James Richardson

Last week I spoke on Skype to Amit.

Amit lives in New Delhi, and has been working for me for the best part of 5 years. Amit is an outsourcer who has a great job at various programming and SEO jobs for me over the years.

The reason I was speaking to Amit was to go through some details about an exciting journey I am making next week. I will be going to visit and meet first hand, “My Team”

I am feeling both excited and nervous about this trip I am going to make. I will be meeting with people I have worked with every day for the past 3-4 years – but have never met face to face, which would in everyday situations be a little weird, but is common place in today’s hyper connected world.

First stop will be New Delhi.

In New Delhi I will catch up with Amit and the team who do all my web development work. “My Team” here consists of 3 designers and programmers who I have come to know very well.

Next Stop will be Pune. In Pune I will meet “My Team” that do all my SEO work. This is a highly specialised and skilled team who have been working for us for over 3 years. “My Team” consists of around 25 individuals who perform various tasks in the SEO process, and together, perform an amazing service for myself and my clients.

Last stop is Goa. In Goa I will meet Satish, who along with 3 colleagues makes up “My Team” of data entry and research. Satish is taking an overnight train to meet up with me.

I am really looking forward to further building my relationships with “My Team” and feel this is a valuable trip that will not only benefit “My Team” and myself, but also help us both work together to provide a better service for “My Customers”

Have you met “Your Team”? What was the experience like? What have I got to dread/look forward to? I would love your advice

First off, I will start by saying that I have not been paid or encouraged in any way shape of form to make this review. I was simply a consumer who used their service and was impressed by the concept.

Last weekend, I was away with my Girlfriend in beautiful Tasmania. The weather was amazing, the food great, and we had a great time. After exhausting ourselves throughout the day on trips to various tourist sites, we returned via Woolworthes to pick up some food for dinner, and thought about buying a DVD to watch in the hotel room.

After looking for a while, we baulked at paying over $20 for a B grade DVD, and something we would most likely only watch once.

As we were exiting, the Oovie DVD Rental machine caught my eye. I have seen these before (My local supermarket has one too), but had never really stopped to see how they work, or what they offer to a consumer.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use, the DVD selection, and the whole DVD delivery and return process.

Now lets get this straight, I am not trying to close down business’, or remove people’s livlihood-but seriously, these machines could easily overtake traditional DVD retal stores with some clever marketing and consumer education.

Some of the best features of the system include:

• No Memberships
  Just swipe your credit card and the DVD is yours for the length you decide to keep it
• Cheap Rental Fees
  A $2.99 where looking at a rental cost similar to a mail order DVD service, or an itunes movie rental
• Email receipts
  You have the option of having tax receipts emailed directly to an email of your choice-awesome.
• Return it ANYWHERE
  If you are on the road, simply return your DVD to any of the machines around Australia. Great for travelling and convienience.
• Like the DVD? Keep it
  If you decide you like the DVD so much you don’t want to take it back, or are too lazy to get off the couch and return it-just keep it. The max cost is about the same as buy a DVD from JB Hifi.

Now I hear you say, if the system is so good-why is everyone not using it? Why is it not a huge phenomenon and DVD stores are dropping like flies in their wake? I think its about consumer education and promotion.

Some tactics that Oovie and similar services could use to help promotion:

• Sharing rental information on Facebook and Twitter
  This is a simple one. Simply tap into the biggest promotional tools around and give consumers the option to auto publish their latest rentals and broadcast them to their friends.
• Instore demos
  Simply having staff manning the machines during peaks times, handing out free rental codes and showing people how to use the machines would go a long way to help consumer understanding of the machines.
• Social Website
  Create a website where customer can login and see and share their DVD rental history. See titles that suit their previous rental interests, and find locations to rent these DVD’s
• Bluray anyone?
  Surely this service should offer Bluray rental considering it’s the  latest technology on the market?

The DVD rental business is a an evolving market. No-one really knows where it will be in 5 years with the increase of streaming movie availability and faster internet speeds. That being said, Oovie has nice opportunity to take on and chance this evolving market and really make some waves in the industry.

For more information visit Oovie.com.au

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