Monthly Archives: April 2009

Seesmic Desktop-That Can Help You Manage Your Restaurant Twitter Updates More Effectively And Efficiently.

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 6 Comments

Just downloaded the Seesmic Desktop. It is another desktop application for Twitter updates that is competing with TweetDeck which has been favourite of mine so far. But when I saw Seesmic Desktop application lately in their video, it looks more promising with more cool features.

One of the first thing that I liked is that you can create multiple accounts and monitor simultaneously different Twitter accounts from the same window. It is so simple that you just drag and drop. If you had one account for your restaurant and the other for your personal use you can manage the twitter updates from the same window without changing the accounts. You can reply, search and do virtually everything with all your multiple accounts.

Grouping or I should say segmenting can be done for whom you are following. Say if you want to just get the updates from certain number of people then you can segment it and get the twitter updates just from them. This way you will not lose the important tweets coming from those individuals or companies. They don’t get lost in the loads of millions of twitter updates that stream through your regular twitter updates. This alone might be great use for your restaurant or any business or individual.

Another cool feature that I liked is to take the picture right from your webcam  and post the picture to Twitter. Since Seesmic is more towards video micro blogging, this is where they shine the most and obviously do the best job I believe.

There are other so many features that they have built into it and also adding new features at every new upgrades. So it worth checking out.

It might help your twitter chaos to be little more organised and more efficient with this application. Speed is critical in any business whether it is to reply your hungry customers query or general questions from your vendors and joint venture business partners. So to accomplish that speed Seesmic desktop looks promising.

You can download and see for yourself the magic it can do for your restaurant business. Please do share your thoughts how you liked the application so it might help other individuals and restaurant business who might want to use this application.

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Posted in Marketing-General, Twitter Marketing

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“Do Something Awesome”-Advise From Twitter CEO Evan Williams

Posted on April 13, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Recently Evan Williams CEO of Twitter was interviewed at Tekzilla. There were several questions asked by Twitter followers direct to him via twitter. The first question was regarding an advice what he would give to someone trying to build their own startup. His answer was very obvious:

The core thing would be “just do something awesome”. Try not to get caught up in the echo chamber. That is probably the toughest thing when you are trying to break out and do something original.

A lot of things are evolutionary, and it is easy to get caught up on what the geek subculture thinks. There’s lots of valuable businesses that can be built there, but I think that is where a lot of people tend to spin their wheels, and I’ve been caught up there before. When I’ve had more successful things, I’ve thought, “Back to basics. What do I want? What do I want to see in the world?” And create that.

Later during the interview when asked,what he thinks about Facebook’s Twitter-like redesign. He joked by saying “Did they redesign?”  Then he goes on to say that he is impressed and hints that some of the things Facebook did is on Twitter’s own design roadmap. (Maybe Facebook got some ideas from their acquisition discussions with Twitter which fell apart). One thing that Twitter plans to do better is make it easier to share videos and photos, perhaps with inline viewing. Now, that would be awesome. Williams says:

Yeah, I think we should support images and video better than we do today, it does not mean we should host them, maybe viewing in line. I don’t want to get into competition with YouTube. Twitter is lubricant for Web content.

Even though his answer was for tech start up company, his message is to all types of companies regardless of what business they are in. It applies to even restaurant business. Evan William is a smart entrepreneurs who has built so many successful companies including the recent one Twitter. So it is worth listening to him and internalising his core messages.If he was talking to the restaurant owners, operators and managers, then I would interpret his messages as follows:

  1. Build Something Awesome
  2. Look beyond your business and have a  long term vision to reach out the wider world.
  3. Plan and create a road map to success and have fun along the journey.
  4. Always plan and make your product or service better

Build Something Awesome-This is the main message that he gives to all businesses including your restaurant business. You have to build something awesome so that people would want to have it, admire it and make a remark about  that is worth making a remark about and spreading the idea. The perfect example of an awesome product is an iPhone which is admired by millions around the world. It is so dear that they would never leave them alone. Most probably they would  held them closer more than their own  girl friend or boyfriend. Another example of awesome service is Twitter itself. The fact that you are able to tweet right now and communicate with thousands of people is amazing. It has empowered even a small restaurants to compete with 800 pound gorilla companies. No wonder you and I get hooked on Twitter for hours and love every day. That is how a product or service should be or at least aimed towards that level of perfection. Well you might think you are in a restaurant business  and how can we be awesome. Well Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant has built a cool brand with in few months because they had a unique concept. They have mouth watering delicious Korean Mexican fusion food. Instead of selling it from a traditional stand alone building they sold their food in a mobile truck by marketing online via twitter and blogs. Your restaurant doesn’t have to be mobile but please, you have to create some thing different and not boring products that people are used to. Please don’t create  the same boring sandwich that I can make better at my own office or home.

Look beyond your business and have a  long term vision to reach out the wider world - Twitter though was popularized by a hard core techie culture they didn’t focus only to serve those people. In fact they have a vision to take it to a broader main stream and reaching to the whole world one day. So here the message is to have a long term vision and look your restaurant  beyond just as a food business. Look at doing some thing different like building Green Restaurant. Install energy efficient equipments at your restaurant. Promote using only paper products with the aim to protect the environment. In the process you might lead a revolution in the restaurant industry by saving on energy cost and more importantly saving a planet that your grand children might thank you for. You might be able to create another business in conjunction to the restaurant business. Never know it could bring you fortune. Can you see the picture of doing some thing different and some thing bold.

Plan and create a road map to success and have fun along the journey – Even though he is a great entrepreneur with lots of pressures he is cool and take it easy with fun. It seems he is enjoying his entrepreneural journey  though sometimes it can be bumpy and scary. You have to be passionate and enjoy what you are doing. If you don’t then you might be in a wrong business. Great business have a road map for success. It is a step by step plan to get to the destination. Your business should have a road map plan to do your restaurant marketing. You should have some sort of plans on how to market your restaurant in this complicated digital world. You should know which road to take whether it is Facebook, Twitter or blog.

Always plan to make your product or service better - Twitter is already in plans to make it easier and faster to tweet even pictures, videos in their later releases. They are putting their effort to improve every day. So you should also plan to make your service better and faster. Have you planned on making the service at lunch hour faster? Have you thought about making your pizza delivery time less than 30 minutes? Recently Chipotle released their iPhone mobile app to let their customer order via iPhone and have them pick up at the counter without having them to wait in the line. Have you thought of similar ideas to stream line your ordering process? Have you thought of creating a live band show on the weekends and letting those happy moments of your customers to be shared  with their loved ones world wide by streaming a live tv show via Ustream.tv ? There are so many things one can improve to make your customers experience easier. See if you plan and work on it even if it seems impossible you can make it happen. Now since internet has leveled the marketing field so plain that you can even compete and win even the big companies with big marketing budgets if you plan, learn and execute all those ideas.

Well these are just the ideas that I am throwing at you. There are so many other things that you can come up with and make your restaurant more unique and fun place to be. People  come to  a restaurant not just only to eat. They come there because it is a cool place to be where there are lots of happy people with full of fun and  joy. So if you want to create a successful restaurant business or any business just remember What Evan Williams CEO of Twitter said, “Just Do Something Awesome.”

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7 Tips For Restaurants To Attract More Twitter Followers.

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 7 Comments

Well for the past few weeks I have been busy tweeting and learning the right strategies to tweet in order to increase the number of followers and more importantly building a solid network based on shared interests on the same subject topics. I must admit that after this 2-3 weeks of experimentation, twitter is addictive once you get hooked. It is like a suspense movie that you never know what is coming next and keep you hooked on the seat for hours and makes you keep on tweeting.

I just wanted to let my self free and dive into the twitter world and experience for myself what it is really like. It was kind of short vacation from my blogging world. I feel so relaxed and energized to write this article not just based on reading an ebook and blog post about twitter but in fact experimenting those Twitter strategies myself and then sharing it with my audience.

I feel there is a difference between education and learning. Education to me is when you study or get information from an ebook or from some experts. But learning is when you apply those education that you studied in to practise to get the results. So with all the education I got from all different ebooks, and twitter experts I tried to put them in to practise and these were the following lessons that I learnt.

Again, I would highly recommend you to take this real life experimentation of Twitter education and put it into practise. That is when learning begins and improve upon one tweet at a time, understanding that learning never stops and keeps continuing for a life time to come.

Lessons Learnt from my  Twitter Experiment.

  1. Build a relationship  with your followers and also one who you follow as well like @SocialNetworkTV
  2. Study before following any body and make the first tweet very personalised like @iRestaurant
  3. Try to inject humour with your twitter to give a different flavour like @PopeyesChicken
  4. Ask questions rather than just tweeting a plain statement like @mikefilsaime
  5. Tweet in relation to your subject topics and also other occasional personal tweets like@geekpreneur
  6. Don’t try to promote only your blog or your product or service in every tweets. Recommends @sethgodin
  7. Humanise your tweets like @chrisbrogan

Build a relationship  with your followers and also one who you follow as well like @SocialNetworkTV

William Lark @SocialNetworkTV gave me this great tip on twitter that any one can overlook. Infact I also overlooked this in some way. I started building a strong relationship with those who followed me first because it is natural that when some one followed you, that means they liked some thing about your profile or tweets that was of similar interest to them. If not all at least the genuine followers believed that principle.But I used to think that the big guys with thousands of twitter followers whom we initially started following would not even care about little guys. That is still true but it doesn’t mean that you can not start building relationship with them too. Persistence wins their heart and quality tweets wins their mind. Even if they don’t return your tweets and DMs keep trying with great powerful tweets. Let me tell you one thing eventually you will get response.I know it because I have got response from John Jantsch @ducttape

Study before following any body and make the first tweet very personalised like @iRestaurant

Oh boy! I should not credit my self. But you know what there are something you learn on your own in the process of learning. So at times you can get credit for your self , that is ok. I wouldn’t mind if you learn something of your own and share with me. I would be happy to put it in my next blog post and give you your credit for that too. I read in some articles that Boeing Company before it initiate it’s talks with potential buyers they find out every detail about the buyer. This is very important because it is not a $1000 dollar deal. We are talking about multi million and billion dollar transaction in one sale. I feel you should treat your first tweet to your follower in the same manner. You will be surprised how reactive they would be. It is human nature. No body wants to be generalised as sir or madam especially in Twitter world. They would prefer ” Hi John or Hi Marianda”. Once you understand their core interest, I would recommend you to follow back and start building relationship based on their interest and not yours starting with very personalized tweets.

Try to inject humour with your twitter to give a different flavour like @PopeyesChicken

This is another great tip that I learnt from @PopeyesChicken. The reason people come on Twitter is not just because they want to talk about their daily life but also because it is a fun place to be with full of interesting people. Life in physical world and especially at the corporate world is so boring and dull that people love coming to Twitter to meet with cool people full of fun and joy. Just think about it as a party. When you go to a party nobody want to hang around a guy or a girl who is talking simply boring stuff. Most often you see more people hanging around a person who is full of energy, passion and most importantly full of funny jokes while presenting his views what ever it might be. Have you ever heard a burst of laughter coming from a corner of a party and made you think what on earth is going with that crowd. It creates curiosity in your mind to find out what really that laughter  was about. Even if you were talking with some one,you want to join that group to share that joy and fun. Well this is what exactly what happens in Twitter. So it is very important to be that guy in the party who creates that excitement and curiosity to not only group he is talking to but people far away from him.This principle is very well displayed by Popeyes Chicken. Every now and then I get their funny tweet. If you want to get the taste of humorous tweet, you can do so by following them at @PopeyesChicken

Ask questions rather than just tweeting a plain statement like @mikefilsaime

A great tip that many people on Twitter miss and  I learnt it from Mike Filsaime while I was watching his interview with Joel Comm at Twitter A Thon. Twitter is a place where you break the ice with other people that you have never seen and never met but have a common interest on the same subjects. It is like a real life where you you start a conversation when you meet a new people. But  how do you do to make it natural and reactive. You could say some thing like this. “It is cold out side. I am craving for some soup today.The restaurant has tomato basil and chicken noodle soup. Which one would you recommend?”  See here instead of  throwing just a plain statement you ended with a question. This enables human mind to react to the question because they are looking for an answer. If you had said just It is cold out side and craving for some soup today.The restaurant has tomato basil and chicken noodle soup. It looks so plain and old statement that the other person at the other end would not know what to say or do. In fact it might confuse him and make him feel awkward. I wouldn’t be surprised if he or she would run away just because he or she didn’t feel comfortable around. Also don’t make it look like  if it is coming from a nerd with his dark specs not knowing how to start a conversation with a beautiful girl. Even if she had attracted to him to begin with she would be the first person to run far away from that person because of the boring stuffs he talks about and the style he presents. So please don’t be that boring guy in Twitter. This might be my biggest advise.

Tweet in relation to your subject topics and also other occasional personal tweets like @geekpreneur

This is the tip that I got from reading the ebook titled “A Geek’s Guide To Promoting Yourself And Your Online Business On Twitter”. I highly recommend it. Though it says for online business it is also applicable for offline business like restaurants. When you enter to the world of Twitter you go with a strategy. You have a mission to accomplish whether it is to sell your product or service. It is always good to make most of your tweets in regards to that specific subject topics with the niche target market in your mind. You just don’t tweet random thoughts right and left. Every tweet is very carefully scripted not only to inform your target audience but also leaving a net for others to find you when they are searching for that term on search.twitter.com Every now and then you can tweet about your own personal thing that you find relevant to your audience. That way this gives them a sense of surprise tweet rather than assuming you are the same old tweeterer who tweets only about your blogs or the same old same old topics.

Don’t try to promote only your blog or your product or service in every tweets.Recommends @sethgodin

This is one of the most “out of the box” kind of  tips that I learnt from Seth Godin-one of the most  reknowned marketers of our times who has seen the fundamental changes in the marketing world with the birth of internet and with his Squidoo lens. Seth Godin doesn’t promotes his book on any podcast that I have listened to. Infact he doesn’t want to even mention about it. I call it “Reverse Marketing.” He makes a subtle sales by bringing the insights into the subject of marketing. People get so intrigued that he doesn’t have to really sell his book. It sell by itself. People are more curious why he doesn’t shout loud like others trying to sell their books.It makes people to find out about it more organically and naturally than him trying to forcefully convince people to buy his books. I have taken this to my heart. I fully believe this strategy. I would recommend you to use this strategy if you want to win the hearts and mind of your target audience or customers for a life time and not just when you are tweeting just for the sake of the sales.

Humanise your tweets like @chrisbrogan

Last but not the least please, the tip that is probably the most important tip and that is  humanise your tweets. This is a tip that I got from Chris Brogan when I listened to his podcast interview with John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing. Don’t make it look like some computer robots throwing those tweets. Chris Brogan says in his own words that “Twitter is full of human beings but computer robots.” A person  likes to talk to another person. So when you communicate with your followers or new prospects try to make a real life conversation may be with little touch of passion, excitement and obviously not to forget the humour. Thought there are some automated tools to make our life easier, Chris Brogan seems not a great fan of automated tools as it takes away the charm of human to human connection that is meant to be established by Twitter.

These tips that I have learnt over the course of last 2-3 weeks are just the basics of Twitter practises and there are still more to be learnt. So keep your eyes and ear open to different ideas and you will learn fast to attract more followers and convert them into your customers for a life time to come.

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Posted in Twitter Marketing, iPhone Marketing

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