How come wine company’s never offer a contest where you could win something on the bottom of a cork? Ok, you’re right, people who buy $50-$100 bottles of wine do not care about whatever it is under the cork, as long as it smells like fine wine. I’m talking about the cheap inexpensive wine, you know the bottles that no one is aging in the cellar, the ones that you buy for the weekend and if they last till Monday you’re having wine with supper.
I see an opportunity here. You could develop a classy contest, partner with the New Yorker or Napa Valley and offer a prize people will talk about around the water cooler.
Creating an incentive for customers to look for your wine at the store can be a powerful tactic. With whatever excuse you come up with as to the reason why wine company’s don’t do this, ask yourself, why? And why couldn’t they? I am open for a discussion.
Photo Credit: Gary Tamin
“Management plan or method for completing objectives; plan of procedures to be implemented, to do something.” – Answers.com
“Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.” – Wikipedia
“A mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests.” – John Boyd’s
“Strategy is about knowing where your company is today, where you want to take it, and how you are going to get there.” -Peter Drucker
However you define it, all strategy really means is focusing on a certain objective and determining how to achieve it. Have you ever brainstormed ways of revamping your company or product to ensure a more competitive stance in your market? Have you ever wondered what may happen if there is a large shift in your industry?
Too many industries are facing large changes in how business is conducted with the majority of organizations ignoring it. What used to be safe is now risky. If you’re not exploring where you industry is headed, where your competitors are expanding to and what your customers are talking to each other about, you may be missing the most valuable information about your industry.
The best part about this ever changing business landscape of the future is that the internet, if used effectively, can become your most powerful tool to explore your options. It is never to late to start learning, you’re already on the right track by reading my blog 
.
The choice is yours, either start learning and exploring or take the “safe” alternative and do business as usual believing you’re industry is immune to change.
- Instead of “news” build your own RSS reader
- Begin following local bloggers in your RSS reader and keep searching for new ones
- Challenge a local blogger, disagree, leave a comment
- Offer to write a guest post for a local blogger
- Offer to write a guest post for an industry specific blog
- Hold a local specific contest (Treasure hunt via Facebook?)
- Start a local restaurant review site, make it fun
- Ask for feedback of your product/service via Twitter
- Offer to take pictures at an event and start a Flickr account for them
- Host a picture contest
- Host a picture caption contest for other businesses
- Encourage patrons to take a picture of their meal and share it online for 25% off the meal
- Tell stories about your product on a blog
- Host a community blog with many different contributers
- Start selling your product on Facebook
- Encourage employees to offer reviews of the company via LinkedIn
- Start a local trivia blog (written, video, picture)
- Offer free products/services to people with lots of friends on Facebook
- Put your website on all printed material
- Put your Twitter name in places where no one would expect to see it (get creative with this one)
- Put your blog and Twitter name on the inside of a box of donuts and deliver them to potential readers
- Put your blog, vlog, landing page or video in your e-mail signature
- Start a collection of local website on Delicious, sort them in a meaningful way
- Host an online garage sale
- Host an actual garage sale via Ustream
- Add you company to Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and any other geo-location service
- Offer different deals on Foursquare, see what works
- Host a city wide treasure hunt via Foursquare
- Host a 24 hour Foursquare challenge
- Leave an unbelievable “deal” on Yelp and see who takes you up on it
- Document the entire Foursquare challenge on YouTube
- Do a video production of your safety manual
- Record the “Monday morning announcements” on YouTube, make them fun
- Set up Google alerts to monitor your company’s name being mentioned
- Add you business to Google maps (seems simple but many people overlook this one)
- Give me a reason to go to your website daily
- Host a local “Tweet-up”
- Offer to begin a Twitter account for a large local event
- Setup an your automatic e-mail the next time you’re on holidays to say “you’re only responding to requests on Twitter”
- Have a video contest, offer a large cash prize
- Make a video explaining everything about your organization
- Make a video about a different employee every day until you run out of employees
- Start a YouTube channel for your company and post a video per week about industry specific topics
- UStream your Friday at the office
- UStream a different place/person in your office weekly
- Have a “submit question” box on your homepage, answer every question that comes in
- Submit a fascinating story to Digg and Stumble Upon once a week
- Sell T-shirts on your home page for charity, let people vote on the charity
- Start a Foodbank challenge with one of your competitors, document everything on a picture blog
- Create an interactive fundraising tool on your website
- Encourage all of your staff to fill out their entire profile on LinkedIn, make it a company wide activity
- Host an appreciation BBQ for the employee of the month, video tape it and post all the pleasant things said on your company blog
- Start an e-mail newsletter and fill it with the most helpful information/links in your industry
- Recognize employees who go above and beyond on your company blog
- Put your Twitter name on a billboard by a busy street
- Give free coffee to everyone downtown who becomes a fan of yours on Facebook
This is just the beginning of what you could do, the possibilities are endless. Have anymore you want to share? Please do!
The business applications for Foursquare seem to be increasing. As more people join, the more attention the platform is getting from businesses. Albeit Saskatchewan is a little behind the “checkin” train but that doesn’t mean some businesses are trying Foursquare on for size. Just today I found this on Twitter. 
Coda Clothing may not explode with business but I went and bought a shirt to get in the draw, will you?
I believe those who could benefit the most from Foursquare are events like Mosaic. In a three day span, thousands of people will be traveling to and from nineteen different pavilions. Like the Haggis at the Scottish pavilion? Leave a tip for everyone else who checks in there. Want to know which pavilion your friends are at? Or better yet, which pavilion is the most popular? Check Foursquare.
For the Mosaic organizers, create special badges for those who checkin to ten, fifteen and all nineteen different pavilions. Offer a prize to people who checkin at all nineteen pavilions. The pavilions themselves could have a swarm badge where if over fifty people checkin, all food is 50% off for an hour, just as an example but you get my gist.
Why would Mosaic do this? Where is the economic return? How about all the story’s and tidbits of information that people will write about on Twitter and Foursquare. I’m sure the organizing committee would be interested in the feedback left online about how Mosaic 2010 was. Capture and share the positive messaging, and deal with the negative upfront. All the positive comments that were made online now become your messaging towards tourists thinking about visiting Regina. It’s the authentic online story being told that is going to attract people to come in future years.
It seems like a very cost effective method of spreading the word about Mosaic and garnering feedback on how to improve this long standing tradition we host every year in Regina. What do you think? Would it work? Would you checkin somewhere to get a discount? Heck, I sure would!
