Shopping online, in the scheme of things, it is a pretty new experience.   Most people prefer to go to the store, walk the aisles and find what they are looking for. They want to be able to touch, feel and play with what they are about to buy. Not me, I am happy to just go to my computer and find what I am looking for using my web browser.

This week my family needed a new dishwasher and my wife and I could not find time to make it out to get one.  So, we decided to do the whole thing online with Sears. I have to say, Sears could not have made it any easier. They seem to have the perfect mix of traditional and online interactions.  Let me share with you some of the “High Points & Low Points” of dealing with Sears. I will do it in list form, as people like lists!

- When placing the order online with Sears I was able to pay a percent with Paypal, Gift Cards, a coupon and debit card. Yes I paid in one transaction with 4 different payments combined!

- I had a question, I clicked on the “Live Chat” and had someone answer a question about the item.

- There was a rebate available for the dishwasher. Their systems flagged it for me. Then after the purchase they sent me an email that had a hyperlink to it. I was able to complete the form, print and mail it all within minutes.

-I never got a confirmation call about when the dishwasher was going to be delivered. I decided to stay home to wait. Being the calm cool person I am I tweeted:

Sears quickly replied:

Then I posted:

I must say.. I was impressed. They responded to my tweet within 10 minutes and I got a calls in the same amount of time! Amazing, great save! They did great!

- The dishwasher was installed last night and it does not fit. Story of my life.  I called Sears this morning and alerted them to the issue.  An employee named Chris stayed on the phone with my wife and I for about 20 minutes and helped us find one that fit. He was great. After placing the order I got another call from Edwin. He stated his goal was to make sure everything is handled properly. He will be the single point of contact for the removal of the first dishwasher and the replacement of second dishwasher! He gave me his direct line, his hours, etc.

-Then I go a direct message via Twitter from @MySears…it said:

..hmmmm an automated DM.. not good.

As of this post, I am waiting for the second  dishwasher, Ill let you know how the rest of it goes.

Overall, I have to say my experience with Sears has been really good.  I really like the fact they have found a good mix of using tools like Paypal, Twitter, emails and  traditional live person customer service.

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I have noticed a trend lately in the social media space. Well there are several trends right now in the space.

Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable pointed out the top 5 for Twitter. Such things as:

-Real Time Search Engines

-Verified Accounts

-Sponsored Tweets

-Well you can just read Jennifer’s great post…

One trend I see picking up is what I am going to call “Social Media For Good”. Now before you say, “Dave using Social Media to do good things has been around for every.” True, but with all these different social networking sites and instant communication tools, things are changing.

Let me share with you a few different sort of ways people are using these tools to do good things. By good I don’t mean “helping me get 16,000 friends in 90 days on Twitter”.  Nor will I ask you to join a Facebook Cause. I will share this with you in list form. People like lists:

Drew, who I have known for several years was diagnosed with cancer in May and.. , instead of me explaining I will post what he wrote on the page:

“Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer.  Ever since that day, Drew has blamed everything on his cancer. Losing his keys, misplacing his wallet, Twitter being slow, the Phillies losing, etc. Why? Because you have to beat up on Cancer to win… and you can help out. Blame Drew’s Cancer for anything you want by tweeting with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer and it’ll come here. We’ll keep a tally and when Drew beats Cancer, our sponsors will donate a dollar for every participant to the American Cancer Society and the Make a Wish Foundation.”

Sophie Azouaou is “the interior designer who gives back” as well as the 7X7′s Community Impact contributor where she gives tips on giving back that “put your mind and your wallet at east”. She is what Change Starts At Home calls a “Change Maker”.  Currently she is working on “Touching Hearts” a TV show that will look at philanthropy and The Real Stories for NBC Bay Area. They have just started a donation campaign  to help their show get off the ground and make a difference. It will air right after Monday Night Football in the fall. If you want to get involved or donate, which gets you a credit on the show, contact Sophie direct or go the the Touching Hearts site. Her goal is to use all aspects of Social Media to get the show off the ground!

The Twestival. In February 2009 about 200+ cities around the world held these events. All with one cause, to help let people know about Charity:Water. When all was said and done they raised about $250,000. The key here is that thanks to Twitter it from a local event, to a global event. Come on, that’s pretty cool…

In January of this year David Armano asked people to help a woman and her children who wanted to get out of a domestic abuse situation. He simply reached out and asked people to donate. No big party. No big event. Just do what you can. Well that request raised almost $17,000 for Daniella’s Apartment Fund!

So there you are people using the Internet, social networking and sites for good. To do good things.

I like it!

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Yes, its true. I give. You win. It is time for me to buy an IPhone.

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may recall this post, I wrote called “The New IPhone Is Coming And I Don’t Care..”at my old site. So does this make me a hypercrite? Knocking the IPhone last year and now going out and buying one? Well, I would like to think not. I made a bad call. I have been known on occasion to make bad calls. You know, pick the wrong horse.  Go “All In” with the the wrong hand. Some notable wrong moves I have made are (I’ll share them in list form, as people like lists.”:

-I liked New Coke

-I not only paid to see “Howard The Duck“, after the movie I immediately  went out and bought the soundtrack at Tower Records

-I thought the Sony Betamax was going to be huge

-Loved the Arch Deluxe ( hey the lettuce was crisp and cold, and the hot was hot)

So that being said you get that I have been known to make some slight mistakes.

I plan to atone for this by getting a 3rd gen IPhone on Friday. I need to get involved with “applications”. They are just too powerful for me to ignore. I want to start using them. Making my life easier. I want info at a touch…. and to watch “The Office” while I am at the kids baseball games.

So, the point of this blog is not to share with you that in the ’80’s I was eating an Arch Deluxe, drinking a New Coke and watching Howard The Duck. It is to ask for your help.

As a “newbie” to the IPhone, I need to know what applications I should be using. What applications are the “Got to have”? Some applications I have been told to consider by Jeff Podraza are:

Tweetie – 1 of 2 great Twitter apps $2.99

TweetStack 1 of 2 great Twitter apps $2.99 (This is my favorite works with Tweetdeck if you use it)Skype for iPhone

Beejive – costly (15.99) But love the instant message interface.

LinkedIn

Lonely Planet San Francisco City guide normally 15.99 free during WWDC so grab it fast. (still free as of the 15th)

Searchme – this is a visual and media search engine

Evernote – great way to save information and sync with a desktop application
i.TV – I like this as you can integrate your Netflix account and Tivo
One Connect from Yahoo
Google
Yelp
Amazon (I use it a lot for price comparison)
Sea food Watch – from Monterey Bay Aquarium
AOL Radio – I love the comedy radio stations and 80’s stuff
Pandora
Shazam (hold it to a radio, when you want to identify a song)
Reader by Enormego (2.99 but allows for Google reader importing)
ABC News
Huffington Post
The Weather Channel
Ny Times – allows for offline reading
USA Today
Wall Street Journal
NPR
Public Radio
Flight Control – best 99 cents I spent on a challenging but simple addictive game
Lexel word  - game was free but worth paying for if not
Kindle for iPhone – From Amazon
eReader – From Barnes and Noble

What IPhone applications do you recommend and can not live with out? Are there some on this list you disagree with?

Thanks for your help!

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So you want to create a successful marketing campaign using Social Media. I cant say I am shocked as  Forrester Predicts Huge Growth for Social Media Marketing. It seems  every brand wants to get into the social media and mobile area as these areas are  growing like wildfire.

Now, if you came here looking for the  exact secret ingredient into a hopefully successful social media campaign, your at the wrong place. If I knew what that was, I would be rich and famous. Oh and living on the beach with lots of Kindles, super fast wifi , Iphones, and.. sorry back to the blog.  My point was that this is a document I created that  has many items that need to have  answered, so I can come up with a campaign that is hopefully putting out the right message to the  right people. It is made up mostly of questions I want answered by myself, my team or the client. This helps me figure out what the campaign could possible be.

Feel free to suggest items that should be added, removed or tweaked in  the document. (as it is far from perfect)

1. What is the goal?

-Reputation Management
-Brand Awareness
-SEO rankings up
-Increase site traffic
-Increase sales
-Other

2.Who is the demo/target we are after? In regards to the demo:

-. Who is likely to be most interested in the content?
- Who does the brand want to communicate with and why?
- What are people currently saying about the brand or business?
- Which type of person is likely to purchase the  product or service?
- What tools or online services does the  target audience use?
- Which websites does the  target audience frequent?
-What dot he  target audience have in common with one another?
- What sites are most popular?
- Where is the brands audience now?
- What is the conversation about the brand now?

3. What are the channels we will need to use?

-We need to take the dynamic content to set up multiple channels that direct traffic and attention to the brand. By doing such things as:

-blog
-Twitter
-Fanpage
-youtube
-digg
-stumbleupon
-Can we use people of influence?
-etc

(This method can work well along side SEO/SEM)

4. What is The Big Idea?
-Is it relevant
-Is it easy to distribute

5. What does the end user get? (why should they join/interact/engage/spread the mess) It could be:

-Knowledge
-relationship
-laugh
-prize

6. What is our ROI? (may not always direct/immediate)

-Relationships
-Better reputation
-Brand Awareness
-Sales

Random Questions/thoughts

-Why will people spread the mesage? WOM/talk about the campaign/brand? Is it same as what they get out of it?
-You need to be transparent (the best you can)
-Who will manage it?
-Who is the person who will manage feedback, interact, be the face on sites? They will need to interact on customer/target level.

social media visibility = brand awareness + word of mouth = new customer

The cliff notes version:

-What is the purpose
-What is the reward

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(This is the crazy story on how I got involved in Social Media. It is too long to tell in great detail, but here are the key points to the history. If you are totally confused, check out the video below.)

It is true. Are you done laughing? Yes, I a 38 year old married father of 5, used to pretend to be a 26 year old bombshell on the ‘net. Want to  know the best part? It worked really well for networking and building my brand. Yep.  I would do my social networking under the name: Britney Mason. Here meet Britney-

Britney Mason

Yep, she.. I mean I was a female avatar.

So at this point your totally confused, I know. Let me just tell you the story from the beginning, as I can best recall it.

In August 2005, I was up with my new born twins around 1:00 a.m. Doing my part so my beautiful wife could catch a few winks. I was reading TIME magazine learning about this new virtual world called, Second Life. (I’m not going to get into all the details of SL in this post, you can read more about it here.)

The first thing I was asked to do was pick a last name from a list and create my own first name.  As I looked down the list, the only semi-normal last name I could find was, Mason. As for a a first name, I had US magazine next to me with Britney Spears on the cover.  At that moment it all came together for me, Im going to pretend to be a girl in SL.

(Weird? Yep! Odd? For sure! Do you want to make all kinds of jokes at my expense right now? Yes, you do.  Done? Great)

Now I spent about 3 months in SL trying to figure out what the point was, what I needed to do to have fun, etc, etc. In the end, I got bored. I found really nothing interesting to do there.

Fast Forward to early 2006, I had been listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code podcast since 2005. On one show Adam had mentioned his discovery of Second Life and how he was so excited about this new way to meet and interact with people. He went so far as to invite people to meet him in world, giving out his Avatar name of  “Adam Neumann”.

I thought to myself, why not log in and meet Adam Curry. Well that is exactly what I did.  Adam quickly responded to me, going so far as to invite me to his home. Over the next few days I would meet Adam “In World” and help him build out his avatar, Curry Castle and share tips and tricks. Now, Adam asked me point blank if I was really a woman.  I immediately  replied “Yes, of course!”

At the time Adam’s podcast was truly daily, so everyday he would mention something about SL, what we were up doing, who else was in SL.  As, we spent more time in SL and he updated listeners on his podcast, something interesting started to happen.  A community started to form around us.  I would get Instant Messages from people looking for Adam, or just wanting to chat. It was really exciting.

Then Adam approached me about a Second Life deal. What if we partnered up for a “Virtual Business”? A 50-50 deal.  He would fund it and I would run it. SL was just starting to grow by leaps and bounds, Real Life companies were starting to come in like Home Depot, Sears, IBM, and others. I was all in!

Now, a few other things were happening at this time. All sorts of Podcasters and also joined SL. They all would hang out at Curry Castle or maybe at a piece of virtual land they purchased nearby. There was Cali Lewis, Anji Bee, The Rumor Girls,  among many, many others. They in turn would go and talk about their experiences on their  respective podcasts.  The number of people joining the community just grew and grew because of this.

Seeing that we needed something more organized, I spoke to Adam, who agreed, it was time to purchase our own virtual island, PodShow Island. Podshow was Adam’s company which would later be called Mevio.

PodShow Island, in my opinion was a success when it launched. The sim was nothing but hustle and bustle.  Eventually many of us lost interest and moved on to Twitter. The island closed in March 2008

Yes, I have missed a lot of the details. Think of this as the cliff notes version if you will. So, please do not nit pick.   I wanted to give you this history so I can refrence it in future blog posts, when I discuss communities, networking and online branding. Oh, its also fun to go reminisce of where it all started for me!

Oh, so for those of you who are totally confused and wondering what is the point, check out the video below.

I think this video I did for CNBC somes it up really well.  Questions? Feel free to ask!

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We have some terrific case studies that were submitted for our event in SIlicon Valley tomorrow night, Five For Sharing.  It was hard to choose, and indeed we had to pass on a couple of really great one’s just due to time constraints.  In the end, we have a great balance that will be really informative and entertaining.

In addition to Shashi Bellamkonda who will be presenting an overview of the integrated social media programs being produced at Network Solutions, we will also be joined by:

• Mike McGrath of McGrath/Powers will be presenting on how his agency used social media as part of a product launch for Nero
• Dave Peck will be sharing how he promoted this video on YouTube, how he drove traffic there and how they engaged in the conversation that ensued.
• Cathryn Hrudicka will be talking about the new social media program underway at Sutter Health about building a new medical center.
• Cory O’Brien will be talking about how they used social media for a Dwell Magazine conference.
• We also may have one other remotely presented case study, which I will simply call our surprise guest for now….

In short, we have case studies on the use of social media for: an event, a product launch, promoting content, engaging with community and as part of a broader marketing initiative at a high tech company. Wow! You just gotta love how we can all do things like this together.  Thank you all for agreeing to participate and share what you have learned.  So now that you know what we are going to be discussing, go register today so we can have an accurate head count

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The last few days I have been hurting for ideas for blog posts. I was not feeling it. Maybe I have writers block. I’m just not sure.

Well about 2:00 today I thought “How can I get an idea for a blog post?”

Where the heck can a social media, online community advocate type get an idea for a blog post… hmmmm

Oh wait! I can ask my community! I preach to companies all the time to “Ask Their Community” go back to their community. I did not practice what I preach.  Maybe the writers block has grown into “Social Media Block” or something.

So i went to my community and asked for  ideas for a blog post. Within 10 minutes I  had..count em.. 7 ideas that were kick ass. Just like that! I have been banging my head trying to come up with something and I got them with one post to my networks. One single post got my 7 amazing responses.  So there you have it, the power of having online networks.

So thank you all who responded like Scott Place, Meghan Rodberg, Joel Postman, The Diva, Netvalar, indieradiochatt, and DylanFan.  I will do my best to blog about each of your questions in the next few days!

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