I’m sure this isn’t a new topic, but I thought I would talk a little bit about brand management online for small businesses. Many small businesses believe that because they are not using the internet that their business is not being talked about online. This is frankly stupid. There are many sites out there like yelp and zagat that allow users to create profiles for businesses, services, restaurants, etc. and then vote on their experiences. Also people have their own blogs (like this one!) where they can rant and rave about the guy they bought their new car from or the mom & pop coffee shop they went to last week. And this doesn’t include forums, wikis, twitters, facebooks, and what have you that let people say pretty much whatever they want. In other words, just because you are not online talking about your small business doesn’t mean that other people aren’t. To that end you need someway to monitor what people are saying about your company, or website (if you have one) online. There are a couple of options here: 1. would be to spend every hour of every day doing google searches, crawling over tweets, facebook, yelp, and all of those other sites mentioned above 2. pay someone to do this for you 3. dupe an intern into doing this for you 4. pick up some software that you have to pay for to do it 5. use Google Alerts. For most small businesses options 1-4 are pretty prohibitive. So I’m gonna talk about Option 5. Google Alerts. Alerts is a free system provided by Google that allows you to enter various keywords and then get either a daily digest or an instant email when something is posted with those keywords. So what I usually do for my clients is to create a Google Alert with their company name inside of “”. This means that by and large if someone write an article, posts on a forum, etc with that company name I will get an email about it. (I usually create these an instant alerts as I want to know ASAP when someone comments about a client). Now sometimes these will not be talking about your business especially if you have a common word as your company name or if it is a common company name. But the nice things is that these alerts work just like google so if the company was AlteredGames and it is based in Missoula, the alert would be “AlteredGames” + Missoula. This would return all mentions of AlteredGames and Missoula. You could also add other identifiers so you knew it was your company. Next I like to set up an alert or two that is a daily digest and is more concerned with the industry or area. So if we were doing a restaurant in Missoula, the alert might be: “local restaurants” + Missoula. This just lets me monitor what’s being said about the general area, and may provide some good places to drop a link or a comment about the business to help drive traffic.
These are just a few tips for a very powerful tool that Google provides. The biggest thing is just to remember, if you are doing your job right SOMEONE is talking about you online even if you aren’t. And in this day and age it is important if you are not the one leading the conversation that you are at least aware of what is being said.
I just had a great phone conversation about Alternate Reality Gaming with Jake Kahle. In it we discussed that the majority of ARGs are being used to market video games, movies, tv, et cetera. But I’ve been thinking what else can we use them for? And since most of these ARGs are being run very large scale, can small businesses possibly get in on this new… tool? game? technique? life? So I thought of two different scenarios in which ARGs could be used to 1.) build community and ties 2.) be implemented by a small business
1.) The Secrets of the Omega Society:Where do most people today build a significant number of their life long connections? Colleges! So I thought why couldn’t a college especially during orientation, begin and run an ARG. The plot could surround a secret society (the Omega Society) known for having the best dorms, best seats at sport’s events, private galas, the top students, etc. (all kinds of good rumors to get students involved). The rabbit hole could be something like a clue in the orientation pamphlet (perhaps the secret societies’ symbol is a greek character Omega?) or perhaps, there is a website for students to log into to create a social profile for the university and located at the bottom is a link a la the Net. Maybe a short ‘home video’ style runs on campus tv at 1 am that is a student hiding in the omege societies lair (he gives his name which if payers look up takes them either to his facebook page, or to an article he wrote for the university 4 years ago on the society). Either way, the game should leave clues that require a range of different types of students to complete. There should be math clues to encourage those students to become involved, items placed near sporting equipment so those s inclined would see them. In addition, bury the various clues in the different orientation events in order to drive new students to these to build up attendance and traditional ice breaker techniques. Recruit different RAs, tourguides, freshman advisors, an even professors to act as puppet masters. The ARG would culminate in an initiation ceremony involving the winning team, and prizes awarded in the form of box seats to sporting events, a nice quad for Omega Society members. The nice thing about this one is that it could be possible to recruit one year’s winners to be the next year’s puppetmasters!
2. Secret of the Stolen Recipe: For this one we’ll go back to my first post about a small restaurant here in Missoula, MT. Here is a way for a small business to possibly run an ARG on their own. The rabbit hole for this one would be to place a new item on the restaurant menu, but have a piece of tape or something to look last minute placed over the item with a note saying: “due to unforeseen circumstances this menu item has been pulled”. Waiters/waitresses acting as puppetmasters if asked could vaguely reference someone trying to buy out the restaurant which if looked up would send to a social profile or perhaps a few fake ‘news’ sites talking about th same guy buying up buildings in the area, maybe there is a clue written in the bathrooms saying: “I know who has the recipe” with some some numbers scrawled below (the numbers lead to a GPS coordinate AND a google maps location both with a new clue of some kind). The idea is that this gentlemen is stole this prize winning (another hook!) recipe in order to keep the restaurant from earning a bunch more money so he could buy it for some nefarious purpose (perhaps to get to the hidden prohibition-era treasure hidden in the building?) The key here would be try and keep as many of the clues in the restaurant thus driving customers back to find out the next clue, and to involve LOCAL scenery and people as much as possible. The goal would be to generate more community feelings around the restaurant, increase brand awareness, and bring in new customers. Many of the clues would require man hours but little cost. Maybe paying for a po box to drive someone there, some URLS to create dummy pages, maybe a two day ad in the local paper, but that would be about it. And even those if done write could be cut out all together. The culmination of the game could be a date and time, along with the gps coordinates of the restaurant. The time would be for when the restaurant is not open, and whoever shows up with the correct password could be treated to a free sampling of the ‘stolen recipe’.
These are just two of the many different ways in which ARGs could be used in ways other than for tv, movies, and video games. The key is that people have fun. If you have any other ideas for innovative ways to use ARGs please, pass them along.
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