers do not pick up the tab for these things. I’m keeping things as simple as possible for organizations that are looking to host an event.:

Buy 100 copies of the book
Cover the cost of a round trip flight from Dallas
Cover the cost of one night hotel accommodation

You can give the books away to attendees or sell them at the event if you prefer.

I’ll deliver a presentation on Social Location Marketing and how marketers can and are including these apps in their marketing plans.

Here are a few quotes about the book from people you might recognize:

“Have you checked-in to the new reality of business? Simon shows you how to engage the social consumer and compete for tomorrow’s future, today.”

Brian Solis

Author of Engage, the complete guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web

“Too many people are running around nowadays calling themselves “Social media experts.” Simon doesn’t call himself that. His clients do. And they’re right. I’ll read anything this man writes.”

Peter Shankman
Founder, Help a Reporter Out – Author Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World

Location-based services are becoming increasingly crucial to brands, marketers and their agencies. Social consumers are sharing their locations – and how they feel about them – with these applications. This book is a vital head start for marketers who are seeking to incorporate these new capabilities into their plans (and that should be everyone).
Adam Keats
Senior Vice President - Weber Shandwick

This book offers a revolutionary idea: that you can win by timing your marketing to reach people who are actively sharing their location online instead of trying to blast them with irrelevant marketing at every hour of the day. Many now-defunct companies could have been saved by heeding this deceptively simple idea.
Rohit Bhargava
Author of Personality Not Included and EVP of Strategy & Planning at Ogilvy

You can get your city on the tour by completing this form.

I'm glad you took the time to read this post.

If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

Is Privacy a Myth in a Social Media World?

simonsalt — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:55:59 +0000

Privacy is a recurring theme in Social Media, which reflects much of the recurring themes in the real world. When Facebook makes a change to its layout inevitably someone will raise the specter of how it impacts your privacy. But is all this talk of privacy really just a falsehood, a myth that was created a few decades ago?

Firstly, it is important to point out that the “expectation of privacy” in its legal sense is a concept that only truly exists in the United States, while many other countries have a “right to privacy” encapsulated in their laws, only the United States has a legal test for the expectation of privacy. In addition it is important to put that legality into context, it is something that only came to be in the 1960′s a time of great change in the United States, a time of civil disobedience, a time of social change and upheaval.

If you consider how privacy was viewed in the early part of the 20th century and prior to that, prior to the large scale urban drift, privacy was in fact a luxury afforded only to the wealthy and those in positions of power. For the rest of the population, either those living in small communities in which everyone knew your business or those living cheek by jowl in the urban slums where there was an equal lack of privacy, what you did, how you did it and what the outcomes of your actions were was common knowledge.

As Social technologies pull us away from the isolation created by large urban environments, the distrust created by not knowing your neighbor, the stress and paranoia of receiving barely an acknowledgement from those living around you, we are seeing an increase in the amount of openess that people display. Laughingly we call it oversharing, but really is it? Perhaps what we have termed the global village is in fact creating that sense of “knowing” people around us, even if “around us” means in a virtual sense.

We now choose to trust those around us with the minutae of our lives just as those who lived in villages did before us. We have companies building tools to monitor reputation, ostensibly for companies and brands but just as usable by individuals, because reputation & perceived influence is increasingly important, just as it was in village life.

So do we really have an expectation of privacy if we engage in Social Media? When we fillout profile pages, upload pictures are we still realistically entitled to cry foul when an online organization decides to share that information with others in the global village?

While many criticize Mark Zuckerberg’s “safeguards off approach to privacy, I am beginning to believe that the new residents of the global village already understand that privacy was a passing phase in human evolution, that it was a moment in time, most notably bounded between the 1960′s and the 1990′s and that the citizens of the 21st & 22nd centuries will live without it just fine.

What do you think of privacy and the global village?

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5 Books The Marketer in Your Life Will Want in Their Stocking

simonsalt — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:00:25 +0000

As we start the countdown to gift-giving day (or whatever politically correct term we are using this year), I thought I would share five books that you could give the marketer in your life that I know they would appreciate owning. Whether they work with you, for you, you work for them or perhaps you happen to endure their rants when they come home in the evening, these books are sure to make them smile this holiday season.

I recommend these books based on not just the usual, I’ve read them and I thought they were pretty good criteria but also on a long term reading relationship with the authors. These books are written by people whose work I have been reading for sometime now. Who have written not just the book that I am recommending but write consistently good blogs, articles etc. and contribute to the general thought leadership in marketing today. It is this criteria that I feel is more important. So for the list, in no particular order, along with a link to where you can buy the book – the links are not affiliate links, I just thought I’d save you the trouble of finding them on Amazon.

Book One – Content Rules

From C.C. Chapman & Ann Handley. As a long time advocate of Content Marketing, I have been asked lots of times to define what is good content. This book will help you get your head around that concept. Whether it is a blog post, Facebook note, a YouTube Video or even a Twitter status update, content rules the world of marketing. This book, so aptly named shows how you, as a marketer can create content that really does rule.

Buy Now

Book Two – Now Revolution

From Jay Baer & Amber Naslund. The increased use of social media by your customers means that the traditional marketing campaign and messaging timelines are things of the past. Operating in a near instantaneous response driven world is where the modern marketer works. This book will help demystify that world. This is not a Social Media “How to”, rather this book is a guide for getting the real time web to work with you rather than against you.

Buy Now

Book Three – Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World

From Peter Shankman. Full disclosure here – I was honored to be asked by Peter to be his Technical Editor for this book, so I have actually read the original manuscript in its entirety before it went to print. However, even if I had not been in that position I would still be including this book. Marketers have to understand that Customer Service is not an after sales activity that takes place in some far distant basement of the corporate headquarters but is an activity that shapes and molds the very messages that they are trying to spread about their organizations products and services.

Buy Now

Book Four – Unmarketing

From Scott Stratten. Stop trying so hard, stop just throwing things at the wall and hoping they will stick. In this book, Scott helps the reader unlearn the things they thought they knew about marketing and learn the things that matter most in a social media driven world. Don’t open this book if you are afraid of throwing out things you thought were absolutes and learning things that you thought were just impossible.

Buy Now

Book Five – Personality Not Included

From Rohit Bhargava. I have been recommending this book for a year and half now since I first picked up a copy. It has stayed in my top 5 marketing books that I recommend to clients, friends and anyone else who will listen. The reason why? In an age where marketers are constantly told to be “authentic” comes a book that shows you what that actually means in a real sense. Whether you are a business owner, entrepreneur, marketing manager or just need to know how to make your organization converse with personality this is the book you need.

Buy Now

Book Six – Social Location Marketing

From Simon Salt. Ok so the post title says five books, so sue me. It’s my blog and if I want to include my book I will. Seriously, if as a marketer all those check-in tweets and status updates about people having a subway sandwich for lunch leave you scratching your head, if the names Gowalla, SCVNGR and Yelp mean as much to you as the a la carte menu in a Klingon restaurant then this is the book for you. With explanations of exactly what each of the platforms does and how to construct successful social location marketing campaigns, this book will assist you in adding the world of location to your marketing mix.

Buy Now

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Hanes Virtual Sock Drive

simonsalt — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:55:20 +0000

Socks at the Holidays, something that a lot of people will get as a gift and smile politely and then groan inwardly over. But what if you didn’t have any socks, what if they were actually something you would not only be happy to get but actually put at the top of your list of things you would like?

This holiday season Hanes will again be donating Socks to the Salvation Army. Last year was the first time they held the Sock Drive and it was so successful that they have decided to do it again this year and raise the bar by attempting to donate 1 million socks.

This is such a great cause and I’m very supportive of it, hence the blog post dedicated to it. As part of the full disclosure, as always, I reveal I am part of the Hanes Comfort Crew and have been since its inception last year. However, I was in no way recompensed, compensated or otherwise rewarded or incentivized to write this post. I’m doing it because I happen to believe in what the company is doing.

So head over to the Hanes Facebook page and help them reach their very laudable goal of donating 500,000 pairs of socks to those who need this most basic of comfort this holiday season.

Please spread the word and ask your friends to get involved with this campaign. From tomorrow there will be a widget on the sidebar of the blog here that people can click to take them straight to the page.

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Facespace & MyBook: What the partnership means for marketers

simonsalt — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 14:55:17 +0000

MySpace recently announced a move that brings them closer to Facebook. MySpace users will now be able to sync their account and share their activity across both platforms. While a lot of social media users have long since forgotten their MySpace account (and the password that went with it), 91 million other users are still accessing the site on a regular basis. That makes the site on a par with Twitter in terms of user base, obviously a significant step down from it’s one-time dominance of the social networking world, but still not exactly the backwater that some would have you believe.

Should Marketers Care?

Without wanting to give the standard “consulting” answer to that question, the answer is in fact Yes and No. The new MySpace seems to have made a real effort to reinvent itself as a personal music and entertainment portal (yes that word from the 90′s web). If music & entertainment aren’t your bag then you are probably not going to find much in MySpace to enjoy. However if they are then having the ability to create things like playlists, which include both music and video is a nice break from Facebook’s constant stream of friends updates. The cross posting from Twitter to MySpace is just as annoying on MySpace as it is on Facebook.

Your home page is populated with things that you are interested in. You get to decide what appears here rather than your network controlling what appears – I guess that makes sense given the name of the site. With the “likes” and “interests” pulled through from Facebook your MySpace page automatically populates with things that MySpace thinks you will find relevant. It actually did a fairly good job with mine.

Now that Facebook “Likes” will be visible to MySpace users networks it does beg the question as to whether a brand should in fact have a MySpace presence. For many this will be just one too many places to try and maintain a presence. MySpace lacks the equivalent of a Business Page for most brands though musicians and other artists can create accounts and have users add them as “friends”.

To MySpace or Not?

So to answer the question, should I, as a marketer care about the new MySpace and the potential partnership with Facebook? Ultimately as a marketer I would say yes. You owe it to yourself to keep an eye on all the potential outlets for your communications. Realistically though, with everything else that you already have going on and given the increasing demands that Social Media is already placing on marketers I’d say that I think the majority of marketers will probably skip over MySpace until they see if it gains any traction. Of course that is what most did with Twitter and are already doing with Social Location Sharing apps like Foursquare.

I get that this is the safe route but to get an edge sometimes you just have to make a leap of faith. So if you are looking to do something a little different to your competitors perhaps now is the time to get involved with MySpace again and see what it can offer your brand. After all 91 million people is still a significant audience.

Will you be recovering your MySpace account? If you do add me as a friend.

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Has Facebook Locked Up Location Services with their Patent?

simonsalt — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:58:33 +0000

Filed in February 2007 Facebook has been granted a patent as of October 5th, to what appears on the face of it to cover all location based services. This is the full Patent filing. Here are the elements of the patent that certainly make it look as though the world of Social Location Sharing belongs to Facebook from now on:

A method of sharing locations of users participating in a social networking service at a geographic location, the method executed by a computer system and comprising: receiving location information and status information from a mobile device of a first user of the social networking service, the location information representing a geographic location of the first user, the status information manually provided by the first user on an input module of the mobile device; associating the location information with the status information of the first user in a database; and sending the status information and the location information of the first user to a second user for display.

Assessment: This pretty much describes Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, Yelp and every other Social Location Sharing service available, including of course Facebook Places.

A computer server for providing a social networking service, comprising: a database module configured to store location information in association with status information of a first user in a database responsive to receiving the location information and the status information from a mobile device of the first user, the location information representing a geographic location of the first user, the status information manually provided by the first user on an input module of the mobile device; and a communication module configured to: receive the location information and the status information associated with the first user from the mobile device; and send the location information and the status information of the first user to a second user for display.

Assessment: Here they are defining the infrastructure that would be or is used by any location service and how that infrastructure is used to collate and store the users location information

So having laid out the main territory they then go on to include some specific features that will look familiar to any existing user of Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.

The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving location information of the second user; determining if the first user is in proximity to the second user based on the location information of the first user and the location information of the second user; and responsive to determining that the first user is in proximity to the second user, initiating transmission of information about the first user to the second user.
The server of claim 7, wherein the querying module is further configured to: receive location information of the second user; determine if the first user is in proximity to the second user based on the location information of the first user and the location information of the second user; and responsive to determining that the first user is in proximity to the second user, initiate transmission of information about the first user to the second user.
The server of claim 3, wherein the second user is designated by the first user as connected to the first user in the social networking service.
The server of claim 3, wherein the communication module is further configured to send the status information and the location information in a page of information about the first user.
The server of claim 3, wherein the geographic location is determined by a wireless positioning signal generated at the mobile device.

When you look past all of the legalize, they are basically claiming ownership to any system that connects one user to another via a server based environment based on social connections and a shared geographic location that is either current or historic and that is determined by the use of a GPS system in a mobile device.

So what will this mean for the world of Social Location and Location Based Services in general? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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