The Yellow Pages are Done: It’s All in Social Media
A couple of months ago I walked into a shopping center and saw a pay phone. It seemed awkwardly out of place, like a relic in the wrong era. In a day where our mobile phones can play games, pay for items and buy coupons on Yelp, this pay phone could only push numbers and call people.
Attached to this pay phone was a copy of the yellow pages. The yellow pages hung off the phone booth, lonely as ever and the pages fluttered in the wind.
Truly obsolete.
In this day and age of social media, Yelp and Google search, searching through the Yellow Pages is a dirty process, right down to the ink on your fingers at the end. In the time it takes for anyone who can type on a keyboard to find a business, Yellow Page users are still flipping through the alphabet to see if their business is under a letter or a particular category.
In just a few short years, social media has:
- Made the Yellow Pages search an inefficient one, compared to social media
- Consumed excessive amounts of paper, even recycled - Millions of pages are printed each year to be put on the steps of households that never even look at them, but turn them into high chairs for little kids instead.
- Given businesses and consumers a chance to engage in real time on social channels. On the Yellow Pages, you cannot Tweet or share the business you found unless you physically clip out the ad. Do you have time for that?
- Lowered the barrier of entry for advertising. If you advertise in the Yellow Pages, the costs are crazy. A one inch spaced listing can range from $252 to $2,500 depending on location, and there is no guarantee that someone could see that small text when glossing for businesses. A larger page listing can run you anywhere from $10,000 to $90,000 depending on your location, and you don’t even get the chance to change the content displayed. A Facebook page is free and you have the opportunity to add content of your own from photos to videos as well as partner with other businesses over social media. Can your Yellow Pages do that? Imagine what an investment of $10,000 could do for your social media presence and bring in more business. The gains would be substantial.
- Created viral brand campaigns that really, really allow for more reach. Neither you nor I may ever visit Chuck Testa in Ojai Valley to have anything taxidermized, but we know about his services through the viral video he created with the help of Rhett and Link and the help of Reddit. Yellow Pages are static. Social media moves mountains.
Don’t be that business that advertises in the Yellow Pages. Join the future of marketing and customer engagement. Let me know how I can help you transition into the future of marketing, content management, video production and social media.
Albert Qian writes for Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude and has not used the Yellow Pages seriously in 10 years or more. Join him and move your business forward today.
Twitter at 6: A Happy Belated Birthday
Here’s to another six years - with less Fail Whales and more success stories. Connecting people, closer than ever!
Restaurants and Retailers - Pay Attention to Social Media
I found myself dining at a relatively well-known locale in Pasadena, California, several days back. As I am custom to do, I checked in on Foursquare to add to my total and to check whether the restaurant had any deals that I could also take part in. Like the few restaurants that do engage in deals, this one did.
When the waitress came back around to take our orders, I inquired regarding the discount that was offered to those for checking in. She was unsure about the particular deal, and went back to her colleagues to ask as well. Upon returning, she told me that neither her colleagues, nor the weekly email containing the information sent from corporate that waiters and servers needed to know, contained any information regarding the Foursquare deal.
The incident ended up going well (my table and I scored chocolate chip cookies), but underlies a solution that can build customer rapport and meaningful customer relationships. Luckily my friends and I received more food and enjoyed it, but not all businesses are that quick to engage social media/mobile phone wielding customers who check-in at their establishment. In the modern world of social media and mobile, this is something that is becoming more commonplace and if anything, mandatory.
Here are some things to consider if you are an establishment and have a social media presence:
1) Expect your customers to ask – As a heavy social media user, I take (some) pride in my mayorships and check-in points and love being able to jump over my friends in greater check-ins than them. In fact, more than once, I’ve asked employees about their social media specials, even if nothing is listed on their Foursquare page. I’m not expecting an entitlement for my patronage, but am more so curious about any benefits social media might bring.
2) Make the First Move – When people show up to restaurants, one of the first things they will do beyond checking is check their email or log in to Facebook to show off to their friends where they are or what they are doing. As a restaurant owner, one key objective to undertake is to notice these kind of people and pounce on the opportunity. Asking if they are following the Twitter or Facebook page might get more engaged customers, and show that the establishment is interested in what’s hip right now. It also gives an opportunity to…
3) Incentivize the Presence – Customers love feeling special. Whether it’s being able to win a rewards card for being loyal or showcase a new place down the street to their friends, customers love being able to talk about unique and special social occasions. Social media offers the opportunity to do just that – by making the first move, then incentivizing (“follow us right now, get 50% off your order”), you create the experience that is sure to land a tweet, Facebook status update or a positive recommendation on Yelp.
4) Advertise the Presence – Maybe it’s because I’m in the space, but I always like to look around at how a company advertises and brands itself. 10 years ago it would have been seeing if the establishment had a website, and today, its seeing if the establishment has anything pointing to a social media presence. Knowing that they do have one makes me think that they are more committed to building a brand, interested in reaching out to a community and potentially more responsive to customer service complaints.
Do you ask when you go out to an establishment about their social media presence and actively ask about deals found on social media? Share your comments below.
Albert Qian is the author of Albert Qian: The Social Media Dude. You will find him dining at food joints where social media is accepted as widely as Visa or Mastercard. Find him on Twitter @albertqian or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/albert.qian
BundlePost Updates, Makes Content Management Even Easier
For those of us who don’t spend all day on the Internet scouring for content, there is without a doubt, a challenge in the hunt for content, posting that content to the necessary feeds and engaging with our audience. Content management alone, can take up the entire day, from finding the right content, reading about it, choosing what to say in the tweet and so forth, leaving no time for the true essence of social media: engaging with the audience and creating relationships with followers. As I’ve explained in the past, BundlePost is one of the critical keys to your social media strategy.
I began my new year right by upgrading to a higher version of BundlePost. This of course, gives me more feeds for me and my clients to use, as well as customized content feeds. I finally also imported my ‘Follow Friday’ contacts into BundlePost as well, so everything is taken care of. The best thing however, is the latest update of BundlePost, which allows you to among other things, choose articles that you want in your Twitter feed, rather than make edits after you download the comma separated values (CSV) file, making your time more efficient.
Also added into the latest release is a little bit of color. In prior releases, you weren’t able to see which was your content and which was someone else’s, but in the latest version, you’ll notice this change as well, which lets you differentiate, and if need be, drag the articles around for greater timing and audience reach on Twitter.
These as you notice, are the tiniest of changes, but in the world of social media, the small details are supremely important, and the folks at BundlePost have certainly done it again, making the changes that need to be made in order to create a much more fluid social media content management process.
Finally, if you’re reading this and have yet to check out BundlePost, I suggest you do so immediately. The tool is the first of its kind in helping social media users manage their content so that they can spend more time engaging with their audience. My experience has netted me many contacts and opportunities for collaboration, and no doubt will do the same for you.
The site to get you started is here and you can get in touch with as well on Twitter. I would be also glad to offer a tutorial on how to use the tool as well!
I’m a big user of BundlePost, and I think you should too. Follow me on Twitter @albertqian.
How to Use Social Media to Find a Job in 2012
So the new year has begun, and you’re still unemployed. After months and months of posting your resume to job boards and attending career fairs, you still sit in your office at home and are lost, and have no clue what to do.
Have you considered social media?
I get the question asked of me a lot from mostly new graduates, but social media is the way to go in today’s economy. Because of the inherent value that is placed on relationships, primarily in western culture, using a tool such as social media is very valuable for finding work, because in order to get what you want, you need to build a relationship first. The challenge additionally, is finding out where to build those relationships to begin with.
1. Get on Twitter and Start Building Content
Since you are jobless, there is no better way to get going than getting on Twitter. Once you have figured out what job you want, get your way to Twitter and start tweeting - but not just about anything! Using your username, picked with your name in mind or your goal, tweet about topics that matter to you and that give you thought leadership over others. Be sure to supplement that with BundlePost by bringing in a Google feed and posting often. Content is king, and since everyone wants to hang out with kings, you know where to start!
2. While on Twitter, start building a following
A following will come, but one might come faster if you go to the people that you need to see. Tools such as TweetSpinner allow you to search for users by location, tweet type and hashtags, which is perfect if you are looking for someone in that field to talk to.
3. Network, network, network
Twitter hashtags such as #FollowFriday exist for a reason - so that you can recommend people to other people to follow. Once you find the people you need to talk to, network and hold a conversation. When you know what you want, people will help you get there!
4. Participate in Twitter Chats
Twitter Chats are some of the best ways to get yourself out there. By showing that you have experienced an interview, have an idea or anything else, recruiters who are on Twitter will want to talk to you more. Consider joining chats such as #hirefriday (9 AM PDT, Friday) and #jobhuntchat (5 PM PDT, Monday) to connect with people and get your name out there!
5. Start a Blog
There is nothing worse than going into an interview and having the same dull questions asked of you over and over again. Instead of answering “What do you think are your biggest strengths and weaknesses”, answer a question that considers one of your blog posts. Personal branding is key, and a blog can help get you there.
These are my five points. How have you used social media to find a job in 2012, and how can other ways help? Share your thoughts in the comments below or send me a tweet to @albertqian.
2011 Social Recap: Predictions (Part 1)
At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, I was very green behind the ears for social media. Nonetheless, I made some predictions and now that 2011 is near its end, its time to check in on them:
1) Groupon will not go public, Microsoft and Google will release competing and struggling social applications. Verdict: No, yes and yes. Groupon did end up going public, and has struggled, while Google released Google+ to a lukewarm audience. Microsoft has recently released its own platform (named Socl) that is too early to judge.
2) Social gaming explodes. Zynga releases more hits. Verdict: Yes and yes. Social gaming did explode in 2011 and there was an immense amount of money spent. Zynga released Mafia Wars 2 and Cityville, and also went public to a lukewarm IPO.
3) Facebook continues to struggle with privacy and niche platforms struggle despite that. Verdict: Yes and verdict still out. Facebook did struggle with privacy in 2011, and recently settled with the FCC and will be required to undergo audits for the foreseeable future. However, privacy did get easier to use in 2011 as simpler features were rolled out, and of course, CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized. Niche networks on the other hand, did pop up. Photo sharing application Instagram was Apple’s iOS app of the year and Pintrest gained steam towards the end as well. This is something to watch for in 2012.
4) iTunes Ping will be integrated with Facebook. Verdict: No. Ping was ultimately never integrated. Instead, Sweden-based Spotify made its debut out on Facebook in late-2011 and took the world by storm. Now everyone can listen to music and post it to Facebook.
5) Location based social media takes off via Foursquare, Facebook struggles. Yelp remains niche and companies offer more deals. Verdict: Yes, Yes, No. Foursquare saw a spike this year in signups and Facebook left its location based service behind. Yelp is now looking at an IPO.
6) Twitter struggles to monetize, but sees a big event unfold on it. Verdict: No, Yes. Twitter found a $300 million dollar Arab investor this year, continues to work with sponsored tweets. And regarding big events, the Occupy Movements and the Arab Spring used Twitter and used it effectively to get across an organized message.
7) Email remains strong in the corporate arena. Verdict: All I have to say is, what was I thinking? Email is still strong everywhere!
Results: 8 correct, 5 wrong, 1 up in the air (57.1%)
How did your predictions do? Tweet at me @albertqian or write a comment below!
3 Questions: Am I Using My Twitter Account Correctly?
Twitter is like the wild west of social media - so much can happen so fast, with so little reaction time. Many people hate it for this reason - I mean, what can you do with 140 characters, right? The answer to that is, plenty. You can forge relationships, create meaningful sales pitches, say hi to people and meet people you never thought you possibly could. I’ve done all that myself.
As a business and brands, Twitter is an odd area to be in. There is so much potential, yet even more uncertainty, and even more ambiguity. Here are 3 questions to ask to see if you’re using your Twitter account correctly and effectively - whether you are your own brand or your own business.
1. Am I Engaging?
One of the keys to Twitter and effectively using Twitter is engaging with followers, prospective and getting into conversations. If you’re sitting back and watching the show, and want to be influential, you’re doing it wrong. Just as it takes a leap of faith to jump into a relationship in the real world, the similar leap of faith is required when you land on Twitter and want to share your opinion. It’s a conversation you’re giving, not a speech. Being engaging also means being human as well.
2. Is my Audience the One I Want?
Sometimes tweets go into the great abyss because there is no one to hear the tweets and because the audience is aligned the wrong way. If this is the case, consider seriously finding out your goals, what you want to achieve and what you want to do for your audience. Twitter is best done with a goal, and without a goal, you’re just using another tool and wasting your time.
3. Am I Active Enough?
Twitter streams are best followed when content is fresh, recent and meaningful. Facebook is like a one hour news cast, and Twitter is the ticker underneath, delivering fresh, consistent and meaningful content. If your Twitter stream runs dry then it becomes stagnant - making others more unwilling to follow you.
What do you think? Are these questions you ask when you look at your Twitter account? Let me know by sending a tweet to @albertqian or leaving a comment below.
The Facebook-Twitter Convergence
This week, Facebook users logged in to their account to find several new features, among them the “Subscribe” button. This button, similar to Twitter, allows you to subscribe to a specific user and lets you track their status updates if you are not already connected to them. This feature already exists, similarly with the friends that you already have, by letting you subscribe to their status updates, life updates, application updates among a whole host of other things that may or may not matter to you. It’s a definite study into not just metadata, but the meta of metadata: what parts of friendship with those whom we are connected with do we care about the most?
I’ve already found myself subscribed to a select few people like MG Siegler of TechCrunch and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. For cynics of this update and Facebook in general, this provides an interesting look into how we further manage our relationships, adding thus another layer onto how we engage and interact on the popular social media platform now boasting over 750 million members. Where Twitter requires you to be personal in order to build effective long term relationships, Facebook now offers you that option as well with the subscription option. I can now, since I can, choose to follow someone like MG Siegler and his professional updates, but opt to ignore his Farmville crops (if he even has one), thus providing my news feed with greater relevance and more concentrated engagement opportunities, wherever they may lie.
This is still not to say however, that Facebook’s adoption of subscription based updates is a threat to Twitter, because it isn’t, even though it seems like a clear mimicking. Twitter is still the place to build external relationships (as opposed to Facebook’s internal) because at its very core, that’s what it exists to do. Facebook has already been around too long and has many complicated features, and unlike Twitter where posting 12 times an hour can be an acceptable way of communicating, doing the same on Facebook would be a clear alienation and spamming of other individuals.
Albert thinks you should subscribe to his updates on Facebook as well and tell him what you think about Facebook subscriptions? If not, leave a comment with your thoughts on how the platform will evolve either with a comment below or with a tweet.
Robert Scoble & Kevin Rose: It’s Not a Google-Facebook World
One of the benefits of the new Facebook layout is finally being able to subscribe and follow thought leaders who move the dial when it comes to topics of interest like social media and internet technologies. From Mark Zuckerberg to Tom Anderson (MySpace founder) to Sean Parker, it’s amazing to see their thoughts and the ensuing engagement that comes from it.
This week, I had the pleasure of watching Robert Scoble (Technical Evangelist, founder of Rackspace) and Kevin Rose (former CEO of Digg) discuss their thoughts on social media, primarily what they considered a “Google-Facebook” world - missing of course, that of Twitter, the microblogging site that allows users to create messages in 140 characters or less.
These were their thoughts:
And Kevin Rose’s
Both posts seemed to suggest this: That with the implementation of new features on Facebook and subscriptions, and with the existence of Google+, that Twitter was now out of the running because of time availability to see content, link click through and that apparently that people who are engaging on Twitter are leaving in droves. While all these points seem to carry water, I would like to offer some firm disagreement.
First, as you know, Google+ is not exactly blowing the social media world out of the water. While recent Facebook changes may prompt the usual lot of complaining from users, what also ends up happening is that Facebook users settle down after awhile. Statistics have also shown that Google+ has been dropping precipitously in activity over the past month, and even though the service has now gone out of beta mode, that doesn’t guarantee that more are going to sign up. Even more, as I explained two previous posts ago, Google simply isn’t that great at social media, as evidenced by their losing market share to Facebook in Orkut in regions where they were once strong.
By justifying that this is a Google-Facebook world, Scoble is essentially pitting a close-to-loser versus a winner and a market leader, not two formidable competitors exchanging blows versus each other. The stats here simply do not lie.
The second reason why its not a Facebook-Google world is because Twitter still matters and at the heart of social media is the ability to engage. Scoble explains in his post that the “engaged people are moving away from Twitter” and Rose talks about how his content generates many more views because he doesn’t have to consistently post and because people check Facebook multiple times per day as opposed to Twitter.
The problem with these arguments are two-fold: Twitter has, and always will be, for forming and creating relationships between people, and referring people to the right influencers. For folks who don’t have TechCrunch and Bloomberg riding on their backs, this is a great tool to utilize primarily because of its viral nature and its short bursts. Twitter in short, is made for networking. Facebook on the other hand, is made for socializing between a network that already exists in the status quo, as is Google+. Trying to find influencers on Facebook and Google+ is much more difficult because you have to ensure that engagement is high or that they are commenting on the same status as you. This is definitely not the case with Twitter where tools such as TweetSpinner enable the user to go out and find people based on key social indicators such as whatever is in their Twitter bio, what they tweet or specific topics.
The second reason why Scoble and Rose make no sense is because of engagement. Social media is dependent on the social media ecosystem in order to make things work, and create relationships as I mentioned in the previous paragraph. As thought leaders, both Rose and Scoble can afford to tweet and forget because there will be hundreds, if not thousands of users hanging on every word they have to say. For regular people, a content and engagement strategy is necessary because it fosters thought leadership, engaging conversations and builds relationships, something that power users on social media don’t really need once they are there. Staying silent for a regular person doesn’t net anything at all over social media.
Engagement is also a deeper challenge on social media because users are never sure what people will respond to. Remember, corporate hates social media primarily because they are scared of outcomes and because being human over the Internet is a concept that is difficult to grasp due to a fear of being open. Twitter, if anything, fosters an open network engagement process where people don’t need to jump through hoops to talk to each other one-on-one. Scoble and Rose will never engage with their own Twitter followers one-on-one because of the time suck, so the idea of a Google-Facebook social world makes sense to them (but not the rest of us). As I mentioned several paragraphs back, the “set it and forget it” principle.
The final reason why its not a Google-Facebook world is because social media success is predicated by a combination of social media tools. Social media tools have their own strengths and their own weaknesses for how to reach the customer. By putting everything on two networks, you put your eggs in two baskets, which is limiting for customer reach. Facebook has always (and with their Timeline integration) been about the social experience, while Twitter has always been about building the relationship and conversation, while YouTube has always been the visual and entertainment hub where users engage with media.
A Facebook-Google world is limiting because it removes the relationship building process and instead attempts to build a relationship through group conversation, which removes critical human elements. When you remove the relationship and conversational process from social media that you get on Twitter, you get everything pre-Facebook: corporate communications with a story that no one wants to hear about.
In closing, the verdict is simple: We are far from a Google-Facebook world because social media simply does not support such a theory. With the critical need for engagement, slow upstart of Google+ and the necessity for diversification of social media, the world is still very much Facebook and Twitter oriented with Google+ trying to break their way into the pie. Until Google+ penetrates beyond a niche group of marketers and tech geeks, it does not belong in the same sentence as Facebook, and what Facebook has accomplished in gaining 800 million users.
Robert Scoble and Kevin Rose - I challenge you to refute and defend your claims made earlier this week on your Facebook page. Feel free to write a comment below or send me a tweet @albertqian. You will most certainly get a reply from me, and I look forward to conversation, if one materializes.
For everyone else, do you believe we are headed in a Facebook-Google world? Share your thoughts below or send me a tweet. I’d like to have a discussion with you as well.
