Stop Making Friends And Start Making Money
Written by Todd L. MichaudAugust 26th, 2010
Franchisee Columnist Todd Michaud can't help but smile when he reads polls about how many companies are experimenting with social media. Responses along the lines of, "We are trying different social media tactics but have not landed on a solid strategy," tend to be the most popular answer. Can you imagine a CIO making the statement, "We are playing around with ERP to see if we can build a business case"?
The world is moving to an open, sharing, social platform at a lightening pace. As a result, people behave differently today than they did yesterday. How have your sales and marketing strategies adapted to this change? What if you could provide incentives to customers to entice their social graph to visit the location (receive 10 cents on your loyalty/gift card for each of your friends who checks in)? Laugh if you will, but I believe the restaurant industry will see multi-level marketing become a large part of its business in the next three to five years.
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3 Comments | Read Stop Making Friends And Start Making Money
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
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August 26th, 2010 at 6:43 am
Point well made Todd. Companies should quickly move to next level by implememting social crm and start creating new business model through social hubs.
August 26th, 2010 at 8:25 am
Crooks rejoice, you can now rob the “Mayor” of the local Firkin pub while he is at the bar! Now that’s progress! The privacy implications of that application run deep. Being impersonated and burglarized because of one’s careless social media exposure doesn’t just happen to other people. Companies beware: just because an app/platform lets (or encourages you to) share personal data, doesn’t mean you should put your users through this.
August 27th, 2010 at 7:59 am
The data location based services are collecting on bricks and mortar locations is so valuable – equivalent to web analytics – that brands will figure out a way to leverage them in a way that makes sense for the consumer and the brand. I believe that this will be through white label services integrated into the retailers mobile web/app offering.
If I’m a brand, why do I want to advertise Foursquare’s brand? Why do I want them to collect data on my locations and customers simply to have them sell it to my competition? Why do I want to direct my users to an application like Foursquare that is going to attempt to lure me to the location down the street with a better deal?
Mobile and location based services represent an amazing opportunity to engage and influence the consumer like never before. I believe once brands understand the data they are giving up and the ability to leverage their customers ‘fan base’, they will start to add this functionality to their own mobile presence in addition to leveraging these service.