Category: Twitter

More big cities are experiencing a tasty phenomenon for lunchtime diners: gourmet food trucks setting up shop in parking lots and dedicated areas.

And yes, there is a social media side-dish that helps explain the recipe for success with food trucks.

In this week’s edition of SplashCast, host Renay San Miguel interviews Dallas food blogger Stephanie Hawkes, who keeps track of her city’s food truck scene at DFWFoodTruckFoodie.com. Stephanie also writes for the Food Networks’ Eat Street blog and has reported on social media and food trucks for Mobile Food News. She talks about the explosive growth in the DFW food truck scene and how this part of the restaurant industry uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest to develop their online communities of fans.

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I don’t normally like to write about the same topic two posts in a row. But then the Facebook IPO valuation started sinking well below the IPO pricing shortly after Monday’s Nasdaq trading started. That took the backlash against Mark Zuckerberg’s company that started with Friday’s less-than-stellar first day of trading to a higher level. And, it seems to me, is now including doubts about social media marketing in general.

I find those doubts in the comments of blog posts such as the one from Business Insider dated last Thursday, which includes an incredibly cluttered infographic taken from a recent Buddy Media conference. The post’s title, “This INSANE Graphic Shows How Complicated Social Media Marketing Is Now” is very effective clickbait; it’s been making the rounds on my Twitter feed since its publication. And the graphic itself is extraordinarily deceptive and obviously intended to help Buddy Media sell its products – many of the company logos crowding the graphic wouldn’t be relevant to any businesses’ use of social media marketing. They’re included simply because they’re social media-related.

A few of the post’s commenters shared my skepticism, but others saw it as their cue to pile on: social media marketing is a scam, those practicing it will be “flipping burgers” in a few years (in the words of one commenter), yada yada yada.

It was the same reaction to B.L. Ochman’s DigitalNext post on AdAge.com. Ochman took GM to task for its decision to stop spending money on Facebook ads, which we covered last Friday here on the Splash Media blog. Ochman argues that GM is unhappy with its results on Facebook because it’s putting up the wrong kind of content. Again, the commenter floodgates opened up; social media won’t get the same results as TV ads, companies don’t need to outsource their social media marketing, etc.

It doesn’t take much to get social media marketing’s critics screeching. The lackluster Facebook stock debut is fresh blood in the water for them. Just a few points to keep in mind:

• Social media is here to stay because it’s powered by the customers/users/consumers. Are social media’s critics expecting them to go away anytime soon? And some businesses will need outsourced services because they can’t come up with the content they need by themselves to generate leads. They’re a tad busy.
• Yes, Facebook needs to get its ads initiative together. No, people aren’t doing a whole lot of clicking right now on any kind of advertising on social media networks. But it’s only Round One in this fight, folks. Facebook’s geniuses still have time to crack this, and a third-party type may come up with a winning idea that stresses some kind of unique audience participation, probably on the mobile side of things.
• Social media marketers get to sell their products to prospective clients like anyone else (You seriously think we’re going to gripe about that?) Buddy Media has every right to use whatever content it can to push its products, just like Splash Media does. But we as marketing professionals also have to manage expectations well and not promise the moon. When we don’t, we shoot ourselves in both feet and give our critics plenty of ammunition to do the same.

Businesses get to ask all the questions they can about whether social media marketing is right for them. But they shouldn’t use the hype surrounding Facebook’s IPO pricing- and the accompanying Greek choruses of doom from social media’s critics – as the basis for their decisions.

Renay San Miguel is the Chief Content Officer at Splash Media and On-Air Talent and Host with Spark360.tv. You can find him on Twitter @PrimoMedia. Click here to see all of Renay’s blog posts.

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If you run a healthcare-related business, you might have questioned if social media offered any kind of prescription for success. After all, compliance issues and questions about the transparency required to take advantage of the potential in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube might have scared off some businesses faster than an immunization needle can spook a toddler.

But a recent study (registration required) from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC shows that more consumers and hospitals are using Facebook and other social media to shorten the distance between patients and doctors.

Perhaps more importantly for health-related companies; patients are talking to each other about the quality of care they receive.

The survey’s highlights:

• A third of the more than 1,000 consumers surveyed said they were willing to share their health information with other patients.
• 47 percent were sharing health information via doctors on social media.
• 38 percent were using social media to talk to insurance companies.
• 16 percent posted social media reviews of doctors, treatments and drugs.
• 28 percent supported health-related causes via social media.

The PwC survey also included some 124 healthcare executives, and that research determined that there were now about 1,200 hospitals taking part in 4,200 social networking sites.

“Early adopters in the health industry tell PwC that despite concerns about integrating social media into data analytics and measuring its effectiveness, they are incorporating social media into their business strategy,” said the report. “Not long ago, terms such as liking, following, tagging, and stumbling all had very different meanings. But in the era of social media, they provide the clues that could lead to higher quality care, more loyal customers, efficiency, and even revenue growth.”

Obviously, we concur with that diagnosis. Hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices should know by now that they are already being discussed, rated and reviewed online. But small/midsize businesses involved in the healthcare field – either business-to-consumer or business-to-business – are getting more research data available to them showing business advantages to using social media. These play right in to government-sponsored mandates for more usage of electronic health records, which also can help with office efficiencies. But the real-time aspects of social media help businesses deal with vendors and others in the supply chain, and they can ease patient concerns, answer questions and solve customer service issues.

All of that can make the medicine go down a lot smoother for healthcare-related businesses – and those they serve.

Can you share any instances of hospitals, clinics or doctors’ offices using social media in creative/innovative ways? Please write them down in our Comments section.

Renay San Miguel is the Chief Content Officer at Splash Media and On-Air Talent and Host with Spark360.tv. You can find him on Twitter @PrimoMedia. Click here to see all of Renay’s blog posts.

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We always knew search engines would eventually incorporate more social network buzz in their results – an evolution in search that businesses need to know about and leverage.

We just thought it would be Google, not Bing, leading the way.

But late this week, Microsoft’s latecomer to the search market announced that it would soon be launching a new, improved version of Bing that sticks a social “sidebar” on the right-hand side of search results. “Whether it’s making a purchase, deciding on a vacation destination, choosing a great restaurant, or figuring out which movie to see this weekend, the new Bing focuses on bringing friends, experts and enthusiasts into your search experience,” says a post on the Bing blog. (BTW, saying “Bing blog” three times real fast gets our vote for the Tongue-Twister of the Week).

The Sidebar does that by including relevant information to your search queries from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Quora – and in what has to be a direct dig at the current search engine leader, Google+. You know what Google search results turn up right now when you click on its “social” tab? Google+. And that’s it. That clanging sound you hear is Microsoft throwing down a big search engine optimization-friendly gauntlet in Google’s direction.

Yes, Bing is making other changes, boosting its algorithms to provide more relevant web results and introducing Snapshot, the center third of its results page that puts related information like maps, reviews and e-commerce links out front. Bing says this will make it easy for users to take the next step after searching, such as booking flights, buying products, etc.  But let’s be clear; integrating social network results into regular Bing results is a giant step for Microsoft and the search industry. It also should be obvious now to businesses that they have to monitor their online reputations, put their best social content out there, and start optimizing that content if they’re not doing so already.

The new Bing may not make a widely-used verb out of its product name a la Google. But it should still push businesses to take some positive action regarding their social media profiles. We can expect Google to fire back with its own improved version of social search, but businesses shouldn’t wait until the Google-Bing cold war reaches that level.

Renay San Miguel is the Chief Content Officer at Splash Media and On-Air Talent and Host with Spark360.tv. You can find him on Twitter @PrimoMedia. Click here to see all of Renay’s blog posts.

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Klout is now the Most Evil Thing in Social Media, the Loki to all the other superheroes in the social network universe. (Facebook as Iron Man? Discuss.) We know it’s official because Klout now has a parody site of sorts – Klouchebag.com, whipped together just this week by Tom Scott, a UK-based web and social media observer/speaker who’s fed up with the controversial influence-measurement service.

Klouchebag purports to measure “how much of an asshat you are on Twitter,” in a satirical take on Klout’s mission to measure your social media activity and engagements. Using Klout-like graphics that stop just this side of copyright infringement, Scott has you enter your Twitter username so his site can use his ARSE rating system to determine your Klouchebag score. What’s ARSE, you ask? It’s described on the website as: “Anger: profanity and rage. Retweets: “please RT”s, no or constant retweeting, and old-style. Social Apps: every useless check-in on FourSquare or its horrible brethren. And English Usage: if you use EXCLAMATION MARKS OMG!!! or no capitals at all, this’ll be quite high.”

Klouchebag gives you your score and also calls you names based on those figures; “a bit of a prat,” “facepalm central,” that kind of thing.

Scott told Splash Media in an email that the website only went live Friday morning and it’s already burning up his servers. “It took off like a rocket!” He doesn’t have any traffic figures to share yet, but if links to coverage in stories on The Next Web and Mashable are any indication, he’s definitely hit an online nerve. When it comes to anecdotal reactions, “the comments I’ve got have been almost entirely positive. I had one mostly-incoherent insulting response, but other than that everyone seems to like the joke. And fortunately no one’s taken it seriously!”

Not that he’s using Klouchebag as a way to diss all social media, mind you. “Social media’s brilliant, provided you realize that you can always turn it off. Nothing important ever happens solely on the internet. And there’s no such thing as being ‘famous online’ – that’s like being ‘famous on the fax machines!

“Klout, though, is one of the worst ideas ever put online,” Scott said. “Klout annoys me for the same reason that search engine optimization annoys me: it’s an enormous amount of effort designed to game an arbitrary and often-changing system. Imagine if all that time went into actually making interesting things, or caring about the people around you.”

Klouchebag is a fitting capper for an interesting week for Klout. Wired published this profile piece that revealed some companies are asking for Klout scores in their hiring, which got the same negative reaction as the recent news that some businesses were asking job applicants for their Facebook passwords. The company also released an iPhone app and Brand Squads, its version of brand pages. I blogged about those developments on the SplashCube website this week; I found the iPhone app lacking in terms of content and features, but Brand Pages show promise as long as Klout can figure out a way for smaller businesses to play.

Others have been piling on Klout since the company angered its users last fall by tweaking its influence-ranking algorithms, lowering scores in the process. This week alone, Forbes and the New Yorker have detailed why Klout has become the social media service you love to hate.

I like the idea of Klout democratizing influence, giving average users a chance to rank as high as Justin Bieber. And as Wired reports, big brands are starting to reward high Klout scores with discounts and giveaways. There’s nothing wrong with loyalty and incentive programs, but it shouldn’t be limited to large companies; again, Klout needs to get busy with SMB’s the way FourSquare and Facebook have. But the company now has a serious perception problem in terms of its algorithmic credibility. Too many people are just fine with not knowing their Klout score, despite the obvious appeal many of us have with knowing how we rank in various aspects of our lives. That’s the behaviorial temptation Klout is feeding off of, but indifference to Klout scores are becoming a badge of honor in the social mediasphere.

As Klouchebag’s Scott says, “to quote the WOPR computer from ‘War Games:’ ‘the only way to win is not to play.’”

Renay San Miguel is the Chief Content Officer at Splash Media and On-Air Talent and Host with Spark360.tv. You can find him on Twitter @PrimoMedia. Click here to see all of Renay’s blog posts.

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