Lots of people who know me are keenly aware that I’m into the whole “Social Networking” thing.  But they really don’t get what it’s all about, how to be involved, or what the “rules” are. 

There are a lot of unspoken rules, but today a guy named Seth Simonds posted some actual written ones.  “Gosh! Napoleon Dynamite’s Guide To Social Networking” contains 5 great rules to follow in your social networking life.  All of the rules are cleverly written based on hilarious quotes from the movie Napoleon Dynamite (One of my favorite movies of all time!)

Contained within this great post is one of the most brilliant ways to sum up networking I’ve ever seen:

A good friend comes to your house and tries to help you fix your toilet. A great networker knows a trustworthy plumber who will fix your toilet, then takes you out for a drink to celebrate the victory!

Well said.

CLICK HERE to read “Gosh! Napoleon Dynamite’s Guide To Social Networking”

Be sure to post a comment and let me know what you think about it. 

If you do, I’ll catch you a delicious bass.

Testimonials are the super-powers of marketing messages.

Based on over 20 years of testing and proof, I’m always telling my clients to use testimonials more often in their marketing.  Whether it’s on a TV ad, on a website, a direct mail piece, or anywhere else, compelling customer testimonials will substantially increase response rates and sales.  Guaranteed. 

(I should put some testimonials in right here just to prove my point!)

However, I just came across an article talking about some new FTC guidelines which restrict just how testimonials can be used in your marketing…particularly if you are using “cherry picked” testimonials of extreme results or best-case scenarios. 

It turns out the old “Results not typical” disclaimer may not be enough to keep you out of hot water with the FTC.

The article goes on to state:

If you don’t have clinical data that enables you to substantiate what consumers will generally achieve with your product, the FTC offers you two alternatives — get that data or stop using “success story” testimonials.

If you market products having to do with making money, losing weight, or any other “measurable” claims for success, be sure to check out the complete article. 

Click here to read:  FTC Decides “Results Not Typical” no longer good enough
 
Bottom line:  You MUST use testimonials in your marketing message…just be careful HOW you use them and which ones you use.

For those who don’t speak French, the English title of today’s post is “Joy of Life” or “Suffering of Life”?  Keep reading to understand why…

(This is a long post, but I’m hoping you will bear with me and help me out by reading it through and offering your opinion at the end.)

A few days after posting a (very) positive review of the book “Peak” by Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, I realized that I needed to plan a business trip to the Bay Area.  What better way to see if the lofty promises in the book match the true customer experience when staying at one of Chip’s hotels?

I frequently have meetings in San Jose, CA.  When I do, I usually stay at a nice Larkspur hotel, a competitive chain to Joie de Vivre.   After researching a bit, I found that Joie de Vivre happens to have one of the top rated hotels in San Jose.  That’s where I was headed, so it was perfect! 

I thought.

Turns out, JDV Hospitality is sorely lacking in meeting “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” when it comes to booking a room.  It took 5 DAYS to book a reservation.  Not exactly what I would consider “meeting my basic needs as a customer”. 

Here is the story:

Feb. 5th  I started to book a reservation using the hotel website.  They had a king room for $153 with my AAA discount. WOW, what a great deal!  Then, I noticed the company had a frequent stay club called the “Joy of Life” club.  I decided it would be a good idea to join, since I planned on staying at Joie de Vivre hotels a lot based on what I’ve read.   I registered for the club, figuring it would be better to book my reservation as a club member.  Upon clicking “Submit”, I received the following notice “Please allow us 3 Business Days to establish your on-line account.”

3 days?  Really?  That’s seems awful silly when the competition can do the same thing immediately.  But ok, I’ll wait.

Feb. 9th (Four days later) I receive a “Welcome” message saying my account has been activated.  As a special “thank you” for joining the club, they are offering me a 10% discount on my first reservation if I use a special code.

I go to the website, enter the code, and get an error saying it’s not valid.   Thinking perhaps I did something wrong, I spend the next 20 minutes trying every possible way of using the code.   No luck.  I also notice that the regular King room isn’t showing up as available.  Now I’m only seeing the “Club level” King room…for $180. 

I finally give up and send an email message to customer service asking what’s up with the code.

Feb. 10th  Customer service gets back to me.  They said “There was an issue with the promotion code that caused it to work improperly.”  “Try it now“ they said. So I do.

Now I get a NEW error saying that I cannot use the code online, and I need to “Call the hotel directly.”  CALL?  This is a cutting edge company in the heart of Silicon Valley, and I can’t book online?  The whole experience is just getting worse and worse. 

I call the hotel.  A very polite and nice woman answers and tells me two things:
#1  During the 5 days I’ve tried to book this reservation, the room/rate I wanted has sold out.
#2  She has no idea how to process the reservation using the code THEY gave me, and she will have to check with a manager and call me back. 

About an hour later, I finally hear back from the hotel.  She said the code had “blackout” dates (NOTHING about blackouts mentioned when they gave me the code by the way) and they have made a “one time exception” to let me use the code online.  Gee, thanks for making me feel like I’m a pain in the butt. 

So I use the code. 

Guess what? 

According to the website, the “special discount” is the same rate (for the Club King) that I already had with my AAA discount…which is STILL $30/night higher than the rate I originally found when I started this whole mess.

Under normal circumstances, I would have given up long ago, and booked a room at the competition, but after posting such a positive review of the book, I felt I needed to see this thing through to completion. 

So I book the reservation at $180 per night. 

I’ve now spent 5 days booking this reservation, at least 1 ½- 2 hours of my actual time, and am paying $90 more for the stay than I would have if I would have just booked durng the original session and been done with it.  But at least it’s finished. 

Or is it?

After booking the reservation, I get the confirmation email.  It looks like this:
Daily Rate: Joy of Life Club- New Member Promotion
Day 1, 2009 —— USD 180.00
Day 2, 2009 —— USD 180.00
Day 3, 2009 —— USD 207.00

What?  $207.00 for one of the nights?  Where did THAT come from?  It didn’t say that on the website when I booked.   It appears they just slipped it in there.

So, now I’m torn.  Should I keep the reservation, and post a review of my actual stay “in the interest of research”…or should I cancel the reservation, and never give them another shot?

I’m going to let YOU decide.  Should I stay at Joie de Vivre, or book their competition, where I’ve never had a problem?

Please post your opinion in the comments. 

Either way, the bottom line for now:  Joie de Vivre, which claims to have a goal of creating “Committed, satisfied evangelist” customers has now created a very annoyed, ticked off customer…and I haven’t even made it to the hotel yet!

UPDATE (2/17/09):  I didn’t contact JDV management about this situation, but they proactively contacted ME.  I’ve now heard from the CEO (twice), the Chief Revenue Officer, and the hotel Manager.  Now THAT’S customer service!  They have made me a fair offer if I will keep my reservation at the hotel, which I have accepted.   I’m looking forward to (and hoping for) a very pleasant and trouble-free stay with Joie de Vivre.   Thanks everyone for your opinions and votes on this ordeal.

With your very best “Cliff Clavin from Cheers” accent say the following:

“It’s a little known fact…”

…that I’ve been involved in leveraging video online since 2000…which is five years BEFORE YouTube even existed!

Back then, we were taking infomercials, editing them down to 3-5 minute clips, and posting them on our website for the purpose of selling product.  Everyone thought we were nuts.  Until sales went up 35% as a result!

Marketing using online video

Suffice it to say in the past nine years of using online video for marketing, training, customer service, and promotional purposes, I’ve learned a thing to two. 

Last month, I shared some of that knowledge at the Affiliate Summit conference by moderating the panel “Lessons Learned in Using Video for Affiliates”

This month, my feature article “Don’t Let Your Video Languish” appears in Electronic Retailer magazine.   This article is focused primarily for DRTV/Infomercial companies, but I believe there are some great ideas for ANY company on how to use video effectively in their marketing strategy.

CLICK HERE to check out the article, then come back to this post and use the “comments” to let me know what you think.

I’m reading through the latest issue of Toastmaster Magazine yesterday, and see a FULL PAGE ad for an event called Public Speaking Idol, which is a public speaking contest featuring over $50,000 in prizes.

The call to action on the ad is a website address, www publicspeakingidol com (Deliberately not a “clickable” URL so as not to endorse the site with a link)

Sounds interesting, so I go over to my computer, enter in the URL, and here is what I get…

Public Speaking Idol Website

The entire page consists of this one graphic.  Nothing to click.   No email, no phone number. No way to get more information.  Nada.

I guess they expect me to come back every day for the rest of my life, or until they get off their butts and put some info there.

Now, I’m a very realistic person who has done thousands of marketing campaigns.  I know that often things go wrong.  I’m sure that there is some glitch in launching the site which prevented it from being ready before the ad ran.  Or perhaps the magazine ran the ad before they were supposed to.   Whatever…it doesn’t matter.  The damage is now done.  People are seeing the ad, going to the website, and then nothing.

Hello!??!  You get ONE chance to make a first impression, and whoever is behind this project is blowing it.

Big time.

Tip:  If YOU ever find yourself in a similar situation, don’t panic!  The simple, effective solution to a problem such as this would be to add a “Coming Soon” message to the destination page, and include a way for the visitor to provide their name and email address so they can be contacted when the site is actually up and running.   It’s a very simple form to create.

That way, when you finally DO launch, you’ve got a ready made list of prospects!

In fact, I did this exact strategy with another website project I was working on recently, and we collected over 3,000 names before we even opened our doors!

Oh, and to the organizers of Public Speaking Idol…the answer is NO, I won’t be coming back to your site again.

That’s one prospect gone.

The full name of this book is “Peak:  How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow”

When a friend of mine gave me a copy of Peak to check out, I was intrigued for a couple of reasons:

#1  I hear the phrase “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” thrown around quite a bit, but never really studied it or sought to understand it thoroughly.  This was my chance.

#2  The author, Chip Conley is the Founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality group, which operates a number of cool hotels in the San Francisco Bay area.  I’ve stayed at a few Joie de Vivre hotels, and they are quite unique, so I wanted to get inside the mind of the guy who runs them.

Before I started reading Peak, I was expecting a “psycho-babble” kind of book with lots of touchy-feely platitudes.   To be honest, there are a few of these spots in the book, but most of it was practical (though heart-centered) business management advice. 

I especially enjoyed the section about the relationship between your business and your investors, be they private, personal, or public market.  Most management books focus on the customer, or on the employee, but rarely on the beneficiary of the business. 

A quick glance at the Table of Contents will give you an idea of the well-rounded approach Conley takes to running his business:

I – Maslow and Me
   1. Toward a Psychology of Business
   2. Karmic capitalism
   3. The Relationship Truths

II – The Employee Pyramid
   4. Creating base motivation
   5. Creating loyalty
   6. Creating inspiration

III – The Customer Pyramid
   7. Creating satisfaction
   8. Creating commitment
   9. Creating evangelists

IV – The Investor Pyramid
   10. Creating trust
   11. Creating confidence
   12. Creating pride of ownership

V – Putting the Truths in to action
   13.  The Heart of the Matter
   14.  Creating a self-actualized life

One of the more interesting things about Peak is that Conley wrote the book shortly after the events of 9/11, when the travel and hotel industry was suffering huge losses, and Conley’s own chain of hotels was on the verge of bankruptcy. 

The author details how he fought his way out of very bad situation, with most of the obstacles completely out of his control.

In today’s recession-plagued business environment, the thoughts and ideas Conley used to help his business survive and thrive are more pertinent than ever. 

In summary, I recommend you check out “Peak:  How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow”

Today many bloggers are doing a “2008 wrap-up post” or “Year in review” or something similar on their blogs, writing about and pontificating about the year that was. 

I was thinking of doing something similar for today, the last post of 2008. 

Then a twitter connection introduced me to a very cool tool called “Wordle”.

Wordle takes the written word from a website, blog feed, or even cut-and-paste and creates a “Tag Cloud”.    A Tag Cloud is a visual representation of a given set of words, with the most frequently used words displayed with more prominence, (bolded, larger size, color, etc.)   The less frequently used words are smaller and less noticeable. 

This graphical device gives you a simple, at a glance way to know what where the most important/frequent topics discussed in a given piece of work.

By running all of my blog posts for 2008 through Wordle, it created a tag cloud which pretty much sums up my year. (On my blog anyway)  

 Here it is:

2008 Tag Cloud for "My Perspective" (Click image to view larger)

Pretty cool, huh?

By the way…how was YOUR 2008?

No matter how your 2008 was, I truly hope your 2009 is fantastic!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

If you read my post yesterday, you know that I have between 500-600 connections on each of the three social networks on which I play and work; Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

I found it odd that I’m “stuck” at almost the exact same number on each network.   But that’s yesterday’s topic. 

Today’s topic…what I find interesting about these numbers:

I’ve been on LinkedIn since February of 2004, thanks to an invitation from Paul Allen
It took me 58 months to amass 506 connections.  An average of 8.72 connections per month. 

I’ve been on Facebook since August of 2007, thanks to an invitation from Shawn Collins
It took me 18 months to amass 631 connections.  An average of 35.05 connections per month. 

I’ve been on Twitter since April of 2008, thanks to myself for finally getting around to leading the social networking conversation rather than just following it. 
It has taken me 8 months to amass 624 followers.  An average of 78 connections per month.

What are my takeaways from this? 

• Clearly, social media is growing at an exponential rate
• People today are more willing to adopt social media than they were a few years ago
• I’m getting better at leveraging the power of social media networks to grow my business, as well as business for my clients
• Thanks to social media, the world is shrinking, yet my horizons are expanding…and I’m very excited about it!

Want to connect with me?
Connect on LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/martyfahncke
Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com//fawnkey
Friend me on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/people/Marty-M-Fahncke/668225559

 

**Special thanks to Kay Ballard for helping me quickly find a piece of data for this post which would have taken me forever without her help!

Today I noticed something odd about my social media stats…which led me to notice something interesting about them as well.

Today, I’m posting the odd thing.  Tomorrow, I’ll post the interesting thing…

The odd thing about my social media stats:

I seem to be at a “ceiling” of around 500-600 connections across all my active social media platforms.   As of this date (12/17/08) I have the following number of connections on various social networks:

Facebook:      631
LinkedIn:       506
Twitter:          624

I’m a big believer in “Dunbar’s number” when it comes to organizations.  (From Wikipedia:  Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar’s number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.)  <Click here for full definition> 

I was aware of the power of the number 150 years before I even knew it had a name and had been scientifically studied.  I just naturally came to understand the affect of Dunbar’s number by working with hundreds of companies over my 20+ years in business, and seeing the huge difference in the communication and effectiveness of a company with less than 150 employees  vs. one with 150 employees or more. 

Looking at my social media numbers, and thinking about Dunbar’s number has lead me to a few questions:

1. Is my online social networking “ceiling” caused by some sort of affect like Dunbars number? 
2. If so, why is the number around 600, and not 150? 
3. Does technology allow for management of a larger network than the “offline” 150? 
4. Is my social media ceiling naturally occurring from outside influence, or is this something I’ve subconsciously made happen? 
5. What are the possible reasons all three of the networks I play on are so close in the number of connections? 

If you have any thoughts/answers to these questions, please feel free to chime in using the comments button!

Be sure to watch for part two tomorrow. 

PS – Yes, my total number of connections are pretty small compared to many people I know.  Some of my business associates have thousands and thousands of connections on each of these networks.   I’ve never been very aggressive about connecting with a lot of people.  I prefer my connections to happen organically, and with people I actually know, or that I find interesting.   Due to this, I will reject some connections if I find the person offensive, boring, or just plain stupid.

In 2005, I registered to attend a professional speaking conference put on by Mark Victor Hansen. 

Shortly after I registered, I received a CD in the mail with “21 tips to get maximum value” from the event.  The information on the CD was co-presented by Mark Victor Hansen, and some guy I’d never heard of named Alex Mandossian. 

The CD was a wealth of absolute GOLD information.  It contained precise steps to take before, during, and after the live conference to get the most value for the (substantial) money I had just spent.

I listened to that recording twice, and implemented all of the 21 tips…and it seriously changed the way I consumed not only that conference, but every conference I’ve attended since.   Bottom line, it made me a lot of money.

For some, going to a conference or an event is a “boondoggle”, where the main purpose is to get out of the office and have a little fun.  Not for me.  As the owner of my own business, every event or training I choose to attend must have a measurable and positive ROI.  

Fast forward three years, and Alex Mandossian has become my mentor, business partner, and friend. 

So when he was preparing his 2008-2009 Teleseminar Secrets course (of which I am an alumni), I asked Alex why he didn’t have a “21 tips” product of his own?  He really didn’t have a good answer…I think it was one of those “smack the forehead” moments for him!

So, to correct the problem, I worked with Alex recently to create “21 Tips to Get Maximum Value from Teleseminar Secrets or ANY OTHER Virtual Training”. 

Alex then took the recording and gave it to Pat and Lorna over at Spectacular Presentations, and they did a bang-up job making it a very professional audio/visual program.

Even if you haven’t attended/aren’t planning to attend the Teleseminar Secrets training, this program has great info you can use for any virtual training course such as teleseminars, webinars, virtual coaching, and more. 

Check it out by clicking HERE

And please, let me know what you think by leaving a comment on this post, ok?