Which is why I was intrigued by Viggle when Access started working with them.

The premise: You pop open Viggle on your phone or tablet while watching TV, and let it listen to what you’re watching. It’ll recognize the show and allow you to check in. Every time you check in, you earn points, which can be redeemed for actual prizes.

Not badges or titles. Actual stuff people want and can use. Like gift cards, deals, t-shirts. I love t-shirts.

I can vouch personally. I saved up about 65,000 points over the course of around 6 months (the typical point total for an hour-long show is around 100-200) and traded in 62,000 for a $25 gift card at Best Buy.

Let me emphasize that point: this isn’t like the “Free iPad” posts your crazy aunt posts on Facebook in between her Obama rants and Kenny Loggins Jesus pics. Viggle is 100% legitimate. And it kicks ass.

Here’s a few reasons why I think this app has a bright future:

1. It gives me (and every other user) a reason to watch live TV, which I almost never do.
2. It incentivizes me to tune in to shows I never would otherwise (such as Nashville. I made it 6 minutes before stabbing myself.) This happens because Viggle offers extra points for checking into certain “featured” shows
3. It keeps me from turning the channel (unless I’m watching Nashville.) This happens because Viggle offers in-show features such as trivia games and the “MyGuy” fantasy-style game during sporting events that actually require me to stick with the show and play along to earn extra points.
   

   Example of a featured show on Viggle. This is fashion show starring PitBull. PitBull keeps getting nice things, somehow!

4. It has rewards. Actual rewards.

There are some downsides. Viggle doesn’t pick up certain channels, and only recognizes your DVR’d shows within a day or two of the original airing. Viggle has limits on the amount of points you can earn, but they fall well within limits of normal human TV habits. It’ll take you a while to earn something, but that’s okay because you also checked in to that Waffle House for over a year to become mayor, and that put absolutely zero into your pocket.

The only other drawback is they need to expand their rewards options, but I think that’s coming soon.

It’s free and worth a try, so why not give it a whirl?

The post Viggle: Where I Actually Got Something for Checking In appeared first on Brandon Carter.

The Bad

I went to Big O Tires in West Valley City, Utah, to get my car inspected and tag renewed. This normally takes 10 minutes at autoshops, and I was told it would only take that long at Big O. 30 minutes into my visit my car hasn’t moved and I’m standing at the counter watching the attendant on the phone. Not talking on the phone, just holding it to her ear. I sat back down and waited, because I can’t stand confrontation and assumed my car was next in line.

20 minutes after that I’m standing in front of the counter while a couple of bros munch on some Taco Bell at each of the cash registers, talkin’ bout cars and the Super Bowl. Curious how long until they’d acknowledge me, I stood there and stared at them. After about 5 minutes, I said “Excuse me” and they reacted as if I’d interrupted the birth of a child or something.

“WHAT?!” they blurted.

I asked for my keys back, and as I was walking out the door the lady who was no longer with her phone says “We had a stall in one of the bays.”

Great to know. A piss poor experience on every level.

The Expected

Today I went to another shop, Performance Emissions and Inspections. I walked out in five minutes with my car inspected. I didn’t get a cheerful reception and I’m not thrilled with the price, but I had the experience I expected. This is a BIG DAMN DEAL these days. I’ll go back to these guys again.

Look, I wanted simple car service. I don’t think any reasonable person in the world expects much from car service: be honest, be fair. Unlike the grocery store, or a hair salon, I’m not looking for smiles and candy canes. just fix my damn car. When I’m standing at the counter, take a few moments to pause the Taco Bell grunting to acknowledge me. Don’t choke on your Doritos Loco taco when I ask for something.

People have asked why I didn’t say anything to the Big O people. I can’t stand confrontation, especially with strangers. I’m quite content to walk away and spend my money elsewhere (and in really crusty cases like this, blog.) I believe there are a lot of you out there who would do the same.

It comes down to this: know your expectations and surpass them. If you can’t surpass them, ensure you’re excellent at the bare minimum, which is to give people exactly what they expect when walking in your door. If you can’t deliver that, in a social media-driven world where opinions can spread like wildfire, then you can expect to close up shop soon.

The post The Good, the Bad, the Expected appeared first on Brandon Carter.

When I started in PR, for an NBA franchise, my mission was fairly straightforward: work with the media to make sure the team was always portrayed in a positive light. I would want a player covered in a particular magazine, and I would have a conversation with an editor to sell him on the idea, as an example.

As I progressed, I learned I could accomplish more by moving outside the traditional “pitch and sell” method of media relations. Some of it I picked up from my boss, like reminding a local writer that the team bought a lot of ads in their paper. Some of it I learned myself, such as leaking pieces of information to create a favor debt that I could cash in on later, or having the team mascot show up at some kid’s birthday party.

PR has a lot of shades of gray, obviously. I’ve tried to do things the white hat way since, sticking to building relationships with journalists and providing reliable sources. Everything has moved online now, and “journalists” are being replaced by bloggers, pundits and influencers. In other words, the social media world. In many ways, the ole rules have been tossed out the window.

Trust Me, I’m Lying.

A few months back I heard about Ryan Holiday, a PR flack for American Apparel, Tucker Max and others. Ryan has a reputation as a trickster, or someone who uses every advantage the web gives him to create buzz for his clients – leaking false information anonymously, creating provocative content just for the public outrage, defacing billboards then alerting bloggers about the vandalism.

Seems Ryan had made his way into dozens of respected media outlets simply by posing as an expert for open press queries. He then got even more publicity for having gotten all that publicity, all in the name of promoting his book, “Trust Me, I’m Lying.”

Consider me interested. I like a clever PR stunt as much as anyone (unless it’s an obvious celebrity ploy, such as a “leaked” sex tape.) So I picked up the book, and was impressed with Holiday’s honesty and candor. He openly admits to manipulating bloggers and the online media’s lack of attention to details. He outlines his tactics and why they work, and also suggests how you can do the same.

He makes no apologies, and offers no solutions. And I think there’s a lot that content creators and PR people can learn, for good and evil.

Pageviews are Currency

The most popular blogs today judge their success based on one metric: pageviews. It how they sell ads and how many of them base their writers’ pay. What gets people to click and read is what gets written over and over, whether that’s cat pictures or celebrity speculation. One of Holiday’s tactics was to plant a story with an anonymous tip, then paid to send traffic to that post, ensuring most posts of the same ilk would be written. It’s the modern version of yellow PR feeding yellow journalism.

Journalism is for Other People

The pageview currency means stories are churned out fast. That leaves no time for fact checking and speaking with multiple sources, both absolute pillars of journalism. What you get is Trickle-Up journalism, where a story starts out on a small blog, gets enough pageviews that a larger blog picks up the story, and eventually leads to a major traditional media outlet picking up the story and providing national legitimacy.

That’s happened for years, but today it happens with unprecedented swiftness. And when no one is double checking facts or getting sources on record, it can ruin lives and massively misinform the public.

Apologies are… Whatever.

Believe me, nothing kills a PR person quicker than an outlet publishing a controversial story without soliciting an official response first. You have to contact the writer, contest their claims, fight like hell for a retraction or a rewrite or hope that they’ll delete incorrect content.

As Holiday bemoans in much of the second half of the book, apologies don’t happen in the online world. Trickle-Up journalism means blogs can report whatever they want, so long as it’s pinned on their source (which is a smaller blog, usually.) Posts that require new information, or corrections, usually just have a simple annotation at the bottom, which will be seen by about 1% of the readers. Sometimes you get a new post with your source cited, but the original post remains. It’ll live on forever in search results, RSS feeds, Wikipedia citations and so on.

Can We Change?

As I mentioned, Holiday confesses to using shady tactics and says he will continue to do so. He wants the system to change, but has no solution, and will continue to work within the flaws to do his job. It’s not my approach, but it works for him and mine works for me (granted, I’m a Utah content marketer with B2B specialties and he’s an NYC B2C publicist.)

What has to happen to fix the system? We need to change. Internet consumers need to hold media outlets and bloggers to higher standards. PR people need to be vigilant in protecting their clients and proactive in building their own message.

For social media types, content creators? It all boils down to this: there is a need for content creators to abide by some basic journalism standards. Have high standards for your sources, vet out every claim and earn your pageviews (and dollars) by having better, more useful content than anyone else in your industry.

I try so hard not to be a cynic, but if I’m being honest, I say there’s no way either of those things will happen. In fact, I expect consumer appetite for actual journalism will continue to wither while content creators get more and more focused on whatever it takes to earn that pageview.

I really hope I’m wrong.

The post Subversive Content: Trust Me, I’m Lying appeared first on Brandon Carter.

For me, his tales of endless weeknight drinking, sleepin’ in the work john, and two day diets consisting of buffalo wings on top of a taco salad, among others, strike me as exactly the type of behavior I’d be engaging in if, Lord forbid, I ever got divorced.

Deplorable as Karl may be, with his chest beefer obsession and susceptibility to drunken rampages in White Castle parking lots, I do have to admire his particular brand. So much that I really, genuinely admire some of the finer aspects of Karl’s style.

1. Your brand doesn’t have to be for everyone.

It’s true.  Karl talks a lot about going to ‘Bees, drinkin’ top shef margs and putting moves on the babes. Except he always gets shot down. It’s a harsh reminder that your brand isn’t for everyone. Craft your brand to your core demographic, around their wants and needs, and don’t worry too much about the outside world. They can come into contact with it – like the babes at Applebees – then experience it, and walk away; yet it should connect when the right lady comes by (in Karl’s case, his coworker Ken’s wife, who was looking for hot carnal passions during a rough patch in her marriage.)

2. Social media is best when its planned.

DadBoner is as consistent as a clock. His tweets pop up at about 3PM Eastern Time every day, even Sunday, continue for an hour or two (each tweet is spaced around 10 minutes apart) and then *poof* he’s gone, until tomorrow. On occasion he’ll pop up during a Lions game or the middle of the night after a drunken celebraish, which kind of feels like bonus Boner. A true surprise and delight tactic.

But it’s a good lesson that I need to take to heart: limit your social media intake, as well your output. Jump in for about 20 minutes at a time, which is enough to read a little bit and post a little bit. While in there, might as well as throw in some personal tweetin’ so you don’t keep it all business, all the time.

3. Always be pushing the brand upward and onward.

The mayor of Bad Boy Town, USA, is never content to sit idly by, watching life pass him by. No, Karl has an endless stream of ideas and concepts to branch out the ‘Boner brand: Capt. Karl’s Pizza Ship (concept restaurant, cheetos as a topping for anything), Gatorpagne (hangover remedy, Gatorade and champagne. Pretty ingenious, actually), TimeHouse (a Penthouse magazine with a Time cover, for the man with raging carnal passions but the desire to be dignified on the john), a screenplay for a Roadhouse sequel starring Guy Fieri and so on.

The takeaway: always be planning the next step for your brand, looking forward to see where your audience may be heading and how your brand needs to evolve alongside consumer tastes. Even if most of the ideas don’t take, like all of Karl’s, you need to have options and be prepared when the right one hits.

I’m one of those types that never gets the big, obvious points that I’m supposed to, but I’ll still walk away with little, unintentional details. Like the hidden genius behind Dadboner, and how elements of it can be applied to marketing. I might be a corncob, but I know a good thing when I see it.

The post 3 Marketing Lessons I Learned from @DadBoner appeared first on Brandon Carter.

I need to just hit publish.

“Vacancy” By Leighton Smith.

We all do. No one looks for perfection from bloggers, and a large chunk of what is published is imperfect, incomplete or even misguided. But, I’ve learned, as long as your post isn’t something totally idiotic such as “Hitler was really misunderstood…” it’s okay to let it fly. At worst it’s ignored, but you never know what’s going to hit a nerve.

I have four unpublished posts from the past couple months. One is an uninspired breakdown of fake Facebook profiles, another is a ten pager about the idiocy of the Chick Fil A Day. I’m not going to publish them now because the time has passed, but I missed out on a lot by not letting them fly when I wrote them.

At best, the post reveals a bit about yourself to readers, and even if they’re angry, you give yourself a chance to explain rationale OR to show growth in your thinking.

Just hit publish.

The post Just Hit Publish appeared first on Brandon Carter.

The post Talkin’ Facebook: When to Be You, When to be a Brand appeared first on Brandon Carter.

As part of my work with Access Development, I manage and contribute to a couple other blogs. The Access Loyalty Blog keeps a corporate focus on what’s happening within Access and within the loyalty and rewards industry. It’s a great company to work for and has some very cool services that I’m proud to write about.

Friend2Customer is a new initiative from Access. It’s a service focused on bringing customers to the Facebook pages of small businesses. I’m happy to contribute to their efforts, as I’m all about social media for small business, which is a lot different than social for the big boys. Friend2Customer is designed with that in mind, and The Friend2Customer Facebook Marketing Blog gives me an opportunity to offer some pretty specific executions that are for us small-timers trying to make it big in the world.

If there’s a post I’m particularly proud of, I’ll mention it over here. Hope you don’t mind.

I’m working on a couple more guest blogging opportunities in the near future, so if for some weird reason you want more access to my opinions, then stay tuned.

On a side note, all of the blogs that I manage now run on the Genesis Framework for WordPress. I’m not an affiliate and won’t earn any money if you use it, but I’m really impressed with their designs, performance and most of all, SEO performance. Try them out, particularly the Eleven40 theme, obviously.

The post Social Media Blogging appeared first on Brandon Carter.

It’s the double-edged sword of a great, interactive Facebook presence. You’ll attract a big crowd that actually comes into your location and spends money with you. That’s great. But if something goes wrong for some of them, they’ll come to your page to complain, because they know you’ll respond.

That’s a good thing. Yes, you want your customers complaining on Facebook because you want to hear and solve their complaints, instead of them simply sharing their bad experience with their friends and/or never coming back.

Also, a complaint is simply an invitation to convert a person into a fan. Think of it as an invitation to make things right. But there is risk – mishandle an angry customer, or simply ignore them, and your wall can go up in flames with angry posts from his/her network. Yes, customer anger goes viral.

Keep these steps in mind when dealing with an upset customer and you should be just fine:

1. Know When It Happens – Set up alerts so you know when something is posted to your wall, or when you receive a message. If you don’t check email very often, then set up text alerts or push notifications. Speed is critical, and the sooner your response comes, the quicker the customer will be to simmer down.
2. Don’t Delete – I can’t emphasize this enough. The quickest way to turn one angry customer into a full fledged mob is to delete posts and/or ban users. Taking away someone’s voice only makes them angrier.
3. Respond Publicly – If the upset customer posts something on your wall, don’t delete. Respond publicly. Add a comment acknowledging their issue and that you’re looking into it. Ignore this if they contact you privately – keep that conversation between you and the customer.
4. Take It Offline – When you respond to a public comment, ask them to give you a call or email you. You don’t want to hash out details or even your resolution offer in the public eye. =
5. Make It Right – This is simple. Hear their complaints and fix the problem. Throw in a resolution offer to show you’re truly sorry. Yes, it’s not cool to have to give away a meal, or a free pedicure, but consider the lifetime value of the customer. If you turn that customer into a fan, they could have hundreds of visits to your establishment. They could share their good experience with dozens of friends, who tell friends, who tell friends, and so on. That’s thousands of dollars, if not more, in exchange for a freebie.

I can say from personal experience that many of the people who are willing to complain publicly are also willing to praise publicly. There’s a reason why customer service on social networks is much more responsive than “offline” channels. Your public success or failure will influence potential customers for years to come.

The post The Five Rules of Facebook Customer Service appeared first on Brandon Carter.

Brandon is now listening to * embarrassing pop song from the 90s* on Spotify!

Quite frankly I just don’t think most people care what I’m listening to, except other Spotify users who may be curious about my playlists.

In controlling options for apps that can publish content to my news feed, I have four options: Public, Friends, Custom List (Close Friends, College, Hometown, etc), or Only Me.

Why not add an option to allow “Others Who Use This App” to see updates?

Social media types often speak of relevance, or the idea of creating content that is relevant to your audience. Google+ is built around the idea, forcing users to select which circles their friends should be in, thus dividing them into related groups so that content can be specifically shared with a relevant audience.

Facebook was late to the game as far as lists/circles, and their sorting features are still not so great. This is one obvious, easy way to cut down on the clutter and MySpace’ishness that gets worse with each passing day.

Yes, I could go through and create a list of people who use Spotify, but manually adding and subtracting people as they begin and cease to use the program is just inefficient and unsustainable.

Think about how such an option would apply to the games so many people are annoyed by. Farmville people really care what Farmville people are doing – why not enable that? The rest of us loathe Farmville, but Farmville users could Farmville each other to death with this option enabled.

If only there was an option to not see thousands of tacky images with “clever” saying overlaid on them…

QWTN875R4476

The post One Feature Facebook Needs to Add TODAY appeared first on Brandon Carter.

The people who sell likes are getting rich beyond their wildest imaginations. And the smart ones, or someone else altogether, are about to get even richer by selling likes AND engagement.

Yes, Facebook Engagement is the Internet’s next big goldmine.

No, I don’t condone it. Purchasing likes and engagement is abhorrent to my social media soul. I’m just calling it like I see it, and I see these scammers getting incredibly rich.

Let’s Go Buy Some Likes!

You wouldn’t believe the companies, celebrities, musicians, even politicians that have purchased likes. It’s a lot of people you would think would be able to garner a large amount of fans without hardly any promotion. Instead, these accounts have millions of fake accounts that they’ve paid to like them. Why? It’s an old school way of thinking, that likes are the most important measure of success on Facebook.

This looks like a Herbert to me. Definitely a legit account.

It reminds me of the desire of some of my former PR clients to be featured in printed publications. It didn’t matter to them that the real win was an online article that had some nice anchor text hyperlinks, that a potential customer could use to immediately visit that clients’ website and submit a contact form. No, if they couldn’t hold it in their hands and turn the pages, it wasn’t real to them.

These guys who purchase Facebook likes are the same way. The “if my page has less than 1,000 likes, it doesn’t exist,” mentality that completely ignores whether any of those 1,000 ever see the page’s content or give a shit about the company in the first place.

Here Comes Edgerank, and $$$

But they’ll come around. They’ll realize that Facebook LOVES engagement. They love pages that earns comments, likes, posts, mentions, shares and all that jazz. The pages that get that engagement are the ones Facebook promotes front and center on News Feeds and Search Results.

It’s called EdgeRank. It’s Facebook’s algorithm that decides what’s important, what’s legit and what’s worth making sure people see. Much like Google’s algorithm, it factors in a lot of elements, such as links, interactions, quality (does it have a photo?), and so on. If you have great EdgeRank, then you’ll show up in nearly every one of your fans’ News Feeds and in Facebook searches. If your EdgeRank sucks, no one will find you.

Right now, the pages that buy likes are getting crushed in EdgeRank, because Facebook sees a ton of traffic but zero engagement. The interaction has to be there for Facebook to care, and for these pages to see any benefits.

And someone out there will be smart enough to capitalize on it. They’ll provide a thousand or a million accounts, all connecting, commenting, liking, sharing and, to the average onlooker, feel 100% legitimate. Right now you can buy “shares” of a post for a couple hundred, so it’s already starting.

Nut Check for Facebook

Facebook has to be on top of the issue, and able to recognize which accounts are buying this behavior. They need to shut it down, because it’s going to piss the hell out of those of us who are legitimately trying to engage with real people and build our pages out organically.

What do you think about pages who buy likes? Do you agree with me that engagement is the higher calling on Facebook? Let me know in the comments.

The post The Next Internet Millionaires (Are Scammers) appeared first on Brandon Carter.