Category — Social Media

If you’re addicted to Foursquare, then you know the “special sauce” that makes this application a perfect synergy between social networking, gaming, and business.  The Foursquare fad hit Miami about two months ago and I’ve been HOOKED!  The application (available on a host of smartphone platforms) does a terrific job mixing social networking with a real business model.

Last time I wrote about e-mail it was 6 Tips for Successful Nightclub Weekly Event E-mail Newsletters – but I didn’t mention anything about integrating social marketing into email.  That’s because it required it own blog.

Let’s look at the 4 commandments of integrating the two channels:

You’re Talking to Two Different Audiences

Nightclubs that cut and paste content and offers on social platforms and email campaigns dilute the value of opting in to each experience. If you send me the same offer on Facebook as you do on e-mail, one will be ignored. Therefore, be sure to alter tone and value based on the conversation. It’s worth the extra time and effort.

If Twitter is all about answering that seemingly simplest of questions, “What are you doing now?” then the newest location-based services are all about answering the more intriguing question, “What are you doing next?” The new location-based check-in services encourage people to share what they like, dislike, and generally think others might find interesting about the place they’re at right now in the context of the decision they’re about to make. As a nightlife marketer, these new check-in services, powered by social Web technology, are worth taking the time to understand.

One step that gets overlooked in most Nightlife social media strategies is how companies go about thanking their audience and customers. Your customers and audiences play a significant role in whether your online marketing strategy will succeed, especially if it focuses around social media. Saying “thank you” is now just as important as understanding where and how to communicate with them.

Don’t Say Thank You With Your Own Products or Services

Unless you give your customers a key to your venue, saying “thank you” with your own “stuff” comes off as self serving and a bit tacky. This amounts to silently saying, “I’m too lazy to get you a gift that you’d appreciate.”

Nightlife professionals, as you prepare for 2010, there’s one thing you can count on: your job in online marketing won’t get any easier compared to last year or the year before that.

Why?

The proliferation of consumer devices, technology advances such as real-time search, and the popularity of social networks all bring new complexity to marketing strategies.

That means you need to figure out how to connect with consumers who are playing FarmVille and Mafia Wars, friending and unfriending each other, shooting and posting video and photos, tweeting, and more.

There is good news of sorts on the economic front. If you believe Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the recession is likely over and the nation’s economy is on the road to recovery. But for the Nightclubs and Lounges (that survived) who have had to weather the economic storm with diminished resources, the outlook isn’t so rosy yet.  Cash-strapped Nightclub owners are still scrambling to do more with less, including promoting.

For every comment received on our Blog in December 2009, The Creative Complex will donate $1 to www.charitywater.org.  Every 20 comments can give one person clean, safe drinking water for 20 years.

Almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean drinking water. That’s one in eight of us. charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.

Doesn’t that make you thirtsy to start commenting?  We hope so!

We knew it was going to happen eventually, but many digital marketers were taken somewhat by surprise when it happened all at once. Seemingly overnight, the era of social search dawned. Bing just started to incorporate tweets into search results, with Google right on its heels.

Then Google announced social search. Unlike most Google rollouts, it’s available to everyone right off the bat (so if you’re still pining for a Google Wave or Voice invitation, at least you’ve got something new from the company to keep you busy in the meantime).

 
In March I wrote an article titled “Should My Venue Have a Twitter Account?”.  It’s been 6 months, and Twitter has seen the death of Michael Jackson, Kanye West’s “jackass” moment, and a slew of other headlines that nearly shut the social media giant down.  I hope my question has become rhetorical.