Photo Credit: Flickr.com by PatrickSmithPhotography

I recently returned from a short trip to San Francisco and I’d like to recommend a few places to stay and eat while in the city that you won’t be disappointed with.

1. The best place to stay in San Francisco is the Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf. You can see all of their reviews on TripAdvisor which confirm my recommendation for a top place to stay in the city. The location is excellent for both leisure and business. It’s close for a nice long walk by the water to the Ferry Building Marketplace, a fabulous place to explore Northern California local produce, breads, meats, seafood, oils, wines or grab a cup of nice coffee or taste some fresh oysters. Along the way, you will pass a few excellent options for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Hyatt is also super close to a couple of cable car turns around and you can enjoy a beautiful sightseeing tour of the city. We enjoyed being able to walk just about anywhere in the city right from the hotel. It’s within a short walking distance from Ghirardelli Square, the Wharf, Pier 39,  North Beach, the Coit Tower, China Town and even Union Square. In addition to the excellent location, I love the modern and clean rooms and most of all the super comfortable bed. The staff is helpful and friendly and the stay is by all means very enjoyable. I haven’t found a better place in the city regardless of your trip purpose – it’s great for short or long visits to San Francisco or business trips.  The Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf wins my award for customer service – everyone I have met in their hotel understands what it means to provide superb customer service. With rooms rates starting at $149, this hotel is a definite winner if you are looking for a place to stay in San Francisco.

2. Nombe Restaurant – This restaurant came as a recommendation by a friend. We looked at each other in the taxi with questions in our eyes as we were approaching the location – in a most unassuming part of  San Francisco in the Mission District. From the outside, the place looked empty although we were told a reservation is necessary to get it. Once inside, the place opened up to a nice atmosphere, busy tables and a great dinner. They serve a big selection of sakes and a very interesting menu of tapas. By all means, get the chicken wings with honey and serrano chili sauce. They have some interesting dishes as well starting with different sashimi plates and ending with pork belly (done two different ways) and chicken gizzards and hearts. Reasonably priced, it all depends how much sake you drink. The staff is friendly. This restaurant just made the Top 100 restaurants in San Francisco. Check out their Yelp reviews.

3. Kokkari restaurant is by far the best Greek restaurant I have visited in the US. Again, via a recommendation from a friend we went there once and we’ll continue to return. The staff is super nice and on top of it, the food is superb, the atmosphere is great.  They have an extensive wine selection from the New World and from the Old World and scrumptious tapas and dinners. By all means, try their lamb – you can pick from lamb rib lets to shank, lamb organs and other delicious cuts. I would also recommend their whole fish and the grilled octupus. The Greek salad, fava beans and zucchinis are delicious too. I would love to return there with a large group of friends and take over their private room. Kokkari makes the perfect location for a special occasion or casual drink and some tapas at the bar. Check out their Yelp reviews and enjoy it. Make sure to make a reservation ahead of time.

Your turn. What places in San Francisco do you enjoy and recommend? Let me know what you think of these places if you visit them.

Sliding on The Cheap turned to Out&About Marketing for help with social media. Kevin Tinto, a great businessman and founder of Sliding  on The Cheap could see the potential for using social media for his business. His website, http://slidingonthecheap.com offers discounted skiing and snowboarding lift tickets, ski&stay packages, ski deals, ski shop sales,  ski resort events and killer deals from around the country. Sliding on the Cheap has solid email following (30,000 subscribers+) and many businesses report a spike in phone calls the minute their newsletter goes out. Kevin, who lives part time in the Bay Area and part time in Truckee is a hard core skier and really passionate about skiing, snowboarding, motorcycles, wakeboarding, biking and anything outdoors. He’s determined to spread discounts and insights from the ski resorts to his loyal followers and help making skiing and boarding more affordable – a great idea in this economy. If you are not already a fan of his newsletter, join today and watch for it to hit your Inbox – you are guaranteed to read something that you will like and use for your next ski/board adventure.

Here’s what Kevin Tinto said about this custom created social media strategy for Sliding on The Cheap:

“As one of the largest Ski/Snowboard informational services with more than 30,000 weekly email subscribers worldwide,  we sensed that Social Media was critical to the continued growth and success of our business, but had no idea how to implement on a large scale.  With limited knowledge of this new medium, we turned to Milena Regos.  Her charge:  Develop in a matter of weeks, a complete and professional Facebook and Twitter Strategy. Within two weeks of launch we had 345 Facebook Fans and we are adding new Fans and Email subscribers daily.  We fully expect to add thousands of email subscribers by season’s end, and expand our business in directions we couldn’t have even contemplated just six months ago. As Managers, you have two choices: use Out&About Marketing to work on your Social Media Strategy, or find yourself  outgunned in a complex and changing Internet environment”.

With the launch of Sliding on The Cheap social media strategy, they are off to a great start. Within days, they accumulated 345 Facebook fans and continue to grow fast thanks to an easy and engaging Facebook contest.

It’s the perfect business to engage on social media with their fans. People love discounts and freebies and they will help spread the love from Sliding on The Cheap. Fan them on Facebook or start following them on Twitter today. Although, we can’t disclose the specifics of their social media strategy, here are some tips that any business can utilize to become successful:

1. Create a solid word-of-mouth campaign. Word of Mouth is your best marketing vehicle. If you have happy customers, they will talk about your business to their friends and spread the word for you – for free. If you need help creating your Word of Mouth campaign, Out&About Marketing can help.
2. Explore the possibilities of social media. Find the networks that make the most sense for you. Not everyone needs to be on Twitter and not everyone needs to be on LinkedIn. With more than 300 million active users on Facebook you can’t ignore it but you still need a plan on why and how you are going to engage. Have you heard of Foursquare? It may be the next Twitter.
3. Understand that once you commit to being on social media, you need to keep your content fresh and engage with your followers. There’s nothing worse than seeing a blog that hasn’t been updated for a year or going to a Facebook page that’s been non-existent for months.
4. Think of fresh and engaging content. Make sure you provide value and not just sell your business.
5. Listen to what your customers are telling you and address their requests in your business. Use social networks as a research tool to make your business better.
6. Adjust your strategy as you learn more about the social media environment. You will make mistakes. Apologize quickly and publicly when you make a mistake and move on.
7. Hire someone with experience that can help you get your social media off the ground. This new marketing medium is changing too fast and you need someone who’s staying on top of it, understands how it all works and can recommend the best approach for your business. You are probably not going to hire someone full time to learn and maintain your social media effort, but you can outsource some of it and commit to doing some of in in-house by spreading the responsibilities to people within your company. Social media can be very powerful if used well and any company can benefit from it. Social media does take knowledge and time. The knowledge required is not just about social media, but also about online marketing in general and how customers behave online. If you get stuck, Out&About Marketing is here to help you!

Share some excellent social media stories here or tell us what you need help with. Do you know someone who wants to explore the endless possibilities that word-of-mouth and social media present? Send them this post today. (Full disclosure: In case it’s not clear until now, Sliding on The Cheap is my client).

What I like about U2 using social media and what they did very well:

1. Content

People say content is king. U2 definitely has the content to go viral worldwide. They are giving it away for free. People are talking about them in different languages. U2 just created word of mouth marketing that reached out to millions and millions of people. They have set the stage and opened the horizons not just for the entertainment industry but the future of the Internet, social media and the way people consume content.

2. Making sharing easy

You could post your comment to your Facebook or Twitter account rigth from YouTube without leaving the site. Allowing to share the word about the concert increased visits to YouTube and contributed to even higher viral effect.

3. Call to Action

Again, right on the screen you have the option to take 4 different actions with direct correlation to social media ROI:

1. Buy the Album -I would love to find out how many albums they actually sold through this action. I’m sure the numbers will be available soon.

2. Join their newsletter- again, I’d be interested in seeing how many people subscribed to their newsletter and ultimately turned into loyal customers, i.e purchasing their music.

3. Visit U2.com – easy tracking with website visits and additional actions taken on their website.

4. Donate to (RED) – a good tie in with a non-profit organization and dollar amount from this donation would be one more measurement for their social media actions.

4.Social Media ROI – Results

I’m sure information about the 4 call to actions outlined above will soon be released as to the actual ROI from the concert.

During the concert I logged into Twitter to listen to the additional buzz this awesome social media campaign generated.

Besides owning 3 of the top 10 trends on Twitter, there was roughly 250 tweets every 3 seconds.

You Tube generated 1.3 million views

There were 100,000+million comments on YouTube

Yes, U2 set up the stage for creating buzz on social media. I can’t wait to read the blog posts on the ROI of social media for them. Once I get some more figures, I’ll be sure to update this post. Everyone on Facebook and Twitter are voicing their opinion about U2 – positive or negative. How is U2 going to digest the conversation and take it to the next level? Possibly announcing their 2010 tour dates was part of the plan. All I know is that U2 embraced social media with open arms and there will be more to follow soon.

And YouTube role in all this? Maybe they are planning on getting more involved with streaming video or have a plan to sell advertising on their site.

What do you think?

1. Look for a product or service that is already successful
2. Start small
3. Find your niche
4. Ignore the naysayers

Excellent quick reading for people interested in how Quicksilver started.

Evian just created a remarkable and clever campaign with a social media component to it. The Evian Live Young campaign was just released today. The video on YouTube had 323 views as of the writing of this blog.  I think the campaign is funny and memorable. The break dancing was done by adults. Babies bodies and faces were used in the commercial. No babies were made to dance .

You can see the video below.

What do you think? What goals did Evian set up with this campaign? Do you think it’s going to accomplish the goals?
To see the entire making of the TV commercial check out the EvianLiveYoung website. I feel energized and awake. If that was one of the goals of the campaign I have to say it was successful. I’m not sure it will make me purchase Evian water but I  live in Lake Tahoe where the tap water tastes better than bottle water. I’m fortunate this way.

I have already shared the commercial on my Facebook page and I wrote a blog post about it. I do believe that this campaign will become viral fast. Just wait until all the moms on Facebook and the blogosphere see this! By the time I was done with the blog post, the YouTube video had generated 2,620,643 views! Talk about fast! I didn’t spend more than 25 min writing!

I think this commercial is much more engaging than the previous Water babies commercial from Evian. I like the combination of traditional and online media. You can see the older Evian TV commercial below.

The old commercial so far has generated 91,144 views on YouTube. I’d be interested to see how many views the new spot will be able to generate.

I also found out that Evian just became a sponsor of the 39th Annual Los Angeles LGBT PRIDE Celebration (LA PRIDE) to keep its youth spirit.

You can  read the official press release about the new advertising campaign here.

Air New Zealand’s new TV campaign is authentic, fun, remarkable and well done. On top of everything it will go virally on social media channels. It has already generated quarter of million views on YouTube.

I love this campaign for its creativity, employee engagement, humor and surprise factor. I think it’s brilliant from idea to execution. Well done Air New Zealand!

Check out the TV commercial below on YouTube

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you want to see how they created the campaign which is as good if not better than the actual commercial check out the YouTube video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Well done! With the power of social media this campaign will truly take off. Way to go Air New Zealand! I’d love to follow up and see how the campaign affected their bottom line. Would you be more inclined to travel with Air New Zealand because of this campaign? I would.

1. Susan Boyle singing sensation

The news picked up the story of this phenomenal singer and within days the YouTube video went from 1,578,735 views (this is what it was recorded on it when I wrote my previous post) to 19,233,462 views as of the writing of this blog. This is only in a matter of 3 days. As a matter of fact by the time I finished the blog, the video had accumulated another 2,000,000 views within an hour.  In addition to this video, there are millions more views on other videos that are on Susan Boyle. Her amazing singing and performance will continue to grow virally with the power of the Internet. Of course, main news stories picked up the video and it’s been all over traditional media but the viral effect of YouTube and the power it has to build a brand has been proved.There is already an official website for Susan Boyle. At the time of this post, there were 2,355,880 blogs  written that included her name. She went from a no one to a star within a matter of hours. That’s the power of YouTube!

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. The Domino’s Effect

Domino’s spent years building their brand only to be destroyed in seconds by the YouTube video posted by two of their employees. Domino’s has been active in social media with a Twitter account, YouTube account, Facebook page and MySpace page. Domino’s video has been pulled from YouTube since then but you can still see it here if you really want to watch Domino’s employees doing disgusting things to food which is being prepared for customers. The employees say they created the video as a “prank” and since then have been fired from the company. The company itself called them “idiots”. The lesson here is that anyone with a video camera and an Internet connection can do a lot more damage to your company than you can imagine. Another lesson for these two people is that they may discover that finding a new job just got a lot harder for them  and it doesn’t have anything to do with the state of the economy. As a potential employer would you really want to hire a person whose face was on traditional and social media associated with a “prank” on their current employer. This is certainly a bad choice for showing how you are being active in social media.

Domino’s has responded to the “prank” with their own video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video has been seen by 353,466 viewers as of the time of this post.

MediaCurves released a survey on how effective the Domino’s apology video has been.

Among the findings:

“Which of the following actions are you likely to perform in the next three months?”

“Do you think the apology response video released by Domino’s USA President, Patrick Doyle, was effective in rectifying and restoring Domino’s image after this incident?”

For more information about this study, you can visit MediaCurves.

This is a story on how a brand can be destroyed with the help of YouTube.

3. ‘The Best job in the World” by Tourism Queensland

One of my favorite examples of how effectively to use social media to generate brand awareness and start up a conversation. Tourism Queensland released a contest for the best job int he world – a caretaker for one of their islands and a person who would blog about their experience while on Hamilton island for a year. Brilliant! The application had to be submitted via a YouTube video. Tourism Queensland put a nice package for the job that included accommodation, travel insurance, and get this: $150,000 AUS for 1 year period. What’s does the job entail? Blogging, traveling on the islands and doing a lot of snorkeling, swimming with the fish, kayaking, sailing, and bushwalking. Amazing! It sounds great right? What’s the catch? Nothing. They are looking to create buzz about their destination and continue the buzz online.  A brilliant idea and awesome execution. They had 34,000 applications for the job from 22 countries. That’s 34,000 youtube videos of people saying why they are the perfect candidate for the job. The news went viral from just one press release and got also picked up by main news agencies around the world. It sure put Queensland on the map. They are still going with their process and the final candidate should be picked up in the first week of May. Stay tuned for more news coming up from this beautiful destination.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As of this post the video had 1,578,735 views.  Susan’s goal was to perform in front of a large audience and she did it so well that jaws dropped. The judges were simply amazed, the audience speechless.  First impressions were forgotten immediately. Thanks to social media, this video is going to go around the world a few times and Susan is going to be a famous singing star! Go Susan!

In my full-time job as a Marketing Director for Incline Village General Improvement District I deal with daily challenges on how to communicate better with our customers, how to engage them and how to listen to what they have to say. We adapt our marketing strategies based on our customer feedback. As the Marketing Director for Diamond Peak Ski Resort, The Golf Courses at Incline Village, The Chateau at Incline Village, The Recreation Center and Tennis Center I have a responsibility to serve our customers by providing the best products and services for their money. To achieve this I need to listen to our customers. I’m starting this blog as an opportunity to engage more effectively with our customers. I also want to provide lessons that I have learned, research I have found and real life experiences all in one place for people who are interested in Internet marketing, social media marketing and web 2.0. I will continue to update this blog with all things marketing, Internet marketing, web 2.0 and social media marketing that I find interesting and worth reading. This is my personal blog and my thoughts and opinions are not associated with the organization I work for (IVGID).

I hope you enjoy my blog. Send me your feedback and let me know how I can make it better, what interests you and what you would like to read about.