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Trying to imagine how 140 characters could possibly do anything for your business? Well luckily, Gary Vaynerchuk, wine connoisseur and host of the popular Wine Library TV recently carried out an experiment that pitted traditional forms of advertising against Twitter. In the battle among traditional billboard, direct mail, and social media marketing, Twitter reigned supreme.

His experiment was fairly simple: He created three different coupon codes that would give users free shipping on their orders. His billboard coupon resulted in 300 new customers and cost him $7,500. The direct mail brought in a very minimal 200 customers compared to the $15,000 it set him back. But his tweet generated 1,800 new customers at the low, low cost of $0. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math here, the results overwhelming speak for themselves.

The reason for the disparity is also simple. With a billboard, you’ll catch eyes but that doesn’t mean the people actually care about the board’s message. It’s a crap shoot. With mail or even e-mail marketing, people get annoyed when their mailboxes/inboxes are essentially spammed. Twitter is unique in that its users can broadcast a message to followers who have an interest in what they have to say or the products they have to offer. Once you build a group of followers, your stream is essentially permission-based marketing targeted to a large group of people in a very efficient manner, especially when you include links that drive users to your site.

Social media “experts” have been touting Twitter’s marketing power, but here it is for you in numbers thanks to Gary V. And if you don’t believe him, you can have a look at Dell’s $3 million in sales thanks solely to Twitter.

I’ve had trouble accurately describing what Google Wave is exactly. At its highest level, Google Wave is the next revolution in communication. Period. And businesses would be foolish to be ignorant and not harness what will certainly be the most powerful communication tool since e-mail.

I know you’re saying to yourself, “yeah dude, just like every new Web technology that pops up … I’m sure they’ll be something new next week about which people will say the same.” This is the real deal though–at least if Google delivers on everything they promised in their demo. If any of their other projects, i.e. Gmail, are any indication, they will not let this fail. Since I doubt my ability to convey just how amazing this could be, I strongly encourage you to watch the demo below to understand its potential. (Lifehacker breaks it down nicely if you’re not inclined to watching an hour and a half video.)

In their own words, Google has described it as “e-mail, if it were invented today,” but it’s much more than that. It is a communication HUB. Think of any form of digital communication: e-mail, IM, Twitter, social networks, blogs, wikis, etc. Google Wave either improves on these or easily integrates with them so you have a central source for all your communication needs. Click to continue →

Have you ever noticed that none of the Technorati’s top wine blogs are written by people who actually own wineries: Vinography, Fermentation, Dr .Vino. That may seem counter-intuitive, but not if you examine what makes a good wine blog. Here are some best practices for wineries’ blogs—if you’re a winemaker that wants to get found and loyalty online.


Cultivate your terrior
Are you a California winery or an Indiana winery? Spell that out. Talk about the grapes endemic to your area, and what makes them different from those of other regions in America, and even the world. Make sure to use keywords people looking for information on the subject might type into a search engine: “Indiana grape varieties,” “Indiana wine varietals,” “Indiana chardonnel,” etc. Blog about this enough, and you’ll be an authority on the subject in search engines.

Talk about other wineries!
You’re not going to engage a lot of people just talking about your winery. But you can keep them coming back to your page if you’re a genuinely good source of information on wine—especially a niche aspect you know well. Do you use sustainable wine practices? Have some especially cool wine packaging? Feature and focus on other wineries that do the same. Trade links so you reach a larger audience. And blog regularly on these chosen niche categories.

Don’t name your blog after your winery.
It sounds like a good idea, but … if people aren’t familiar with your winery, its name certainly isn’t going to get them to your blog. Like the most popular, name your wine blog something catchy, preferably something that will get searched a lot.

Use multimedia.
Don’t just blog. Do wine tasting videos, a la Gary Vaynerchuk’s infamous Wine Library TV (by the way, he’s a wine seller!). Wine is a sensual product—you don’t just want to read about it, you want to see it and virtually smell it. Video will go so much further than print tasting notes, which will give you a leg up on the competition.

Connect your events to your blog.
Have tastings? Of course you do. Trivia night? Promote your blog at these events, whether it’s telling people to leave a comment or register for a small coupon online, or just letting them know about its existence.

Came across this new consortium of art videos in a blog-like, multimedia rich format last time I was at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The IMA, Smithsonian, New York Public Library and others contribute to ArtBabble, which the IMA envisioned as a place where people could see and comment on art videos.

I love the illustrations on this site, and the idea. But I don’t think the IMA is going far enough with it. In the FAQ’s, it tells you there’s nowhere to send an idea for an art video, and you can’t upload one yourself. “But feel free to comment to your hearts content!” they chide. Um, somehow, I don’t think that’s enough. Can’t wait until they unleash this to be truly interactive.

Google didn’t take long to unveil its plans to crush the yet-to-be released fact engine, Wolfram|Alpha. Yesterday, at Searchology, Google showcased new features for the world’s most popular search engine, some of which are available today but one of which is specifically designed to clobber Wolfram|Alpha before it gets its land legs.

Now available are additional search options that allow you to filter by video, forums, reviews and perhaps more importantly by time. Google is trying to duplicate Twitter’s ability to tap into live data to spread news faster than any other media outlet by allowing for filterable results by the past day, week or year. Although not quite up-to-the minute like Twitter, it’s close and will surely only get better. Click to continue →

In exactly five days, the shroud will be lifted from Wolfram|Alpha, ushering in a new dawn in searching the Web. Well, maybe, maybe not.  Stephen Wolfram, child prodigy and creator of the popular computational software program Mathematica, will be bringing his prowess of all things nerd to the world of search engines. And as with any search engine created by a particle physics genius, his latest endeavor is being touted as the Google killer. A bit overhyped? Definitely. Revolutionary? Possibly. One thing is clear: Wolfram|Alpha will not be a Google killer.

It will serve as what many are calling an answer or fact engine or what Wolfram himself has labeled a “computational knowledge engine.” Built on the computational power of Mathematica, it’ll probably be a damn good one: Twine founder Nova Spivak described his experience with it “like plugging into an electronic brain.” Click to continue →

We went on Jeffrey T. Meyer’s Good Beer Show podcast a month or so ago to talk about women and beer. My contention is that women DO drink craft beer, although my friend and Freetail Brewing Co. owner Scott Metzger said the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Boston had a panel on women and craft beer that addressed the great gender divide. While women represent 51 percent of the population, Metzger capitulated, they’re only 25 percent of craft beer drinkers.

This show is my representing for that 25 percent! We’re only going to grow. I think there’s a marketing and awareness gap here that can be easily remedied with some evangelism, starting here. (I was introduced to craft beer by women, BTW, in the Midwest. And they know more about it than any guy I’ve ever met.)

We drank Founders Cerise, Kentucky Breakfast Stout and Three Floyds Dark Lord (‘08). God Bless The Fickle Peach in Muncie, where we taped the show–and The Heorot, Founders and Three Floyds for that matter. And Belgian yeast. And enterprising craft brewers. And the Dark Lord. And …

The Chicago Trib did an article yesterday featuring a couple of random small businesses—a cruiseliner, a test preparation site, a real estate company and more—that have used social media to successfully drive their business.

Some highlights/lessons from the article:

Go where your customers are. The Scion Group, which owns and manages college housing, took its blogs to Facebook so they could reach their potential customers where they already play. Find out where your potential clients reside online by asking existing customers what types of social media they use (connecting off and online presences) and seeing where competitors and similar businesses in your field have successful online presences.

Don’t do it halfway! Posting events on social networks, blogging, having a Facebook profile won’t get you a lot of traction unless you have an integrated strategy for what you want to achieve, and actively work toward it every day. For example, PrepMe.com has a targeted, integrated social media presence to reach online clients: words of the day on Twitter, a Facebook crossword game, and Facebook group pages associated with high schools that use its services.

Be transparent. What does that mean? Being open, honest and responsive to online criticism. If someone complains about any aspect of your businesses, being online gives you the opportunity to acknowledge your shortcoming and make it right. Take advantage of that.

Recently, the amount of press on the explosive growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter has been overwhelming. What’s been really surprising? The demographic accounting for this massive growth: Baby Boomers are now dominating the social media scene, at least with respect to adoption rate. Facebook, once perceived as a college kid activity when it was restricted to college e-mail addresses, now has women over the age of 55 to thank for its most recent growth, according to Inside Facebook. In the past four months alone, this demographic has grown a staggering 175.3 percent. Additionally, the number of Facebook users over the age of 35 has nearly doubled in the past 60 days.

Similarly and to an even greater degree, Twitter has been the beneficiary from the surge in traffic from the middle-age demographic. Recent research from comScore discovered that 45 to 54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than the average Twitterer’s age to visit the site, which makes them the largest indexing age group. Overall, the average age of all 10 million twitterers is over the age of 35.

What does this mean for businesses? Social media, no longer a playground for the young, has reached a critical mass for use as an effective marketing tool. Coupled with the decline of print media, social media is now on the precipice of assuming its throne as king of reaching the masses. The onus is on businesses to come up with clever ways to effectively utilize these social media tools to bring customers back and reach new potential customers. And that’s where we come in. Let us create or refine your social media strategy and maximize these tools for you.

The New York Times reported last week that Yelp will, after six years of a user-driven approach to community business reviews, allow small business owners to respond to critiques they don’t think are fair or accurate.

Judging from the comments on the article, many business owners responded that they’ll eschew the “libelous” site altogether, citing a slew of “stupid” and “false” reviews that “should have been removed.” (Though their passionate responses here seem to contradict the promised refrain.)

Which just goes to show why businesses SHOULDN’T have a voice on this site. It’ll turn Yelp into a messy war zone, with most small businesses objecting to any criticism, petty or legitimate (and who is the best judge of that? Certainly not the businesses).

Indeed, many people think Yelp is too easy on outfits. FeedMeDrinkMe’s Renee Wilmeth posted an article a while back citing the amateur, easy-to-please palates of the majority of reviewers on Yelp. Indeed, the spirit of the site seems to reward favored small businesses more than to harpoon errant ones (though that does happen).

How about this: Instead of diluting a consumer-driven Web site, Yelp or some other enterprising outfit should erect a site where small business owners have the choice to skewer bad reviews. They can pull them from Yelp, dailies, magazines, weeklies, TV shows, etc. Everything wrong with a review–misspellings, factual errors, obvious lapses in judgement, and presumptuous statements–could be flogged for all the world to see.

Don’t crash a party, small businesses. Start your own: Badreviews.com?