The marketplace of today is always go go go and companies are always concerned about their brand.  In the past companies relied on more traditional advertising, but things are changing drastically and companies must be ready to reaft at lightening speed.

Take for example Domino’s and the videos that were recently surfaced on Youtube about 2 staff members doing inappropriate things to food items while they prepared food for customers.  In the past a story like this would have broken on the TV and if people did not get a chance to see it they would have had a much easier time cleaning up the bad press.  Now people are taking video clips of everything and sharing them on many different socail network sites, like YouTube.  The staff members that did these acts posted their videos on YouTube, and they were sent like wildfire all over the internet.  I got emails, and Tweets about them and had already seen the videos 12+ hours before there even made headlines on the traditional TV media programs.

So now that the videos are surfaced on the internet and starting to spread like a plague, it is time for Domino’s to kick it into high gear.  They are on a Social Media frenzy campaign to try and get the word out that they do not condone these types of actions.  Word of mouth is a very powerful thing and companies need to recognize that they need to stay tuned into what their brands are doing each and every minute to avoid potential brand crushing situations.

They have released a video from the president of the company apologizing for all fo the things that the staff members did in the video, which while the video was a great step, they should have not had him reading a script.  In Social Media there is a big push to be authentic, and not scripted and corporate.  Had he actually did a candid apology looking straight into the camera, the video would have been more compelling and sincere.

Making a video with positive spin is not always enough though.  In more cases then not a positive reply from a company does not draw anywhere near as much traffic as the original video in question.  In these situations company’s need to put the full court press in all of their customer service and PR campaigns to reach as many customers and reassure them they have their best interest at heart.

So the jury is still out on how bad these videos have hurt the Domino’s brand, but one thing is for sure.  Good News, as well as bad news travels a whole lot faster in this new age of Social Media.

Be Well
Frank

photo credit

This is the first part in my new series on Social Media Tools, where I showcase some of the more popular tools and teach you how to use them.

What is Delicious?  Delicious.com is a social book marking application that will allow you to save, tag and share all of your favorite websites that you visit on the web.  In the past if you wanted to bookmark a site to review or reference later you would use the bookmarks that are built into your browser.  The problem with saving sites this way is that they are local only to the current machine that you are on, and if you want to use another machine you will not have access to those bookmarks.  In addition they are not easy to organize and search on when you want to find a certain website.

Is Delicious Easy to Use?

If you can bookmark a site in your browser you can use Delicious.  Follow these quick steps and you will be on your way to changing the way you store and browse your favorite sites.

1. Go to Delicious at (http://www.delicious.com) and register an account with a username and password.
2. When you are at the site, download the browser plug-in for your favorite browser. Here are the links for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
   1. Firefox – http://delicious.com/help/quicktour/firefox
   2. Internet Explorer – http://delicious.com/help/quicktour/ie
3. When you first start to use Delicious you will have the option to import all of your bookmarks from your current browser.
4. Browse your favorite website and then you can click on the “Tag” icon in your browser.
5. You will have a dialog box appear that will allow you to enter in some key information:You can see and edit the following:
   • Title: I would leave this alone; this is the title from the webpage.
   • Notes:  You can enter in any words you want, and you can use this to help add more notes to yourself about why you bookmarked the site.
   • Tags:  You enter in search tags here separated by a space.  There are some Recommended and Suggested Tags below and if you want to use any of those tags just click on those tags.  You an also enter in any tags you want as well.  Feel free to use as many tags as you need.
6. You have now saved your bookmark to the Delicious.com website.
7. You are able to recall all of your Delicious.com bookmarks within the browser, and better yet view them on any machine that has a live Internet connection.  To view your bookmarks online just go to the following URL:http://www.delicious.com/XXXusername – where you enter in your username instead of XXXusername.
8. Next to the “Tag” icon on the browser plug-in  to the left is the Delicious bookmarks icon.  This will bring up your Delicious bookmarks and they are all sorted by your various tags.  In addition if you go to the website you have a number of various options as well to view and sort your bookmarks.
9. You can now also share your bookmarks with others by giving them the URL from above and then they can see all of your bookmarks.

Go and get your Delicious.com account today and start making the best use of your bookmarks.  Ever since I have started using bookmarks on Delicious I have never looked back, I use a variety of machines each day and having my bookmark sites all in one place and available anytime on any machine is why I think this is the most valuable tool I could ever use.

Enjoy and tell me what you think of Delicious.

Be Well
Frank