I’ve invested in new tools, such as the new MacBook Pro I’m writing this post on, and I’ve realigned my personal and professional strategies to allow me to work faster and more efficiently than ever before. I’ve got a new website coming (it’s almost done!) and I’m launching several new initiatives that I’ll be very excited to share with you in the very near future.

While I’ll be discussing things in greater detail in future posts, I will also be posting much more frequently this year on a variety of topics including the following:

• Social Media &Interactive Marketing
• Tools (app reviews and “How To” posts)
• eBooks (I’ve got several coming out soon)
• Events (speaking and training seminars)
• Writing (both screenwriting and fiction that I’ll be sharing)
• And much more!

I hope you will join me this year, both here and via my social media outlets; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ (which will be a major focus for me in 2012). If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing, sharing and helping you in 2012 and beyond!

And Happy New Year!

The Class

On November 10, 2011, I had the pleasure of presenting “Create & Deploy Your Own QR Codes” to a small class for the Center City Proprietor’s Association in Philadelphia. It was a really fun giving this presentation. If you’d like to see it, can download it from Slideshare.com (for some reason, embedding isn’t working – sorry about that).

I may repeat this class in a few weeks as a webinar. Please let me know if you’re interested by commenting on this post.

Also, I added a QR Code Campaign Worksheet at the end of the presentation which should help you organize you campaigns when using QR Codes. If you have any questions about QR Codes, the presentation or the services I offer, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks to the CCPA, Audrey Julienne and the attendees.

Enjoy!

Scan (or click) on this Code to Register

You’ve heard about them. You’ve seen them around. They’re popping up everywhere. QR Codes are the latest rage, but what are they? How do you create them? How do you use them? What are they good for? Join me on Thursday, November 10, 2011 (12:00 – 1:30 PM) at the law firm of Caesar, Rivise, Bernstein, Cohen & Pokotilow, Ltd. (1635 Market Street, 7 Penn Center, 11th Floor, Philadelphia) and you’ll learn everything you need to know about QR Codes, including:

• What are QR Codes?
• History of QR Codes
• QR Anatomy
• Types of QR Codes
• How to Make a QR Code
• How to Read a QR Code
• How to Use QR Codes
• Measuring Success
• Examples & Best Practices
• How NOT to use
• Security Risks
• The Future

So, come join me. It’ll be a great time.

Click here to register (or scan the QR Code in this post).

See you there!

In this post, I interviewed Jonathan Maberry, author of such zombie brain-feasts as Patient Zero, Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Dead of Night and Wanted Undead or Alive. Note that there are two versions. Tweeting with Zombies is a short version that focuses on Twitter and was posted to twitip.com. The longer, extended post, Of Zombies & Social Media, is on Addicted to Social Media.

Enjoy!

It's all good. I promise.

Hi there! I’m not a fan of announcing that I’m going to be making an announcement, but since you’re here anyway, I will.  BIG changes are coming very shortly. Please keep an eye out for them. I’ll let you know soon.

Thanks,

Neal

Neal Wiser Presenting to Villanova MBA Class

On Monday, April 4^th, I was invited to present to the marketing MBA class at Villanova University’s School of Business. The presentation entitled “Social Media and Marketing” included the following topics:

• Defining Social Media
• The Structure of Social Media
• The State of Social Media
• Why Social Media is Important for Marketing
• Strategic Planning
• Social Media for Marketers (Monitor, Manage Measure)
• Where are we Going?

If you would like to see my presentation or would like me to present to your organization, please don’t hesitate to contact me through any of the channels listed here.

Following my presentation, Professor Dr. Ralf Terlutter, Vice Dean of the School of Management and Economics at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, gave an enlightening presentation about advertising in Europe. Dr. Terlutter’s presentation included an analysis of various, long running print campaigns and an analysis demonstrating how the advertisements both succeeded and failed.

After their presentations, Dr. Aronte Bennett, Ph.D. of Villanova’s Department of Marketing and Business Law presented both Dr. Terlutter and myself with plaques commemorating our presentations to the class.

Professor Dr. Ralf Terlutter, Dr. Aronte Bennett, ODM’s Neal Wiser and Villanova Alumni Carmine Berardi

Last week, it was announced that Goldman Sachs will invest $450 million in Facebook in addition to helping the company raise an additional $1.5 billion. This is a massive amount of money that will allow Facebook to do practically anything it wants (as if it couldn’t already). But while the pundits debate what Facebook will do with that money and whether or not it should, will or won’t go public, Facebook could become even more massive and powerful, ultimately evolving into FaceBank.

Could Facebook become FaceBank?

Facebook would certainly need much more than the few billions it’s raising in order to transform itself into a bank. However, if Mark Zuckerberg can successfully compete against companies such as Google (something he’s clearly positioning Facebook to do in both search and advertising) then Facebook would be able to generate the billions in additional revenue per quarter that it would need to back transactions from its 500+ million members.

Indeed, Facebook already has much of the critical infrastructure it needs in order to enable such transactions. Aside from the robust server infrastructure Facebook uses just to run the site, it has Credits, its virtual currency product, and Facebook social plugins such as the Like Button, Like Box and Login Button that are currently being used by at least 2 million websites. With these components already in place, Facebook is very close to being able to offer its users the ability to purchase products and conduct other financial transactions amongst each other using Facebook as the intermediary.

Would Facebook become FaceBank?

Of course, to do this Facebook would have to open itself up to an incredible degree of scrutiny, perhaps in many countries. This is something that Facebook will have to do anyway if it is going to go public, but this is also something that Zuckerberg doesn’t seem interested in doing.

However, in a FaceBank world, Facebook’s current $50 Billion valuation would merely be a drop in the bucket. If Zuckerberg and company could transform Facebook into a FaceBank, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Facebook surpassing Apple’s $300 Billion valuation, especially if Zuckerberg achieves his goal of having 1 billion members. If this were to happen, in our bubble-based global economy, could a trillion-dollar valuation be far behind? And what would a company that commands such wealth and that knows so much about a significant percentage of the world’s population’s interests, likes and desires ultimately do then?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

What it Does

Image Source: Inside Facebook

The change is actually very simple. If an ad directs you to a destination outside Facebook, it will display the ad’s destination URL by placing that URL in a prominent location just below the headline and above the ad’s image (see picture). The idea is that you will now know exactly where you will be sent if you click on that ad. It’s a new layer of protection, right?

Wrong!

What’s the Risk?

The risk is that it’s ridiculously easy to dupe the user. How? Because while you may indeed be sent to the URL being displayed, Facebook has not indicated that they are doing anything to validate that the destination itself is safe.

But how could the destination not be safe if Facebook is showing me where I’m going?

Here are two likely scenarios that someone with malicious intent could set up in minutes. In both scenarios, you see an ad on Facebook with the URL www.ThisSiteIsSafe.com. You click on it. This is what could happen:

1)      The site you arrive at injects malware into your computer or does other evil things.

2)      The site you arrive at immediately redirects you to yet another website that could inject malware into your computer or do other evil things.

Certainly Facebook could, and should, add some sort of ongoing validation service to investigate these destinations. I say ongoing because it would be simple for the “advertiser” to set up a benign site that could revert into a malicious site as soon as validation is completed.

While I applaud Facebook for their attempt to protect users, they certainly have not thought things through. Until then, Clickers Beware!

What do you think? Let me know in the Comments.

Communication Breakdown, NOT!

The situation is a familiar one. Without realizing it, I used far more minutes than my plan allows for during the month (I had an unusual number of long conference calls). While working with AT&T’s Customer Service Rep to resolve the issue, I asked why I was never notified that I had exceeded my plan’s minutes, especially considering how massive the overage was. The Rep told me that I could request a notification email, but such an email would only be sent after I had exceeded my limit by one hundred minutes!

Furthermore, AT&T will not notify me when I am approaching my limit, nor will they notify me once I’ve exceeded my limit. Indeed, the only notification I’ll get is after I’ve already accrued close to two hours of additional charges billed at a significantly higher rate.

Regardless whether you consider AT&T’s failure to notify me a “shady” business practice, the one thing it wasn’t was a communications breakdown. It was a conscious decision made by AT&T because their calculations tell them that they’ll generate significantly more revenue by billing their millions of customers who exceed their limits every month at a higher rate. But at what cost?

Missed Opportunities

Clearly, there are massive numbers of people who get upset with AT&T when they receive their bills every month. Obviously, many of those people leave AT&T for another service as soon as their contracts expire. This is called churn and it’s a major loss leader in the telecom industry.

The following steps outline how AT&T should seize the opportunity to provide an important value-added service to their customers that would not only make those customers happy, but both reduce the churn rate and generate additional revenue.

1. When a customer chooses their plan, they should be required to sign up for Usage Notification Messages via email, SMS, Twitter DM’s, Facebook, voice mail, smoke signals or whatever method they choose. Upon doing this, they have now Opted-In to receiving constant messaging from AT&T which, in addition to notifying customer of their current usage, could also be filled with special offers, coupons, etc.
2. One or more of these messages could be a mandatory as part of the contract in order to guarantee that AT&T will be able to reach them with their message.
3. The customer should be allowed to choose when these messages are sent, and their frequency. A typical messaging program could look like this:

• • Notification 1 – Approaching Limits (Optional): “You requested that this notification be sent to you when you are within XX minutes of your limit. If you would like to purchase additional minutes…”
  • Notification 2 – Limit Reached (Mandatory): “You requested to be notified when you have reached the limit of your contract. Any calls made beyond this point will be billed at XX/minute. However, you can purchase additional minutes at the special rate of YY…”
  • Notification 3 – Weekly Usage Report (Mandatory): “At the time that this message was sent (xx:xx:xxxx), you have used XX minutes out of YY minutes as specified in your plan. If you feel you may exceed your monthly minutes, you can purchase additional minutes at the special rate of YY…”

The benefit to AT&T is that they get a chance to offer the customer something of value while at the same time letting the customer know the status of their account. Their customers will be much more likely to read these messages because it keeps them informed as to how many minutes remain.

Is this simple, or what?

BTW, because AT&T realized they were remiss in notifying me that I had exceeded my minutes, they credited me back the overage. Thanks AT&T!

So, is this simple, or what? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Neal and Astronaut TJ Creamer

On July 29th, I was back at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC for yet another Tweetup, this time to meet Astronaut TJ Creamer (@Astro_TJ) who recently returned from the International Space Station.  After the Tweetup, I interviewed Stephanie Schierholz, NASA’s first Social Media Manager which you can listen to right here.

This interview marks our 25th Podcast for Addicted to Social Media. You can listen to our previous podcasts here.

Please leave a comment, and Enjoy!