The Future Buzz

It’s interesting to me which industries decide to engage in social media.  It is even more interesting to see who does so in a way that makes sense for their brand and is seen as authentic and true.

The QSR industry (QSR stands for Quick Service Restaurant, if you aren’t aware) in particular seems to have a big opportunity here, as many people are already quite fond of their brands.

In fact, the tactics they can take don’t have to be anything crazy and could be quite simple, especially if there is pent-up demand for their presence in the social space.

Everyone is marketing web products like crazy online.  Physical products are used by people online too, and the realization that most reading this already know is that those active on the web don’t see a difference between interacting on and off the web.  It’s a big missed opportunity here not to join the conversation about your own brand.

Purely having a website and static presence isn’t enough to engage your true fans, they crave a deeper interaction.  Not having a social presence on the web is analagous to going to your own birthday party and then standing in the corner, ignoring everyone who is trying to talk to you, or is talking about you.

Follow Popeyes on Twitter

Popeyes Chicken is using Twitter in a positive way to interact with their fans in this space.  If you search for Popeyes on Twitter, you’ll quickly notice there is plenty of positive feedback about the brand.  It was a smart choice for Popeyes to enter this space and they seem to be doing well interacting here.

They aren’t capitalizing on social media like they could though.  It feels a bit disjointed to me to purely participate in microblogging without having their own blog to document their experiences in Twitter and tell deeper stories about the brand.  That’s great that they are using one tool, but microblogging is just an “outpost” to what your web presence could be in it’s most optimized state.

Then, there are others in the QSR industry (and plenty of other industries) who set up shop in Facebook/MySpcae:

Jamba Juice has setup a Facebook fan page that easily amassed 47,000+ fans on the site.  That’s a great indicator of the popularity of Jamba Juice in the social space, although the page seemed like it was a bit thin on information about the brand.  Merely has a few lines about the company overview.  They didn’t even add any product photos to the page.  Facebook is a great place to have a presence, and their logo now sits on 47,000+ profiles next to those fans.  But again, seems like a missed opportunity not to build interactions with those people who have opted in to receieve their messages on the network.

Popeyes and Jamba are using the tools, sure.  But what I’m getting at is these tools could be used as outposts to draw traffic into somewhere with a deeper interaction and converting the people to subscribers of their brand.

Let’s look at how a web professional uses outposts successfully to draw traffic and interest to his blog and build community.

This is an image from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger representing how he uses outposts (the social networks on the chart) to draw traffic to his blog, ProBlogger (the logo in the middle represents his blog).  He uses them to:

• add content
• build relationships
• test ideas
• grow a profile
• listen
• experiment
• make connections
• try to be useful
• play

Read Darren’s whole post here.

Essentially what Darren has is a consolidated place on the web that he can call his home base, the place he wants to draw people to become subscribers of his content and continue to interact daily.  Your home base cannot be a static website, at least not if your goal is sustained traffic building.  It needs to be something social that is frequently updated with content people will actually care about.

The goal here is not one-off traffic.  Your goal should be to build consistent, loyal traffic that is going to spread your brand and build your business.  People don’t return to static websites, or even interactive websites that are really still the same each time you visit.

Everyone has stories to tell, not merely bloggers.  Brands potentially have even more stories to tell about what they’re doing.  Using social media services here is just one part of the puzzle.  You need an integrated approach with a home base on the web (a blog is the perfect platform) where you’re building return, loyal traffic and providing those people value, community and connections.

This matters for the QSR industry and really any industry looking to boost their exposure and traffic on the web.  Ultimately more traffic, more share of voice and more interactions on the web equals greater business and sales off the web.

Related posts from The Future Buzz

10 Reasons Why Organizations (And Individuals) With Audiences Win

Use The Branding Strategies Of Bloggers And Social Media Startups To Grow E-Commerce

Technorati 2008 State Of The Blogosphere Released

Related posts from around the web

Pixelated - Your New Business Conference Starts Now Online (6 Pixels of Separation)

25 Ways To Build Your Community (Chris Brogan)

Brand “U.0″ + The Chicago New Media Summit (Logic + Emotion)

Software companies, such as Ableton use forums as part of their community building strategy.

Prior to Web 2.0…

Before blogs, before social media, before Facebook and MySpace — message boards and forums reigned supreme. For the uninitiated, they are fragmented, niche communities of like minded people who came together around a common interest.

It’s no surprise that sites like Ning have sprung up in popularity and blogging has taken off in the last few years. There are countless people creating content, trading expertise and working together to learn and socialize around things they are passionate about.

Message boards (or message forums, which ever you prefer) were the start of the modern social web. In fact, they still thrive today and are some of the best resources of information on niche topics around. […] Continue Reading…

First up, full disclosure: Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company is a client of mine…

With that said - previously I wrote a case study on building buzz in the blogosphere regarding a viral campaign I implemented for Joffrey’s called “Joffrey’s Java Beta Test”. With the help of Wake Interactive for web design(they do fantastic work by the way, I cannot speak highly enough of them), we were able to make a lot of people happy and bring together a plethora of bloggers for something really fun.

Some highlights from the beta test were: […] Continue Reading…

image credit: dbarefoot

Continuing my series on documenting social media power users and influencers, this week I’ve got five more wonderful people to share with you.

Again, these are in no particular order and I am taking the time to write on not only the big-name players, but perhaps even more interesting I will tell the stories of power users in the long tail also.

If you missed last week’s entry, start by checking out:

Social Media Power Users And Influencers: Part 1

Now that you’re caught up, let’s get into part 2:

[…] Continue Reading…

image credit: victor nuno

I have a theory. I believe that the ability to make art, whether music, drawing, painting, sculpting - it doesn’t matter what kind - is an inherently human trait.

Anyone who makes the statement “I am not creative” is wrong. Translated, it really means “I never tried”.

I’ve been told I am lucky to have the ability to make music. It’s really not luck at all, I am no more skilled in writing it than you can be. The difference is, I have put forth arduous hours, days, weeks, months and years of my life into it.

We are hard-wired for creativity. It is just a matter of honing it to a specific craft. And, it is perhaps one of the most rewarding feelings you can have — giving life to something original from within yourself to share with the world purely for intrinsic value.

Not convinced you should be an artist yet? Here’s 21 more reasons to consider it: […] Continue Reading…

Email and RSS subscribers, you’ll want to click through to the site to read this one as there are several pieces of embedded content.

Simplicity

image credit: gmacorig

Complexity

image credit: victor nuno

Simplicity (or minimalism) is one of the largest movements of the last decade, across industries. It is especially big in the areas of design, music and architecture.

Complexity was a bigger trend during the 80’s and 90’s, especially in art. Electronic and rock music from the 80’s and 90’s had that ‘over the top’ feel to it, where artists were throwing everything and the kitchen sink at their mixes. […] Continue Reading…

Agencies or people that offer SEO services, yet have a site that scores poorly in free SEO tools like Website Grader and have dismal traffic rank in Alexa.

Web professionals who you Google and find they don’t have their own blog and a large digital footprint.

Marketing companies or individuals that do blog, but don’t inspire traffic, links or comments on their site.

Are you weary of these things? I certainly am.

What chance does a company or person that can’t deliver real results for themselves have of delivering real results for you? […] Continue Reading…

Read a great post recently at Twist Image on selling 2.0 - letting the customer do the communicating. Mitch writes on the great strategy used by e-commerce sites for empowering consumers to be vocal about products and what they like and don’t directly on the same page as the product.

Amazon comes to mind as a site that does this extremely well. When making a purchase (which is pretty frequently as I’m addicted to reading) I always read the consumer reviews there, especially when it comes to new authors. The consumer reviews always tell the real story about the product. And everyone knows it, I am willing to bet a heat-map of an Amazon product page shows consumers spending more time reading reviews than the publisher copy someone painstakingly drafted.

Why is this? Simple - we know the publisher copy is going to gush praise. While it is worthwhile in getting someone’s attention and providing them an intro, what provides real value in a consumer site that is unfamiliar territory with a potential new visitor is other consumer’s opinions and thoughts. It is social proofing. […] Continue Reading…

image credit: fred cavazza (click image for high resolution version)

A major aim of The Future Buzz (as seen in the tag line at the top of this blog) is helping you create buzz on the web. If you’re reading this, certainly one of your goals is to become a power user of social media or high profile blogger, and/or learn how to bend the network to your advantage.

As such, it is prudent to learn what others have done/are doing successfully at the edge. Studying how social media power users (or influencers, same thing) create and share information, ideas and trends with the world and their interactions with their carefully built networks is vital to becoming one yourself. […] Continue Reading…

Every year, Technorati, the authority blog database and search engine releases a “State of the Blogosphere” where they document the progression of blogs as a medium and their influence in our culture.

I touched on a few of these statistics already in my post from Sunday on the digital divide. However, now that more detailed information has been released, I thought I’d put some of it here to spread the good news of the blogosphere’s growth with all of you.

Some snapshots from the State of the Blogosphere 2008:

“The word blog is irrelevant, what’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.”

–Seth Godin, Author Tribes (blog is: sethgodin.typepad.com)

[…] Continue Reading…