Outback Steakhouse recently offered a free ‘Bloomin’ Onion‘ to the first 5,000 folks who signed up on their Facebook Fan page. The results? They added 24,000 new fans in the first week. And the numbers just keep on growing.
Marketing – Outback Steakhouse’s Bloomin’ Onion/Facebook campaign
The 5 spoked wheel of social marketing
Social marketing, at its core, is like a wagon wheel. It has a hub and 5 spokes which can conveniently be arranged into a fine circular object that will handily take you down the social track.
- The hub is your blog
- Spoke #1 – a social networking account on Facebook.
- Spoke #2 – a microblogging account on Twitter.
- Spoke #3- a video sharing account on Youtube.
- Spoke #4 – a photo sharing account on Flickr.
- Spoke #5 – a network of like-minded blogs to follow and comment uponst.
- The invisible spoke – patience, keen listening skills and time.
In this wonderful new world of business models there are lots of folks who have reached ‘wizard’ status…and there are lots and lots and lots more who are just trying to figure out where to start. As a way to help the later group we are putting together a series of videos created by members of the ‘wizard’ ilk. We will start with a Youtube video called Blogs in Plain English by Lee LeFever.
The story of creation (via Twitter)
This wonderfully witty post is from Tom McNichol at the Huffington Post
Day One
Let there B-lite. OMG! Or shld I say Oh Me! It’s so much easier 2-C now. WTF was I thinking B4? Spent the rest of the day dividing lite from drkness. It is good. 
Day Two
Made a firmament (sort of a dome thing) to divide the waters under firmament from the waters above. Assigned firmament the file name <heaven>. +<:-)
Day Three
Gathered waters and let dry land appear. Dry land tagged <earth>, waters tagged <seas>. Uploaded grass and herb-yielding seed into <earth> folder. GR8!
Day Four
More lighting wk. Installed 1 great lite to rule day [<sun>] & lesser lite to rule night [<moon>]. Beta tested them & everything seems to work. It is gd. 
Day Five
Bushed from tweaking fish & fowl files. They wouldn’t be fruitful and multiply until I found it’s a simple <duplicate> command. >:-? Thank Me It’s Friday.
Day Six
Created 2 humans, file names <adam> and <eve>. At last – I now have 2 Twitter followers! Tweeting just to myself is sooo Day One. LOL! 
Day Seven
[no tweets]
7 habits of the highly effective
Highly effective websites are like highly effective people. They don’t just happen. Their success is honed and developed. To explore this thought I found a summary of Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
- Habit 1: Be Proactive
- Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
- Habit 3: Put First Things First
- Habit 4: Think Win/Win
- Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
- Habit 6: Synergize
- Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw Continue reading »
Remembering 9/11
Most of us will take some time today to reflect on the September 11th tragedies of eight years ago. Its sobering to remember the disbelief, apprehension and grief we all held as the day unfolded. As the days and months passed we learned of the 2,752 who had died, we witnessed the ceaseless acts of bravery from those who were assigned to ‘make it right’ again and we watched the ushering in of a new era. One of muffled hope and cultivated fear.
In many ways 2001 seems far, far in the past. We learn, communicate, heal, analyze, travel, even play differently now. We can thank (or curse) technology for many of the sweeping changes.
In order to get a finger on America’s heartbeat concerning 9/11 I did a Twitter search. I followed some links in the unending stream of thousands and thousands of tweets to read posts written by journalist, actors, conspiracy believers and politicians. I wondered what would have happened if Twitter or Facebook or the endless list of other social sites existed on that fateful day.
Is Twitter worth the time?
On June 22nd Amazon acquired online shoe/clothing merchant Zappos.com with a stock deal valued somewhere between $850 – $920 million.
I’m sure there a more reasons for this acquisition than meets the eye but the most stated reason is Zappos’ CEO’s philosophy of “karmic capitalism”. What goes around comes around couldn’t be truer in this case.
Tony Hsieh is Zappos’ CEO. He is a Harvard graduate with a degree in computer science. He made a bunch of money back in 1998 when he co-founded and sold LinkExchange to Microsoft. He joined the Zappos team in 2000 and has taken the company’s gross sales from $1.6 million to $1 billion in his tenure there.
What is remarkable about this young man is what how he accomplished this feet. He and his team created a Zappos ‘culture’ that is completely customer-centric. You can read Zappos 10 Core Values here. http://about.zappos.com/our-unique-culture/zappos-core-values They included their employees and customers in this ‘culture’ and they tweeted – a lot. Not just a little bit of alot, they tweeted a lot of alot.
Search Engine Watch’s Sage Lewis wrote Zappos + Twitter = Innovative Success http://searchenginewatch.com/3631269 back in October of 2008. It is worth the read.
One thing that caught my eye was Sage Lewis’ point that dedicated Twitter activity garners links from other sites. At the time the article was written, Zappos had 2467 pages linking to their site. I did a link check when I read the article. Now they have 7116. Wow!
For those not obsessed with search engine optimization, incoming links from other sites is a significant factor (some say less so now) in who’s site show up where in a searched listing. They also bring very valuable, targeted direct traffic. In other words, incoming links add value to your company’s bottom line.
So does being a Twitter rockstar. And in the case of rock star, Zappos, it brings about 1 billion tidbits of value.
Oh Wow!
I had a big ‘Oh wow’ moment on Saturday when I went to get the mail out of my mailbox. Mixed in with the usual blend of credit card offers (yes, I’m still getting them), catalogs and bills was the latest issue of Time magazine. Pictured on the cover was the large, signature photograph of FDR – and the headline, “What Barack Obama Can Learn from FDR.’ Continue reading »
4 Reasons Companies Don’t Join the Social Media Marketing Frenzy.
You know who you are. You have that antagonizing itch scratching and scratching right there nestled next to the need-to-succeed part of your brain. You know the world of doing business as usual has taken a sharp left turn but you aren’t quite going with it. You have an inkling you should but you just aren’t buying in. Hummm, why is that? Perhaps its because:
- Some companies aren’t suited for social marketing. I can’t think of any right off the top of my head – maybe the ‘We’d tell you what I do, but then we’d have to kill ya crowd’ or…well how about
- Trash collectors? Wait, they could lay out a wealth of information on recycling, composting, company long term green goals etc. Trash collectors could defiantly benefit from a presence in the social scene.
- The dog pound? They kill innocent kitties and doggies. But wait, they could show videos, photos and tell the stories of the available animals. Set up a mascot dog or cat Twitter account to tell the Twitterverse to pleeeeeze adopt Fluffy or Duke or Killer. What a fun and rewarding campaign that would be. Continue reading »
And the Webby winners were brief…
This post is taken straight from the Associated Press:
Webby winners take awards with 5-word speeches
NEW YORK (AP) — Who needs Twitter’s 140 characters? Five words were enough for the winners at the 13th annual Webby Awards ceremony, where Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, took the prize for breakout of the year.
Sticking to the Webbys’ tradition of acceptance speeches limited to just five words, he said: “Creativity is a renewable resource.”
Also at Monday’s ceremony, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane was honored for his Web series “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Said MacFarlane: “What is this for again?”
Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post won for best political blog, said: “I didn’t kill newspapers, OK?”
Jimmy Fallon, cited for using the Internet to flog his taking over NBC’s “Late Night,” said: “Thank God Conan got promoted.”
Thoughts on the Iran
We are all fascinated, some more, some less, with the drama of human injustice. This has certainly has been the case with the recent Iranian election and its ramifications. So much so that CNN is providing complete coverage both on the website and on the air. They are also doing something they didn’t do during the election and the resulting rebellion’s early days. They are using Twitter. So are most, if not all, of the other worldwide media organizations. Continue reading »
