I like it when I see a local Lake Tahoe business doing a good job with their social media marketing efforts. In addition to our Once a Month Who’s Doing it Best in Lake Tahoe in Social Media and Digital Marketing Series, I’m going to feature a local Lake Tahoe business in our Tahoe Thursday series. If you can think of any, let me know in the comments section or send me an email milena@outandaboutmarketing.com.

Today’s spotlight goes to Tahoe StandUp Paddleboards.

I’m not going to review their website today. I like what they have done with it. I’d like to concentrate on their social networks instead. Some of them are well linked from their website. (Good start) and some I had to look for. (Constructive criticism here – I had a hard time finding their youtube channel).

Let’s look at each one:

Facebook

Active and engaged feed with good interaction with other companies.

Great custom profile photo.

Excellent use of the custom tabs. I particularly liked the Team Tahoe SUP custom tab with my friend Whitney Wall featured at the top. Great way to bring personality into your brand.

Other tabs worth mentioning are the 2012 boards, telling us what to expect, the welcome tab and the Explore Project.

Overall, a visually beatiful Facebook page. Great job! Can they get even more engagement and likes and perhaps introduce Facebook commerce?  Do they have a well put social media strategy in place? If you want to check your Facebook EdgeRank score for free and establish a benchmark for the company, Facebook Edgerank Checker is a good free tool to use for that. For more detailed Facebook Analytics and intelligence, hit me up.

Twitter

Twitter is one of my favorite networks. The Twitter account for Tahoe SUP didn’t disappoint visually. Great custom background image carrying our the brand with urls to other social networks and website assets.

A quick check on Klout shows Tahoe SUP at 21 with topics of influence of construction, plastic and surfing. What is Klout? Klout has positioned themselves as the standard of influence on the web, a very interesting and controversial topic of conversation. They give you a score of 1 to 100 and the higher your score is the most influence you have on the web. They also analyze your conversations and tweets and assign topics to you they believe you are influential in.

With a fun sport like paddle boarding I would imagine that Tahoe SUP can do a lot better on Twitter. To see the entire Twittalyzer dashboard for Tahoe SUP, head over to the this link. Sure, Tahoe SUP can do better with their twitter activity but at least they are not cross posting Facebook to Twitter as many bigger brands wrongly do. (More on this in another post).

YouTube

The Tahoe SUP YouTube account is also customized with their brand. With 8 videos and 31 subscribers, I’d venture to say they can definitely improve their video presence. Although, they are fairly active with 8,635 views to their channel.

I loved their video on paddle boarding with dogs in Lake Tahoe with the dog whisperer as featured on National Geographic. Nicely done. Who doesn’t like going out on the lake with the dog and enjoying the outdoors.

and finally the Tahoe SUP Blog

Prominently featured right on the home page, Tahoe SUP has an active blog. One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to leave a comment on a blog post but maybe I just missed it. If I didn’t, adding comments to the blog will be a good improvement.

I particularly like the integration of photos, videos and the team within the blog. It makes it easy to look around and get a feel for the sport before you jump both feet into it. And as a passionate paddle boarder, I highly recommend it.

Overall, Tahoe SUP is doing a good job with social media. I’m sure they have limited resources to spend online and if their products are flying off the shelves already, then I’m sure they are analyzing what makes the most sense for the company. I see a lot of opportunities and potential to grow their business and connect with paddle boarders around the world.

I hope spring comes soon and we can all go out and enjoy the sport. I know I can’t wait to grab my Tahoe SUP and go out.

Do we need any more social networks in our daily lives? We are stretched so thin trying to stay connected 24/7 on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs that adding one more social network to our lives seems like a crazy idea. But I really like this one. And I think it has a big potential for travel destinations and companies. Meet Pinterest.

What is Pinterest?

It’s an online pinboard where you can pin things of interest to you. You can have different boards based on your interests. For example, I have a board called Places I want to visit where I have pinned various destinations, cities and natural landmarks I want to visit one day. It’s a visual board with beautiful images. Do you see how travel destinations can benefit from this?

Who’s using Pinterest? 

Pinterest has been around for 2 years but only recently it gained a lot of traction to where it’s now ranking in the top 10 social networks. “Time magazine called Pinterest — a website where users post collections of images of their favorite food, clothes, places and everything else — one of the five best social media sites of 2011, along with Google-Plus and Klout. The company has raised $27 million in venture capital led by the firm Andreessen Horowitz, which several tech news outlets have reported as valuing Pinterest at $200 million” states this story in the USA Today on Pinterest standing out in a crowded social media space.

At this time, you still need to receive an invite to join Pinterest but if you submit a request, you will receive your invite within a day or so.

Retailers, like Real Simple, Land’s End, Nordstrom and Etsy are using Pinterest and for some of them Pinterest is driving more traffic than Facebook.

Demographics

80% of Pinterest’s users are women making it a very appealing place to showcase your destination, ski resort, city, hotel accommodation.  Below are the detailed demographics from HotelMarketing.com.

- Largely women (a 80% to 20% ratio). So there’s some truth to Matt Buchanan’s post on Gizmodo yesterday that proclaims Pinterest as “a Tumblr for ladies”.
- Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
- Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
- The majority live off a household income of $25-75k

An attractive demographics group if you are in the travel&tourism industry.

To take advantage of Pinterest start compiling good photography that shows your spa, your destination, your ski resort, your town. People can pin photos from your website as well so having good photography on your website as always helps travelers make a decision faster.

Do you use Pinterest personally or for business? Let me know in the comments below. If you need a beginner guide to start using Pinterest, Mashable put one together. It’s very easy to use. Go on and try it.

Jan 2012 – Tahoe Mountain Sports

I’ve been thinking about starting this series for a while as there are certain local Tahoe companies and businesses that are doing a really good job with their online and social media marketing efforts. There’s no better time to start this series than in the month of January. Once a month, I will feature a local Lake Tahoe business who’s doing an extremely good job with their website, digital, mobile or social media. If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them my way at milena@outandaboutmarketing.com.

Our first selection goes out to Tahoe Mountain Sports and below are some of the reasons for it. In the spirit of Full Disclosure I have to say that this blog post is in no way paid or sponsored by Tahoe Mountain Sports. They didn’t give me any discounts or goodies to write it.

1. Website

Tahoe Mountain Sports website is organized and build with user experience in mind. It is my understanding they are doing all the work in-house. I wish they were using an outside agency as I would hire them right away. Kudos to the entire team at TMS! It’s great to see local talent producing high quality work like this. The website has clear call to actions, it’s easy to navigate, it’s professional looking and has integrated social networks and features really well. I love the fact that you can shop online. So many local Tahoe businesses are completely missing out on the entire ecommerce opportunity. It’s 2012 people! Start selling your products and services online. The site is well organized with items for men, women and kids, plus you can shop by brand, activity and gear. In addition, MTS provides a very detailed information on Tahoe with anything you need for your complete Tahoe adventure from weather and web cams to general information about the area. I like their gift cards availability as well so you can gift someone with an email delivered right to their inbox. I love their Deal of the Day. It’s a great way to bring people back to your website daily. Kudos to TMS for keeping this active. I’m sure it pays well in sales for them.

I decided to test their Live Chat function which integrated with my Facebook account. I asked them a question and received an immediate response. A few pleasant exchanges later, I went on to continue writing this blog post. I can keep going about their website features, like free shipping, secure check out, Amazon payments, etc. In summary, this is an excellent website and I’m sure they are seeing the returns from their efforts in real dollar signs.

2. Blog 

TMS maintains a very active blog which shows they understand the power of search and social. The blog also shows their passion and enthusiasm for the outdoors, sports, Tahoe and their business. Their love for the outdoors is captivating. It’s an engaging blog with interesting articles, product reviews and tons of photos. One of my favorite posts was their recent Yosemite trip with the Tahoe bikini chicks. Now, this is a great way to sell some bikinis in winter and even get the guys interested. Right?

Photo courtesy of the TMS blog

3. Social Media

In addition to the blog, TMS is active on Facebook (2,267 likes), Twitter (324 followers), YouTube (70,959 views to their videos so far) and Google+ (68 people). They are active on their social networks and responding to people not just blasting out messages like some other companies (won’t mention any names) are continuing to do.

milena@outandaboutmarketing.com

If this happens to you, most likely your account has been hacked. It happened to me yesterday and it’s not pleasant. I ended up spending hours apologizing and fixing the issue. It looks like this hack is spreading as I’m seeing more and more direct messages from people that are being hacked.

The following steps will help you take care of the hack.

1. Go to Twitter.com, click on your profile page, go over to settings and change your password immediately.

2. Disconnect any suspicious third party applications that are using your Twitter account. For this, you need to click on the Applications tab showing below and click on Revoke. This is a tricky one as you never know which application was hacked. To be sure, I disconnected all of them. You will need to reconnect the ones you want and still use.

3. Delete any tweets that contain the malicious link. To do so, go over to Twitter.com and hover your mouse over your tweet. Once you see the delete button, click on it.

4. Send out an apology to people and advise them not to open any suspicious links that came from you.

5. To read more about how to protect your account in the future or deal with other safety related issues, you can visit the Twitter Safety Center. To prevent your account from future hacking, ensure safe tweeting.

I hope this article helps you with cleaning your Twitter account or preventing it from being hacked in the future.

And finally, if you google twitter hack, you will find plenty of tutorials on how to do it. Please, don’t go there.

Ashton Kucher‘s, the Huffington Post‘s and other Twitter accounts with large followings were also hacked lately. Be cautious as to what links you click on and make sure you are only giving your password to trusted sources. In the meantime, Twitter is working on making their environment safer.

]]> http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com/2012/01/has-your-twitter-account-being-hacked-heres-how-to-stop-the-spam/feed/ 2 http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com/2011/12/the-challenges-with-qr-codes/ http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com/2011/12/the-challenges-with-qr-codes/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:13:02 +0000 Milena Regos http://www.outandaboutmarketing.com/?p=1487 Let’s start with what is a QR code?

Based on Wikipedia:

A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) first designed for the automotive industry. More recently, the system has become popular outside of the industry due to its fast readability and comparatively large storage capacity. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of any kind of data (e.g., binary, alphanumeric, or Kanji symbols).

Created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994  to track vehicles during the manufacturing process, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes.

It looks like this: You may have seen it already in print magazines, direct mail pieces, billboards, real estate postings and even emails and websites.

What you can put in a QR code:

• Text
• Hyperlink
• Telephone number
• SMS/Text
• Contact entry
• Calendar entry
• Website
• Video

Check out my example below for a couple of billboards. The Calvin Klein campaign to the right generated quite the buzz on social media.

As you can see some advertising agencies are spending lots of time thinking of creative ways to use QR codes.

You need a QR scanner to scan the image and see its contents. You can get a QR code scanner you have a smart phone. Without the QR scanner these things are worthless.

Challenge 1: How many people have smartphones? Pew Internet says that 1/3 of Americans own one or 35%. By 2015, 200 million people will own a smartphone or a tablet or both. Now, that’s a significant number of people using smartphones.

Challenge 2: How many of the people with smartphones know what a QR code is and that they need to download a QR scanner? The phones mostly used to scan QR codes are iPhone and Android. 68% of all scans are done on the iPhone. Most people expect to get a coupon or a deal. For a great info graphic on QR codes, packed with information on where QR codes are being used click here. QR code scanning increased 4549% between Q1 of 2010 and Q1 of 2011. Solution: Add a reader with every smartphone and people will start using them more.

Now we are talking small numbers of the overall population.

As marketers we love to use QR codes but they also come with a set of challenges. As with everything else, THINK before you slap a QR code on something. Why? Scott Scratten from UnMarketing who’s a brilliant and funny guy explains it.  It’s a short and to the point 2 min video. Watch it!

I completely agree with Scott. I even saw a QR code on a pineapple I bought at the store. WHY? I scanned it thinking it will give me nutritional information which would have made sense. Instead, it sent me to a web page with some general information about the company. ARHHHH!!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more information on QR codes – best practices and free resources, here’s a good article. Have you used QR codes? If so, how? I know I have one on the back of my business card. if you scan it it will take you to my website homepage.

Challenge 3: Make sure if you take people to a web place that it is mobile friendly. So I have work to do.

Special thanks to Scott Scratten from UnMarketing for showing me this video! You rock!

What are some of the reviews this app is getting:

• Featured by Apple! Winner of the 2011 Communication Arts Interactive Annual!
• Experience what some are calling the #1 Free App of All Time.
• “One of the most spectacular virtual-tour user experiences I’ve seen” – Fast Company Design

What we like:

App: It comes with an app for iPhone or iPad so to fully utilize it, get the app.

Ease: Snap a panoramic or 360 degree photo with your iPhone and using the platform turn it into an amazing visual that will really make your property, resort, hotel or shop pop up on the Internet. Professional photography will look great on this tour. Imagine the possibilities for marketing your venue.

Augmented Reality: Using this app on your iPad is super cool. Check it out today for a glimpse of the future.

Example of a tour: Don’t try to click on the image. Unfortunately, TourWrist doesn’t allow to embed tours in WordPress sites. If you wan to see a tour in action, click here. It’s a cool photo from Sand Harbor that Jen Schmidt took last summer.

Marketing tools: You can share your tour on social media, embed it on your site (except for WordPress and Posterous sites) and even create a QR code for it.

Price: So far, it looks like it’s free so that’s AWESOME. Hope it stays this way.

We are planning on spending some more time with this tool and really putting it to work for marketing purposes with travel and tourism brands. If you have used it already, let us know your feedback or just check it out.

Special thanks goes to Mike Henderson who posted it on Facebook.

Check your page settings. Go to Manage Permissions on your Facebook page. Make sure no country is selected and your age restrictions is set up to 13+.

This should do the trick and now your custom domain name will work properly. I hope this is helpful. Have you checked your Facebook page when you are logged out to see if it’s visible to people? Does it work properly?

To see what Mashable has to say about this, click here.

I did some research to find out what are the main differences between a Google+ profile and a page. Check it out below:

Companies are jumping on Google+ today to get their pages reserved. My opinion is that if you are a big brand and many of your followers are on Google+,  you would want to do the same. For the smaller brands, Google+ needs more traction, i.e. more people to start using it. Yet, this doesn’t mean you should wait. Reserve your page today even if you are not currently using Google+ in your social media. Why? The video below explains it very well. In short, businesses don’t make people happy. People do.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To help you get your Google+ page I went through the process myself. It’s really easy and it takes 10 min to complete.

Here’s what you need to do:

Once you sign in with your profile, and click on Create a Google+ page you will see this screen. Choose a category that matches your company.

Follow the step by step form and your page will be live in minutes. Below is Out&About Marketing page. Go ahead and connect with us there too.

What do you think? Is Google+ going to be the next Facebook? Leave a comment in the comments below and let us know.

I truly enjoyed the presentations I saw, starting with Troy Thompson from Travel2.0 setting the stage for the day, Mike Henderson from Arborglyph talking about destination marketing videos, Rob Gadtke from KPS3 n mapping media and technology to the buying process and Eric Bengston on Developing an Interactive Strategy.

Below you will find my presentation on how to engage with your fans on Facebook and create a culture and vibrant online community with lots of examples from local and national properties doing it right. I covered custom landing pages, affordable apps, best business practices and measurements. In addition to my presentation, feel free to use my handout on 10 Facebook tips to improve engagement. Some of these tips you can implement today in your Facebook marketing.

A good friend, Troy Thompson from Travel 2.0 is going to be the keynote speaker and I will present on Facebook for business. Let me know what you want to learn.

Out&About Marketing is giving away a free admission to the event. Here’s how to you can win the free ticket valued at $99 before Aug 31 and $125 after.

2 ways to WIN:

1. Tweet with #WinSMGTahoe hashtag in your tweet. You can tweet up to 3 times a day. You will get an entry every time you tweet.We’ll randomly draw the winner.
2. Leave a comment on this blog post and tell us why you want to go.

Contest rules:

1. Contest ends Oct 3rd and the winner will be announced on this blog.
2. The winner will be selected at random and the decision is final.
3. If you have already purchased a ticket, no problem. We’ll give you a full refund on your ticket or you can just give away the ticket to someone who really wants to go.
4. No purchase is necessary to win.
5. You are responsible for your own travel expenses.

Good luck to everyone! See you on Oct 12th!