Web Ink Now

SEC action against Netflix CEO over Facebook post is completely wrong

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is considering taking action against Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings because of a Facebook post.

The agency says that the update to Hastings' 200,000+ subscribers where he said "members had enjoyed over 1 billion hours in June" violated the SEC Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) rule.

The SEC is charged with making securities trading fair and since Netflix is a publicly traded company, the SEC has oversight. RegFD is the SEC rule that says when a company discloses something of material importance (something that might affect the stock price) that the information needs to be sent to everybody at once.

According to the SEC: "Regulation FD provides that when an issuer discloses material nonpublic information to certain individuals or entities—generally, securities market professionals, such as stock analysts, or holders of the issuer's securities who may well trade on the basis of the information—the issuer must make public disclosure of that information."

The SEC is completely wrong

The issue is not with Netflix. It is with the dinosaurs at the SEC. This is not a stock story. It is a real-time communications story.

The post that Hastings sent out was to his Facebook PUBLIC followers list which currently numbers 245,000 people. Anybody can subscribe to the list and anybody can access the content at any time without subscribing. I do not subscribe and it took me less than five seconds to access it – go to Facebook and type 'Reed Hastings' in the search bar. Bingo.

Any journalist or securities analyst who has any brains at all would be following what Hastings is saying on his public Facebook posts.

Here's the important point -- by posting to Facebook, Hastings is getting the news out fairly to anyone who wants to see it.

The SEC considers press releases to be the acceptable way to comply with RegFD.

Press releases are fine, but in 2012 saying that only press releases qualify for fair disclosure is like saying the only way to watch movies is in a theater. In fact, when I looked for press releases from Netflix it took me much longer than five seconds to find the relevant pages.

Time to re-think fair disclosure

There is no question, based on my extensive previous experiences - 1) working in the real-time news business for a decade; 2) as head of corporate communications for two public companies and 3) as VP marketing for Fair Disclosure Financial Network - that the SEC is wrong.

The SEC needs to develop new rules on what disclosure is in our world of instant communications.

If anyone from the SEC reads this, I'd be happy to come down to Washington and educate you on the new tools of real-time communications. But since this is not a press release, I doubt we'll hear from the lawyers down in D.C.

Not Another Junky Blog

Tania Venn, director of PR at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, the largest full-service professional junk removal company in the world, oversees a team that creates content with a focus to reach customers who may not think that they need a junk removal service.

“Once they hear about what junk removal could do for them and how it could impact their lives, they become interested in our service,” Tania says.

Tania and her colleagues focus on what information would be valuable for buyers as they create content for the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Not Another Junky Blog and then use their Facebook page and Twitter feed @1800GOTJUNK to let their followers know of new posts.

Making junk interesting

I hear all the time from marketers who tell me something like "My business is boring. Nobody cares about what we do so how can I create content?"

Tania's example shows any market or company can be made to be interesting. We're talking about junk removal here, people!

"We think about what’s relevant," she says. "That could be tips and suggestions for people on getting their space back. It could be about decluttering and how to do a garage sale. We also focus on environmental sustainability, what happens to the stuff we haul away and creative ways to reuse junk." Right on the homepage there is a counter showing the number of pounds 1-800-GOT-JUNK? has saved from landfills. As of this writing, the ticker reads 2.264937 billion pounds.

They also create content about what's timely, either because it is in the news or tied with the time of year. "With the holidays coming up we'll post about making space to have your in-laws over and making room for new things you might get as gifts," Tania says. "And with New Years, everyone has resolutions. We know that the top ten New Year's resolutions includes 'getting organized' and 'simplifying'. We also look at what's trending. For example, there is a trend called trashion, when people make fashion out of trash, so we'll write about that."

Writing for buyers

Unlike when a blog is written from an egotistical perspective and turns into a bunch of advertising messages, Not Another Junky Blog, because it is written for buyers, focuses on real problems that people have with junk in the home.

"We know there’s an emotional component to getting rid of the stuff that you have," Tania says. "Our customers have an emotional release and an amazing magical feeling of 'that crap is not there anymore' when their junk is taken away. They don't realize until it's gone how good it feels. We hear it time and time and time again from our customers. So we build that into our blog because it answers what customers are looking for." The 1-800-GOT-JUNK? business is a franchise model, so the content they create also appeals to franchisees who learn about clever ways to market in their local area.

When you focus on buyers' problems as you create content, frequently you'll write about something that doesn't have anything to do with what your organization actually does. This is true at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?.

"We might talk about how to set up your own garage sale," Tania says. "That wouldn't get us business necessarily, but we’ve got the experience and we can share that with people. We know that readers may not be able to afford our service right now, but some day they will be able to. They'll have learned something from us that can help them out, something that can help them get rid of some of their junk, but they can do it themselves."

Measuring success

It's not just the billions of pounds of junk that the company saves from landfills that's measured. Tania knows that the content published in Not Another Junky Blog and shared on Facebook and Twitter is working because she uses analytics to measure content success too.

"I look at how many people view our blog on a daily basis and a weekly basis," she says, also paying attention to any content that becomes particularly popular with readers. "We've learned that we need to create content in order to be recognized on the web. It's a way of engaging with customers. It's a great way to get information directly to who you want to reach rather than going through the media."

Hey, if Tania can make junk interesting, there's no excuse for you not making your company interesting!

The second most important communication revolution in history

I’d like to step way back and look at the big picture of where we are today. To use a cliché, this isn't a "30,000-foot view". Rather it's more like the view from the moon.

Johannes Gutenberg invention of mechanical movable type printing in about 1439 was the most important communications breakthrough in history. It meant books could be mass produced, rather than painstakingly copied by hand. It meant ordinary people could refer to things in books, like laws, that used to have to be committed to memory.

The printing press created the first communications revolution by freeing people from memorizing information which allowed them to use brainpower to create things instead. At the same time, this first communications revolution (which took many decades) meant that large numbers of people became literate, raising living standards along the way.

The second most important communication revolution in history

556 years later, in 1995, the second most important communications revolution took off. I choose 1995 because it was the year Netscape went public on the success of Netscape Navigator the first popular product to allow people easy Internet connections and Web browsing.

I talk about it in this short clip. My friend Chris Brogan pointed out that I ended the clip abruptly. True. The clip was taken from my new speaking highlight reel. The entire video is about 8 minutes and is here if you want to check it out: Marketing and Leadership Speaker David Meerman Scott.

We're fortunate to be living in this time in history. We're actually living through an important revolution.

I figure we're about half way through this second communications revolution. The first 17 years or so were fast paced and things changed very quickly. Adoption went from a few million people online to billions. But things are still changing, as many organizations aren't truly communicating in real-time yet.

You are what you publish

The next few decades will see continuation of the revolution. Are you a supporter of the revolution? Or do you support the old regime?

Full video of my Inbound 2012 keynote featuring Cyndi Lauper

Several months ago I kicked off HubSpot's Inbound 2012 conference in Boston with a keynote titled "Inbound Now" detailing how to get found as people search for products and services on the Web and mobile devices like Androids and iPads. The video of the talk is now available.

The presentation to 2,500+ entrepreneurs and marketing professionals focused on the 4 ways to create the information that search engines rank highly and that people share on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Featuring Q&A with and a live performance by Cyndi Lauper!

Being a live music geek, I played off the conference theme Inbound Rocks to use music examples - including the Grateful Dead, Amanda Palmer, the Avett Brothers, STS9, and Cyndi Lauper - throughout the talk and was thrilled to interview Cyndi live on stage.

Direct link to David Meerman Scott keynotes Inbound 2012 featuring Cyndi Lauper on Vimeo.

At about 7:45 is a one-minute video interview I did with Amanda Palmer. Amanda talks about how she engages with her fans on social networks. Amanda crowdsourced the funding of her latest album on Kickstarter in what is the most successful music funding effort in Kickstarter history.

At about 31:50 I go into the audience to show how the Grateful Dead engaged fans. I find out how many people are Grateful Dead fans and who in the audience has attended multiple Dead shows. This is to prove the "true fans come back for more & spend lots of money" idea. In 2,500-person audience, about 100 had seen the band live. About 10 had seen more than 50 shows. Three over 100 shows and the most was 173 times.

At about 40:30 I interview Cyndi Lauper live. We talk about how she stays relevant and engages with fans through social media. First thing out of Cyndi's mouth (after she compared our shirts): "I stopped listening to the record company."

And at 45:30 Cyndi and her band did a killer live performance of "Crossroads." Her band featured blues harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite.

Google Plus emerging as a back door to top search results

Google News results now prominently show results from Google Plus (Google+ or just G+). This presents an exciting opportunity for real-time marketers for newsjacking using Google+.

How Google+ has changed since launch

When Google+ first emerged in the summer of 2011, it looked to me like a direct competitor to Facebook. Not that the application actually looked like Facebook but that it played in the same market of social sharing and connecting friends. When I first wrote about G+ in my post I really wanted to hate Google Plus that's what my focus was.

Initially many people used G+ for business purposes in similar ways that they used other social networks. You first create a personal profile and then figure out if there is a clever way to use G+ for your business.

I've noticed a significant trail off in interest in G+ in the past year or so as people who didn't need a "better Facebook" stopped engaging on the G+ social network. That's been my personal experience too. I still post my new blog posts to G+ but I don't go in to see what others are doing nearly as often as I do on Facebook and Twitter.

Google Plus emerging as a cool back door to top search results

Now there's a way to use G+ for business that has real potential. If you go to Google News, you'll see a dropdown arrow button if you mouse over on the right of each headline. Clicking the arrows reveals more stories and those frequently include a G+ listing.

For example, in the business section story this morning talking about "Cyber Monday", the last item (with tons of real-estate) is a G+ update from Scott Kelby. I took a screen shot so you can see how it looked for me this morning.

How cool is that? A mere mortal can get into the front page of Google News just by making a real-time G+ update on a breaking news story.

Note that I do not know Scott and we are not connected on G+.

This has significant potential for marketers who want to inject their ideas into a breaking news story.

I’ll be experimenting with this in the coming weeks and months. Meanwhile, do let me know in a comment if you’ve had any newsjacking success with Google Plus.

Social networking drives Adagio Teas success

Adagio Teas is a fantastic example of a company integrating social networking into all aspects of their business.

Social sharing and crowdsourced product creation isn't something that's bolted on as an afterthought at Adagio Teas. Unlike at most companies, social networking is a critical component for driving the Adagio Teas business.

I learned of Adagio Teas from my daughter Allison who was home this weekend from University for her Thanksgiving break. She's a loyal customer and shared with me the cool aspects of how the company works.

Crowdsourced tea blends

As of this writing, Adagio Teas sells a remarkable 24,242 blends of tea. The vast majority of blends are created by their customers either for their own enjoyment (you can keep the blend private) or as one that is sold to others on the site.

Avid tea connoisseurs can search the database for a perfect blend, or like Amazon's bestseller list, browse teas based on popularity. If you like a blend, you can see what other blends that creator has made.

For example, the currently ranked #4 tea Sherlock is a blend by Cara McGee: "All at once exotic and mysterious and perhaps a little bit insane, with a lingering hint of smoke. Inspired by BBC's Sherlock, which I am in no way affiliated with. This is created purely for my own enjoyment. Ingredients: lapsang souchong, assam melody, oriental spice."

Check out the Sherlock blend listing to see the social aspects that are built in. Cara uploaded a video where she talks about the blend, there are customer reviews (187 as I write this), and social sharing including a Facebook "like" button (with 502 thumbs up), tweet this, update Tumblr, and Pin it.

The Sherlock blend is part of a theme that Adagio calls Fandom Signature Blends which also include such teas as Avatar, Big Lebowski, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, & many more.

Your tea profile

Repeat customers can create a profile to keep track of teas they enjoy most and they can also add teas they want to try.

The social aspect kicks in when you add friends to your profile. If you log in to Adagio with a Gmail account, you can instantly find out which one of your contacts also has an Adagio Teas profile. Or if you’re reading a review and like someone's taste in tea, you can friend that person.

Adagio Teas on social media

With all the sharing going on with customers at Adagio, it's no surprise that the company itself is active on social networks. They have an excellent Tumblr official blog from the people behind Adagio and they are active on Twitter with @AdagioTeas, on Facebook, and other social sites.

And they really are active, using social networks to communicate with customers. The mistake made by so many other companies is just using social media like Twitter as a one way broadcast advertising channel. Not so at @AdagioTeas.

For example, recently @AdagioTeas tweeted: “We are developing a wishlist feature & would love feedback. Would you use it as a bookmark for yourself, or as a list to help guide others?”

And people love the interaction. For example, @jamieworley tweeted: "It's so cool that @AdagioTeas sends me twitter DMs to let me know where my tea shipment is!" And it is cool. I wish some of the companies I frequently do business with used Twitter DM to communicate.

Create your own blend

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison made her own blend because she wanted to have interesting Christmas and holiday gifts for family and friends.

The Create a Blend widget is really easy to use. Many people love mixing teas and Adagio has made it fun and easy to mix different flavors to create a unique and tasty blend.

You name your creation and choose the types of teas and the percentages of each. You then have an opportunity to create a custom label that can be just simple text based or something much more elaborate. Social networking pops up again because you can upload a Facebook photo to be part of your custom label.

Allison made a hand drawing for her label, which she scanned and saved as a JPEG and then imported into Adobe Photoshop where she added text and then uploaded to the Adagio Teas app. Her scottea dog blend is "Just a cute jumpy Christmas blend of assam melody, hazelnut, and peppermint".

Points when somebody buys your blend

Another fun social aspect of Adagio Tea is that the creator of a custom tea earns points whenever a customer buys their blend. Points can be used to get discounts or free tea. This encourages social sharing by people who create blends. When your new blend is ready for sale, many people will tweet about or post an image of the label with a link on Facebook or make a Tumblr post talking about the blend.

Driving business success

By building social aspects into all aspects of the customer experience, Adagio teas drives business success. As customers talk about teas on social networks, fan their favorite blends, or even create their own to share with their friends, at each step new people learn about the company. Sure beats traditional advertising to get the word out.

I've learned a lot from this example. It's exciting to see social networking used in such a great way.

Disclosure: My daughter Allison will earn points for anyone who buys her tea. But this blog post is about sharing the great social aspects of Adagio Teas so we can all learn from what Adagio does, not about promoting scottea dog blend.

Get Famous Fast: Helping entrepreneurs win at media relations

On Friday, I participated on a terrific panel discussion titled Get Famous Fast: Helping entrepreneurs win at media relations at the MassTLC Innovation 2012 Unconference.

We had a great crew led by Scott Kirsner, the Boston Globe’s Innovation Columnist and author of Fans, Friends & Followers to discuss this important topic.

Joining me as panelists were Kate Castle VP Marketing at Flybridge Capital Partners; Dave Balter founder and CEO of BzzAgent; Laura Fitton, HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Evangelist; and Matt Lauzon who co-founded Gemvara.

Since I was participating on the panel and chose not to multi-task, I gathered additional information needed for this report from a few sources including great posts about the panel by Fred Destin (who in true real-time fashion had his post up before the panel was over) Engaging with the Press and Kevin Kosh's Get Rich Fast? Get Over Yourself!, Scott's @ScottKirsner Twitter feed, and the 35 tips the panel created which were transferred to flipcharts (I snapped photos of each of the 5 pages).

While the MassTLC event was primarily for emerging technology companies, the ideas we generated on the panel are valuable for anybody looking to reach the media.

Here are the tips in the order we covered them with liberal post-panel editorial comments from me:

1 Look at which journalists have written about your competitors. Target them with appropriate outreach.

2 Don't just pitch! Send journalists complements, notes, ideas, feedback.

3 Use Twitter to understand who covers what, what they care about, and what stories they might be working on.

4 Don't underestimate the power of in-person meetings with journalists. I noticed that prior to the conference, Scott tweeted "Up early today. Heading over to the @MassTLC #uncon. Say hello and tell me what you’re up to - esp. if we haven’t met before!"

So had you been watching his feed and then saw him at the event, you knew that it would be cool to say hello. If you did, then you’d have a valuable personal contact with an important journalist.

5 Newsjacking! Use current events as hooks to breaking news. At this point I talked a bit about how to inject your ideas into a breaking news story and generate tons of media coverage.

6 If you update your Google Plus with breaking information that is valuable to journalists, it might get indexed in Google News and be found by them as they are seeking quotes and second paragraph information for their stories.

7 What do your customers read? Read that for ideas.

8 Don't blast your pitches to journalists willy-nilly. Quality is better than quantity.

9 If you are successful in generating an important media hit, be prepared for a spike in traffic to your site and an increase in requests for interviews from reporters at other news outlets.

10 Hire good help and the right consultants.

11 Many news sites have tip lines. Use them when you have something that's important. For example, TechCrunch has the following on the homepage: "So you've got the inside scoop on a story or topic that we've covered? We respect your anonymity. Feel free to directly email us at tips@techcrunch.com"

12 Don't just pitch the media. Have your own content generation strategy! Create videos, blog posts, infographics, Twitter feeds and the like to get your company noticed by the media.

13 Don't just talk about what your products and services do. Reporters don't care. Instead talk about how you solve problems for customers. Journalists love customer success stories, especially if you are giving it to them first (less so if the story is written up on your site for all to see).

14 Don't just pitch about what your company does. How about pitching a story about market trends?

15 The best press starts from companies that have great products.

16 Pitch reporters on your own rather than have agencies do it. Journalists are much more interested if a company founder reaches out to them then if a junior PR rep sends the email.

17 Be able to explain what your company does simply and quickly so that anybody can understand. Revise and rework your "cocktail party explanation" so it is short and simple.

18 Hone in on the essence of what you do with the five why technique.

19 If a journalist responds to your pitch with a request to interview you or wants to receive additional information, RESPOND QUICKLY. Right now. Not five minutes from now – NOW!

20 Make contact information easy to find on your site.

21 Eliminate the gobbledygook. Get rid of all the cutting-edge, mission-critical, best-of-breed, groundbreaking crap language.

22 Early stage companies should hire individual PR consultants rather than firms.

23 Create infographics and videos that tell your story.

24 If you do have an agency, listen in on pitch calls and take a look at pitch emails. Work with agency staffers to get the information right.

25 Conduct due diligence on PR consultants and PR firms you are considering hiring. Speak with their clients and ask about the press the agency helped generate.

26 Think about milestones and big events that a reporter might be interested in such as funding, a product release, the opening of your European office.

27 Reporters are humans. Find out what they like and dislike in their personal life. Find out what they are interested in and writing about and feed them stories that are not related to you. Help them build their stories.

28 What do your customers link to on Twitter?

29 To find the important bloggers in your marketplace, use Google search and Google alerts for long tail search terms.

30 Understand what writers do and what outlets they write for. Many reporters (like me) are what I called "multi-personality disorder types". We don't just do one thing. For example, Scott Kirsner writes a column in the Boston Globe, blog, moderates panels, speaks, founded the Nantucket Conference, has a column in the Boston Globe, is the author of several books, and is active on his @ScottKirsner Twitter! Do a little extra research to find out what the reporter you are targeting does.

31 Retweet bloggers and reporters. Reporters respond well to "heartfelt flattery". So flatter them.

32 Laura says: "Read Meridian by Alice Walker."

33 Know what you represent. Know what your brand is.

34 Negotiate everything up front. If you are offering something on embargo, get the agreement before you spill the beans on the story.

35 Don't lie. Saying "no comment" is okay.

Inside the brain of Scott Kirsner

Scott spoke for a few minutes and gave a bunch of ideas for what he personally likes and dislikes.

- Journalists will NEVER fill out a "contact us" form on your press page. They want a real name and number.

- I listen better to people directly involved (the founder, the VC, the angel, a customer) than people paid to pitch (PR).

- In-person connections are where it's at: I want to see companies in their natural habitat, when they innovate, not when they have a PR agency.

- Exclusives: I hate it when Fred Destin lets his stories slip to other outlets.

- Keep it simple: if you cannot explain to me what you do crisply and intelligently without using 3 letter acronyms, I won't engage. Get your cocktail party explanation down! Don't assume I'm an insider.

- Timeliness is everything: once you have someone hooked for a story or if you want to react to one of my questions, do it real time or do not do it at all. And be available for the press!

- Make sure your milestones are newsworthy: launching product isn't. Landing Boeing as a customer, hiring 100 people or getting Jack Welch to be your CEO are.

Panel photo: Ken Kosh via MassTLC blog
Scott Kirsner photo: @ScottKirsner
Flip Chart photo: David Meerman Scott

Seattle Police blogs Marijwhatnow guide to legal marijuana use in Seattle

Here's proof cops have a sense of humor and that the Seattle Police understand the power of online content to educate and inform.

On Election Day, November 6, 2012, the people of Washington State passed Initiative 502 making it legal after December 6 for adults over 21 years old to possess up to an ounce of marijuana (or 16 ounces of solid marijuana-infused product, like cookies, or 72 ounces of infused liquid, like oil) for personal use.

So, Washington residents wonder, what does that actually mean for me?

I just love the post Marijwhatnow? A Guide to Legal Marijuana Use In Seattle on the Seattle Police blog SPD Blotter. The post provides a practical guide for what the Seattle Police Department believes Initiative 502 means.

Brand journalism with the Seattle PD

This is some terrific brand journalism!

Here are a few of my favorite Qs and As from the Marijwhatnow post.

Can I legally carry around an ounce of marijuana?
According to the recently passed initiative, beginning December 6th, adults over the age of 21 will be able to carry up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use. Please note that the initiative says it "is unlawful to open a package containing marijuana... in view of the general public," so there’s that. Also, you probably shouldn't bring pot with you to the federal courthouse (or any other federal property).

SPD seized a bunch of my marijuana before I-502 passed. Can I have it back?
No.

What happens if I get pulled over and I'm sober, but an officer or his K9 buddy smells the ounce of Super Skunk I’ve got in my trunk?
Under state law, officers have to develop probable cause to search a closed or locked container. Each case stands on its own, but the smell of pot alone will not be reason to search a vehicle. If officers have information that you’re trafficking, producing or delivering marijuana in violation of state law, they can get a warrant to search your vehicle.

December 6th seems like a really long ways away. What happens if I get caught with marijuana before then?
Hold your breath. Your case will be processed under current state law. However, there is already a city ordinance making marijuana enforcement the lowest law enforcement priority.

Will police officers be able to smoke marijuana?
As of right now, no. This is still a very complicated issue.

The SPD Blotter

I love the use of humor in the post. Sure, it provides valuable information about the new law, but in a fun and approachable way.

And hey, we're talking about the cops here!

The SPD Blotter began in 2008 and is maintained by the staff of Seattle Police Department Public Affairs Office.

The Marijwhatnow post was written by Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a journalist who, as he says in his bio, covered “the always-exciting cops and crime beat at Seattlecrime.com, PubliCola.com, KIRO Television, and The Stranger.”

Spangenthal-Lee joined SPD in March 2012 to tell those same stories on the department's SPD Blotter blog and publish real-time information on breaking news through SPD’s @SeattlePD Twitter feed.

Isn't it great that the Seattle PD hired a journalist to write the blog and update the Twitter feed?! I've talked about hiring journalists many times over the years such as this 2009 post An open letter to journalists: You have an amazing career opportunity on the Dark Side.

Here's how Spangenthal-Lee describes his role: "As a reporter, I've stood out in the rain at crime scenes, rode around in patrol cars late into the night, and pored over police reports in order to dig up and tell stories about just what goes on inside the Seattle Police Department, and the streets of our city."

Nice. Maybe I'll have to take a field trip to Seattle to sniff around and learn more about this story.

photo credit: 1ncognito via photopin cc

Do you care more about customers or the competition?

Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook asked Scott Forstall to resign, reportedly because Forstall (who had headed Apple's iOS Software) refused to sign the company's apology over the crappy Apple Maps that were made a part of the latest iPhone software. I'm glad to see that because it signals that Cook cares about customers rather than "beating Google" which as far as I could tell was the only reason to swap out the mapping platform in the iPhone.

Too much focus on the competition

Many companies obsess about the other guys. Why in the world would you name your business Seattle's Best Coffee unless you were directly competing with Seattle, Washington based Starbucks?

My sense is that the various social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the like) are spending way too much time worried about the "competition" and not enough time worrying about their users.

For example, Google worries about Twitter. So Google eliminated the excellent real time search feature which had delivered tweets as part of Google search results. While tweets no longer appear, Google will happily show updates from Google+ in search results.

Who do you care more about – your customers or the competition?

In a world of commercialism Free Sofia Tour goes social

For the past several days, I have been in Sofia, Bulgaria where I delivered a full day New Marketing Masterclass.

I always want to poke around when I'm in a city for the first time. So when the good people at Free Sofia Tour tweeted me, I knew I had to be on their tour.

I love how Free Sofia Tour embraces social media while the other tour operators use traditional marketing. I see the other guys' brochures in the hotel lobby. They have ads at the airport and in the tourist magazines. Free Sofia Tour uses social media including Facebook, Twitter, and good old-fashioned word of mouth. I first heard of Free Sofia Tour from Ovanes Ovanessian at Web and Events, who organized my Masterclass.

Free Sofia Tour relies on volunteer guides like Ina Paunova who showed me, Samuel Bredl, and one other person around Sofia. Talk about social media—both Sam and Ina were booked for my Masterclass.

They rely on donations from their guests to support the organization.

Getting social

I just love how this organization works. If you're social, it’s easy to find them. They make you feel welcome, and follow up after the tour.

It’s not just me. Free Sofia Tour is ranked the number one activity to do in Sofia on Trip Advisor with 188 "excellent" ratings out of 200.

In a world of commercialism (think the Big Bus Tours that operate in many cities), sometimes the personal approach works best.

Do check out the excellent Free Sofia Tour web site as well as their @FreeSofiaTour Twitter and Facebook. And if you ever find yourself in Sofia, you know who you should have show you around.

Photo of Ina Paunova by David Meerman Scott