This little gem has grown to become a shopping mecca for the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex region and is known all over North Texas for its high-end boutiques and fine dining, centered by Southlake’s Town Hall.

Dallas Limo Services is the premier limousine company in Southlake TX offering exquisite limousine transportation to anywhere in North Texas and beyond. Whether you need a Southlake prom limo, graduation limousine, wedding limousines, concert limo or a Southlake limousine for sporting events in Dallas or Arlington including the Cowboy’s, Mavs, Stars or Texas Rangers we have you covered. Our Southlake limo services are best in class and promise to exceed your expectations for luxury ground transportation in Southlake to anywhere in Dallas Fort Worth. We will send a well-trained and impeccably mannered chauffeur to pick you up from the anywhere you choose. You will be treated like royalty and will love the care and attention that will be given to you from the moment your chauffeur greets you. You will not need to worry about anything when you are with us. Get ready for the most luxurious drives of your life. You can give us a call at anytime of the day and we will be there at your disposal.

The real opportunity lies in successfully navigating your company through the turbulent waters of change.

Never before, have people had access to so much knowledge and it’s the ubiquity of this information that has forever changed how brand preferences are formed.

This new level of information access and customer engagement requires a fundamental change in company culture and that type of transformational change must come from the top.

Employees hunger for meaning and it’s a leader’s job to help them to see it. People want to feel like they are part of something big, a movement, rather than just merely cogs in a lifeless machine. Mahatma Gandhi said it brilliantly “be the change you want to see”.

Are you driven by a cause, a purpose or a belief? Do you consistently communicate to your team why your company exists beyond sales and profits? Can you articulate a vision that excites your employees and gets customers to rally behind your brand? Do you walk the talk with a fire in your belly?

The digital age has unveiled a new climate of leadership and it’s no secret that influence is no longer controlled strictly from the top. Influence is shifting into the hands consumers and online communities. The world has flattened and the power dynamics have begun to change.

As we move into the 21^st century, the most successful leaders will create relationships and networks, not hierarchies or silos. These leaders will leverage the networks to create value, build knowledge and ultimately develop advocates both inside and outside the organization.

This is an era of inspiration, inclusion and connection. All of the strategies, guiding principles and actions that we are used to are as critical to success as ever, but the greatest results will come to companies that can inspire both employees and customers to invest in the company’s underlying mission and what achieving that mission means to them as individuals.

Look, I get it, ultimately we have to deliver profit, but profit is a byproduct of serving the customers, which can only be achieved by serving the employees and your employees are starving for a sense of connection to a higher purpose. They need more than meeting this month’s sales and profit figures to get fulfilled and feel inspired.

You don’t need charisma to inspire people. You need an inspiring vision or purpose. People like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet understand this well. They’re great leaders not because they are charismatic but because they know that everyone has something within them that serves as a personal inspiration for their own level of success and satisfaction.

Great Leaders tap into that source of passion and energy unleashing the full potential of their employees driving extraordinary levels of creativity and innovation. This kind of enthusiasm spreads throughout organizations to create inspired and vibrant company cultures that attract consumers and talent alike.

Add in the right strategic value proposition and… BAM! you create an unstoppable force; one that permeates throughout all consumer touchpoints producing legions of loyal, engaged and profitable customers. It works for one of my companies Dallas Limousine Service and the results have phenomenal.

Simon Sinek author of “Start With Why” shows a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership that starts with the question “Why?” He says “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” He uses examples ranging from Apple to Martin Luther King; Simon demonstrates how the power of inspirational leadership motivates people to take action.

Is your company ready for the Digital Power Shift? What are you doing to prepare?

There is little doubt now that social media is a necessary piece of any corporate marketing mix. The bigger question these days seems to be “how do we monetize social media?” Real examples of a financial Return on Investment (ROI) from social media marketing programs are rare. Unfortunately for most e-commerce teams, having a huge flock of followers often doesn’t translate into revenue.

For C-Level management to take your social media efforts seriously, you need to validate a direct tangible impact that either reduces costs (e.g. reduced customer service calls) or increases sales. At the moment, most social media initiatives are doing neither.

Both Dell and Sony have both stated that they have generated real sales from social media program, but these are definitely exceptions. What’s interesting is that most organizations don’t even measure social media engagement at a basic level let alone try and attribute sales to their efforts. It’s not that there aren’t any tools to do so, it’s just that unless you’re running a direct marketing campaign links to actual sales from social media programs are often tenuous. And where you have tenuous links, then ROI becomes very subjective and only as good as the assumptions that go into the formula. In my experience, the C-suite doesn’t like subjective!

There are a number of sophisticated thinkers and writers on the ROI of social media and Olivier Blanchard is one. He says “You have to understand that the value of a pair of eyeballs, of an impression, is subjective until that pair of eyeballs actually does something. Then the body attached to that pair of eyeballs becomes one of three things: A browser, an influencer or a transacting customer. The first two don’t actualize a financial impact (yet). The third does. That’s where we want to focus when dealing with ROI.”

An industry wide problem is at hand, social media ROI means so many different things to different people. In economic terms, ROI is simply defined as “the monetary rate of profit or return relative to the money invested.” Therefore it goes that ROI in social media should simply be defined as the monetary profit or return relative to the money invested.

ROI is not synonymous with results, KPIs or value. ROI is not the only or perhaps even the most relevant way to define success in the social media business. ROI is a financial metric.  ROI can only be measured in terms of revenue generated, cost savings or costs avoided.  It is transactional in nature. There is ample evidence on twitter, blog posts and in industry articles that many people say ROI when they really mean results or value.

Don’t get me wrong, impressions, click through rates, conversations, and influential advocates are all important. These performance metrics are at the heart of social media engagement but until you are able to tie the “Return” to the “Investment” those measurements are a vague representation of your success (or failure).

Your C-Level management wants to know how your allocation of time and money has either saved the company money $$$ OR generated an increase in revenue $$$. Phrases like Return on Engagement sounds like soft and squishy marketing speak because engagement is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

What does all of this mean? Organizations must determine a measurement strategy for their social marketing activity that aligns with internal goals, objectives and cultural capabilities. This requires knowing where you want to go with your social programs and how you intend to get there.

I’m a practical guy. I know it may be impossible at this point in time to determine the specific ROI of your efforts.  But there is no excuse for not tracking key non-financial measures that contribute to your company’s goals. 

Are you looking to shift sentiment? Are you hoping to generate leads? Are you striving to increase the share of voice? Are you hoping to reduce the number of inbound service requests? Increase the number of influential advocates? Do you have these metrics defined and implemented in a way that is measurable?

The world would be so much easier if we didn’t have to be accountable for results. But that’s not the way business works. A company exists to create shareholder value, so that’s what we should do — and be PROUD of it!

The new Gold Rush for geolocation services is hot and for good reason. But will the risk of being scorched be worth the rewards?  

Geolocation is more than just the tech buzzword of the year. Location relevance bridges the gap between virtual and real-life social interactions and is a critical step in the evolution search and social networking.

For users, a whole new world of opportunity will open up around them when all of the new, location-specific data can be accessed, filtered, personalized and organized. For marketers, this contextual information is considered the Holy Grail of data as they try to get the right message to the right people at the right time.

Legions of companies are hurdling towards implementing location services so they can cash in including: Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Yahoo, Google and now Facebook (the category killer). Geolocation services are undoubtedly the biggest and most disruptive web trend in 2010, and dramatic growth is projected as more and more people switch to multifunctional smart phones.

However, for many people, these services still either don’t make sense or are a little too creepy. Even worse, if used without the proper safeguards, these services could create real-life disasters. Greater functionality, in this case, brings greater risks and users are understandably concerned. A study by Webroot.com revealed:

• 55 percent of those that use geolocation tools are worried about their loss of privacy
• 45 percent worried that details about their location could be used by potential burglars
• 49 percent of women are highly concerned about letting a stalker know where they are

These finding are just scratching the surface of potential privacy pitfalls and the option of hiding your whereabouts from others defeats the purpose of geolocation. What’s the answer? You have to use common sense and make sensible decisions about how widely you share your status and how carefully you guard your privacy settings.

Privacy concerns have taken center stage but this is not just about geolocation. It’s about information sharing in general. Facebook’s privacy blunders are a case in point. The stakes are high and ultimately the market will demand new security and privacy standards giving users a variety of new ways to easily cloak their location while limiting access to that information.  

Clearly, there are big hurdles to clear before geolocation services will gain widespread acceptance and get the necessary scale to become the next “big thing”. But as the technological barriers come down and privacy concerns are dealt with people will increasingly use their phones on-the-go to access personalized location-based content because the benefits will far outweigh the risks.

Geolocation is the next level of internet customization. Our phones will be used as a central hub and personal beacon that will provide a whole host of new personalized services and enable us to connect to and explore the real world like never before. As Marketers, we need to embrace it and start getting familiar with the technology, because because before long if it’s not a part of your marketing mix, it will most likely be a part of your competitors. Regardless of the concerns, as the mobile internet continues to grow, so geolocation will grow with it. It’s here to stay, it will be big and it knows where to find you.

It’s not working. You’ve setup a Facebook Fan Page, a LinkedIn profile, a You Tube account, a Twitter account and a Corporate blog but nothing tangible is happening.  

Where’s the Buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement?  You’ve heard all the hype, but where are the real benefits for your company and your customers?

You have worked hard. You decided to show up to the game but, as you soon found out, showing up doesn’t mean you will gain an audience.

If you’re like most businesses, you’ll have a challenge attracting new customers and growing your social network. Don’t give up. Here are 9 tips to help you generate the buzz you need.  

9 Tips to Generate the Buzz You Need   

1. Start with Crystal Clear Objectives   

Failure to begin with measurable objectives is probably the most common barrier to creating buzz in your social network. Most businesses approach social media tactically and without a well-defined plan. They’re the proverbial “ship without a rudder”. Your social networking strategy should be tied into crystal clear business goals. What specific outcomes do you intend to attain as a result of social network involvement? Make sure the alignment is obvious and understood by all involved in the program. Once you’ve clearly identified objectives, then you can create a strategy that outlines which tactics make the most sense to reach and engage your audience.  Defining a clear strategy can help you reach social media goals, including:   

• Inbound activity
• Lead generation
• Conversion
• Sales
• Registrations
• Referrals
• Links
• Reduction in costs CRM
• Decrease in customer issues

2. Pay attention! Show that you care   

Pay attention to your customers’ preferences towards information discovery, consumption and sharing. Where do your target customers go online and what do they want when they get there? What is their social media skill level? Users have different skill levels in social media applications, just as they have different social skills in the real world. This information is essential if you want to connect in a meaningful way. Each engagement is unique to the user, long gone are the days of the “one size fits all” consumer experience and interaction with your brand. By listening to conversations you can reduce the time it takes to convert a prospect – to a lead – to a sale.    

Listening is great, but showing you care is better. If you don’t, what’s the point? Be personal and put mechanisms in place to help your customers when they shout to the world “I have a problem!” Don’t worry about scalability because, if your after-the-fact fire-fighting becomes too costly, you will change your approach. You’ll find that it’s actually cheaper to “use this feedback” to train your support personnel and provide better service in the first place. Either way, your company and your customers will win.  

3. Create a unique likeable personality   

Whether you are a large multinational technology company or a small local day spa, the power of a transparent and authentic personality can inspire trust and trust builds loyalty. Show that you have values that your customer share and be honest in your interactions. Your personality can be the secret weapon that builds the kind of customer loyalty your competitors will envy. What does your brand stand for in the mind of your customers? I like Chris Brogan’s approach. He asks “What’s the soul of your brand? What’s the one thought that defines you – and it’s not features and benefits. Volvo = Safety.  Apple = Innovation.  Disney = Magic. What’s on the other side of your = sign?”  

Lose the marketing-speak and talk like a real person. People share thoughts that are easy to remember and want to connect with people and companies they can relate to. If you don’t talk like they do, they’re not likely to invite you in. You can start by making up a good 140 character pitch that people will want to share. Communication is changing; you can’t keep saying the same old crap, the same old way you’ve always said it. Talk like us, and we’re much more likely to pay attention.  

4. Recruit your network champions  

Your social network will need critical mass to succeed and champions (raving fans) will help get you there. It is much easier to engage additional fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings etc. if you have fresh, quality content being provided by experienced and knowledgeable experts. Your network champions, together with active members, create the critical value add for your network. Interesting stories, valuable links, and funny anecdotes proliferate quickly across the network. One of the defining characteristics of social networks is user generated content. But keep in mind, the vast majority of network participants are consumers, not creators of content so focus your efforts on your network champions. These advocates will sway over prospects, and could defend against detractors. Their opinion is trusted more than yours. 

5. Test, track and refine   

Failure to begin with measurable objectives is probably the most common impediment to proper social media measurement. Your social networking strategy should be tied into specific business goals. Web analytics, social media monitoring, CRM metrics, offline conversions and most importantly an integrated analysis can facilitate the feedback loop. Simply focusing on fans, followers, comments or sales can leave out some of the essential pieces of why some efforts fail and others succeed.  

6. Don’t dive into social media unless you’re ready  

You need objectives, goals and ways to measure success and accountability.  

 7. Don’t be an endless self-promoter    

 Know the difference between becoming a thought leader and being an endless self-promoter.  

 8. Don’t be afraid to try social media because it’s measured differently  

ROI will be challenging with social media, but there are many ways to measure business impact. You need to have a baseline to start with.  

9. Don’t try to “boil the ocean”.  

 Focus on your target niche and craft your message specifically for them.

 It’s all the rage, the new social media company Foursquare encourages users to check-in, or become a mayor of the local bar down the street. In an incredibly short period of time Foursquare has become the dominate player on the mobile social web. 

Businesses have long wondered about the people who walk through their doors. Sure they know the regulars, but what about the customers who come by every so often? Who are they? How can businesses reach them? And most importantly, how can businesses encourage them to come back? Foursquare and other mobile apps may be able to help them.

Foursquare is a consumer mobile service that encourages people to share their location information with others. Foursquare’s stats are impressive. The company claims the following since its launch: More than 725,000 users have checked-in over 22 million times to almost 2 million places (1,400 of which are offering Foursquare specials such as a free beer or coffee). Using Foursquare, you can check-in to a place, be it a restaurant, your friend’s house or a store, in any city across the world. 

Recently, Foursquare launched the Local Business Dashboard, which provides businesses with more data about their customers and methods of reaching them through the app. It displays data about what days and when people are coming to your store.  

According to The New York Times’ Bits blog, “Business owners will also be able to offer instant promotions to try to engage new customers and keep current ones,” and, “there will also be a Staff page available to each business that will allow employees to interact directly with customers using social networks.” Business owners are already jumping at the opportunity by giving away “Foursquare Specials,” or free items, to the mayor of their business. This encourages users to check-in more often, and occasionally persuades patrons to choose a Foursquare-friendly business (for the perks!) over an alternative. 

With Foursquare the game is real and so are the rewards - courtesy of Jack Aaronson’s article: 

Here are some examples of companies using different reward schedules to honor their loyal customers: 

• Alamo Drafthouse gives you two free movie tickets if you are the “mayor” of that location.
• Atomic Wings (in NYC) gives you 15 percent off if you are the mayor.
• Ben & Jerry’s (in Detroit) gives you a free small cone for every fifth check-in. Mayors get 10 percent off.
• The Doubletree Hotel Crystal City (Virginia) gives 20 percent off an entrée to all who check in. Mayors get 20 percent off their total bill.
• Nightingale Theater (Tulsa) gives a free bag of popcorn and a beer on your fifth check-in.
• Xoom (NYC) gives you a free smoothie when you buy one and check in with a friend.
• The Wynn Hotel (Las Vegas) gives you a free glass of champagne when you check in at the Blush nightclub.
• The Lite Choice (NYC) offers free upgrades to a larger size cup or cone just by checking in.

Location-based services make it possible for small businesses to make meaningful online connections with their local audience. Have you put a reward program in place for your loyal, local, online customers? 

Check out this video by Kevin Rose one of Foursquare’s Angel investors. 

Reference:  Forbes

It’s abundantly clear that social media provides a rich source a data on user sentiment and that companies ought to be able to exploit it. Not just to sharpen their marketing, but also to improve their products and services – potentially, the ultimate source of customer views and a crowd-sourced suggestion box.

But the challenge is how to make sense of the vast amount of information, find meaningful patterns and use it as guide for action. The digital tools for social media monitoring and analysis, analysts say, are still primitive. The current ones focus mainly on so-called sentiment analysis, giving companies a broad-brush approval rating at best.

SAS recently introduced a social media analytics program that will compete against the major metrics players such as Radian 6 and WebTrends. The new service shows once again how blogs and social networks are deeply influencing marketing, customer support and product groups within the enterprise.

“Consumers are online right now talking about your products and services, their experience, and their likes and dislikes. Smart marketers aren’t just listening to online chatter; they are analyzing it to better focus resources and build engagement and loyalty,” said Mark Chaves, Director of Media Intelligence solutions at SAS.

According to SAS, Their new Social Media Analytics platform is built on SAS’ strengths in advanced analytics and data integration. Social Media Analytics offers seven distinct advantages:

• Enterprise-level capabilities – Collect and analyze huge quantities of data, both structured and unstructured, from internal and external sources. Integrating with CRM and marketing systems, the solution aligns social media monitoring with overall business strategy and tactics.
• A long-term view – Maintain a continuous archive of online data stretching back more than two years at the start, building over time the ability to understand trends and update historical analyses based on new information.
• Predictive analytics – The software delivers the ability to quantify influence, forecast future volume of social media conversations, and then predict their impact on the business. This helps companies allocate resources, create “what-if” scenarios and correlate key marketing metrics like brand preference, Web traffic, online campaign effectiveness and media mix.
• Extensible Language Processing – Statistical models miss colloquialisms and slang. Unlike “black-box” offerings, SAS lets marketers and analysts adjust the rules that assign sentiment to topics and apply subject-matter expertise to improve statistical approaches and better classify text. This hybrid approach provides more accurate sentiment extraction rules that give a more complete picture of customer likes and dislikes and better answers to business questions.
• Multi-language support – Understand and classify conversations in 13 distinct languages including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
• Ability to take action – Even the best data analysis is only useful if it reaches decision makers on time, in an easily understood manner. SAS Social Media Analytics delivers real-time insights through Web-based dashboards, reports and workflow-enabled alerts. This enables organizations to respond in a timely and consistent fashion across brands, business units and service groups.

Reference: Enhanced Online News

The marketing world has long known that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of advertising, and social networking is the ultimate in word-of-mouth promotion.

Companies aren’t trusted, brands aren’t trusted, and nor are your executives. People trust each other, and now they have the tools to communicate with each other using social technologies and mobile with or without brands involved.

In the distant past, products and services were associated with people rather than with organizations. The qualities and values brought to the marketplace by individuals — tradesmen, shopkeepers, builders, tavern owners –  were as much personal attributes as they were professional ones. One of the most fascinating aspects of the digital media revolution is the way in which the empowerment of the individual is changing the very concept of brand.

Companies today need to build and communicate a likable brand personality through the “individuals” in the company. Social media, given its casual nature and emphasis on authenticity, is a great opportunity to continue to leverage this brand personality as a differentiator. The question is how do you use all of this to move the needle?

6 Tactics to Leverage Social Media WOM Promotions:

1. Start by Engaging in Non–Self-Serving Conversation

“Social media is well, social, so you want to do things that have no obvious ROI, like having a conversation.  And if you’re half-decent at conversation, you know not to talk about yourself the whole time.  People are pretty good at detecting when someone is trying to sell them something, and if that’s how you’re using social media, people won’t engage.  Find fun ways that aren’t blatantly self-serving to talk to your community.” Andrew Mason, Groupon founder and CEO

2. Integrate Online and Offline Advertising

Social marketing allows a business to extend their offline sales pitch. Including your Facebook Page or blog URL in offline ads act as social proof, inviting potential consumers to see your community and increase trust in your business. Not only can integrating online and offline advertising help the conversion process, but it can also help build your community.

3. Use Multimedia

Multimedia can break down the faceless business-to-consumer sales flow and make your company appear friendlier. Use videos and images to show that your business is fun, you care about your employees, and most importantly, that you care about your customers.

4. Include Contests and Discounts

One way to excite the community is to collectively do something to create a contest or offer an exclusive discount. Not only does a contest build buzz organically but if contestants need to, for example, publish an article that gets the most comments in order to win, the contest itself becomes viral. Discounts are also a great way to connect with your community. By giving exclusive coupons to your social community, you’re rewarding and reminding them that you are not only a brand to engage with, but also a brand to buy from.

5. Stop Spamming. 

Nuf said.

6. Stay the Course.

Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook pages that get a lot of fans. But what comes after those efforts? After the tools change (and they surely will) how will social media fit into the company’s overall strategy and help it reach long-term goals? Smart companies look at the long-term. Once you have created the community, listen to it. Doing so will help build customer trust and loyalty. 

 Conclusion

Many businesses have already established a presence in social media, whether it’s a Facebook page or a LinkedIn profile or a YouTube channel. But it is important to remember that presence alone is inert; the purpose of social media is to dialogue and engage. Creating a basic social media presence is easy enough, getting your community to actually do something is more difficult. Taking advantage of these strategies can help you build your community, make your marketing more effective, and incentivize buying

Great articles on this topic:

Jeremiah Owyang 

Social Media Examiner

Samir Balwani

There is a lot of discussion about how social media will play out from a mobile perspective, and how marketers in particular can monetize and leverage social media for real revenues and brand influence in the future.

There are those, such as Umair Haque from Harvard Business Review Blog, that believe social media in its current form is a bubble with very little in the way of real income – in effect creating relationships that are not as robust as others would have you believe.

As we start to see massive adoption of smart or App phone handsets, the promise of potential migration of social media onto these platforms are hailed as the real future of 2.0 with endless possibilities.

The real question businesses ask is how do you make money out of social media? We have seen social media give a voice to customers, empowering them to either individually or collectively influence policy, pricing or strategy.

The real challenge is not the technology. The real challenge is for companies to understand the shift in marketing dynamics. For almost a decade now traditional broadcast media has been in decline. Marketing to tribes requires a completely different skill set than is on offer in most organizations today, but it is a key part of our future in reaching and retaining customers.

Tribal, viral, mobile – they are your future if you are trying to reach customers.

Full Story at Huffington Post

There are a multitude of touchpoints within social media: Social Networks, RSS Feeds, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, Widgets & Gadgets. These are some of the more well-known ones. The list goes on: Search Engines; Social Book Marking Sites; Micro-blogging; texting is social; video sites; photo sites; travel sites; and now B2B networks are forming; mashups – a good example being display of flickr images over the top of Google maps.

Brian Solis points out that “Touchpoints serve as the point of influence between a buyer and a seller. As the race to socialize commerce escalates, these touchpoints represent the nodes that define the human network, connecting people across the social Web and uniting them around common interests, themes, and movements”.

Technology to connect buyers and sellers on the social Web is universal. Customers are flocking to the social web to not only connect with friends, family, and peers, but also the brands that attract their attention. However, there is a tremendous disconnect between the volume of potential customers and the brands who truly understand how to find and more importantly, how to establish mutually beneficial connections with them.

Over 60% of consumers follow one-to-five brands online with another 21% following six-to-ten.  10% actually reported following 11-20 brands and 8% stated that they follow over 20 of their favorite products and services.

What motivates them?

Affinity and allegiance are of course among reasons for following brands, but consumers are also motivated by receiving invitations for events, special offers or promotions. Your customers ultimately will engage with their favorite brands where and when possible, but eventually, your absence will eventually contribute to the insignificance of the brand as competitors will ultimately step in and capture the attention and loyalty of the very people you need to reach.

Consumers are seeking ways to transfer their digital interactions into something tangible. Businesses, big and small, must find ways to not only cultivate social media audiences but weave their brands into the daily lives of consumers. Your business should aim to empower them, excite them, inspire them, and enable them to engage with your brand in a relevant, new and useful way that adds to their real-world experience.