Welcome to RyanThompson.org

This past weekend, Jetblue offered $4 intracity commuter flights during “Carmageddon” from Burbank to Long Beach. Slate writer Tom Vanderbuilt put forth that a cyclist could likely make the trip in a shorter period of time. A group of cyclists called the Wolfpack Hustle decided to take on the challenge, racing Jetblue flight #405.

The $7,000 “First” Tweet:

Upon hearing of the “flight vs. bike” race, Santa Monica Airlines SkateboardsGeneral Manager Anthony Converse was excited. Converse, a lifelong alternative transportation advocate, skateboarder, cyclist and supporter of The LA County Bicycle Coalition signed up for twitter. Without knowing what the race’s “rules of engagement” were, he pledged $100 for every minute that the cyclists beat the plane by in his very first tweet. Converse expected a 5-10 minute difference between “racers”, a monetary amount he was eager to give to draw attention to the Bike Coalition.

After seeing the tweet, a friend called Converse to ask “what was up” as Santa Monica Airlines had never “twittered” before. Converse confirmed the tweet was made by him on behalf of SMA in support of the The LA County Bicycle Coalition as they have “tirelessly done the legwork to benefit the entire community of Los Angles by promoting cycling and alternative transportation.”

The friend responded “the bikes left already and the plane doesn’t leave for 90 minutes or something. You are screwed.” Converse, a bit slack jawed, informed his friend he was at his doctor’s office and unaware of what was happening as he was unable to login to his hours old twitter account.

Over the next two hours, “flight vs. bike” trended on Twitter as Jetblue, The Wolfpack Hustle, flight passengers and fans from around the world sent out messages on the progress of the race. Converse received updates every ten minutes from his friend via phone calls, the last being his friend inquiring “have you ever been to South America? The bikes beat the plane by 70 minutes!”

While shocked, it was easy to do the math. 70 minutes meant Converse and Santa Monica Airlines had pledged $7,000.

While South America did seem like a good place to head for “avoidance”, Converse told his friend “that is just not who I am. It’s not what Santa Monica Airlines is. I may not have the cash but I am going to make this happen”.

As Santa Monica Airlines is a small company, the $7,000 would be too damaging of a hit to come from company coffers. Cash poor, Converse eyed his possessions and started thinking of where the closest pawn shop was. It was while taking his first box of valuables to the car for the trip to the pawn shop that Converse had an epiphany:

“I looked at my car and said ‘just sell THAT’. This whole event was about alternative transportation. My company has a van I use, so my car was redundant.”

His box of possessions placed back in his house, Converse sold his biodiesel car.

Tonight at 7PM at TANG’S Donut at 4341 West Sunset Blvd, Converse and Santa Monica Airlines will present The LA County Bicycle Coalition with a check for $7,000.

Asked to sum up his “first tweet” Twitter experience, Converse said “sometimes things happen magically that we don’t expect. Because of this event there is one less vehicle on the road in LA as mine is going out of the state and LA County Bicycle Coalition reaps the benefits. If everyone who hears about this donated $1 to their local alternative transportation advocacy group the world would be a better place.”

Impulsive? You bet. Then again … Santa Monica Airlines and Anthony Converse have just shown the “twitter-verse” that nobility is not yet gone in this internet world … call that the stuff honor is made of … FLY SMA.

via Yo Venice!

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View from East Bank Storage

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:16:56 -0700

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12 Social Media Case Studies That Prove Social Commerce ROI

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:15:39 -0700

Social commerce is the merger of social media and ecommerce.

It’s a marketing combination that’s here to stay because it aligns with our buying behaviors.

90 times in any given week people mention a specific brand
90% of consumers trust recommendation from people they know; 70% trust recommendations from others even it they don’t know them
83% of consumers share information from people they know
81% says they’ve received advice on a product purchase from friends or followers on a social network site
74% say that advice was influential
71% claims reviews from family members and friends exert a great deal of influence on what we buy
67% of consumers spend more online after receiving recommendations from friends
61% of people rely on information from reviews when making a purchase decision
14% of people trust advertising

Sources: Econsultancy, eMarketing, ClickZ, Internet Retailer, Bazaarvoice)

Social commerce provides strong evidence of social media ROI because direct sales occur on social sites. In recent years and even months, the numbers of apps and vehicles to enable social commerce has skyrocketed.

The social network to show the greatest social commerce innovation is Facebook where the Like Button and plug-ins such as login-in with Facebook, recommendations, activity feed, registrations, Live Stream, other social plug-ins and the Facebook Store create a rich customer experience where people with similar interests share brand affinities with the convenience of making purchases without ever having to leave Facebook.

As a result, there is a sub-set of social commerce called f-commerce and companies like Coca-Cola, Disney and P&G are actively involved. There are the deal-of-the-day social networks, Groupon and Living Social and other social couponing sites.

Not to mention apps like Wildfire and Involver that, when added to social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and the company blog, provide coupons, offers and promotions to accelerate social commerce adoption.

But, if you’re still not convinced, here are 12 case studies that prove Social Commerce return on investment (ROI).

1 BEST BUY: Discovered their core users and heaviest purchasers were Facebook users. Merely by asking for consumers to come check them out on Facebook with no offer or coupon, their fans went from 27,000 to 163,000. Within 9 days, sharing took the size of the community and their heavy user base from 163,000 to 900,000. Best Buy has 3,281,961 Facebook Fans and WOMMA estimates the value of a Facebook Fan is $72.

2. CARS.COM: Does not sell directly to consumers but puts consumers in control by giving them information on cars from other consumers. In examining the impact of other consumers’ recommendations, pages on the website that had reviews and ratings were compared to those that did not and showed:

+16% conversion increase for pages with reviews and ratings
+100% increase in traffic to locations for dealers
+45 increase in consumers seeking financing options

3. DERRYNOID CENTRE: A 40 suite conference and training center in Northern Ireland used Groupon to offer a 60% discount if a voucher was secured that day. The Derrynoid Centre saw:

426 reservations from the offer
88% of people fulfilled reservations for hotel stay
+26% sustained increase in bar and restaurant sales resulted from the effort

The Groupon business model may not be for every business. Here’s how it works. Groupon insists there be at least a 50% discounts off the full rate and Groupon takes 50% of each sale. But it does seem suited for a small business with low awareness where unfilled seats, rooms or idle workers create a financial drain that could otherwise be put to use.

4. EVENTBRITE: Sharing is one of Eventbrite’s most effective revenue generators. When someone shares an event with their friends through social media, the action results in real dollars. Recent data shows that over the past 12 weeks, one share on Facebook equals $2.52, a share on Twitter equals $0.43 and a share on LinkedIn equals $0.90. In one year Facebook went from being the 15th top driver of traffic to Eventbrite to the number one driver to the site. Eventbrite had over 17 million average monthly page views in 2010.

5. MOVIEFONE: Executed a full scale Facebook implementation using Login with Facebook, Graph API, Events API, Like Button and the Activity Feed to enable social sharing and engagement. Consumers could connect with their Facebook friends on the Moviefone site pushing unique content and driving traffic. The results were:

300% increase in site traffic
40,000 to 250,000 increase in referrals per month
40% increase in click-through-rate
Average user click back to the Moviefone site 7X

6. OFFICE DEPOT: Incorporated consumer reviews into their website around specific products. Then, they initiated paid search with the keywords consumer used in reviews. The result were:

+78.5% increase in click-through rate
+23.8% increase in conversion
+196.6% gain in revenue
+183.3% increase in new buyers

7. PREMIERE BEAUTY: Beauty Salon offered 60% off through Groupon and turned beauty into a social business with:

500 new customers
85% of customer now come through social media because the store uses Facebook and Twitter to promote offers

8. SHOE DAZZLE: Leveraged Facebook Pages, Like buttons and Graph API to import friends who shared the ShoeDazzle shopping and discovery experience with other friends. It resulted in

100,000′s of Likes
600% increase in Shares
Facebook user showed greater loyalty and bought more than non-Facebook users

9. SPORTING NEWS: Implemented recommendations plugin on their Facebook page to provide a simple and intuitive way for people to share articles from Sporting News back and saw:

2X increase in site traffic within 3 months
Facebook goes from 16th to Top 3 referrer in site traffic
+30% increase in subscriptions

10. STARBUCKS: For a business that is primarily offline, Starbucks uses social commerce to gain an incremental online business with an advocacy component through their loyalty club, MyStarbuckRewards. They offer special high-end blends to the members of luxury bounty hunter, Gilt.com. They set up social social commerce on Facebook that enables purchases from smart phones. The activity show Starbucks believes social commerce is a significant source of business.

11. STUDIO PE: Pilates Studio used LivingSocial and changed its business model from personal sales to include group buys. Owner, Carla Vercoe, claimed, before LivingSocial, no advertisement that she or the previous owner ever tried worked.

12. TRIP ADVISOR: Displayed friend’s reviews and opinions on Facebook that are directly relevant to planning and conversion. Implemented Like button and other sharing functionality to help users share their experiences with their friends and saw:

2X more content contribution from Facebook users than non-Facebook users
20% in site engagement
Trip Advisor saw a direct correction between greater site engagement and increased conversion

In addition to showing ROI, these case studies demonstrate how social media and the tools now available are transitioning businesses that traditionally operated offline to online sales at group multiples; all to the betterment of their revenue and profitability.

We’ve written quite a bit on the subject of social media return on investment using case studies. You can also check out 34 Case Studies that Prove Social Media ROI, 67 Case Studies that Prove Social Media ROI and 16 Case Studies that Prove Social CRM ROI.

Do you think your business might benefit from Social Commerce?

(Source: Rob Peterson)

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[Slideshow] Employee Golf Outing "Swingline Open"

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:04:00 -0700

Trisept Employee Golf Outing!-Mobile.m4v Watch on Posterous

Swingline Open 2011

"I'll shoot my age if I have to live to be 105. ~Bob Hope"

Thanks to Joe & all the team players that came out to support each other, our company, and the Trisept tradition. The 8th annual Swingline open was a huge success and fun to be part of. To show my appreciation, I compiled a few photos/videos I snapped and put them into to slideshow for you to enjoy.

Cheers & good luck next year. It was an honor and pleasure to golf with you all on a perfect day to play!

Sincerely,

Ryan Thompson

PS Need a golf vacation? Click HERE for my favorite travel solution, Funjet Vacations & see you at the 19th hole!

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Just wrapped up 18 at Hawthorne Hills.

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:21:53 -0700

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Facebook for "every phone" photos & details.

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:29:00 -0700

Facebook may be building a secret HTML 5-based site for the iPad and other advanced devices, but the company hasn't forgotten that the majority of Americans still own a feature phone. Facebook announced late Tuesday a new downloadable app called Facebook for Every Phone that brings a smartphone-like experience to lesser handsets. The new app works with more than 2,500 Java-enabled feature phones, and includes the usual Facebook trappings such as the News Feed, message inbox and photo viewing.

Facebook for Every Phone also includes the ability to upload photos to the social network and discover new Facebook friends from your phone's contacts. The company says the new app has been designed to use less data than other Java apps or mobile sites.

To entice people to use Facebook for Every Phone, the company has partnered with several cell carriers worldwide to offer free data usage for the new app for the next 90 days. The bad news is, Facebook hasn't partnered with any U.S. carriers for this offer. The free data plan appears to be largely a play for international users in places such as India, Russia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Feature phones reign in U.S.

Although smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, feature phones are still more widely used. About 38 percent of U.S. mobile handsets are smartphones such as the iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices, according to a recent Nielsen survey. That means 62 percent of Americans are still opting for less expensive flip and candy bar phones to stay connected while on the go.

That may soon change, however, as Nielsen says 55 percent of new cellphone purchases between March and May of this year were of the smartphone variety.

If you're part of the declining feature phone majority you can grab the new app at d.facebook.com/install or from app stores such as GetJar, Appia and Mobile Weaver.

Facebook for Every Phone:

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