positive disruption by: Tom Martin | New Orleans based Social Media Consultant

Three For Thursday - April 29

Welcome to the "I'm launching something really, really big next week" edition of Three for Thursday. I found a couple of really cool ideas and tools for your reading pleasure. So check'em out and be sure to let me know what you think of them in the comments section. Here we go....

Custom Travel Planning 

As usual the folks over at Springwise have found a bunch of cool stuff, like this interesting travel agent service. As we all know, the web and specifically sites like Priceline, Expedia, etc., have placed a lot of downward pressure on pricing in the travel industry. Airlines and hotels have transferred that downward pressure to their agent community and consumers have forever altered their behavior. Now, rather than contact a travel agent, many consumers simply hit the web. But let's face it. Unless you're a real travel junkie, you really don't know what you don't know and that may result in your missing out on a few great experiences.

Enter OfferMeaTrip -- where you as a consumer (sorry UK only right now) describe the trip you'd like to take. You may say for instance,

I want to visit New Orleans, LA and I want to make sure I take in the culture, art, music and great food. I'm not interested in packaged tours but I would like to visit a plantation.

You'd then submit that description to the site (or more if you like) along with dates for travel and a budget you'd like to stay under. Then competing travel agents put together your dream New Orleans trip, package it up in a custom online trip brochure for you and submit for your approval to book. You as the consumer get multiple trip options to choose from depending on what each travel agent puts together and best of all - you get one fixed package price. A pretty cool service I'd say. It would be even cooler if you could do group travel like this... say you were putting together a "We're turning 40 trip" for a group of friends. You could outsource the planning/execution of the trip via a site like this. Very interesting model and it will be interesting to see if it jumps the pond. Guess the more important question - what other industries lend themselves to an approach like this? Thoughts?

 Self Publishing
I'm totally stoked about this next find -- again from Springwise. Leanpub is a new eBook creation platform that purports to let you quickly and easily convert your blog posts into eBooks. It also allows you to update the eBook and push that updated file to everyone that has already bought a copy. But is goes farther by also allowing you to sell those eBooks and keep 75% of the price for yourself. Yes, that is not a typo... they want to let you keep 75% of the price of the book as income for you. Remember when I mentioned that Amazon wants to publish your next book -- well these guys want to get into that picture too.

Currently all eBooks produced are PDFs sized at 5.98 x 8.98, so they may not render perfectly on an eReader like the Kindle but I emailed Peter (co-founder of the site) to see if/when they might be able to produce Kindle friendly eBooks and this is what he sent back.

We're currently working on MOBI and EPUB support, so that we can
properly support Kindle, iPad and the other e-book readers...We're probably 2-4 weeks away from releasing it, however.

So their eBooks will be Kindle/iPad friendly. That alone is a great reason to check this service out and why I'll be using it to produce my first eBook this summer. 

photo by goXunuReviews

Simple Survey Tool

By now you've been on my site for more than 10 seconds and as such, a little survey box has hopefully appeared in the lower right hand corner of your browser. It's a free little piece of java code from a group called KISSinsights that I found while checking out Leanpub's site. 

It's an incredibly simple little survey tool that let's you insert (and suggest) quick one question surveys that you can place on your website, blog, etc. Best of all, you can place a different survey on each page of your site to capture different kinds of feedback. So for instance, I could put a "Got any cool things for me to cover here" survey on all of my Three For Thursday posts and then use a more general survey on other pages. While most folks probably won't go through the trouble of adding things via the comments section, it might be interesting to see if they'd add ideas via this tool. I might test that application of the tool next. There is also a paid version that gives you more control, which based on how many of my readers complete the free survey, I may upgrade to in the future. 

So that is it for this week's "I'm getting ready to do something big next week" edition... let me know what you thought of the stuff I covered and be sure to point me to cool things you've found so I can cover it here.

How Do You Find The Time????

 
If I had a nickle for every time I get asked this question... To be fair, it is a great question and given my life (wife, job, four kids) it is truly a fair question. I'm busy and proper social media engagement is very, very time consuming. Now of course, I'm assuming we'd all agree I'm doing a proper job of this... which is up for debate. Feel free to chime in on that one in the comments...

But I digress. My favorite answer to this question is quite simple actually.

How much time did you spend today doing any or all of the following?

• idle chat on the phone, in the hallway or elsewhere
• watch tv
• daydream
• procrastinate
• mindless Internet surfing
• debating an issue you can't change vs moving on to a solution
• bitching about work, spouse, kids, life, job, etc., etc., etc
• waiting on hold, in line, or maybe just to order lunch
• and for you commuter folks -- riding a train, bus or maybe airplane

Do you see where I'm going? If not, maybe read David Allen's Getting Things Done. [amazon affiliate link]

In the book he basically teaches you how to turn those little "wasted" moments into actions. Actions that help you get more done each and every day. Warning: it's a hard program to stick to. Not because it is hard, but because it requires discipline.

And I think that is the point of this post. If we just apply a little discipline, we find that we do have the time to engage properly in Social Media for our company, our product, our brand and most importantly for ourselves.

So whether you buy the GTD book/process or just turn the darn TV off for an hour a day and blog/tweet/post on Facebook -- whatever... I think you'll find you do have the time.

Agree? Disagree? Have a few tips for everyone out there struggling with the same issue you are??? Care to share a few with us? I know you have an opinion on this one... share it please.

photo by zoutedrop

Do You Remember Your First Time? (part III)

  

Today I thought we'd complete the discussion of First Time marketing. If you missed part I and part II, you can catch up by clicking those links. For the rest of you, let's get tactical and talk about how a hospitality brand could program my first time experience to maximize the value for both me and them. Again, I'm thinking this applies to all kinds of brands but I'm extremely interested in how this plays out for hospitality brands because there are so many first time travel experiences given our penchant for taking vacations to places we've not been before vs returning to the same location every year for vacation.

You can break down the first time travel experience into the following mini-experiences:

• Pre-departure
• Departure/Travel
• Arrival at airport
• Transport to hotel
• Arrival at hotel
• Preparing to "be local"
• Actual destination experience(s)
• Returning
• The day after

Let's take these one at a time and see if we can't map out a top level approach to First Time marketing.

Pre-departure
There is a lot of pre-planning you can do to make travel and international travel a heck of a lot easier and more fun. But people are busy today and thus, they just don't have the time to do the deep research that will improve the enjoyment of their trip. But as a hospitality brand (airline/destination/hotel/attraction) why not take this opportunity to do it for them and in the process create a relationship before they ever leave?

In it's simplest form, this could be a series of eBooks that cover FAQ's around travel (airports, baggage, customs, transit times to/from airport), the destination itself (hotel, main attractions, off the beat and path attractions, family stuff, nightlife, etc) and Nuts and Bolts kind of information (taxi phone number, emergency phone numbers for police, fire, medical). I'm sure there are lots of really good eBook options I'm missing here... can you think of a few?

Departure/Travel
When does a travel experience begin and end? For may destinations that answer would likely be when the consumer reaches their market. But I'd argue it begins when I leave my house. As we discussed in the first post in this series, you could provide me with airport information for each of the airports I'll travel to/through. You might even make it easier by pointing me to apps like Gate Guru.

Arrival at Airport/Transport to Hotel
You might also provide information on baggage retrieval and ground transport at my final destination airport. Again, anything that would make it easier on me and make this newbie an expert will improve the experience and hopefully ensure I arrive at your destination in the right mindset and already loving you as a brand. You might even suggest or arrange for car service. In many markets, this isn't all that much more expensive than a traditional taxi. However, the transport experience is usually far better and let's face it, there is something incredibly comforting about seeing your name on a sign and knowing that you'll be taken care of from there. Again, this takes away the trepidation factor.

Arrival at Hotel
How about you? How do you feel when you're traveling to a new city or country and you arrive at your hotel. For me there is a sense of relief... like the "hard stuff" is over. I mean check in is check in right? It is at this point that I find most brands (especially hotel brands) start the marketing machine. Take the time to really plan this experience as it is a real opportunity. For instance, lets say the travel to your destination was a nightmare. As we've discussed, not a ton you can do outside of trying to help the consumer plan for the experience and providing them information that may make it a better experience.

But arrival at the hotel is different. As Suzanne Vera pointed out in her comments on yesterday's post we should ourselves go through our experience. I think that is a great idea don't you? See your experience through your customer's eyes or better yet, invite your neighbor to do it. It won't cost you much but it will likely provide you with a few key insights to improve the entire arrival experience. But most of all, think about that arrival experience though "comfort" eyes. Deconstruct it and ask yourself, is this input contributing to a feeling of comfort? Is this input making the consumer feel more or less "in control" of the situation? I can honestly say, I've worked with a number of hospitality brands in my career and I don't know that I've ever sat in a brainstorming session to do that. How about you? Have you ever sat in that brainstorm session? If so, what was it like and what kinds of ideas did you come up with and implement?

Preparing to be local
This is the chance to really design or influence the customer experience. It's a chance to go beyond the normal concierge desk or recommendation from the front desk/bell staff. It's a chance to make that transition from traveler to guest (of a destination) real. Domestically this might be providing a welcome kit with maps, reviews of local attractions and restaurants and such. Or it might go so far as to suggest best times of the day to visit certain attractions and mode of transport to get to/from there. For instance, if your city zoo (which rocks) is located at a busy intersection that gets really backlogged around 4pm in the afternoon because a local school is dismissing students at that time, then you might point that out in your kit. Suggest that zoo trips be done in the am, which will assure your guest doesn't lose 30 minutes of their valuable vacation time to sitting in traffic. Do you see where i'm going here? Is this making sense to you? Do you think we're on to something or am I off base?

Actual destination experience
This is where it gets really interesting. At it's most basic, some kind of unified training or focus by all members of a hospitality industry around a key goal like service can make one heck of a difference. For me, when I was in Asia I often remarked at the level of customer service and the number of employees that were always on staff. Whether I was in a restaurant or hotel, it always seemed like someone was standing within 20 feet just waiting to be called on or proactively provide service if I looked as though I needed something. Is that just a cultural thing or planned? Honestly, I don't know but man did it make an impression on me and I'm sure plenty of other travelers.

But here again, technology can come into play. With the proliferation of smart phones and some of the really cool new technology like Augmented Reality -- why not give the consumer a virtual city guide like this one? [note: the agency I work for, Zehnder, created this app] Obviously there are tools like Yelp that are a wonderful asset to travelers, but what else could we do for them? What other custom apps could we create to improve their enjoyment of our destination? Or forget technology for a second and just get human.

I recently returned from a 7 day trip to Asia. On 5 of those days and nights I toured the city, ate breakfast and dinner by myself. What if the cities where I stayed had an escort service (no not that kind of escort service) where locals, or professionals hired by the city or maybe even fellow solo travelers (there's an app for you) could get together to dine or see the sites together? How much richer would that make the experience?

Returning home
If we've done our job up until this point, the return home should feel very comfortable for the traveler. They still have all those great tools we provided them on the in-bound trip so this should be the easy part. And while I'm not thinking of anything I'd suggest adding I'm convinced I'm missing something. So I'll ask you - would you add anything to the mix at this point? Can you think of any trepidation points we can solve?

Day After Marketing
Have you ever taken a trip and then gone to work the day after you got home? Did anyone ask you anything about your trip that day? Do you see the opportunity here? Do you see where I'm going with this day after stuff? I firmly believe the day after is one of the single most important marketing opps for today's marketer -- especially in the hospitality world. The first day after we do/have anything our friends and co-workers ask us how we like it, was it fun, etc. This is a brand's last chance to reinforce the good and minimize any negatives. Remember, humans tend to remember the first and last thing they experience... so make that last memory a good one.

But what's funny is, in the 20 years I've been in marketing, I don't know that I've ever sat in this brainstorming session...have you? If so, what did you talk about? What did you come up with? And lastly, did it work?

So what do you think? Are we on to something here? Is this worthy of further discussion inside and outside of your company? Let me know. I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

Do You Remember Your First Time? (part II)

 
Yesterday we talked about my first time. And we talked about how important it is to get that first time right. But why? Why do we have this fascination with our first times? Why is it we remember our first times so vividly?

I'm no brain scientist but I have a theory. I think we remember our firs times because of trepidation. You're always nervous the first time you do anything. Maybe you're fearful of failing or seeming silly to the more well practiced around you. Maybe you're a perfectionist. Doesn't matter why you're feeling trepidation, what matters is that you are feeling it.

My theory is that trepidation fires a pattern of neurons in your brain associated with memory. Why? Because people who don't want to fail, who are perfectionists or who just don't want to appear silly in front of others realize that they must learn and in some ways master what they are about to do -- the first time. They don't want to learn on the second time. They want to get is all the first time. Therefore, those neurons work together to codify memory -- good or bad. And that is where first times get dicey.

We've all know folks that have sworn off a repeat performance of an experience, a food, or a destination. We've all heard them say never again. How they hated it the first time. The old saying is you only get a once chance to make a first impression.... sound familiar?

We're wired to internalize that first experience. So I guess the question is... and one I plan to dive into more on Wednesday -- how do we as marketers ensure a great first time? How do we leverage these neurons to ensure a positive first memory is created, stored and called up on again in the future?

How would you do it?

Do You Remember Your First Time? (part I)

 
I've just returned from my first "real" international trip -- a week long sojourn to Asia. As I've never traveled internationally and certainly never to Asia, I was faced with a number of firsts. Which got me to thinking about firsts and specifically how brands and especially hospitality brands can build marketing approaches around a consumer's first time.

The first big opportunity I saw last week was nerves. I travel a lot in the US and frankly don't give much thought to really anything to do with travel. That wasn't the case here. I found myself a lot more nervous about everything from making the check-in gate early to hailing a taxi (and not getting ripped off) in Asia. I just wasn't running on my normal autopilot mode. And frankly -- that is where I think there is a marketing opportunity. With nothing more than a simple email, any number of brands I just dealt with over the last week could have asked if it was my first time. Heck, that was the single most asked question by the people I met there, so why wouldn't the airline, the hotels or the cities I was visiting have asked. And if they had asked, they could have done all kinds of cool things to make sure my first time was a great time.

For instance, as I was giving SocMe Seminars during the day, I had precious little time to explore KL or Singapore. I was also quite busy leading up to the trip, which meant I didn't get to do any real research on either destination to put together a plan for maximizing the visit. But what if either city had offered to do it for me? What if the hotel had done it or maybe even a local taxi company...which of course would have suggested I take their taxi's to the various areas they suggested I frequent. The point being, in the week I was gone, I uploaded over 100 photos to Flickr a few videos to YouTube. What if I had been given a good plan? A plan that would have resulted in my posting not just 100 random pics but 100 pics of the most important, most interesting or simply the most well known areas of each city. Imagine the SEO effect of 10,000 consumers doing that and properly tagging the photos and videos. Do you think that would help a tourist destination? Do you think it would help a local restaurant or attraction in your city? Oh, and I didn't even mention FourSquare -- mainly because I didn't use the data roaming feature but if I had, imagine if I had checked in at all those places and 10,000 fellow travelers did the same over the course of the year. Now you're starting to add in Twitter search as another vehicle you can impact by doing little more than helping make sure my first time is a great time. (assuming of course that each person chose to notify Twitter of the check-in)

The airline could have sent me a First Timer's FAQ to traveling to Asia. It might have included layouts of the airports I'd travel to/through and helpful hints like, at the Hong Kong airport, if you want to eat you have to go to level 7, which requires you to pass through a security check-point. Maybe even point out where that is, which would have been helpful. It might include things like don't buy water at the Hong Kong airport before boarding the plane because they're going to take it from you as you enter the jet way to board.

These are little things yes, but after a 15+ hour transpacific flight, finding out you missed your connection to KL and now must chill in the Hong Kong airport for a four hours -- I can assure you, anything and everything is magnified and pushes your nerves a bit farther on edge. If the airline really wanted to make my first time special, they might have given me a special Twitter handle or IM handle that I could instantly contact for information or maybe even a special phone number... anything to give me that comfort zone.

Now I'm focusing a lot here on tourism/travel because that is the experience I just had and it is prompting this post...but there are lots of firsts. Think about buying your first car, house, major appliance purchase, etc, etc., etc. For any product or service there is a first time. The question is, are you taking steps to make sure every new customer is having a good first time or a bad one?

Tomorrow we'll talk more in Part II about why focusing on the first time experience is so vitally important. Till then, let me know what you think about the whole idea of first time and feel free to share some of your really good or bad first times.

Three For Thursday - April 8

Useful Augmented Reality Application

We've been hearing a lot about Augmented Reality lately... but to date, most of the stuff you're seeing isn't all that useful. Instead, it's more about just using the technology for the sake of using the technology. As I'm a big fan of creating utility applications vs game applications - I found this video most interesting. Ideally I'd think women would want to do this at home or at least in a contained environment where they can see how they look under different lighting conditions. But that said, this is such a perfect use of AR.

Multi-Party Video Conferencing

I had the chance to meet Steve Woodruff (finally) when he asked me to join him one evening for a Skype Video chat. What a great idea... virtually meet all those folks you Tweet with but have never actually met IRL. Yes, I warned him -- I was stealing that idea. But then he suggested maybe we should go one step further. We've both long wanted to meet the brilliant Lisa Hoffman, so we decided to take Steve's video meeting idea to the next level with a multi-person video platform.

Enter TokBox, which purports to do a great job of hosting up to 20 folks in a simultaneous video chat at no cost and if you need better service or more seats, you can rent the service on a per meeting basis. Very cool and I'm looking forward to putting it through it's paces. And I'm especially intrigued by the Broadcast Chat feature... that could be pretty interesting.

Is this the Web 2.0 version of the Man Purse?

  

I'm always intrigued to see how companies are trying to solve real, everyday, consumer challenges. For women, having multiple electronic devices isn't all that big of a deal. They have a purse and while they usually have a hard time finding those devices in said purse, they can at least put them all there with no fuss.

But for guys, it gets a little harder. Personally I hate having things in my pockets -- keys, iPhone, iPod, etc. Add to that the desire to have a camera and often my Flip with me (especially at conferences) and well, you get a bit overloaded. Enter the Bandee. Very interesting solution but I wonder...at least here in the USA -- will folks (especially guys) where something that looks like a Girl Scout/Boy Scout badge sash? Don't know...what do you think? And if not, any thoughts on how to solve the problem in a manner that would work?

That's it for this week folks... as always, let me know what you think about these things and feel free to share with your friends. Ciao.

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• ViVu Launches Video Collaboration Plug-In For Skype (techcrunch.com)

Tell Me What Sucks

 
Not sure why, but this old Ad Age post was on my mind tonight and I've nothing better to write and most of you are relatively new here.... soooooo here we go. This was written back in 2008 when I first began writing for Ad Age on their Small Agency Diary blog.

About a year ago, we were hiring a copywriter and we had a really good guy in from Phoenix. He's sitting in my office and I'm peppering him with questions. Then I do the obligatory, "So I've asked you a lot of questions, do you have any for me?" And he says, "Actually just one. You're relatively new here, so tell me ... what sucks?"

Best damn question any interviewee has ever asked me.

Click Here to finish the story at Ad Age.

Would love to hear your thoughts either over at Ad Age, back here or via Twitter. I'm @TomMartin.

photo by Thomas Hawk

Three For Thursday - April 1

Well today it's the Happy Birthday Chris Brogan edition. Everyone be sure to wish him a happy birthday on Twitter -- he's @ChrisBrogan if you're not following him.

We'll start off with a cool little tool that David Spinks shared this last Friday on Twitter. Fotobabble let's you make photos a lot more fun by adding a voice over to the photo. What a cool way to really alter the way you experience something as common as a photo. I've got a little vacation coming up mid-April that my family isn't coming along on so I'm looking forward to using this to document my trip. So very cool. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. Can't wait to see how it works? Just click the image below for a demo.

 

Sticking with the photography theme... how about Customized Travel Planning for the budding photographer? Enter PhotoTours (found via Springwise). From the site:

Photours combines the art of travel and photography. We offer educational photographic tours that capture your imagination. Founded by 2 professional photographers tired of tours that took them to wonderful places only to find that most of our time was taken up with hurried visits to “the sites”, itineraries so packed that no time was left to truly appreciate the local culture and least of all be creative. We decided to combine our years of experience as educators, teaching photography workshops, as well as leading educational travel groups to provide what the market lacked…the type of trip that we ourselves would like to take!

With travel being such a crowded category, what a cool way to differentiate. But go farther. Think about this kind of thinking applied at the destination level. What if cities like New Orleans packaged jazz trips, cajun cooking trips or maybe dive bar trips? The packaging is easy, costs little and in a city like New Orleans, the possibilities are almost endless. Your town or country could do the same. Or maybe you'll create the "dive bars of the US" tour company. The consumer just picks a city and you do the rest. I could even see established brands like the FoodNetwork doing this with shows like Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives. For folks like me that are into that kind of food, we could follow Guy's footsteps and eat our way across a state, region or country.

 
And lastly, as location based is THE word in social media today I found this interesting...

Ladies and gents, I give you Checkin Mania. 

It's an über stalking tool that lets you monitor check-ins on Foursquare, Gowalla and looks to be adding Brightkite and Yelp soon. 

I tested it for New Orleans and the Gowalla integration seems snappy but the Foursquare data seems to lag and in some cases not populate at all. The interface is simple enough... drag the little person icon to the area you want to view, zoom in and presto, you see all the marked locations. Click on a location in the side bar and the check-in information for that location pops up. If you want to see the other platforms you simply click on their tabs and the list of locations changes to correspond to that platform.

Currently the usage pretty much stops there but I'm guessing Checkin Mania and a few other smart peeps are already brainstorming marketing leverage to bring to this platform. 

That's it for this week peeps. Thoughts? Ideas? Cool stuff that you've found and might want to share? I can hear you now so speak up.