Yesterday, I bought a new pair of shoes. That, in and of itself, is not much of a shocker. I don’t even bother to try to hide my shoe obsession.

What I did, however, after buying the shoes, may interest you. I took a photo of them with my  iPhone and posted it to my personal Facebook profile. I then wrote a little blurb saying where I’d bought the shoes, and encouraging my similarly shoe-obsessed girlfriends to check the store out. I became an ambassador for the Freedman Shoe Outlet on 4th and Burrard today.

And I’m not the only one. Every day, people post online about where they’re eating, buying shoes, or getting the best deals on electronics. It’s our nature to want to share when we’ve gotten a smoking deal, great customer service, or a fabulous dinner. I would like to believe that we do this because we want our friends to also score a good deal or eat the most amazing creme brulee ever. Probably, however, in reality, it’s because we like to make our friends jealous.

It’s not hard to create ambassadors for your business. If you make it easy for people to talk about you, and you give them something to talk about, they will. This means making sure you have “Follow Us on Twitter!” or “Like us on Facebook!” buttons on your website, so that people can easily start following you with one click. You should also make sure you have sharing buttons on your site, so that people can easily Tweet about you or talk about you on Facebook to their friends. When you do see someone Tweeting about you or talking about you on Facebook, be sure to thank them. A little appreciation goes a long way.

On Monday, I gave you some tips about how to handle negative feedback from your clientele.  In keeping with that, check out this great article on Mashable: 5 Ways to Turn Social Customers Into Brand Ambassadors.

Witness my love/hate relationship with Starbucks.

While I resent them for being a huge, faceless corporation that sells, for the most part, terrible-tasting, too sweet, overpriced caffeinated beverages, I still go there. There’s one on every street corner, it seems, and the wifi works well with my computer.

And you’ve got to admire their ability to brand themselves.

While some Starbucks are starting to sell wine and beer (it will be years before our archaic liquor laws will allow you to have a glass of wine at a Starbucks in Canada), I am loving their mobile app, which they released a couple months ago.

You must understand that I download a lot of apps. I play with them, test them, and most of them are novelties that end up stuck in a file on the 7th page of my iPhone. The Starbucks app (iPhone, iPod Touch and Android), however, is brilliantly designed.

It has several great features. You can design your own drink, and of course check out what food offerings they have. Last year, I was dating a guy whose drink was a “Tall, in a Grande cup, Americano with three pumps of Toffee Nut Syrup and soy on the bar.” I think. I never could get it right without him writing it down. This new app allows you to remember your favorite drinks and your friends’ favorite drinks. Very convenient when you’re being sent on a 3pm coffee run for the office.

It also uses GPS to locate the nearest Starbucks to wherever you are. And it tells you if that Starbucks is open or not.

But my favorite part of the app is the payment option. We all probably have Starbucks cards lying around. You get them for your birthday, for prizes… If you register your card online at Starbucks.com, you can sign into that account through your phone, and pay for your purchases at Starbucks using your phone. It’s a very cool feature.

I have often set off to an early-morning yoga class with just my mat, keys, and phone, and bought myself a coffee to sip on the walk. It’s brilliant.

Other app-makers: take note! This one is a winner.

One of the main reasons businesses give me for not wanting to jump into social media is because they are afraid of being flamed. Putting yourself out there involves a certain amount of risk: what if someone says something negative about you?

Here’s the truth: people are going to talk about you. Either positively or negatively. But they will talk about you. Isn’t it better to know?? At least, if you know, you can take steps to repair the damage, and perhaps turn that customer around.

1. You need to monitor your feeds. You need to check in with your Facebook Page your Twitter account, and your blog comments at least once a day. Social media tools are rapidly becoming the latest and best customer service tools, rapidly replacing the telephone and even email.

2. Don’t assume that you are getting the whole picture. People may be talking about you, but may not be aware that you have a Facebook Page or a Twitter account. They could be talking about you on other blogs. So, you need some additional tools: Google Alerts (which will scan the interwebz for blog posts that mention your business’ name), a running Twitter search (also scanning for your name, and easy enough to set up if you are using a program like Hootsuite), and every once in a while, type your business’ name into the search feature on Facebook.

3. Making it right. This is a tough one, partly because we live in a “the customer is always right” world. And let’s face it: the customer isn’t always right. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so it may be better to err on the side of caution. If something genuinely has gone wrong, your first step is to acknowledge that. Simply acknowledging that there is a problem will allay most of the negative feelings. Then, do what you can to make it right. Also, know when to address comments in public (usually at first, so that anyone who visits your site afterwards can see that it was dealt with) and when to address in private (negotiating a deal). I do not recommend you delete negative comments.

Check out this article on AllFacebook.

Once upon a time, last year to be exact, in the midst of cold, cold February, I got a new stereo installed in my car so I’d have music and podcasts to keep me company on the long drive up the Hope-Princeton to Penticton. I was braving cold and winter driving conditions to attend the very first Eat.Drink.Tweet Conference, put on by my friend Allison Markin of All She Wrote Consulting.

It was a hoot. I had a deliciously good time: got to stay at a swank guest house, met a whole raft of cool people, presented my YouTube workshop, ate some fantastic food, and, yes, I drank some wine. You can read about my Eat.Drink.Tweet experience here.

And I’m not the only one. Allison’s little conference sold out, was trending on Twitter for three days (a funny story about that in a sec), and won The Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association’s 2011 award for Social Media Initiative.

In a tragedy of epic proportions, I can’t attend this year, due to a work conflict. But you should really go, especially if you are in the wine/food/cultural tourism business. The connections and information you’ll be able to take away from the weekend will be immense. Heck, even if you don’t do that stuff for a living, and you just like good food and wine, you should go!

And now, a social media cautionary tale: on the first night of the conference last year, Friday, we attended the keynote by Rick Bakas, then a wine tasting of local Naramata Bench wineries. Allison announced that if we could make the hashtag #Eat.Drink.Tweet trend on twitter, she would get a tattoo with the EDT logo. In the true spirit of social media (transparency and authenticity), Allison got her tattoo.

As you are likely well aware, I have been obsessed with Pinterest since September. In case you are still unfamiliar with this latest social media craze, Pinterest is an online visual inspiration board. It allows you to collect images (or “pins”) of things and group them into thematically-based “boards.” I use mine primarily to collect inspiration for my food blog, but there are so many beautiful things on there that I have many, many other boards, and have been known to lose chunks of my life scrolling through Pinterest.

I also recently wrote a blog post about Tumblr. While I still haven’t started Tumbling, I do understand Tumblr’s appeal. It sits smack-dab somewhere in between a blog and Twitter. I consider myself to be a writer, so I am going to stick with WordPress, but many people who either don’t consider themselves to be writers, or who find coming up with fresh blogging content daunting, are turning to Tumblr instead, which is a multi-media rich blogging platform that focuses more on photo and video than words.

Both platforms allow you to easily “re-tweet” what others have posted. On Pinterest, it’s called “Repinning,” and on Tumblr, “Reblogging.” This allows you to easily and quickly, with a minimum of effort, share content that you find interesting. Pinterest and Tumblr also play very nicely together.

This week, a very interesting blog post was published about the “stickiness” of Tumblr and Pinterest. When you are looking at your social media success, there are several factors to take into consideration: numbers, certainly, the amount of engagement, and the amount of time people are spending on your site, or stickiness. Turns out, I’m not the only one with a Pinterest obsession: visitors, on average, spent 88 minutes per month on Pinterest, and 141 on Tumblr, only topped by Facebook (394 minutes).

If people are spending that kind of time on Pinterest and Tumblr, should your business be on them? Maybe, if those platforms fit for you.

Who out there is using Pintrest and/or Tumblr for business? I’d love to hear from you.

Change. If you are drinking the Social Media Kool-Aid, then you have to accept that dealing with constant change is a given. It’s a double-edged sword: it keeps things interesting, you’ll never be bored, but on the other hand, it is a constant challenge keeping up.

Social Media is really starting to come into its own. And, as such, it’s starting to be more and more accepted in businesses where traditionally, it was met with fear. Finances, insurance, health care, all examples of businesses that wouldn’t have touched Facebook with a 10-foot-pole two years ago, are now jumping on the bandwagon.

Still, there’s a lot of caution out there. Businesses are worried about confidentiality, loss of privacy, and being flamed. One thing that may help them to feel more comfortable is a Social Media Communications Policy.

One of my favorite Social Media Communications Policies comes from the earlier days of Microsoft. It was, simply, “don’t say anything stupid” (reference: Friends with Benefits). But that might not work for everyone, so here are some ideas you might want to consider.

Who is going to be responsible for your social media? In some organizations, there is one person who manages all the social media. They may do the Twitter and Facebook postings, but blog posts might be contributed from various members of the team. The social media person would then edit and publish those posts according to their calendar. Other organizations encourage all employees to have individual Twitter accounts. In this case, employees would need to be trained on the appropriate use and etiquette of Twitter.

How Transparent are you? Authenticity and Transparency are basic tenets of Social Media. There is no trust without them, everything is built on the honour system. Many businesses, however, are understandably concerned about putting out content that reflects a negative change in their organization, or something they are struggling with, for fear it will reflect badly on them. Either way could be right, but you have to decide how deeply you are willing to go.

Nitty-Gritty: What Social Media tools will you use, and how often will you use them?

Comments Policy: what behavior is acceptable for fans posting on your Social Media sites? What comments will you delete? This needs to be posted in a place where everyone can see it.

Many organizations are still very concerned about negativity, which falls into two categories: either their customers will say something negative about them, or their employees will say something negative about them. In the first instance, the truth is, you don’t have any control over what your customers are saying about you. If they have something bad to say, they are going to say it. Isn’t it better to know so you can do something about it?

In the second instance, we’ve all heard examples of employees who have lost their jobs because of dumb stuff they’ve said through Facebook and Twitter. It is the hope that common sense prevails, but this isn’t always the case…

Resources:

What’s your Policy on Social Media?

Mashable

Nova Scotia Gov’t Social Media Policy

Creating a Social Media Policy for your Non-Profit

Canada Post’s Social Media Policy for Employees

Last June, I got to present at Social Media Camp Victoria. It was a hoot. I met tons of cool people, got to go to some really cool workshops, and we had drinks at Clive’s (if you are ever in Victoria, you MUST go).

I also got interviewed in the Podcast Tent by Bob Garlik and Kimberley Plumley for The Garlik and Plum Jam Podcast. The podcast tent was set up in a hallway of the Victoria Convention Centre, and it was a thing of beauty. I was so excited to be interviewed–it was a blast to talk about all the things I love so much in social media, and also about deep fried butter. Yes.

Listen to the Garlik and Plum Podcast here.

It’s here!! It’s here!!

As of mid-December, Facebook started rolling out its new personal profile interface called Timeline. Now, Timeline is hardly a new thing: those of us who are of the nerdier variety (ahem!) have been using it since mid-September. Facebook had meant to roll Timeline out earlier, but they became embroiled in a lawsuit over the name. There’s very little information out there about what exactly happened, whether Facebook is just forging ahead because might makes right, or if they, in fact, settled with the other party. Whatever the case, Timeline has started to become available as of December 22.

Everyone will eventually get it, and resistance, as with the Borg, is futile. But if you want to get it right away, go to this page and click the “Get it Now” button.

Do you have Timeline yet? And if you do, what do you think of it?

Here’s a bunch of resources to help you make the transition:

• A tour of the New Facebook Timeline (avec moi)

• Timeline Privacy Tweaks: one of the main complaints that people have about Timeline is that it makes it a bit too easy to investigate your past. Which you may prefer hidden. Here are some things you can do to keep everyone from seeing those drunken photos.

• 14 Tips and Tricks to Make Your New Facebook Timeline Awesome.

• 10 Facebook Timeline Designs that Will Blow You Away, and this article on using Cover Images for promotional content by Mari Smith: your Cover image is the large image at the top of the page that spans the entire width. Of course, some clever people have already thought of ways they can use this for marketing purposes.

• Facebook Timeline Began As An Overnight Hack Built By Four People, just in case you were curious about its origins. (h/t @pamsdoll).

Well, it’s that time of the year, kids. A time to look back, reflect, and see what went right (and not-so-right) in 2011.

Without further ado, here are the year’s top posts:

10. How to Use… QR Codes. Relatively new in North America, but very mainstream in Japan (where they were invented), the marketing potential for QR codes is pretty immense.

9. Three Twitter Analytics Tools. Seems like every day someone is inventing a new tool to help you analyze how your tweets are doing and improve your performance. Here are my three faves.

8. Do Artists Deserve This? When Sun Media interviewed Margie Gillis, a dancer from Quebec and raked her over the coals for taking government support, it sparked outrage on the blogosphere.

7 & 6. How to Create a Facebook Landing Page & Creating a Facebook Splash Page with Allison Markin. Splash or Landing Tabs for your Facebook biz page help to increase the amount of “likes” you get and are a great way to introduce newbies to your page.

5. Average Lifespan of a Post: Facebook vs Twitter. How long does a Facebook post or a Tweet last before it’s buried in the stream?

4. “I Need a Starbucks” Lessons in Branding. A trip to Seattle inspired this one.

3. The Role of Social Media in the Vancouver Riot. I think this is the best post I wrote last year. Clearly some of you liked it, too.

2. Pinterest. My new obsession.

1. The Facebook Share Button. When Facebook launched their new “share” button a few months back, it made it much easier for us to share info we’d stumbled across on the ‘net. This post shows you how to install it on your blog.

Thanks for reading in 2011! Here’s to a kick-ass 2012!

Thanks so much for reading, commenting and asking questions in 2011! I appreciate it so much!!

I want to wish all of you a very happy Christmas, and a fantastic 2012!