Warren Whitlock

Archive for the ‘marketing strategy’ Category

Froe Mashable: Google Energy: Google Can Now Buy and Sell Electricity

Google’s ever-expanding empire has added another branch: subsidiary Google Energy has been granted an order by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to buy and sell energy at market rates.

Does this mean Google is set to become your power company? Not yet — instead, Google wants more control over the high energy costs of its many data centers, and also aims to become carbon neutral. A Google spokesperson told CNET: “Right now, we can’t buy affordable, utility-scale, renewable energy in our markets. We want to buy the highest quality, most affordable renewable energy wherever we can and use the green credits.”

Google has been working toward energy autonomy for years. Green power, nuclear discussions, geo thermal and more.

Google has become a major user of power, and a powerful force in the world.

Will they now buy and sell electric power too?

I’ve been experimenting with a couple of tools that bridge databases to make it easier to reach friends and contacts where they want to be reached.

We’ll have an update on this weeks Social Media Radio Show.. including some stats on what social networks have the best connections and how one site promises to get 43% of your email list to open an email (unheard of on some mailing lists today).

With Facebook opening profiles to the search engines by default, this is going to get easier. I think that soon we’ll be able to talk directly to a contact in exactly the way they want to hear from us.. Text, Tweet, Post or Email. In the mean time, let’s make it easier to show where we want to be reached.

BusinessCard2 is trying to do that. I just updated my entry. You can get your own there free.

I read all the comments from this site. Some people don’t know that and still not sure how to reach me.

So I add this cool connection form. It should appear from time to time on posts and pages now. I just add a short code inside a post.

Send me a quick note and let me know it’s working.

We’ve been talking about the social media changing the speed at which we do business.

I say that when you can get real time information, the value of aged information is greatly reduced. That’s why people like Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

Now Google takes the next natural step with real time results from the social media above the older listings:

Now more than ever, we need to know what our customers, readers, friends, fans and foes are saying about our brand

I’m told that the big corporations provide jobs for millions of people who like to believe they are secure there. That’s not been my experience, but what do I know? I’ve been an entrepreneur for most of my life and never set policies for thousands of employees.

From my limited point of view, all employees of any sized company are people.. I do know a few things about people. 350 million of them are now on Facebook, with about a million per day joining. You got to figure that your employees, your customers and the public have found Facebook by now. I suspect that most employees with a computer know about it.

Yet today I’m reading Advertising Age (sorry no link.. I’ll explain below) and read that as many as 70% of companies surveyed are banning social media in the workplace. The article goes on to show how this is a dumb policy (duh) and suggests that “social media is like recess” and that happy employees will be more productive.

Recess?

To be fair, the lower ranking bullet points suggest that an employee may be able to keep up with information about their field and that maybe “brand evangilize” .. then concludes that we ought to consider letting folks use social media at work.

I was amused at the baby steps the author of this article was taking. I decided to leave a comment and suggest that “social media in the employee benefit package” is behind the times and that we should be pushing our people to use social media more to give better customer service, speed up communications and advance the goals of the company.

I wanted to leave a comment.. but Advertising Age still requires a login to participate.

I guess they think that commenting on their articles is recess and a privledge that I have to earn. No problem.. I’ll just log in and.. Wait! What’s this, you need me to confirm? … I can do that, Fire up the email window and click a link. DONE!

OK.. back to the article, scroll to the bottom, smile at the discussion about security issues and employees wasting time (so 2005).. there it is, the comment box. Typed in my 2 cents worth of added value and my user name and password and hit SUBMIT.

A new surprise.. another log in page. DRAT.. I’ve probalby lost my comment… no wonder I seldom comment on old media sites.. but I’m determined and log in for the 4th time.

That’s when I see this message:

This comment will cost you 1 credit. You have zero credits

That’s when I decided to put my comments here. No need to take on the old media, I’ll just bypass them… all I need is a link to that article. But first, let me reread it to make sure I’m quoting them right.

Oops. Can’t do that either. Seems my log in has alerted the system that I’m more engaged than a casual reader.

Access to this article is restricted to Advertising Age subscribers… click here to order

Advertising Age… the voice of the 20th Century Corporate Communications Paradigm (and quickly becoming irrelevant)

I’ve been hearing a lot from one of my favorite companies.

I purchased their product a couple of years back, used it, and been very happy with the outcome.

However, in the past few weeks, my email IN box has been flooded with special offers and announcements. Multiple items in each email with links to buy or give the product as a holiday gift. Special offers for new purchases but nothing that would enhance my use of the product or relationship with the company. Nothing to help me use the product better.

When I see nothing but “special sale” emails.. I begin to wonder “Is this company in trouble? Why are they so desperate?”

Today being Cyber Monday, I decided it was a good time to remove myself from a few of these mailing lists. I scrolled down to the bottom of today’s 23 offer email and found some fine print disclaimers and a few links.  I squinted to find the link that would unsubscribe me and noticed a button just above the fine print that invited me to become a fan on Facebook

Nothing for the fans who already bought?

Despite being there to drop my connection with this company, I must say I found it interesting that they were willing to pay $15 if I were to click on a button on Facebook.

I had to look.

I clicked through to the “fan page” and found 5 unanswered comments from customers using the product. All were politely asking for help with some small problem… no sign that anyone at the company saw them, let alone responded.

My first impression was that the company didn’t get social media (the professional way of saying “this sucks”).. so now I wanted to know: Is there any communication going on here?

Scrolling down, I found an ad for the $15 bribe and videos and photos posted by users, including an graphic with the word “PORN” .. but no comments on any of the wall posts.

Back to the email…

Preparing the post, I went back over a few emails to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that spoke to me as a user instead of just a person to help them get more sales… I had skipped to the bottom of today’s email and had missed this juicy headline:

we want to hear from you
review a product and help your fellow fans make the perfect choice

..followed by photos of their product line

(I’ve removed the product name before the word “fans”)

We have the tools today to segment our databases and provide a unique experience for our fans or customers.. speaking to each of them in a voice that makes sense and initiating a real conversation.

Just a couple of years back, a sales flyer from a company was expected.. and I believe still useful as one form of communication. However, when you decide to get into social media, and use terminology like you want to have a conversation.. you best be ready to have that conversation.

When you do engage your customers you will be adding real value and reap the benefits.