Temporary Social Media

Many people have heard of the application entitled "Snap Chat" in which a person can take a picture of themselves or anything for that matter, and the person receiving it can only view this file for up to ten seconds until it is automatically deleted. In a day and age where sending a picture message via text message or any other form of communication can come back and haunt a person for the rest of their lives, this type of insurance is highly sought after. In a not so innocent world, this type of app seemed to be more exciting to teenagers who "sext" each other. But when put into a different lens, this type of technology could be extremely useful in a business type setting.

Although this technology is still in its infant stages, an upgraded version of such temporary social media can allow for the transfer of important documents between businesses. Such things could ensure the deletion of confidential information instead of relying on the opposing party to shred the information. It could also allow other top secret information to be passed along, again with the added security that such information would only be view able for a certain amount of time before it would automatically be deleted.

Things such as credit card information when making a purchase online could be used with this technology as well. This would allow for an e-commerce business to make their customers feel more at ease about people taking information from their website and setting up false identification with it. Using the technological platform from Snap Chat and expanding upon it leaves the door wide open for potential uses and safeguards for peoples security.

Frito-Lay Chip Contest

Frito-Lay was very successful in a recent social media campaign that involved a contest of who can create and submit the best new flavor for Lay's chips. The general public then had to vote using social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook to voice their opinions on the new products. Frito-Lay actually produced some of the top chip flavor contenders and had them for sale in many stores across the nation, allowing consumers to try the different new products before voting on which one should officially enter the Frito-Lay lineup of products.

My Twitter and Facebook were blowing up in the final weeks of the competition, with everyone buzzing about which chip flavor should win and why. This was pure brilliance by Frito-Lay because many people went out and bought multiple bags of their chips so that they could try each flavor. This was a huge bonding moment for people all over the world, as they shared their experiences with the new flavors and carefully critiqued them.

I have to say that this campaign made me more likely to buy products from Frito-Lay, as I, too, was a part of the chip critiquing and bought many bags of each flavor for everyone around me to try so that we could have a fun activity to do. While this competition frenzy is now over, the Frito-Lay brand has boosted itself into the spotlight, where everyone sees Lay's as the fun and innovative chip brand that they will want to purchase from for a long time.

Welcome to the Square Market!

As some of you may already be familiar with, Square, Inc. is a company that provides mobile credit and debit card transaction services for businesses. By inserting the white square card reading device into your mobile device and utilizing the Square application that you download to your device, you can instantly transform your mobile device into a mobile payment center for your business, allowing customers to conveniently pay you anywhere, anytime a transaction takes place! 

Square is now launching Square Market, which allows sellers to create a storefront online for free with online payment processing capabilities. Square Market allows people and businesses to sell goods online, as well as help promote their physical store by allowing potential customers to search for specific items and have whichever sellers selling that particular item to show up. Unlike other e-commerce websites such as Ebay and Amazon, Square Market does not charge customers to post items for sale, it's completely free. Square does, however, charge a 2.75% fee on whatever is sold using their marketplace, which is still cheaper than many other competitors.

Square Market will help business tremendously, as many businesses are looking to move their business online, but either do not wish to run their own website or do not want to deal with paying all of the fees associated with building their own website. The instant access to many potential customers is also a perk for using Square's new web service.

Who remembers ALDI as "the stock-up store"?

Aldi has come a long way since their first popular television advertisements in the 1980's when they finished each commercial with a voice saying "ALDI-the stock-up store". Yes, ALDI was a store where you could stock up on their core range items. If you did not live near a store and were not able to visit inside to see their selection, many people thought ALDI was similar to today's warehouse stores like Costco and Sam's Club. Viewers thought ALDI was a bulk item store and they were not able to effectively get their message across via their commercials. Print ads were more effective in that they showed items with prices and sizes, therefore letting you know they were not selling in bulk.


With the advent of the Internet followed by popular social media Websites such as Facebook, ALDI has reached out to hundreds of thousands more people in very positive ways. Currently, the ALDI USA Facebook page has 561,915 likes with 9,400 people discussing the page. Via their Facebook page which can be found at <"https://www.facebook.com/ALDI.USA ">, they are engaging their customers by marketing not only their products, but recipes, weekly deals via their ads, as well as a way to contact Customer Service.

One of the best things about ALDI USA's Facebook fan page is that it allows people to share ideas, recipes, shopping tips, and form friendships. They even use the Facebook page to plug in another popular way to share recipes by showing a link to enter your favorite recipe for drop cookies on Pinterest via this post:
"Follow us on Pinterest and pin your favorite drop cookie recipe using ingredients from ALDI for a chance to win a $20 ALDI gift certificate. Click here for info on how to enter: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/52495151880054186/” What a better way to engage people into liking their company than to create a contest to win money doing something you love? ALDI USA has outdone themselves using this Web 2.0 technology by making sure it's all about the consumer. They make you feel like part of the Aldrich brother's family...the original ALDI pioneers.

Pin It to Win It!

While most companies have figured out how to use Twitter and Facebook, some are now catching on to the craze of “Pin It to Win It.” Companies like Campbell Soup, Elizabeth Arden, Volkswagen and now Macy’s are taking their contests to Pinterest and empowering users to simply “Pin It” to enter and win.  This idea is brilliant and I’ll tell you why!  Contest entries via an online form or mail-in postcard are a thing of the past.  Why wouldn’t a company want to capitalize on the opportunity to make their entries virtual and double as a cross-promotion of their product or service?  Again, brilliant.  Let’s focus on Macy’s “Pin It to Win It” campaign.  

Macy’s encouraged shoppers to create a Pinterest page and repin a pin (Pinterest chain effect 101) from their “The Magic of Fall” Pinterest board to be entered into their $1,000 gift card giveaway!  The content included on their Fall board consisted of on-trend Fall fashions that would carry throughout users boards across Pinterest.  

What is great about Pinterest is that you can create multiple boards and tailor its content to any theme you’d like.  This is an excellent feature for companies with constantly evolving campaigns or product lines.

I personally feel that a campaign such as this would encourage users to browse their website and increase the number of orders placed.  If you see that your friend Mary loves a certain sweater and it happens to be something you've been looking for, you're going to buy it (impulse or not).  As mentioned in the book Likeable Social Media, we pay attention to recommendations from our friends and family.  By having users add an element of personalization to their campaign (Mary "Pinned" this outfit), it takes the direct marketing ploy out of the equation.

The Social Media Stalker Strategy

I have a teeny, tiny problem. I think I may have acquired a stalker. In fact, it's a cyber-stalker of sorts. I have to say that I'm beginning to feel like they are literally following me around on the internet, especially on Facebook. Wherever I go, there they are. I'm really starting to feel suffocated and a little creeped out. It all started with trying to save a little money for my wedding...

I'm getting married next September (thank you, thank you), and have started the overwhelming process of planning a wedding. We have decided on an incredibly small inexpensive wedding, consisting merely of myself, my husband-to-be, my parents, and his parents. Our goal is to have a simple, no-nonsense shindig, using most of our saved wedding money for an awesome honeymoon in Hawaii. To help keep costs down, and to avoid pushy salespeople, we are shopping for wedding rings online. I found a couple of great websites that have the ring that I'm looking for at a much lower price than in-store and without all the hassle. Perfect! As soon as I found the ring on these two sites, I bookmarked them so I could find the pages later to decide which site to buy from. Phew! Ring shopping is a lot easier than I thought! Off to Facebook I trotted to check the latest news feed...

As soon as I got to Facebook, I noticed a little ad over on the right side of the page. It was the EXACT same ring that I had just bookmarked from one of the EXACT same websites! WOW!! This must mean that I am totally meant to have this exact ring!! I giggled inside, and pledged that I would only buy my ring from this said website, and not the other, since this was practically a sign from above! Off to Google to look at honeymoon locations...

As I clicked through the different links on Google's results to my search, "Honeymoons in Hawaii", I saw a ton of sites with great honeymoon info. I saw fabulous tips on budget travel, awesome all-inclusive packages, exciting activities, beautiful pictures of beaches and mountains and flowers.....and MY RING!! There was another ad of the EXACT same ring that I had just bookmarked from that EXACT same website. Coincidence?? It must be...

Back on my homepage of Facebook I saw a few cute and funny pictures of puppies, a funny quip from an old co-worker....and another ad of the EXACT same ring that I had just bookmarked from that EXACT same website. I was officially creeped out. How did Facebook know which ring I had decided to buy? How did the Hawaii honeymoon site know?? Was I going to see this ring every time I logged into Facebook??? IS MY FACEBOOK PAGE TURNING INTO A PUSHY, STALKERISH JEWELRY SALESPERSON?!?!?

The answer to that last question is an emphatic YES. Facebook had employed it's incredibly intuitive targeted ads to help an online jewelry store become the exact opposite of what I was hoping for in my ring shopping experience. This unnamed store had turned into a cyber-stalking, money-hungry, ring-slinging sleeze-ball. What was once a warm and fuzzy feeling towards this jewelry company quickly shifted into an annoyed and violated rumbling in my tummy. I impulsively (and vindictively) deleted the bookmark to "My Ring" from my browser, and left the competitors link all alone as the victor to my credit card information.

In hindsight, I can plainly see the intention of this online jewelry store: to get their products out to potential customers via social media, utilizing social media's intelligent forms of advertising. What I don't think they realize is how this kind of marketing campaign can become a bit overwhelming, not to mention intrusive and annoying. In my mind, they may as well have sent an actual salesperson from their virtual store to come to my home and follow me around all day, holding the ring, and shouting the price in my ear every once in a while. From time-to-time, he could even hide behind my sofa and jump out unexpectedly throughout the day, holding the ring and shouting the price. That campaign would have been just as effective as the creepy Facebook advertising campaign.

"Whistle" While We Work

Want to know what your dog does all day, every day, for the rest of his life? Even while he's asleep? I recently came across a new fun little gadget aimed at dog lovers. It is called Whistle, and is essentially a dog monitor that simply attaches to the dog collar. Once snugly in place, Whistle keeps track of all of your dog's activity throughout the day, such as how much exercise he is getting, how much sleep, and even who is spending time with your beloved pooch. Whistle collects all of this data, which can then be accessed by your smart phone, 24/7. You can set goals for your dog, such as the amount of exercise your vet recommends, or how much sleep, and Whistle will create reports which will show you the progress of the goal. When a goal has been met, you can even share the milestone on social media with family, friends, and even your vet (so exciting!) Speaking of the vet...Whistle even creates Veterinarian Insights for you to bring to your dog's next appointment. At this point, Whistle is sounding like a souped up, highly intelligent, dog pedometer to me. I'm definitely intrigued.

The feature that had my little heart all a-flutter, though, was the ability to actually report on times and lengths of dog walks throughout the day, as well as being able to see who your dog is hanging out with during the day, and when. You see, dog walking is my bread and butter. I am the manager of a dog walking company, and it has become my sworn duty to keep the sloth-prone dogs of the world up off of the couch throughout the day with super-duper fun 30-minute walks.  My army of dog walkers are out there 7-days a week, walking, scooping, feeding, and watering, and then providing an element of proof to the two-legged parents (and me) that a walk actually occurred. The walkers leave time-stamped notes which lets the parents (and me) know that the dogs did in fact get their walk. For some of the more "detail-oriented", tech-happy parents, notes are not enough, and they require text messages after each walk. These texts generally must include a potty report and an exercise status update, along with a snapshot of their furry little pooch. This info assures the parent that the walk was successful in making their little dog happy, and therefore worth the money. There is a very easy equation to keep customers happy in this business: Happy Dog + Healthy Dog = Happy Customer. And everyone knows that Happy Customer = Repeat Customer = More Money in the Bank for the Biz.

So how can I keep my tech-savvy customers happy, while keeping track of what my walkers are up to throughout the day? This is where Whistle comes in. Here is an ingenious little gadget that can not only keep me in the loop as far as what my employees are doing with the dogs, but keeps the owners in the loop as well, AND keeps the parents up-to-date on the health of their dog! LOVE IT! Being able to find out anything via your smart phone has become the expectation of essentially every consumer on the planet nowadays, and apparently info about our own dogs is no exception. Whistle would be a fantastic little addition to my dog walking empire. You can check it out for yourself here: www.whistle.com