|
The Social Three took a little break for awhile, but it’s back!
So what’s new in social media-land? Intel’s “Museum of Me” - No Flash Photography Please Intel’s “Museum of Me” project accesses (with your permission) your Facebook account; all status updates, photos, video shares, friends, etc., and curates that data into a video of a museum. It’s your Facebook-life; a tour of a museum with calming music playing in the background. I saw this yesterday across my Facebook feed. Several friends sharing it with opinions like “This is truly amazing...it's almost an emotional experience watching it. You *MUST* check it out!” to “Give it a try :) Really cool!” So I checked it out. I gave it a try. It was interesting and slightly moving - yes it took my information and showed me a few thumbnails of friends, a video I recently shared or liked (the Animaniac’s Wakko singing about the US states and their capitols -- a fond childhood memory), an artistic “digital” mashup of old status updates and then an elaborate collage built from the thumbnails of my friends. I was “wowed” and said as much as I shared it to my feed. (There’s a moment where it is supposed to show you a wall of your photos, but I believe I have a privacy setting on mine and that foiled the attempt to show them to me. Oh well.) Now I’m reading online a bit more about it and I’m kind of confused - to each their own, I get that - but why do I keep seeing words like “creepy” or “disturbing” pop up in various reviews? Mashable likens it to something posthumous. I can see it being emotional if you viewed someone who had recently passed.. but then again, the moments are so short and random (thumbnails of friends are only a few and the statuses are very randomized.) It think it’s just delightful and if it creeps you out or if you find it disturbing to see so much of your content artfully displayed back at you, then I advise you to reduce the amount of information (data, photos, videos) you share across any social platform. Check out a demo version of the video or see your Facebook-life in a museum! Foursquare Mistakes Mashable recently touched on five of the top mistakes that small businesses are making when they create a special for their venue on Foursquare. As an avid Foursquare user and one who *always* looks to see if there is a bright orange “SPECIAL HERE” notice when checking in, small business owners -- following this list is a must. The second “Top Foursquare Mistake” on Mashable’s list is “Not Training Staff”. By not training your staff, it presents a problem for you as a manager, your staff, and to your customers. It’s all about communication here! Foursquare even provides you with flyers once you create a special. They will help train your employees on what to do and let your customers know about the special (that they might not already know about prior to entering your venue.) Last year Starbucks had a nation-wide Foursquare special. If you are the current Foursquare Mayor, you will receive $1 off any Frappuccino. Sweet! I was currently the Mayor for my local Starbucks (no, no coffee addiction at all) so when I ordered my Frappuccino I showed the cashier my phone and said “Oh, and... I’m also the mayor, so I get this discount.” The cashier had no idea what I was talking about. I was the what? The MAYOR of a Starbucks? I had run into a double-dose of a lack of knowledge. Now, not only did I have to inform the cashier about my discount, but also about what Foursquare was in general. No problem, thankfully there was not a long line behind me and the girl was quite curious. She ran off and found the code she needed and rang up my order (apparently paperwork was somewhere, just not nearby the cash register.) This all comes back to, like I said above, communication. Small business owners need to keep their employees and customers in the loop -- especially when it comes to marketing and incentives to bring back those customers. Shaq & Twitter Shaq, like many celebrities, loves Twitter. He’s used Twitter in unique ways to interact with his fans - once he had mini-scavenger hunts (to find him) and when you did, you received game tickets on the spot. How cool, right? But you had to be following him on Twitter to know about it. And like many celebrities, using Twitter has allowed him to feel closer to his fans. It’s a direct connection. So naturally, if he has something to say - how else would you get the news out? For celebrities, issuing a press release -- well OK, as a PR professional, yes, do that. Cover some of the more traditional means and of course with a press release you get more than just 140 characters right? So Shaq tweeted yesterday that he was officially retiring.  Not only did he tweet the simple announcement, he shared a video with it. In the video, he directed the message to his fans - it was a great, personal touch.
|
