This weekend I learned all about wildfires: up close and personal.  It all started with an erie cloud overhead we were talking with some friends on our driveway.  Now, in drought striken Texas dark clouds are a good thing, but this one seemed a bit different.   Then we started to smell smoke.  We do not have cable TV but a quick check of Twitter, Facebook and the local news sites showed that there were several major fires in our area.  They were spreading quickly, people were evacuating and buildings were burning. The top trending hashtag on Twitter was #centralTX fires so we started to check it regularly.  On Facebook we “liked” our town blog, Dripping Springs Babble, to get the latest news about the fire closest to us.  I then started to follow the twitterers who posted the most relevant information/updates.  We packed a a getaway bag and made an evacuation plan, but luckily we did not need implement it.  Others were not so lucky, but the community rallied  and social media sites which yesterday kept us informed, today told us about fundraisers, supply drives and ways we could participate.  All of this made me think about social responsibility during great tragedies, and how social media can elevate the efforts of a small business to match that of  larger, well-known organization.

1. If you post relevant and needed information people will follow you.  Dripping Springs Babble, did a great job on keeping the local community informed on the latest evacuations, road closures and fire department updates.  I estimate that more than half of the comments were thanking the owners of this small business, for providing the neighborhood details faster than traditional news media.  Now people remember this site as active member of the community who did the right thing.
2. This is not the time to advertise.  On the #centraltxfires (twitter catergory), people publically berated people who posted anything other then sympathy, or fire information.  You logo, image or page is enough for people to associate you with good deeds.
3. Once the danger has passed, leading fundraising efforts will be appreciated.  Donate your services, product, facility or time, and use social media sites to raise awareness.
4. Develop a way to measure the benefit your efforts helped everyone.  Knowing hat 100 people liked your facebook page and posted 60 comments saying thank you, really does make it worthwhile.

Not all business transactions are made in dollars and cents, many of us deal with business and products because we feel good about the product, the owners, the service or the overall experience.  In the business world this is called goodwill, and FASB (the standards accounting board) even has ways to calculate a goodwill for your balance sheet in certain financial situations.  The field of marketing is all about how to promote the “goodwill” of business or product to prospective customers. Business owners, know the goodwill factor of their customers and even trade on it, by asking them for recommendations, reviews, referrals, etc.  They have to careful to not demand too much of their customers, or else goodwill can turn into resentment and lead to a decrease in business.

My client “banked” her goodwill by asking her customers to write a review on her business on Yelp.  She did not offer them anything, but rather explained that she claimed her business on Yelp and would appreciate reviews there.  She could have picked another review site, but she learned that Yelp was reputable site and she trusted them to post her reviews.  These were honest and authentic reviews, from real everyday people, who have never heard of Yelp before.  Unfortunately Yelps algorithms/processes/policies can not distinguish between honest first-time users and complex pay-for-review operations.  Of her 10 reviews, none are visible under her business.  Not only can they not be seen by anyone, they also can not be accessed for reposting on to another site.  The goodwill she used is gone, and the time and energy her customers spend to review her business was wasted.

Why can’t she simply ask her reviewers to repost their comments on another site?  She is concerned that if she approaches them again, they may start to feel used and resent it.  The original conversation probably went something like this:  ”Hey you have been coming here for a while, can you please write a review of my business (your honest opinion) on this cool website, Yelp, I learned about recently?”  Its a bit awkward to follow that up with ” Thank you so much for writing that review, unfortunately Yelp thought your review was fraudulent and suppressed it, so now can you please rewrite it on this other review site?”

Yelp is one of the top business review sites, but as its reach expands beyond social media savvy business and reviewers, this issue will grown.  Not all reviewers or business owners know about Yelp, so some exchange of information (about Yelp) between the two will occur.  So I strongly urge Yelp to take another look at their processes and policies, because in this particular case they have lost goodwill with both the listing business and its reviewers.

For the price of an iPhone, the Kinect allows us control what other object do.  Even cooler are all the hacks that people can come up with in the privacy of their own home, and then share with us.  One read your email, another translated American Sign Language (ASL) and a favorite for all couch potatoes: move a lazyboy.

For me its controlling netflix.  That is huge.  Growing up we always had a flight to the death over the remote, because that person got to determine what other people watched.  Now the stakes are even higher, we went through 3 peanut remotes in the past four years (kids use them as projectiles, dogs confuse them for chew toys…well you get the idea.)  Also remotes have gotten so complicated that my mother, or my mother-in-law request I turn on the TV for them.  These are smart, educated women (engineering degree, patent holder.)  Now a wave of your hand or foot can get you to your favorite show.

Like the IPhone, the Kinect is relatively inexpensive, commercially available, has low barriers for development, and a developer community that loves to share hacks.

One question raised in the session was: what what free social media tools do I personally use?

Instead of Microsoft I recomment Google or Zoho.  For finances both personal and professional I use Mint (its not as robust as Quicken, but its free and your information can be accessed from any device you use.  It uses industry standards for security, so its as safe as any other online banking system.)

Here is the event blog post and the official event writeup (its at the bottom of the page.)

Shout out to Amanda Noz from Blaze Solutions Group,  and the AJC staff for the excellent work they are doing to put this event together.