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I recently attended a meeting of the Social Media Club of Dallas, the guest speaker was Christopher Kopenec of Chili’s Grill & Bar.  Chris is a great speaker and really connected with the audience.

Chili’s has done some amazing things with social media and integrating it into their business model. With over 1400 stores you can be a challenge to keep all of them on the same track. The current strategy integrates social media into every aspect of the customer experience.

One area mentioned was the Klout Score, a measure of influence based on one’s ability to drive action. The club score holds data from social networks in order to assess true reach (number people being influenced), amplification (who responds or shares the information) and network impact (how often do people you influence share and respond to your content). I assessed my own score and as of February 27 it was a 46. I aim to get this number up much higher in the near future, stay tuned… ?

On Facebook Chili’s has over 1.6 million fans, clocking over 1.4 million check-ins, both figures are quite impressive!

Another interesting tool that was mentioned was Wildfire, a tool that helps measure the performance of Facebook and twitter pages, track the competition and assess who the leaders are in social media.

The major common theme of this presentation was engagement.   Anyone can create an account on a social network, but many companies don’t invest the time or the effort to get their followers to contribute their own thoughts in different areas.

While there are a number of brand engagement platforms available,  one specifically highlighted is Fancorps.  More and more companies are relying on word-of-mouth marketing and peer recommendations to drive their business.  Just think of how many  buying decisions or influence through Amazon.com reviews.

Creating positive sentiment has also been key to Chili’s success. Having a high number of active fans relative to total fans shows that people are paying attention to the content being generated. This indirectly helps business by keeping your company’s name in people’s minds and letting people know that someone is paying attention.

Using the right voice for specific social networks is another highlight. Hashtags for example make sense on twitter but not so much on Facebook. The same with like this buttons and QR codes.

Public relations is an area many companies can benefit from improving.   There are times when people whose critical comments, and inevitable result when you’re dealing with a large company. Overall people just want their voice to be heard and may not ask for anything in return. Even when they do ask for something, by maintaining the customer relationship, the long-term payout is worth it.

Overall I enjoyed this meeting and I hope to attend another in the near future.

I used to hate Flash with a passion. It’s only taken them a decade to get the performance right on the Mac. Not to mention that little news blurb about discontinuation on mobile devices such as Android phones and iPhone..

Build 11.2.202.96, or 11.2 Beta 2 has made leaps and bounds over previous versions.

“Multithreaded Video Decoding (Windows, Mac OS, Linux)* – This release introduces a new fully multithreaded video decoding pipeline which resolves a number of legacy playback issues. This modern architecture will also enable future performance enhancements across all platforms.”

I am only on a dual core system without hyper threading, but I have noticed CPU usage is down significantly. I can stream 1080p video using my Geforce 9400m graphics card using ~50% cpu. Before it would take almost 100%. 480p video playback is down to 30%. This will hopefully be release candidate by the end of the year. We need it.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Internet’s ability to pull people together and bring ideas to fruition. My desire to connect with people began back in the late 90s. in my spare time I briefly did some software and hardware reviews for an downloadable e-zine / website called RealMac Magazine  in the late 90s and later did work for a startup called Spunk Network in the early 2000s right after the.com bubble burst.

From those experiences I learned that without motivation from within, projects rarely get completed. For some it is a monetary incentive, for others it’s the feeling of learning or giving to those who are less fortunate or unable to do the work on their own.

The reason why I have registered two domains, elliotrobinson.com (2006) and therealmac.net (2003) largely has to do with personal branding. At a very basic level, we identify with our birth names. It is a unique identifier for dealing with the outside world. Unless you have a very common name or wish to be completely shut out of the world of personal branding on the Internet, it makes sense to see if your name has been registered. if the.com has already been registered, look at other top level domains  such as .net, .org, to see if they are available.

As the popularity of different social media websites comes and goes, I have control over what content goes on my websites. If I decide to delete my Facebook, MySpace or Twitter accounts tomorrow, I can still have a central space on the Internet to voice my thoughts. So long as my data is hosted and the domain stays registered.

Search engine optimization is also a major selling point for having your own website. If I happen to be a really talented artist in the middle of a farm town in Idaho and have built a portfolio of work I’ve done, it’s much easier to illustrate that on my website instead of a mishmash of different websites or through traditional local media.

Along with search engine optimization is the ability to track visitors to your website using a service like Google analytics.  Seeing what areas are most popular and what conversion rates are if selling a product or service can be highly useful for assessing strategy.

It’s cheap to get a hosting account setup and the pros far outweigh the cons.  Stand out from the crowd, make a name for yourself in your industry.  Whether you’re just starting out or been doing it 20 years.  Make an impact.