James Richardson

The use of twitter by Small business is really a no brainer, but is still something that is underutilized in this country.

Being a free medium, its a practical gold mine for communicating and engaging existing and new customers in a very ‘social media’.

This week, I was encouraged to see a local favorite of mine ‘Cafe Italia’ jump on the horse, and start a fun and simple twitter campaign, to promote their restaurant, and encourage new diners to try them on the busy and competitive Lygon Street strip, in Carlton, Victoria.

Quick facts
Twitter ID: twitter.com/cafeitalia3053
Following: 559
Followers: 216
Average Tweets per day: 3.7

Cafe Italia is a an Italian restaurant located on University street, Carlton, which is a side street off the infamous Lygon street ‘Little Italy’ precinct in Melbourne, Victoria.

This past week, Cafe Italia have taken to promoting a special ‘Pasta and Gnocchi’ celebration, to highlight their fresh pasta and hand made gnocchi, and have been doing a stand up job at that.

Some of the important factors that Cafe Italia have been getting right are:

Casual Conversations
Cafe Italia have been reaching out to those who @ reply them, RT them, or follow them and communicating to them in a natural way.

Have purpose
Cafe Italia had a clear purpose and agenda for their use on twitter. By having something in mind when you are using twitter for business, you can slowly work towards your end goal – whatever that is!

Make your followers happy
Cafe Italia ran a competition throughout the week, entered simply by RT’ing a promotional message about the restaurant. Having giveaways and freebies for fans costs you very little, gets a customer in the door, and creates buzz in the wider community.

Although these guys should be applauded for taking the plunge and doing so much right, they can certainly do a some things to further enhance their profile.

Here are two ideas I would recommend right away to these guys:

1. Promote Social Media profiles on website
Cafe Italia has a website which is looking a little tired, and has no social media integration. If you are a small business and using social media to build your profile, interlink EVERYTHING.

If someone goes to your website, make sure they find out about your twitter and facebook profiles, and vice versa.

2. Customize your profile
Although there are HEAPS, of really feature rich and cool Twitter desktop and mobile apps out there, fact is, most people still use Twitter.com to browse and reply to tweets.

Make sure your twitter background has the following distinct features:

• Company logo/Image: Make sure you have an identifying image for your business on the right sidebar of the profile
• Links and contact details: Although these are not clickable-visually they are a great call to action for the customer
• Appropriate color scheme: Make sure that your profile is attractive, and most importantly readable. Twitter allows you to choose your text colors, border colors and heaps more – so try and be sensible in your choices.

If you are a small business, I encourage you to embrace, or at least dip your toe in the social media waters.

If you are in the area, Cafe Italia is a great place for dinner in Carlton. Visit the website or call them on 9347 0638

Promotion is one of the hardest parts of creating a successful event. You need to ensure you hit the right audience, at the right time, to ensure they buy a ticket and attend your event.

If you are low on budget, or looking for that competitive edge, the following are some great methods I have personally used with great success, that won’t cost you a cent (almost…)

Social Media
Social media is a no brainer. In this medium, the only cost is time, and the reach is amazing.
Social media allows you to target and interact with people who have interests relevant to your event, and allows current and potential attendees to spread and share your message, and there is nothing better than hands off marketing!
My preferred social media platforms for this purpose are Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is great for building a great list of interested individuals, to which you can use 140 characters to connect with them.
By pushing out a variety of direct event promotions, insights on topic articles, and engaging banter with your followers or potential followers, you will start to build up a reputation as an authority figure within your community.

If you have a personal Twitter account and are involved in the industry, leverage that to push more followers towards your ‘event’ account.
Facebook is another great social media platform to reach the masses. Although it is a little dependent on the event type, it provides a wide variety of options including creating an event, and creating a page, both of which I recommend.

Email marketing
If you build it, they will come. Was Kevin Costner really talking about email lists in the classic movie ‘Field of Dreams’?
An email list is invaluable. If you don’t have one, build one. If you do have one, use it! With all the talk about social media, we often forget that email is a more personal form of communication, and let’s be honest, EVERYONE has email, and only a fraction have a Twitter account.
Use the emails to inform people about the event, but make sure you have a strong call to action.
Some great tips on email marketing can be found:

• 5 crucial Email marketing tips
• How to build a list
• Is Email Marketing worth your time?

Referrals
Anyone in business knows it’s expensive to get new customers. The same goes for targeting brand new potential attendees for your event.
By utilizing the contacts you already have, you will have an easier time reaching new people, and will not have to go to great lengths yourself, it just happens naturally.
The best referral techniques I have found are Linkedin and leveraging existing ticket holders.

Linkedin is an often overlooked online networking tool. It will help you find the right contacts within organisations, and give you the right people to ask for when you email, phone or contact these organisations.
Search for a business that might be relevant to your event, and find employees at that company. Go through and select those which you would like to contact and either a) Call them on the phone b) Buy an ‘In mail’ package form Linkedin which allows you to send them an email directly through the system.

Existing ticket holders should be contacted throughout the lead up to the event. By offering an incentive for referring their friends or colleagues, such discounted referral tickets, and prizes for the most referrals, you will get some great results.

Running an event is a stressful pursuit. It takes alot of careful planning, marketing, and budgeting. With some clever marketing efforts like I have mentioned, you will not only save time and money, you will go a along way to helping your event be just that little more successful.


Good luck!

It was a long and trying few months of planning, organisation, arguments, coffee, and good times – and now the first successful Digital Sport Summit has been and gone.

With some great and inspirational speakers, a truly amazing and iconic venue in the MCG, and a fantastic array of sports and social media minds, we created an event not to be missed, and a permanent fixture on the sport and technology calendar.

The day begin with a fantastic presentation from Jeramie McPeak, VP Digital Operations from the Phoenix Suns. He spoke of the importance social media plays in fan engagement of the team, how his players are universally embracing the technology, and how the Phoenix Suns leverage social media to increase ticket sales and drive merchandise sales.

Other highlights throughout the day included:

• Johnathan Simpson form Essendon FC who spoke about how his club is leading the way in the AFL in social media use
• Anthony Harrison from Cricket Victoria who spoke at length about how the Victorian Bushrangers used social media and iPhone applications to raise the profile of its players and promote games.
• Darren Rowse who spoke about how he successfully uses his blogs to generate a revenue stream and how sporting organisations can take a leaf out of his book and begin to show ROI from online mediums
• Nick Marvin, CEO of the Perth Wildcats spoke about social media from a management perspective. This was a fantastic presentation which spoke of sport as a business first.
• Alana Fischer from FFA who spoke about building and maintaining communities for the World Cup bid
• Peter Jankulovski from Vapour Media who gave some interesting insight into fantasy sports in Australia and its amazing growth over the past few years.
• Harry O’Brien giving us a great insight as to how players can use social media to build their profile and leverage their celebrity for the greater good.

The day was a great success for everyone involved (Including Anthony, Katherine, and myself).

We had over 160 attendees on the day, over 850 tweets using our #dss10 hashtag, and many happy people during and after the event.

The organisers (Jak Events) would like to thank our sponsors Lava, Slattery Media Group, BizCatalyst SEO, 3 Dots Studio, andEventOffice, as well as our fantastic volunteers Rhian and Tyson for their help throughout the day.

We cannot wait to see what we can arrange for Digital Sport 2011 – stay tuned for dates and more information, it’s going to be bigger and better!

Old Spice: a brand making a great comeback from its origins as an ‘Old Man’s’ option for mens bathroom products, has take social media to new levels.

To see more, visit the Old spice Youtube page, or visit him on Twitter

If you are looking for a really great and professional photographer in Australia, Dreamlife Photography are the perfect team to help you capture your special day.

Dreamlife photography are the professionals who pride themselves on their life of photo and video, which means they really know all the best ways to capture your wedding or special event in a way that will ensure that you have lasting memories forever.

Dreamlife Photography have been in the business for many years, and they really are a great  choice when you are looking for a professional team to capture every aspect of and event. Dreamlife photography can use their state of the art equipment and their keen eye for what works, to make sure that everything looks just right. All our photographers and videographers understand how to capture any event that you may be putting on, from large events to weddings-they really can do it all.

The art of our business is to capture exactly what is going on, whether it is with a still or video camera. At Dreamlife they want to make sure you have lasting memories that truly capture what the day is about. They can take natural or professional photos, and pride themselves on getting everything

All our staff are characters in their own right and they all have an understanding of the right balance of professionalism and personality that is necessary for someone involved in working on a couple’s big day. It is an honour and a privilege to be involved with weddings, there is always so much love and excitement involved and we take pride in being a part of so many wonderful peoples’ special moment.

No matter what sort of capture you are after, Dreamlife photography can help you capture the moment and deliver great prints and video footage. I would not hesitate in recommending them for any event you may have – wedding or corporate.

When I was doing some research on this company, I stumblied across some nice reviews of Dreamlife photography:

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