Conner's Blog

So I’m posting it today because I want to post something. Here is the response I wrote to Womfire after they responded to the email I wrote to Chili’s marketing department.

Thanks Howard,
I wasn’t really concerned about my email address, my biggest concern was the grammar skills shown by your representative. Additionally, as someone who is passionate about social media I had a hard time with your campaign. It didn’t feel genuine to me at all. Plus, as most of the comments pointed out, free chips are kind of funny considering you get free chips at every Mexican eatery other than Chili’s.

One last thing that I wanted to point out. Though I appreciate you enjoying my blog, I’m definitely not your target market. My blog is full of posts and links about local, sustainable, and healthy food. Your client, Chili’s, is one of the last places I would ever choose to eat. As someone who is passionate about social media, blogging, and marketing, I would hope that if you are doing a campaign like this you would be doing a quick search for “food” in blogs you want to contact. It wouldn’t have taken much time to see that I was more likely to make fun of Chili’s than promote them.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond to me. I’ll post a comment on the post noting that you responded genuinely and addressed most of my concerns. I do wish you success in your campaign with Chili’s.

They addressed my concern about my email address, they had found it on my blog. They also apologized and advised they wouldn’t contact me again. I’m considering the issue closed.

I got this email today. Though it’s great that they reached out to me, I have some issues.

1st, they spelled my name wrong. Instantly they are on my bad side.
2nd, grammar. I don’t claim to be great at grammar, but even I know that I am not “an excellent of social media insight and knowledge.”
3rd, thanks for letting me know I can spam my friends with an all caps hashtag to earn $50.

Uggh

Not that there was ever any question, but today I received more confirmation.  Google served me this ad.

I rarely read ads, but I took the time to figure out the pseudo code on this one.  Someone apparently knows how to get my attention.

It’s May Day, Friday, and I’m going fishing this weekend.  All in all, today is a good day.  I thought I would start the weekend off with some fun. Here are a few signs I saw in Spokane.

This the logo of Thomas Hammer coffee.  They appear to be almost as popular as Caribou in Spokane.  I didn’t try their coffee, but I have so say I really like their sign hanging in downtown Spokane.

This made me laugh and then I remembered to snap a photo.  I have no idea if they actually had three banjos in stock, but even if they didn’t it’s a great way to catch people’s attention.

This caught my eye only because this warning was located everywhere.  I don’t know if March of Dimes canvased the entire city to get these posted or if it’s a state law that this warning has to be posted if alcohol is served.  All I know is that every bar and restaurant seemed to have it somewhere near the entrance.

I’ve been on a mission to unsubscribe from a few mailing lists that I opted into at one point or the other.  It’s an annoying process most of the time, and of course you’re never sure if your request is going to be honored.  Some people might just click “Report Spam” on these emails, but since I chose to receive them, I feel that wouldn’t be fair.  You run across a lot of odd things when you are doing this.   For example, here were the instructions I found on a piece of mail I tried to unsubscribe from this morning.

You can choose which specific emails you’d like to receive from [ACME Corp] by checking the boxes below to opt-out when you do NOT want to receive that type of email. We recommend opting-in for all email since they keep you informed, and help you enjoy … our site

I’m not sure what the rule is for allowing people to opt-out of your email, but I wonder if it has a part about making the instructions clear.  I had to read that two times to figure out whether I checked the boxes to unsubscribe or if I left them blank to unsubscribe.  I checked the boxes, hopefully I got it right.

I’ve always known PETA was crazy.  I’m all for treating animals with respect, but when you have decided that renaming an entire class of animals is necessary you’re not just crazy your batshit crazy.  At what point do we stop, do we start calling cattle Grass Kittens, calling pigs Mud Kittens?  Isn’t this confusing for our children?

Sorry about this pointless post, but I couldn’t help myself.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate commercials.  It’s not the concept, I understand they are necessary, it’s the way most of them are done.  Right now I’m watching the Sioux-Gopher game on FSN.  If you ever watch FSN you will see the same 5 commercials in rotation for an entire evening.  Right now there are three culprits that are making me want to throw a rotten orange at my television.

The first is the Burger King “Angry Whopper” Ad.  Now the Angry Whopper sounds like a thing of beauty.  It’s spicy stuff and bacon on a burger, you can’t really go wrong.  But the ad drives me crazy for a variety of reasons.  First the farmer is such a stereotype it’s ridiculous, he has bad teeth, wears flannel, and looks like he hasn’t showered in eight days.  The only authentic quality is his hat.  I grew up in a farming community and most farmers are not like that.  Second, the torturing of the onion is just stupid.  And third who would order the Angry Whopper while wearing tie.  This whopper is made for a black t-shirt, it’s going to be messy and you are not going back to work with the breath that thing would give you.

The second annoyance during this game has been the Car Soup commercial.  These are always bad, but the current version where they say “something sells good”  is ear and eye gouging worthy.

The third commercial that is causing me fits is the new McDonalds McCafe commercial. It starts out with two women complaining about their boyfriends,  checking out guys and generally acting like your stereotypical women out with girlfriends.  Then, at the end of the commercial it just happens to be that they just started talking and didn’t even know each other name.  So they introduce each other after having this conversation and just walk away, no exchanging phone number or email addresses.  Would this happen in real life, wouldn’t they at least give each other a business card if they hit it off that well?

Fine, maybe I’m just annoyed because Alex Kangas is playing out of his mind and it’s 0-0 after the Sioux played a much better first period.  Hold on,  the Sioux just scored at the top of the second. It turns out those three commercials don’t bother me that much at all.

Dear Sir or Madam,

First I want to let you know that I appreciate your persistence.  You take the time every week to re post nearly the same ad.  You even changed it this week to try and make it sound like a wonderful deal.  Unfortunately you don’t quite have the price set correctly.

You advertise a used mint condition Nikon D40x that will be sold without a lense.  Your asking price is $375.  I’m sure this price seems reasonable to you, but for anyone who is shopping for a DSLR camera it makes no sense to pay nearly $400 for this camera used.

Why? You may be asking, well a quick browsing of the current offerings of your competitors, retailers, shows that the D40x is no longer being manufactured by NIkon.  It has been replaced by the D60.  The D60 is a newer camera, produces pictures of the same resolution, and can currently be purchased for around $600-$650.  This is a new camera and also comes with a lens. As you own the camera I’m sure you are aware that the D40x like the D60 and the D40 require an AF lens to auto focus.  The low end lens for this camera is currently retailing for around $150.  This means anyone who purchases your camera will need spend $525 to use a used camera.

Now I understand the need to make your money back, but since I continue to see your camera appear on my RSS feed, you may need to consider lowering your asking price.  Not by much, sell it for $300 and I bet you sell it within a week.  Remember it’s a digital camera and the price will only continue to fall, sell it soon or risk having to drop the price even further.

Sincerely

Conner

This post on Tombuntu, regarding the sites server move included a link to Linode.com.  They are a hosting provider, offered virtual servers running on Xen.  On top of being a very reasonably priced, they have a done a very good job marketing themselves to their target users.  Unlike most hosting providers, their home page isn’t flashy web 2.0ish or chock full of ads for their various services.  The pricing structure on the home page is the price per month, not the price you will pay per month if you sign a 5-year contract.  It is a very clean, simple, and refreshing site.

I wouldn’t just write about their site, but I found something that put this over the top for me.  On the features page I found this gem.  ”The Finnix recovery distribution occupies no disk on your Linode account and is useful for recovering from screw ups.”  This might not be the most professional language to use, but it’s refreshing to see a company just come out and admit that yes you will “screw up” and here is the tool we provide to fix it.  

Disclaimer:  This is not a recommendation of Linode.com’s services. I have no experience using Linode and know no one that has.  Please do your own research before purchasing services from any hosting provider.

1. Connect your employees with your customers.
   • The best thing about being a customer of a small business is getting to know the employees.  You can use a blog to accomplish this.  Let them write posts about their work day, give advice related to your business, or show off a recent success.  You can let them write as much as they want and moderate and post the best content.
   • You may be lucky and have employees that are excited to write  If you don’t though you can still get great content.  Pay your employees or reward them with gift cards for every post that is published.  Remember you control the publishing so they don’t just post stuff to just earn the incentive.
2. Let it go out as a newsletter
   • Many of your customers probably aren’t web savvy.  RSS and blogs are probably not something they are familiar with.  It’s trivial to setup a system that emails your latest posts to a list of permissive users.  Let them sign upand send it out at a pace they are comfortable with.
3. Don’t advertise
   • The worst thing you can do is turn your blog into a advertising mechanism.  If it’s well done it should be an advertisement in itself without being an advertisement.  Don’t promote your specials, “exciting new products”, or write other forms of sensationalism.  Your blog should be an attempt to leave the old ways of marketing behind.  So what should you write about.  Consider these options: how you choose a new product that fills your customers needs, the solution to a common problem your customers have, useful news from your industry, profiles of your employees or even your customers.
4. Don’t force it on anyone
   • This is a form of permissive marketing, it is not to be sold like a used car.  Put up a sign somewhere in your store that your customers can see, don’t have your sales people promote it.  The best marketing is spread by your customers.
5. Don’t feel forced into the standard blog format
   • You don’t need to write daily.  You don’t need to allow comments,  In fact, I would hesitate to allow them as an irate customers is more likely to comment then a content customer.  If you do allow comments, only allow customers to comment; having a sign up code on your receipts or invoices is a perfect way to accomplish this.
6. Do not let your marketing department or public relations department write your blog.
   • Most marketers will kill any chance it has of being fun.  Gimmicks, marketing slang, and PR spin is death to the personality your blog should develop.  Ask an employee to edit posts, but let your writers be themselves.  Marketing and PR will not let your employees passion for their jobs get through
7. Don’t let someone like me design your blog.
   • Hire a real designer and make sure your site looks professional.  If you can’t afford a designer find a template that is clean and can be customized to let your companies image take center stage.