Jeff Cutler and Mike Langford talk Burritos at Boloco
(File this blog post under cool things we do in the world of social media)
Soooo, the very wiley, creative Aaron Strout came up with a nifty idea of getting 20 or so bloggers to write a haiku about their favorite brand, or a recent experience with a brand that needs a little storytelling a la Japanese poetry…. Here’s the link to the idea, and the list of 20 other bloggers out there. Follow along!
Here’s my take:
Boloco. That’s right
Thanksgiving in a Burrito
A quarter to cancer.
Curious? Confused? Here’s the quick story for you…. A local (for now) burrito chain here in Boston (Boloco) is following along the Movember cause for men’s cancer and has created a special “Late November” burrito as we lead up to Thanksgiving. This burrito is like Thanksgiving dinner (great green beans). And, for every one they sell, they’ll donate .25 to Movember. Nice work guys. Not surprising considering their excellent track record in social media here in Boston.
And another…
Apple has a way
Ipad, iPhone and TV
to make me happy
Here’s an abbreviated list of other cool haikus, check it out….and use hashtag #brandhaiku if you feel like following along on twitter.
So, enjoy the haikus and if you’re feeling creative, enter one of your own below, ok?
It looks like LinkedIn is taking another good step in the world of social.
Yesterday, on their blog they announced a new feature for their Company pages, allowing companies to showcase their products and recommendations. To quote Ryan Roslanksy from LinkedIn, “Company Pages will enable companies to build their brand through network-aware recommendations, giving members rich, credible insights into how any given product (or service) is perceived by their fellow professionals.”
It’s still early going now, but here are some thoughts…
What I like about it:
Advantage Small Business: What a great opportunity for a small, growing business! If you’re an entrepreneur with a fairly large network on Linkedin. You have an ability to showcase your products and services, not just you. A person can get all the recommendations in the world, but if you have multiple products or services, that’s what you can showcase on your page. Need to quickly sell your old inventory of X product or service by the end of the year? Then highlight this in the “Featured” Section.
Partner Recommendations: If you are a professional service firm with various outside partners, you should be able to recommend other business partners (or products or services) here. If I’m an ad agency that works with a printing company, I’ll be able to highlight them here, and vice versa- a nice way of passing business back and forth.
Paving the Way: I think this gets another foot in the door for LinkedIn to get allow of your company’s content to live on Linkedin. A perfect chance for your company’s blog to live alongside this content, right?
What worries me:
Ok, there has to be some bad with the good here, so here goes.
Just recommendations? Here’s a look at Samsung’s company page, featuring several of their new products. But what if I had a bad experience with one of their products? Isn’t there room for a negative comment? How about a rating system here? Perhaps LinkedIn turned off this functionality on purpose? (I’ll check with their guy, Mario Sundar on this one)
Overkill? If I’m a big company like Samsung, do I really need this? Shouldn’t my reputation speak for itself? And, if they really want to push recommendations, these results better show up on a the first page of a Google search….
Another Layer: Yep, it’s one more added layer of work for the marketing team. But, in the changing world of inbound marketing and social media, it may just be worth it in the long run.
What’s Next?
LinkedIn is smart enough to know that all business still operates on a personal level. You or your company is still more likely to make a purchasing decision based on a recommendation from a peer, right? So, Linkedin is bringing that to the company level- let’s see what happens.
What do you think? Good move by LinkedIn, or waste of time?
