Our agency in South Florida

Most people thought I was out of my mind to leave the security of a great job (with a son to support and parents in need), but I went with my feeling anyway. Besides I did think that someone “upstairs” was watching over me and telling me to take a chance. In order to win BIG, you have to risk BIG. Walking away from that fancy corporate job was the best decision I’ve ever made.

Dianna Huff, my dear Twitter friend, contacted me recently to tell me she was compiling an e-book featuring 23 stories of women (including me) who have gone after their dreams. The book was created to inspire women to overcome obstacles and fears in order to live their best lives.

This book will inspire you!

These extraordinary women are from all walks of life including accomplished entrepreneurs to a triathlon participant who experienced a debilitating accident. The commonality among these women is that they said “Yes” to dreaming big.

All of the proceeds from her book will be donated to the Girls Fight Back foundation. GFB provides personal safety and self-protection education to women and girls across the world.

Please support my friend Dianna and the Girls Fight Back foundation. To purchase the book, please visit her site: profitablefemaleconsultant.com

It will be the beginning of good karma for you too, as this has been a labor of love. To learn more about the extraordinary women featured in this book, please visit them on their websites linked below:

I’m starting to feel that my iPhone is an appendage. I never leave home without it. I’m sure a lot of people are like that, young people, anyway.

The right kind of marketers should know that they can reach me and millions of people just like me through our omnipresent cell phones in a number of ways and with perfect timing. Here are a few examples:

One of my favorite iPhone apps is RedLaser. It’s simple (and everyone I know has it). RedLaser is software that can scan any bar or QR code. Once I scan a code, it searches thousands of local and online retailers for the best prices. If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend your day researching or jumping from store to store to find the best prices.

I went to a computer store the other day to buy a charger for my laptop and it was $60 (far more than I wanted to spend). I scanned the barcode with the RedLaser App and found the exact same charger  on Amazon for $10. I ordered it right away and Amazon got it to me a few days later. How cool is that?

You can scan a coupon in a magazine or newspaper and bring it, on your SmartPhone, to, say, a theater or a restaurant for a discount. If you’re walking by a store, you can enter its name into your phone and there’ll probably be an offer you can take advantage of right way.

A lot of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn users, access their accounts on their SmartPhones. At the mall, I’ve noticed a lot of stores featuring in-store promotions mentioning to “Like” them on Facebook or “follow” them on Twitter. Macy’s offered me an extra 10% discount, if I showed them on my iPhone, that I “liked” them on Facebook.

Text message advertising has also grown tremendously in the past few years. In 2011, a survey conducted by the International Association for Wireless Communication showed that over 2.12 trillion text messages were sent and received. Crazy, right?

Advertising via text message, is a great way to reach your target audience directly and in real-time. 98% of all recipients read their text messages, 95% of them within 15 minutes of receiving them. People change their mailing and email addresses more often than they change their phone number. Companies can take advantage of this large consumer base.

Our good friends at Per-Keys help make this a seamless process for marketers, by offering a platform where they can integrate mobile and direct marketing. Since mobile marketing is permission-based, they use print communications to ask for permission. It uses personalized keywords to make the SMS message highly targeted, and allows for marketers to track responses. It’s also great to use, because everyone doesn’t have a Smartphone, so you can reach a broader audience via text message.

All in all, there are a lot of opportunities in Mobile Marketing. Which ideas do you like? Are you testing any Mobile Marketing? Please share with us in the comments below.

Food Trucks have been popping up all across the country. Everything deliciously sinful is on a truck. From cake shakes and fried Oreos to ginger Brussels sprouts & Short Rib Sandwiches¬…

When food truck lineups started, even better, one opened up right in front of my Alma Mater, Johnson & Wales University. The BTTR (Biscayne Triangle Truck Round-up) Miami Food Truck Events, usually about 35 trucks, get together once a week.

My friends and I have been going practically every week, and the crowds keep getting bigger. At first, it was mostly college students, and then people from all around the city started showing up.

And that made me wonder. “How did all these people hear about this?”

I decided to investigate! I started watching the trucks, more important asking questions. I came up with some surprising answers. Here’s what they do great, and what they could do:

1. They create a stand out brand personality.
The truck owners put a lot of thought into coming up with a creative name, and overall theme. The decals and truck design can make or break them. Some keep it simple and focus on making good food; others go crazy with characters and graffiti-like design. Just like in any business, standing out from your competitors is key.

2. Most of them get the word out with Social Media.
Food Truck owners use Facebook and Twitter, since they move around a lot, so people can track them down. (A lot of my friends hear about Food Trucks on Twitter or Facebook, and read reviews on which ones are best.)

3. About 75% of Food Trucks I saw have QR codes.
While people stand in line they usually have their smart phones in their hand. Food Truck owners ask them to scan the QR code to follow them on Facebook and Twitter, so they get the latest updates.

4. Missed Opportunity?
I noticed that some trucks have 4” X 6” Flyers with QR Codes linked to Facebook, Twitter, their website and phone number. Why aren’t the owners asking people to sign up for an email list? Missed opportunity? Why not collect their information and send them updates once a week about upcoming events.

5. Reviews! Reviews! Reviews!
Like most people, I have favorite Food Trucks. I’m obsessed with this mouthwatering, scrumdiddlyumptious (no real word can describe how good it is) Short Rib Sandwich. I talk about it on Facebook and my friends have all tried it! A lot of people post reviews on Yelp or their own websites, so it’s a good idea to encourage customers to review your business. Some trucks have a decal asking customers to review them on Yelp.

Any standout Marketing Ideas you’ve seen? Please share your thoughts and comment below.

Guest Blog Post from
Rachel Rodriguez
LGMG Account Exec.

One of the great things about speaking at the annual Merit Direct Coop is that I get a chance to learn new things. I also get to meet some of Merit’s clients and to enjoy the beautiful Renaissance Westchester Hotel.

And this year there was a bonus! I got to share the keynote with Amy Africa and spend a little time with her. The fact that it was her birthday made it even better.

Amy spoke about Mobile Marketing, expertly, as always. My topic was “Everything you need to know about Social Media for B to B companies”.

Some of the things I said might interest you:

I· You can develop a Prospect Database through Social Media. Merit Direct is a great List Company and they know better than anyone else that all kinds of businesses are building their own databases. Twitter and Facebook can help. A lot. Twitter has places for you to create your own lists and segment your audiences. You can also create a landing page on Facebook that ask your friends or fans for their email addresses so you can send them updates or offers.

II· Social Media makes it easier to access people in charge. You can begin a conversation with almost anyone on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. I’ve chatted with people online that I‘d never get to talk to if I called. There’s no gatekeeper and people logon to social media when they have time.

III. You can maximize your own content. Use it for your blog, white papers, etc. and broadcast it with links from social media. It’ll get you out to a larger audience.

IV. Talking about your company in all of these places, you can develop a large brand, even though you might be a small startup company. At the Merit Direct Coop, I was delighted to meet one fellow I’d been talking to online for a while. I thought he had a large company. Turned out it was a startup! Goes to show you what you can do with a social media approach.

V. And … You can also communicate with your customers along the buying cycle.

You might also want to consider this:

- The B2B buyer cycle is complex

- The offerings are more sophisticated (what they can do
and on what scale)

- B2B buyers are curious about how a product can make life easier and business better (mistakes can be costly)

- to win a B2B sale you first have to build trust, demonstrate how reliable your product is, and show how it is suitable

- determine each customer’s perspective, and mirror their concerns with benefits

- B2B buyer cycle will always require thoughtful consideration, due to the sophistication of the offerings.

- With targeted online experiences we can shorten the length of time between first contact to signed contract.

A chart of some Conversion Metrics

When I spoke on the exact same topic at the Merit Direct Coop a few years ago, we had a nice crowd. This time there was a lot more people, and we were in the ballroom. B to B sees the power of Social Media.

Happy Birthday, Amy.

Celebrating with Amy Africa (@AmyAfrica)(EightbyEight) and friends; Barbara de la Riva (@bdelariva), Linda Pickering, and Joanna Brandi (@joannabrandi)(Customer Care Coach)

Last week’s post (and subsequent Tweets) elicited responses from some nice people at American Airlines, one of whom is a VP at American Eagle.

They refunded our airfares (we never did get to our final destination) and, all in all, were very pleasant in resolving a lot of my concerns. It took them a while.

Lesson 1: Handle complainers fairly and promptly and you’ll probably get them back as customers, happier customers.

Along the way, a lot of my blog and Twitter friends tweeted and emailed about their AA problems. I hope the airline, at least for its own sake, does its best to help them out. If I owned AA, I’d get helpful people online and on the phone immediately.

The problems I heard about (as well as my own problems) rarely had anything to do with bad weather or mechanical problems. We’re all grownups and we know that stuff happens. The problem is always the way a company handles customers’ issues. It’s a lot like the bigger problem politicians always seem to create after they’re caught doing something stupid. The inevitable dissembling, outright lying and tap dancing for the media – the spin – cause more problems than the original offense.

Lesson 2: Tell the truth.

I was talking to a west coast friend last night. His name is Dwain and he’s an online whiz. He suggested that maybe American Airlines shouldn’t even be involved in social media. They’re not dedicating enough resources to it. He might be right; as near as I can tell, AA has two people working on Twitter and, apparently, neither works on weekends. Again, if I owned the company, I’d have more people, with some company clout, ready, able and, most of all, willing to help customers solve their problems.

Lesson 3: Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
Above all, don’t do what AT&T does – threaten customers who have problems. I found this unbelievably ham-handed and so will you: econsultancy.com

Lesson 4: They’re your customers for crying out loud. Treat them badly and they’ll tell two friends who’ll each tell two friends, and sooner or later one or more of them will eventually tell the whole world … which they can do just by typing a few words and hitting “Post”.

On my AA debacle-trip, I was traveling with a friend. Neither of us racks up hundreds of thousands of miles in the air every year but we do fly a lot, perhaps 40 flights a year between us. Nobody in the Chicago airport the night the debacle went down, seemed to understand that we, and probably a lot of our fellow passengers, represented significant business – and that’s not counting all the people we influence.

Lesson 5: Know you’re customer. Get gate people and phone people to look us up and react accordingly. Treating everyone fairly is a good idea; treating really good customers fairly is a great idea.

How do you think American Airlines and companies like them should handle the complaints they get – given their tiny social media presence? Please let me know, because maybe we can help them and ourselves.

But I never gave Twitter a lot of thought until the other day when my friend, Amy Africa (@amyafrica in Twitter talk), called to chat.

We talk about a lot of things but sooner or later the “How’s business?” question comes up. “Fine,” I told her, “but it could always get better.”

Amy’s an Internet marketing expert and she knows that I have 12,000 or so Twitter followers. She mentioned that having a large-ish Twitter following credentializes you. Amy tends to just mention things and let you make the connection.

I made this connection immediately. Could the time I spend on Twitter ever actually do my business any good? Twitter is big part of what we call Social Media – Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, this blog, etc., all of which I’m involved in to different degrees. Could Social Media do my agency any good?

I should know the answer but I’m not sure I do.

I write about the power of Social Media: relationships, consistency of voice, brand issues, one-to-one communication, frequency, etc. I know how to make a deal, how to close a sale.

Does all this credentializing do any good? Have I been invited to make more speeches this year than last year? Does anyone send me a Tweet asking for marketing help? No and no.

So I asked my Twitter friends if I’m missing anything. Here’s what a few of them said:
@vbpickett: “You should appreciate the great friendships” ( I do!)

@Journeywoman said “absolutely invest in Twitter time …”

@MatthewTNelson:“I have my tweetdeck open all day and I’m constantly scanning for website RFPs. When I see one interesting I reach out and connect.”

Later he tweeted that he had landed two website development contracts via Twitter in the past year.
Wow! Results. Now I have to figure out how to home in and do the same.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, advice you can share, I’d love to hear from you.

· Twitter is for kids, mostly following celebrities.

· Who cares what some people are eating for dinner?

· I tried it for a few days, and thought it was like talking to myself.

So many people try Twitter and never go back. That’s like trying to be a doctor and dropping out after BP 101.

When I was growing up my Mom and Dad would never allow quitting. When I signed up (and paid up) for baton twirling lessons, I had to stick with them even after my twirling with fire almost burned out the gym, sort of like Carrie.

Twitter Quitters had short attention spans. All Social Media practitioners are always testing new platforms, engaging with new people and using it everyday.

In fact, I’m just trying Gowalla today, Foursquare, too.

I don’t want to have Twitter as my one area of expertise. Using all the Social Media and connecting them will multi-purpose my content and increase my luck!

That is a scary thought for me, because I get nervous when people don’t read. Most of all, I feel sick to my stomach when I think people aren’t curious about things going on in the world, or new ideas, or innovations. Just plain curious is good.

Twitter is great that way. If there is breaking news, someone is always tweeting about it, and I hear it first on my Tweetdeck. I can also test all kinds of things on Twitter:

1. Ask people about something, with a link to show it (people read tweets with links).

2. Ask for advice. Recently I was throwing my new iMac into the ocean as I couldn’t get it to work because the monitor showed vertical colored lines. As soon as I tweeted about it, 5 or 6 people told me the computer was dead period. Take it back to the store.

3. I make friends on Twitter with people who share my point of view. Many people who I’ve had conversations with on Twitter have come to visit us, or called me, and when I visit a city…I get many invitations for coffee and lunch to meet in person.

4. For business, because of the huge numbers of people on Twitter, I can do a tweet and invite people to come to our Facebook page and enter a contest. They do come and then I can send them to a website to sign up for a newsletter (and get their email addresses).

5. If I want to find people who are lawyers on Twitter, I can go to twitter.search.com or simply press #lawyers and find all lawyer mentioned in the last 10 minutes or an hour.

The opportunities are endless to use Twitter as the driver to take people to your website, or blog, or E-zine. It’s got great possibilities…and I’m sure you’ll think of new ones for your business!

I missed it when I was in Vancouver a few weeks ago, because my iPhone service was “iffy” and my tweetdeck was very slow. Why…I ask myself into the night?

Well, if you ask my “real life” friend @amyafrica she’d say that all my followers are wackos anyway, so why even read their tweets.

If you ask my friend @anierenberg, she’ll say the only way to network is in person, not on social media. I do notice lately though when we talk on Sunday nights that there is a tweet tweet sound in the background…so she may be adapting.

I like Twitter for several reasons:
1. I can follow people that I might never have access to in life (or it would be hard to meet them). For example, recently I contacted @marcishimoff who wrote the book, Happy For No Reason. I thought she might write an article for one of our client’s on-line newsletters. So, I tweeted on over to Marci and asked, and she said we could talk about it. Bingo!

2. Learning from the Twitter leaders is interesting, and recently I was sent from Twitter to @chrisbrogan ‘s blog, where he talked about a great book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He said that it was about how the author talks about the stories of our lives and how when he got off the couch and started moving that his whole story changes.
I bought the book right away on amazon.com .

3. When I need help, I start tweeting about my problem on Twitter and someone always comes to the rescue in minutes. So, when my new television set couldn’t be set up with the Best Buy guys on Comcast…I marched over to my tweetdeck and in about 30 seconds, I heard from Frank Eliason of @comcastcares and they talked the installers through the process.
Last week I struggles with my new iMac, and people from Best Buy jumped in and told me right away to return it to the store (as there is no cure for vertical color lines on your monitor).

4. And, then I make friends on Twitter I’d never meet in life. @joebees was talking about taking a run and mentioned the loop in Aventura….right outside my apartment. I started talking to him, and he came to visit my office laden with great bee pollen vitamins for us all.

@tlmaurer and I are always exchanging funny chat during the day. She was sad about my computer and eventually told me I should write a rap song about my problems with Apple and put it on YouTube. We’ve been back and forth writing rhyming lyrics ever since.

@relevance , my friend Ted always gives me advice on my latest challenge and @Ernieschell told me about visiting the Barnes Foundation Museum a few weeks back before it moved the collection. I did and it was great.

So, I guess I enjoy Twitter, because it helps me in my life, and my work and introduces me to all kinds of great people….and it improves my luck. So many people have asked me to speak at their meetings, because I’m always giving my latest marketing tips on Twitter.

So, just try it for two months. It is not about who is eating a ham sandwich any more.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about some Twitter Marketing Strategies we’re testing for clients. Stay tuned.