AffiliatesNeeded.Com What's New In Affiliate Marketing

Earlier this week, it was announced that the comparison shopping site, TheFind, took social shopping to a new level by integrating Facebook Connect in an unprecedented way. This move might represent a double-edged sword for the world of affiliate marketing, lending much needed legitimacy to the red-headed stepchild of online advertising, but potentially crowding out many of the smaller players.

TheFind is a “super-affiliate” par excellence because it is the second most popular shopping site, and it makes commissions from allowing users to compare products and prices across multiple sites, and then referring them to the merchant of their choice. And as TechCrunch recently reported, TheFind is now tapping into users’ social graphs to upsell and cross-sell to its users:

TheFind’s newest social commerce feature, Shop Like Friends, allows you to sign into the site Facebook Connect and tap into the the tastes and preferences of any of your Facebook Friends, based on the stores and brands they ‘like’ on the platform. So when you sign on, TheFind requests access to the pages your friends have “liked” on Facebook, then maps the stores and brands it detects to over 40,000 different stores and brands on TheFind.

This is important for several reasons. First, it demonstrates that it’s perfectly viable to tap social media APIs to better target advertising and increase ad revenues. After all, when the second largest shopping site does something, advertisers pay attention.

But it’s also significant because it might institutionalize two classes of affiliate marketers. You see, we already distinguish between affiliate and super-affiliates, but that distinction is largely arbitrary. We know when we see a super-affiliate, but we don’t know exactly where the dividing line is.

So as more super-affiliates move towards this level of social integration, many smaller affiliates might find it harder to compete — and, as a result, grow their business. Specifically, integrating social graphs to this extent requires considerable technical resources which, in turn, requires a considerable investment.

In other words, the smaller guys who lack the resources to do so might have a harder time both retaining their existing users and growing their user-base. First, fewer and fewer users will be willing to use these regular affiliate sites because the user-experience is lacking. Secondly, because these affiliates will have a harder time upselling/cross-selling, it’ll be more difficult for them to grow their revenues to super-affiliate proportions.

Of course, TheFind’s move toward social shopping is not going to kill off smaller affiliates. It’s just going to make it a bit tougher for them. But hey, those are the breaks.

After all, the technology was already there. It was just a matter of time before one of the big guys started using it. And just like it was a lot easier for the small guys to rank organically in 2003 than it is today, offering a seamless social integration is also going to get a lot tougher, too. But that’s the price of mainstream legitimacy: increased market competition.

Mark Zuckerberg’s mouth has gotten him a lot of trouble over privacy issues. In January, he declared the end to the age of privacy, and admitted “that if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would by default be public, not private.” Then, in April, a NY Times journalist outed Zuck’s true privacy colors by tweeting an off-the-record chat with a Facebook employee.

Later, in May, someone leaked some IMs wherein a 19 year old Zuck called his users “dumb f*cks” for trusting him with their data. Zuck tired back pedalling a month later, but still remains persona non grata in the realm of privacy concerns.

As much as Zuck is someone we love to hate when it comes to our privacy, we continue to Facebook, letting it reach its tentacles deeper and deeper into our data.

So it kind of begs the question: Do we kind of sense that Zuck is right about privacy after all?

Social Creatures, Social Users

Aristotle once pointed out that “man is by nature a political animal.” What he was getting at was that human beings are inherently social creatures. After all, the word politics comes from the Greek politikós, meaning “citizen” or “civilian,” and you need a social collective before there can be “citizens.”

Consider language. Not only does our innate faculty of language differentiate us from all other species, but it is testament to our inherently social nature.

And how could language evolve other than in a social context?

Indeed, language is at the core of our nature — our social nature. Without it, we would have no history, no culture, and no society. Chimpanzees, for instance, can communicate and even have culture, but they don’t have society because they don’t have a language with a universal grammar.

Privacy of the Species

So what does language have to do with privacy? Well, a lot of things.

For starters, the point of language is to communicate, and privacy hinders the communication of information. Secondly, we’re talking about privacy in the context of social media, and social networks are tools that facilitate natural human behavior.

But privacy entails a lack of communication. Had primitive man been private or practiced intellectual property, the species as a whole would’ve probably never evolved to a level of prosperity where concepts such as privacy and intellectual property could be enshrined by our societies.

Instead, social group communication has played a critical role and is responsible for our position in the food chain. Without it, primitive man would’ve been no match for the element or woolly mammoth. But through communication, we learned from one another, cultivated land, and regularly hunted such formidable beast — many of them to the point of extinction.

A Place & Time for Privacy

All this begs the question: So where did we come up with the idea of privacy? And why does it appeal to us on such a primal and personal level?

Well, the answer is simple. Privacy had its place in evolution. We’re just getting one place confused for another.

You see, privacy offers a competitive advantage when you’re vulnerable. It offers you protection from predators when your guard is down. This is why we instinctively seek privacy when we sleep, go to the bathroom, or mate.

But social situations are not one of those moments. In fact, privacy and socializing are very much at odds with one another.

And since social media is just an extension of socializing, we might have to accept that there there are inherent limits to our privacy online. We might even have to accept that it’s at odds with the core functionality of these social tools.

So, you’ve set up a social media campaign for your business; you’re spending time and resources on it, and want to know how you’re doing. Are you optimizing your efforts? How can you tweak things to make results more effective? Which also asks the question, what parts of your campaign are indeed most effective?

There have been a growing number of tools on the market lately but there are some key concepts to keep in mind while evaluating your social media engagement and impact. This article aims to clarify a few items revolving around the “what, why and how” of social media metrics and the interpretation involved in measuring this ever-changing channel. We will also discuss two popular but slightly different tools currently available.

1. Monitoring vs. Measurement

What social media measurement tools provide is more of a way to monitor your campaign rather than measure it. This means, for example, finding out how much your brand was discussed (number of mentions), then matching this against favorable mentions (brand mentions alongside affective words such as like, impressed, etc.) or unfavorable mentions. In other words, what you’re getting is an approximate idea of awareness and preference for your brand or product.

2. Social Media Measurement vs  Standard Web Analytics

The web analytics points of measurement, such as Impressions and Clicks, for example, can’t just simply be applied to social media just because it is web-based. Although you could perhaps compare the number of hits to your website before and after you kicked off your social media campaign, the very nature of this new platform is that it goes far beyond website and banner clicks.

People are discussing your brand, reviewing your products, and sharing information with fellow consumers – this certainly can be quantified for social media, but in a different way than we do for web analytics. However, the end interpretation remains qualitative, even if the measures used are quantitative. A quick example here: let’s say 70 percent of potential consumers appear to discuss your brand positively. Do they prefer, like or love the brand/product? How do we measure the levels of these affective feelings?

A second scenario: what if several people like your product but a high-influencer announces a negative review? Where do we then stand? How will this change our position? Factors such as impact and influence are not as black-and-white when it comes to measuring them. There are a few extra layers of complexity involved in social media evaluation as compared to good, old web analytics.

3. The tie-in with your end goal

The end goal of social media efforts is generally to increase revenue. While increasing customer awareness, preference, education or engagement may be part of the process, the eventual gains we hope to see as a result of our efforts, is in regards to the bottom line.

In other words, it’s important to have clearly-defined goals for your social media campaign aside from “But everybody else is doing it.” Only then can you effectively use the tools to gauge, tweak and optimize your campaign to reach these goals, in order to reach your  P&L goals.

Two Popular Social Media Measurement Tools

Let us check out two popular tools on the market. The first of these — Radian6 — is a monitoring tool, while Klout specifically measures levels and types of current and potential influence.

Radian6: (http://www.radian6.com/get-started/what-we-do)

Self-described as a “social media monitoring platform tool to help brands learn who is talking about them, what they are saying, and who the industry influencers are via real-time data provision. Increase or change to a brand’s community engagement can be evaluated based on resulting changes in how the brand is discussed. Radian6 boasts a client portfolio of over 1400 clients spread across a broad spectrum of industries.

KLOUT: (http://klout.com/kscore)

Klout is a personal favorite. It is focused on finding the influence level of brands, products, or people who are engaging in online conversations. Using about 25 variables, Klout measures True Reach (number of active accounts followers), Amplification (likelihood that content posted will prompt action: replies, retweets, etc.) and Network Influence (How many highly influential accounts reply, retweet or follow you).

Currently measuring only for Twitter, Klout is currently working on incorporating Facebook activity into its scoring system. It will look at factors such as the ability to spark a conversation, the number of tags, likes and comments as well as the number of influential Facebook users who engage in conversations with a given user. Check out your own standing on Twitter by typing in your username on the Klout homepage.

Many measurement tools based heavily on web-crawling for relevant keywords have received some criticism as being glorified search engines which simply search blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter. However, they do provide useful insight, which most brands may not otherwise have. Among the plethora of tools out there, understanding your goals and how measurement/monitoring and influence statistics can help you is a first step to choosing the right tool for your business.

Further Reading

There is very well explained and informative post and video by Olivier Blanchard of BrandBuilder Marketing, as well as an article by ReveNews Managing Editor Angel Djambazov.

Some interesting numbers about the potential of social media (SM) have surfaced recently. It seems that, surprise, SM just doesn’t have the potential that a lot of “social media gurus” would have you believe. As eMarketer recently reported, a number of surveys and studies in 2010 have pegged SM as much better suited for branding and retention than for outright sales/acquisition:

Source: eMarketer

• In a 2010 survey of US marketers, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that “brand awareness was the most popular objective of social media efforts, followed by customer growth and loyalty.”
• A July study by eROI “similarly showed brand awareness was the top goal of US marketers using social media.”
• And search marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa in April also “cited increasing brand awareness and improving brand reputation as the two objectives for which social media marketing was most effective.”

And as far as “money talking and bullsh*t walking”, when the DMA study dug a little deeper, it found that SM budgets over the years have become more focused on branding and retention, and less focused on actual acquisition:

While marketers started out in 2008 spending similar amounts on branding, customer loyalty and customer acquisition, by 2009 customer acquisition budgets had failed to grow as quickly as the others. Customer acquisition budgets more than doubled twice between 2008 and 2010, but they still lagged behind the even more dramatic growth of spending in other areas.

We can’t really say that any of this comes as a surprise. For starters, one the main reasons a social media campaign fails is because it tries to drive sales over engagement. And when it does comes to driving sales, SM is much better suited for a supporting role, such as through customer retention. There is also the tendency for marketing teams to rely on the “warm and fuzzy” numbers of social media rather than on real metrics like return on ad spend.

So where does this leave a marketer who need to acquire new customers online? Well, pretty much where they were before hoards of “social media gurus” crept up all over Twitter.

Back to Marketing Roots

For starters, there’s SEO. Although “Americans spend 906 million hours a month inside of social networks” compared to to only “138 million hours a month searching” (Ad Age Article), there’s a difference in mindset between the two sets of users.

Specifically, the social media user is much more passive. They’re just interacting with their personal network when you reach them.

The searcher, on the other, hand is actively engaged. That is, they’re looking for something they haven’t found , and that makes them a much more likely prospect as a paying customer.

Same thing goes with PPC. Through paid search, marketers can similarly target “actively engaged” users, but they can also yield results more quickly, and more easily track the ROI of each dollar spent.

Finally, there’s affiliate marketing. The best of part of affiliate marketing is that it’s focused strictly on acquisition.

Granted, it takes a bit more set-up in terms of choosing the right software and implementing the tracking. But beyond the initial set-up costs, the channel is virtually risk-free because it’s performance-based — i.e. you pay only for results.

The Catch 22 of Social Media

Credit: Hugh MacLeod

You see, the catch with any new channel is that it’s new. It hasn’t existed long enough for anyone to be an expert, and no one is sure what it’s good for.

For a lot of people, that kind of uncertainty represents an opportunity: they can say anything they want about some sexy, new space that everyone wants a piece of and no one understand.

But if social media really is about making connections and building relationships, then it’s little surprise that it would be seriously limited for driving sales. After all, the relationship would have to come before the sale, and then there’d be no guarantee that a sale would ever be closed, and there’s just no room for that kind of uncertainty in a sales environment.

Commission Junction’s annual conference in Santa Barbara is taking place this Tuesday through Thursday, September 21st-23rd. I sat down with Commission Junction General Manager Kerri Pollard to get a preview of what the performance marketing industry will see at this year’s CJU.

What are you looking forward to most at this year’s CJU?

Obviously I’m excited about Daniel Pink, New York Times bestselling author of A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation, as our CJU Keynote. I think at first blush some of the content may not make a lot of sense in terms of how it relates to performance marketing. But I think you will see that Daniel’s material really does apply, especially if you think about the dynamic between advertisers and publishers and the relationship that is there in terms of how to get the most out of it. Especially when it comes down to commission payments and incentives. What works and what doesn’t. You can draw a lot of strong parallels between what Daniel has to say about motivation in relationships and our industry. After all I think the biggest thing that comes out of CJU every year is the networking and relationships. So I think it will be very easy for the audience to actually apply Daniel’s concepts to their business.  And they can not only apply that to their affiliate marketing relationships they can also apply it their relationships at home. I think Daniel is one of those speakers whose content has multiple uses.

We also added another keynote this year which we haven’t done in quite some time. The second keynote will be by Joel Comm, owner of Infomedia and bestselling author of The AdSense Code. When we started to accept CJU registrations, we asked people what topic they would like to hear about. Surprise, surprise the number one request was social media. Based on that feedback we decided to expand the speaker component and add Joel Comm’s expertise to the CJU agenda. We’ll have a very packed Wednesday morning.

As always we will have plenty of networking events. The welcome reception will take place again at the zoo which was an absolute hit two years ago so we’ve brought it back. Obviously there’s our CJYou Awards dinner Wednesday night featuring outstanding affiliate and advertiser partners. You’ll see more of the executive team this year speaking than you probably have in years past.  People like Kim Riedell, VP of Client Development, and Dave Osman, SVP of Operations, who have been with us for six or seven years and they are all actively involved as speakers this year, which is exciting to see.

I also want to share something I’m very excited about. It’s a bit nerve-wracking as we’re preparing for it. I am going to have a surprise at the end of my presentation so it’s important that folks participate in my session. It starts on 10:00AM Wednesday morning. The surprise will be something completely different that we’ve never done at CJU before. I’ll give you a hint that it will feature a new technology. I have no doubt that attending will be more than worth people’s while.

Tell us a little bit about the companies who are nominated for the Innovator of the Year Award

One of our big themes at CJU is pushing beyond traditional affiliate marketing. That’s been our philosophy this year which is “Growth Starts Here”. What it really comes down to is reaching the consumer not only where they are interacting with brands but where are they transacting. We know that consumer behavior has definitely evolved over the last couple years in how they are interacting with brands. Through social media, mobile, whatnot, and we have to shift with consumers. We focused on that theme of growth when looking at the Innovator of the Year Award. Each of the companies nominated (Freshpair.com, ShopStyle, SurfMyAds.com) has really adapted to the consumer in terms of where or how they are interacting online. Whether it’s been on the social side, or the mobile side, each of these companies have come up with content, tools,  technology to reach today’s consumer.

You mentioned social media and mobile. I feel that the performance marketing channel is lagging in those areas. Have you seen any publishers being particularly innovative?

Let me give you a preview of a company I’m actually going to showcase in my presentation. When I first met with this company I was just out of my skin in terms of how cool the things are they are doing. The company is Gyroscope Technologies and it’s led by a young man by the name of Dustin Rosen. In essence what they have created is an iPhone app that’s purpose is to close the loop between online and offline. Say I have their iPhone app and I’m at one of the GAP stores, and I try on a shirt that I think I like but I’m not quite sure I want to buy.

At that point I can take my iPhone and I can take the picture of myself wearing the shirt. Now using Gyrosope’s app it will upload the photo for me to be able to post either on Facebook or Twitter automatically. Now say the product has a barcode. If I take a picture of that as well and assuming that that product information is included in the GAP product catalog that they send us, Gyroscope  will automatically upload information like the picture, price, and the store location to Facebook and Twitter as well. Thus I can find out from my friends whether or not they think that I should buy the shirt. A sort of social shopping. But the real genius of this particular app is that it actually embeds a “buy now” button, and that “buy now” button is essentially an affiliate link.  It’s very, very cool.

Another thing I’ve seen is a lot of early traction on is virtual currency.  You know where they leveraging affiliate offers so if somebody is looking to buy that cow on Farmville, but who needs more points to do it, instead of laying down their credit card they can subscribe to a particular offer or buy a particular product from a merchant in order get the points as an incentive.

I think there’s been a lot of challenges in terms of getting traction with social, especially at the transactional level. It may work from a branding perspective, but the key transaction wise is being able to maintain that authenticity with the consumer. To say “hey I like this product, I truly do”, and at the same time be able to generate the necessary volume in sales to be successful is really challenging. That’s why I’m really excited to see innovation from publishers like Gyroscope as they are going beyond just traditional affiliate marketing.

Thanks for taking the time Kerri. Is there any thing you wanted to remind our readers?

I just want to remind folks, again, to participate in my session. It starts on 10:00AM Wednesday morning. Don’t forget.  The surprise will be really worth your while.

On October 1st, the Facebook movie, The Social Network, will come out. And all indications, thus far, suggest that a lot of money and talent is going into it.

The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin (writer of West Wing and A Few Good Men) and Trent Reznor has written the score. The media machine behind this flick, in fact, has been so great that even Facebook rival, MySpace, has been tapped by Sony to market the movie.

As Public Enemy once warned us: “Don’t believe the hype.” Well, here are 5 reasons why you might want to heed that advice:

1. The Plot and Story Arc Will Let Us Down

The problem with The Social Network is that it’s not just inspired by a true story, but it outright based on one. And if there’s anything that so-called “true stories” have shown time and time again, it’s that they get bogged down in facts and history, and fail to fill that void that good movies (and art, in general) fill.

We’ve seen it with Donnie Brasco and Goodfellas and Not Without My Daughter and Boys Don’t Cry. These are all stories that are interesting and compelling, and sometimes win Academy Awards. But let’s face it: about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way in, they get dry and tedious.

I pretty much expect the same out of The Social Network. It’ll be really cool to watch a cocky, co-ed Zuckerberg fly in the face of the Ivy League. But after about 45 minutes of that, it’ll get repetitive, and the plot will get bogged down in technicalities and facts that are too fresh in our recent memory for anyone to take any real (i.e. interesting) liberties with.

2. The Ending Will Disappoint

The difference between and “okay” movie, book, or story, and a “great” one is the ending. Good stories are a dime a dozen. The endings of most movies are just sloppy ways to tie up lose ends.

The ending of The Social Network will probably disappoint if simply for the fact that the story isn’t over yet. In a nutshell, The Social Network will be nothing more than the story of how Facebook was born. An most origin stories are pretty lame, doubly so for ones that are not about comic book heroes.

You see, Facebook is only about 7 years old. And in the grand scheme of business, most start-ups will live or die in the first 5 years. So one could argue that Facebook is only 2 years old. In other words, the story is just beginning.

So if the story is just beginning, what kind of ending could The Social Network really have to offer? How will it satisfy the audience? It is, after all, based on a true story.

3. It’s Going to Over-Hype Zuckerberg

I’ll be the first one to admit: Mark Zuckerberg pulled off something much bigger and cooler than I (or most of us, for that matter) ever will. But let’s face it: as big and important as Facebook seems, it’s going to be a footnote in history at best.

Consider this: The trailer, alone, paints Zuckerberg in a light where he puts the “genius” in “evil genius.” Take that part of slick dialogue in the trailer where some Harvard disciplinary board just read their complaints against Zuckerberg, and his response is “As for the charges, I deserve some recognition from this board.” The board rep replies “I’m sorry,” Zuckerberg says “Yes,” the rep says “I don’t understand,” and Zuckerberg asks “Which part?”

Slick but hardly evil genius material. There’s that, and there’s how the tag line is “You Don’t Get 500 Million Friends Without Making a Few Enemies”.

But what it really comes down to is that technology moves so fast, especially in the world of social networking, that even if Facebook continues to be serious revenue machine for the next two decades (and I doubt that it’ll even have that good of a run), it will cease to be the controversial media darling that it’s been as of recent. By the end of that time Zuckerberg will hardly get a mention.

Just take Microsoft: it still has businesses by the balls, is still making money had over fist, but Bill Gates just doesn’t have the juice that he used to in terms of media focus. He turned his focus to philanthropy, who know maybe we will see the Zuckerberg Foundation.

4. It’s Not Going to Hype Zuckerberg Enough

From the looks of it, The Social Network will also paint Zuckerberg in a light where he puts the “evil” in “evil genius.” As TechCrunch already reported, The Social Network is “based on the Ben Mezrich book, ‘The Accidental Billionaires’, which paints Zuckerberg and his early Facebook team in a less-than-favorable light.”

What does this mean? Well, for starters it means that the movie will give audiences exactly what they want in terms of a story about a guy who’s touched their privacy in places that would make a Catholic priest blush.

As it is, audiences like to see the titans of industry and state torn apart until they’re parts are laid bare at their feet. But when it comes to Zuckerberg, this guy has been poking, prodding, and probing our privacy like an alien abductor. And as much as it’ll be enjoyable to see him painted as an immature, misguided, and/or evil genius, it’ll be a cliche, and scarcely worth the $10-15 it’ll cost to see on the big screen.

Which brings me to my final point…

5. It’ll Disappoint at the Box Office

I have little doubt that The Social Network will have a decent run its open weekend. After all, it’s the story about the conception and birth of something that just about everyone in America, and most of the free world, uses on a daily basis. But after that, I suspect that box office sales will peter out.

For starters, there will be the reviews, and they’ll probably warn movie-goers to wait until it’s out on DVD. And that’s where the real trouble will start: there will probably be something undeniably irresistible about pirating (i.e. illegally downloading) a movie about a guy we all love to hate.

Even though this won’t hit Zuckerberg’s bottom line, I suspect that a higher than usual proportion of movie-goers will be loath to spend another dime on the legacy of a billionaire that we all love to hate, but rely on in some pathetic and slavish way.

The Social Network in Perspective

In 2005, I was working for Dov Charney, Founder and CEO of American Apparel, as part of a team whose job it was to clean up the company’s and Dov’s image. Now anyone who’s actually spent time getting to know Dov can understand how he’s a largely misunderstood guy, so one day, I asked him: “Why don’t we get your biography written?”

Dov responded that I wasn’t the first one to suggest it, and that he’d even been approached by some serious writer. But he wasn’t ready yet, because he wasn’t done. His story wasn’t ready to be told because his story wasn’t over.

This is what I think will plague The Social Network: the story is being told before it’s over. As far as I’m concerned, that’s cheap, an all around a bad call, and will make for poor cinema.

It’s like handing down judgment before all the facts are in. And it’s for that reason I feel perfectly comfortable passing judgment on this flick before it’s been release and before I’ve even seen it.

That being said, I’ll most certainly watch The Social Network. But I’ll probably wait for it to come out on DVD, or even more appropriately stream it from Netflix.

There was a time when RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags were regarded as nothing more than a way for retailers to control their inventory. Now marketers are seeing the potential for a whole different application of this technology… so much so that privacy advocates are getting nervous.

In August, Wal-Mart started to put removable “smart tags” on individual pieces of clothing. Hand-held scanners read the tags and tell workers when to replenish shelves with certain sizes or styles. Sounds pretty innocent.

According to The Wall Street Journal, however, the tags can be removed, but they can’t be turned off, and they are trackable. So a consumer could leave the store with an “active” tag that has information about his or her purchase. If that tag is discarded in the trash, an unsavory character could scan the consumer’s trash and find out what was purchased, at least in theory.

That may be highly unlikely – but a larger concern is looming in states like New York and Washington that are starting to implement “enhanced” driver’s licenses with unique ID numbers assigned via embedded RFID tags. Guess what – the same scanners Wal-Mart employees use to check inventory could theoretically be used to identify these consumers and even combine that data with credit card information.

Katherine Albrecht, author of the book Spychips, tells The Wall Street Journal,

“There are two things you really don’t want to tag, clothing and identity documents, and ironically that’s where we are seeing adoption. The inventory guys may be in the dark about this, but there are a lot of corporate marketers who are interested in tracking people as they walk sales floors.”

I won’t pursue the potential privacy implications of RFID at this stage, because my purpose here is to demonstrate the technology’s potential marketing applications. And an even more intriguing use of RFID is when it’s linked up with online notification and social media.

A recent report in The Trend Watch cites three specific examples. Two of them involve large marketers – Coca-Cola and Vail Resorts (more about that one in a moment). But the third example proves RFID technology isn’t just being used by the big guys. Izzy’s Ice Cream Café in Minnesota, which you probably never heard of unless you live in or have been to St. Paul, uses RFID in a unique way – to identify customer favorites out of the 100 flavors it makes, since the store can only stock 32 flavors at a time. According to The Trend Watch:

“To help customers know when their favorites are being served, Izzy’s started using RFID flavor tags. Now every time a flavor enters the dipping case, an RFID tag sends customers who crave that flavor, a real-time update.”

Now that’s the way to serve up customer service.

In a more sophisticated example, Vail Resorts in Colorado, uses RFID tags in their season passes and lift tickets to connect with a social gaming application so skiers and snowboarders can track their activities and share them with friends and family.

According to RFID Journal, Vail Resorts started using RFID technology in its ticketing system in 2008 “in order to make it easier for the company to check lift tickets at base area chairlifts across its five resorts.” The season passes or lift tickets contain an RFID inlay encoded with a unique ID number linked to a database that identifies the passholder or lift ticket purchaser. As a visitor approaches any one of 89 ski lifts at the five resorts, that individual’s tag ID is captured, and the data is transmitted and then associated with the database information. This happens each time, so the system can “aggregate the number of vertical feet that the skier or snowboarder has traveled, based on the distances between chairs.”

An application the resort company calls “EpicMix” then makes it possible for visitors to track their ski or snowboard metrics online. They can allow information-sharing between the EpicMix account and a Facebook or Twitter account if desired and then compare stats with their friends who are also on Facebook. Visitors with Web-enabled phones can use the EpicMix mobile application to receive alerts when any of their Facebook friends are skiing. Their friends’ last known location will be shown.

We’re only just beginning to see the creative ways marketers can use RFID. Who would have thought a technology initially used for something as mundane as inventory control would turn out to be a facilitator for social networking?

Is there a huge blind spot in the ways companies are handling their social media these days? A new survey by CareerBuilder.com seems to bear that out, as not only are companies still struggling with how and whether to manage social media, those that are doing something are in the dark as to how exactly it’s being done.

According to the CareerBuilder’s survey, the telling statistic: 57 percent of businesses surveyed said they “didn’t know how many people were involved in managing their company’s social media strategy.” Amy Chulik of CareerBuilder went on to write:

“… (and I’m guessing many didn’t know who was doing it, either). While this may be common, it’s important for companies to have a plan before they jump headfirst into social media (and if you’ve already made that jump, it’s never too late to clean up your process).” 

It’s a scary thought that businesses are riding reckless when it comes to social media without a strategy, let alone a steering wheel. Even if that policy or strategy is as open as Zappos, the fact that decision makers don’t know how many people are on their social media team, let alone who is on there, it is easy to present a disjointed, inconsistent if not downright clunky social media message.

A social media plan that isn’t known and OK’d all the way to the top will ensure a company isn’t using the medium to its utmost. How to communicate and connection with customers will be a crapshoot. Lack of coherent social media strategy, especially when it conflicts with existing company policies, will turn into a joke.

Don’t believe me? Check this week’s run on Dilbert.

What should companies do? Have the social media team or strategy integrated into the marketing, public relations and customer service plan. Have everyone from the head of legal to the head of HR involved in the discussion about how social media is going to be used. It touches all of those places in the company, so there’s no reason to leave them out of the loop.