Fred Wilson writes great blog posts. His style of writing is remarkable. He naturally speaks simply and clearly. That is no small feat for someone who deals with some very complex technology for a living. But as impressive as his blog posts are I think where he truly shines is in his dedication to read every comment anyone ever leaves at his blog. Fred Wilson has not been able to read every email in his inbox in years. But he reads every comment left at his blog. Now you know how to get hold of him!
I read every comment left on AVC. .... The community here is large and engaged. They can have a great conversation without me. .... I have long made peace with not reading every email that is sent to me. I bet I don't read more than 25% of the emails sent to me these days. I still manage to read every email my wife and kids send to me. And I still manage to read most of the email my colleagues at USV send to me. And I still manage to read most of the email our portfolio companies send to me. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot
Online marketing for restaurants is like online marketing for many other things, but with a slight twist. Most people care about food. And you are talking about an experience here. Some cherished memories are made when you sit with someone across a table.
#8: San Chez Bistro ..... San Chez Bistro is a tapas bistro and restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan...... they’ve taken social media and infused it with the needs and preferences of their local audience. San Chez encourages their patrons to use Twitter to reserve a seat at their restaurant. They call it “Tweet-Ahead Seating” and it’s a great use of social media local marketing. Once you tweet your interest in a reservation, the online hostess tweets you back with a message similar to this: “Great, you’re on the list. See you in a little while.” ..... With the number of smartphones on the rise, San Chez knows they can reach even more potential customers if they make access to their restaurant easy and quick. By combining smartphone capabilities, social media and local marketing, they were able to create an extremely successful marketing campaign online. ...... utilizes Foursquare to gain even greater viral visibility. ..... fun for the fan and powerful exposure for the physical business .... San Chez Bistro has customized their Foursquare page, making it easy for patrons to see the incentive for checking in
The interest in finding restaurants online is growing at a staggering rate! .... So how do you get your piece of this pie? The first step is to have an online presence. .... The most important aspect of web advertisement is getting the attention of search engines. You want your potential and repeat customers to be able to find you easily if they cannot remember your web address. ..... have your restaurant mentioned on as many websites as possible with a link to your menu ..... Blogs are a good place to start. Blogs are web sites that are actively being updated and commented on and Google loves them. Find blogs about restaurants, restaurant reviews or your local area and then make comments relevant to the subject. Make sure to mention your restaurant and give out your web address
Foursquare, Facebook and OpenTable .... Foursquare and Facebook are growing in importance. .... a good website is the central piece of a restaurant’s online marketing strategy. Start there and then incorporate other platforms. ..... Foursquare is our first choice because restaurant owners can run a deal over Foursquare for free. After a restaurant owner claims their venue, it is easy to set up a deal (you are allowed two at a time). Foursquare users in your area will see the deal and this will drive traffic to your restaurant. It’s free and if you have any interest in appealing to customers under 35 (the Foursquare demographic), you should post a deal on Foursquare. ...... Facebook is the center of the social media universe. Half of your customers are on it if not more. There is a lot to Facebook, but there are two aspects central to a restaurant marketing. The first is a restaurant’s Facebook Page ..... Your Facebook Page is a place to convey information, represent your brand, and most importantly, engage with customers. If managed correctly, your Facebook Fans can become like a second email list. The difference is that it will be interactive. The interactive component allows for deeper engagement with your current customers. ...... Facebook Ads .. Facebook Ads are getting better too, so if you need an extra push, you should look into ..... A set-it-and-forget-it attitude will be more damaging in the future. More of your competitors are learning the value of online marketing, so just being present won’t do the trick anymore. You will have to invest either your time or money into online marketing to not be left behind
In recent years, a number of hyperlocal platforms have stepped in to make it easier for independent restaurateurs to develop websites, manage social media, and cultivate better relationships with their customers online. ..... restaurant owners should focus on creating simple websites that run quickly on a variety of mobile devices ...... Offer a call to action. Hundreds of online visitors may click on a typical restaurant’s website each day, but what turns those online visitors into real customers is a definitive call to action. The most successful calls to action use limited-time deals and discounts — usually posted on a restaurant’s website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed — as a way to encourage people to get on their feet and get inside a restaurant’s doors. ...... The number one thing that diners look for when they search for restaurant information online is a current menu — just ahead of a telephone number, address, and photo of the establishment. ...... Solicit anonymous feedback from customers. ..... Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter should be a major part of any local restaurant’s online marketing campaign
when I am consulting with many restaurant owners. I teach them the techniques, they acknowledge them and recognize that they make sense and should work, and then... nothing happens. They are so busy running their daily operations (even if the restaurant is half-empty), and complaining about the economy that they don't have any time or energy left to take any action and improve their business. Successful marketing means connecting with customers and understanding their feedback ...... most of your customers access, or have access to, the Internet. ..... And yet, most of the restaurateurs are doing next to nothing to promote their business online. ...... People, (and not only young people, this also includes your potential customers) go online to look for places to eat. No more browsing in the paper ads, or opening the thick yellow book. No Sire. ...... Your customers are not looking for your restaurants where you advertise, they are looking online. They use the Web to search for the best places to eat. ...... have a great website with lots of useful information, promote your business online, where your customers are ..... Make everybody who goes to eat at your place very happy. Exceed their expectations. Deal with any potential issue generously and never, ever argue with a client, even if they are wrong. ...... they don't care about flashy ads in newspapers, radio, or magazines. They just Google "Italian Restaurant" or "Thai Restaurant" and read the reviews...... Does your restaurant have a good website? If so, are you capturing your customers' information? Are you emailing your customers with offers and information to keep your restaurant fresh in their minds? Emailing them a coupon and invite them to come over when it's their Birthday or Anniversary? ...... are you maximizing the Social Networks such as Twitter or Facebook to promote your restaurant? If not, you should. The only investment that you have to make is your time, and they can have a tremendous impact in your business...... Online Restaurant Directories Marketing ... Restaurant Website Marketing .... Restaurant Social Media Marketing ... Restaurant Email Marketing ..... Delegation is perhaps one of the most underused and underestimated techniques. If there are people who can do things better than you, you shouldn't waste your time struggling with those tasks. ...... leaving these tasks that you don't like, or don't know how to do, to an expert
Your full address and phone number should be on the top or bottom of every page. ...... Your menu is the number one thing that customers look for at a restaurant web site. ..... there should be a printable version of the menu available as well, perhaps in a PDF format. Exceed your web site customer's expectations by posting the most effective menu presentation possible. ..... Nothing else can convey the brand image of your restaurant better on your site than quality photography. ..... Photos of your food, your interior and exterior, as well as your people can make a major impact. ....... Time and again, I encounter restaurant sites with no evidence that any real people work there. This is amazing to me because your people are your restaurant. ...... your goal should be to answer every email inquiry that comes into your restaurant within 24 hours (or sooner). Emails, like phone calls are business leads, and customers taking the time to email are serious about contacting your restaurant. ..... Is someone dedicated to responding to incoming email messages? If not, go disconnect your phone as well -it's really the same thing. ..... At minimum, you should have a form on your site for customers to sign up for a newsletter or event information. Follow up with regular, timely emails to your list. ..... Upscale food, but low scale graphics and site design. It happens all the time on the web. Your cousin's friend could build your web site 10 years ago, but not today. ...... Your restaurant's web site should sell for you 24/7 with no breaks ... The best restaurant web sites look at their Internet program as an integrated marketing and sales tool. They do things like take reservations, sell merchandise, help book private parties and catering, and promote gift cards. Is your site selling for you? If not, then you've got some work to do
Peter Fader says a flood of consumer data collected from mobile devices may not help marketers as much as they think. ..... Few ideas hold more sway among entrepreneurs and investors these days than "Big Data." The idea is that we are now collecting so much information about people from their online behavior and, especially, through their mobile phones that we can make increasingly specific predictions about how they will behave and what they will buy. ..... what was going on 15 years ago with CRM (customer relationship management) .... ask anyone today what comes to mind when you say "CRM," and you'll hear "frustration," "disaster," "expensive," and "out of control." It turned out to be a great big IT wild-goose chase. And I'm afraid we're heading down the same road with Big Data ..... many "big data" people don't know what they don't know. ..... the still-powerful rubric of RFM: recency, frequency, monetary value. .... Ask anyone in direct marketing about RFM, and they'll say, "Tell me something I don't know." But ask anyone in e-commerce, and they probably won't know what you're talking about. ...... Chartists are looking at the data without developing fundamental explanations for why those movements are taking place ..... Among financial academics, chartists tend to be regarded as quacks. But a lot of the Big Data people are exactly like them. They say, "We are just going to stare at the data and look for patterns, and then act on them when we find them." In short, there is very little real science in what we call "data science," and that's a big problem. .... the more data we have, the more false confidence we will have
If his point is that collecting Big Data is not enough, you also have to make sense of it. I agree. But in my definition the whole idea behind Big Data is that of course you are going to make sense of it.
One part where I agree is that Big Data enthusiasm will have plenty of accompanying froth.
What he is saying is making sense of data is going to be more important than collecting data. I agree. But that is what I thought Big Data was all about. To me it never was simply collecting.
Whoever says email is yesterday's thing is wrong. GroupOn is 100% dependent on email. Have you noted? Just make sure people willingly gave their emails to you. And even after that make it super easy for them to unsubscribe. Email marketing only works when it is super targeted. And make it pretty.
Image via CrunchBaseRocky's premise that the whole daily deals business is crap, well, I don't buy into that. I am at the other end of the spectrum on that thinking. I think they are onto something cutting edge.
Unless Google would be willing to employ thousands of salespeople, Google and others can not compete with GroupOn, but in employing those salespeople Google will have veered from its core so far that that stretch might end up hurting its core businesses. Google is better off doing smart cars and wind farms in the vast oceans and monorails.
Image via Wikipedia"If you're investing in a startup at a $10 million valuation, you're not saying it's actually worth $10 million … You're saying it has a 1% chance of being worth a billion."
- Paul Graham
The saying that it is not the idea, it is the execution is cliche in the industry. I am going to argue to the contrary. Ideas matter. Big, unsexy companies execute all the time. When a Marco leave a Tumblr to launch an Instapaper, that is not to say he got dissatisfied with Tumblr's execution, and decided he could do a better job at it, and so he left. It was not about the execution. Tumblr's execution is the most sophisticated it has ever been. He left for the idea.
I just read a whole bunch of blog posts by Seth Godin. He casually calls himself the best business blogger in the world and I believe him. I once emailed him (and he emailed me back; that does not make me special, he emails everyone back) about adding a comments section to his blog. He did not say it, but I think his attitude is, if you want to talk to me, email me directly. But now his blog posts come with the Like button. I dig that. It's good to be able to share.
Seth is a thinker. He challenges. I doubt he would be a great manager of a restaurant, for example. But we got plenty of those. We don't have enough people of the Seth Godin kind.
I really like Seth's writing style. It is so direct and obvious and simple. So when he says something profound, it does not feel complicated but rather obvious. Seth will say the darndest things.
Seth Godin poured some water on Twitter saying the reason he does not want to get on Twitter is because he would rather continue being the best business blogger in the world. He can't be the best Tweet, but that he is already the reigning business blogger.
The guy is a great business blogger. He pours out pearls of wisdom. His blog posts read like fables. And the grand claim, if not factually true, is absolutely great marketing. His marketing tips have been more believable to me in the aftermath.
His blog is a nice one to keep up with. It is inspiring. And recently I had an email from the guy. I said how come your trackback thing is not working? Trust me, if I knew how to fix it, I would fix it, he said. Then he got me talking to his techies.
It felt like getting a picture taken with a movie star.
I really like his emphasis on out of the box thinking.
Learning from Singer More now than ever, success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow. ..... I bet you can list a dozen "critical" industries that will be as relevant to life in 2020 as Singer is to our world today. ...... Hiding isn't working, and neither is whining. The best marketing strategy is to destroy your industry before your competition does. Circling the big domino They try to launch worldwide and beat Google. They try to get an endorsement from the Prince of Denmark. They try to break out with a feature on a major blog. They try to act like Coca Cola from the first day. And they try and they try and they try until they get so frustrated, they quit. ..... A few brands pick out tiny dominos instead. And topple them. And they do it again. Spotto! On the road to mediocrity Spectacles Two ways to build trust What works is someone walking the walk while they talk a good game. ..... their lack of spin and hustle hit exactly the right tone Circles of Convenience convenient approaches rarely break through or generate extraordinary returns Scalejacking The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000. ..... "Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.)" Ignore everyone else. What's off the table?Big marketing breakthroughs always come from doing something that everyone else says is off the table. You matter Textbook rant assigning a textbook to your college class is academic malpractice. ...... In a world of wikipedia, where every definition is a click away, it's foolish to give me definitions to memorize. ..... I've never seen a single blog post that says, "wait until I explain what I learned from a textbook!" ..... This industry deserves to die. Ruby slippers How big is your farm? Should Hugh swear so much? The irony, as most multimillionaire authors will tell you, is that it's art that creates the commerce, not the other way around. Direct and useful project feedback I'm not talking about annual reviews (which are stupid) ..... (Not criticism, feedback). Guy #3 Tough! if you're a little tougher than people who are ready to give up, or you are a little more creative than people who are stuck, you'll break through. Graduate school for unemployed college students Start, run and grow an online commun
ity. "Why am I here?" Harvesting You're boring When smart people are hard to understand Learning from the MBA program We didn’t do this at all at when I was at Stanford. We spent a lot of time reading irrelevant case studies and even more time building complex financial models. ........ The act of defending your work in writing became a habit, and once it was a habit, the quality of everything improved. ...... There's not much I'm going to tell you that's not in my blog posts or books. Out of boundsNike isn't allowed to make a computer ..... once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow. Thinking about the compromise I know people with $50,000,000 in the bank who still don't believe that they have enough, who still grind away at a job they don't like trying to earn another penny. .... No right answers, but some good questions.
If you got a great blog, most of your traffic is going to come through search engines. Tags are important. External links are important. Hyperlinks are important. For all three these days you got Zemanta. Use it.
Great, regular content hence is also good marketing. Content is queen.
Got to build a mailing list for your blog. The one that I started using for this blog is over 9,000 strong. I decided on it yesterday. And look what I got.
♫
"My name is ______ and I graduated Columbia J School in 2008 where I concentrated in broadcast. I work at ABC News in DC now (the network) and I am working on this idea of Job Hunting and the Internet--pretty much exactly what you posted in your blog below. I am wondering if maybe we could talk on the phone about this idea."
One email a day, with five links to five blog posts: do you think that will work?
(3) Comments Sections Of Other Blogs
Like minded blogs. Celebrity blogs. If you are passionate about what you are passionate about, it is not possible you don't regularly read at least a dozen blogs that share your passion. Engage your favorite bloggers in their comments sections. Link to your blog from their comments sections. That helps jack up your Google rank. And that is a good thing.
JP, Confused Of Calcutta, is a big shot. I have never met him, but I think of him as a friend. He is CIO of British Telecom. I once came across a list in some magazine where Google CEO Eric Schmidt was number six, and JP was number 12. I really like his blog, that is why I visit his blog and participate in his comments sections. But that participation also jacks up my own blog's Google rank. I am not complaining.
I grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan. This here is me in 1993. Amitabh just so happens to be the most recognized face on the planet. His blog lets me interact with him and read his mind the way a handshake will not. In his comments sections, I have hope I will meet him one day. And, by the way, Amitabh was in Calcutta before he moved to Mumbai.
I am a New Yorker. I take pride in the New York Times. It is a good idea for me to leave comments in some of their blog's comments sections and hyperlink my name to my own blog.
I really like it that when I link to an article on the Google Blog, my blog shows up at the bottom of that post at the Google Blog. I am flattered, what can I say?
Mark Cuban is a loud mouth. I think that is a good thing for my blogging.
Huffington Post does Facebook and Mashable does Disqus. They don't make me create a separate account with them or fill up basic info before I can leave a comment. And they both have huge traffic. So it is a very good idea to participate in their comments sections. Read a post, then say what you have to say, and leave a link to one of your blog posts that might go with the theme. Or just leave a link to your blog.
But primarily, you are looking to make friends in comments sections. Passionate bloggers with small traffic might have time for you. Get to know them.
Another way to figure out which comments sections to visit is by using Blogsearch. Make a blog post, then search the key term for your blog post. Relevant blog posts will show up. Read and comment and link back to your blog post. The weirdest part of the exercise though is that most blogs out there don't do Disqus, at least not yet. But the nice ones just ask for your name, email address, not to be published but required, they say, and website address. The not nice ones expect you to register with them. I almost always walk away when I see that red flag.
The reason you want to follow everyone who follows you is because the Direct Message option is a great one. It is like a politician saying hello to you on the campaign trail. That is not shallow. He/she is not pretending to be family.
Twitterfeed is as grand as TweetDeck. Thanks to Twitterfeed, as of yesterday, my Netizen blog, this blog, BusinessWeek, CNet, and Digg will all feed my Twitter feed without me doing anything about it. Manual feeding is history.
(5) Facebook Notes
My blog is integrated with my Facebook account. So a new blog post shows up as a note in my Facebook stream. And I like to tag friends to those notes, so I show up in their Facebook stream as well. That is a fancy way of saying hello.
(6) Feeds
Don't allow feeds access to your full content. Give out the first paragraph. Let people show up at your blog if they want to see the whole thing.
I did a google search on "sites that pay you to blog" and these are the first 10 results that showed up. Before that I had visited result number one on my own. But it felt to me like it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I did not want to have to visit every suggested site and see for myself. How do you see for yourself? Do you register and participate and see if it works? So this is what I proceeded to do. I made a list of all the sites mentioned in these 10 blog posts/articles. The more often a site has been mentioned, the higher its ranking. Then I visited all the sites to weed out three dead links I found. These are in alphabetical order.
Mind you, I have not had the chance to cross check them. I took them at their word as to what they were offering. And I have shared. If a few of these are scams, don't blame me. If some of them do no better for you than if you ran AdSense ads on your own, don't blame me. If some of them work wonders for you, don't give me credit.
And this popularity contest is flawed. I visited only a few of those, but the best so far to my mind was:
It is very hard to get in, but I went ahead and applied. They take four to eight weeks to get back with you. Their top earners make over $100,000 a year. About.com is a New York Times company.
You blog, you post ads, and you go engage with other like-minded bloggers in their comments sections.
Don't get fooled. Blogging for a living is kind of like doing stand-up comedy for a living. It is very hard. Most people who try don't make it. Many people are happy just being able to do it on the side as part timers.
Think about it. All these sites are businesses. They are in it to make money. And you are going to help them make money. Most of them are out to act middle people between bloggers and advertisers.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t9wXRDZLSYiAPH7-vL5JsADQM5QkF40bCD0NgN_e65oWokaPPZv9qveo7GuYLrlSMqyjpgPHOxiVIJDsJKrnt0t8We3MCoe6QcXuafpFcumuJ4-DaG7ZANrOMf6jR4uDC_G4cAZFqO9j_04PFCEy3g=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u3D6Tsx0lCX0iX4NIQQitTQYtNRZdG-jzEEHkwGcxXlx5bcW73D3vVGgeHr9igACBjs9bVpM_VKV6xaPom243KmnqGofxcknuq_fLe2IaP5_Zyu5BDEdlVja0fGjIJ-y74VM05XroZsBEHQVgmJzwR=s0-d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sPw68Zw77nERhXZtWMyzrn7s5CgQ8WrusiV_RxFLxagnIc838w9B3ciRMRH0lvpFVL5eUvyTjNwsLzmce3RMN-gmqYGZ_wiZ-96e1xsPap6lAKa7BAOEm3klEhPw2AsRsF2Ugl_Rt1DHZhja88YFDQ=s0-d)