BCV Evolve — Evolve with the Digital Revolution

Essentially, we’re moving from the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends - Dan Rose (Facebook)
There are over 200,000,000 Blogs, 54% of those bloggers post content or tweet daily.
Twitter is like democracy, the more people participate, the stronger it becomes.

Highly TOUTed

by Benji on June 30, 2011

This is a guest post from Michael Horwitz (@Hova34), one of the fine young interns we have learning the ropes here at BCV.

Recently, NBA legend and future Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, first announced his retirement through a new social media site called Tout; this announcement brought over 500,000 viewers to Tout in under three hours. Tout is a new breed of social media that has yet to be mastered, using video sharing. Shaq’s announcement was heard on television and shown in an ESPN.com article, which gave us a direct link to his Tout announcement. The reason this was so effective is because it showed fans that this announcement was for real, as it came directly from the big man.

Shaq Tout's retirement

Tout already has an iPhone app and is in the process of creating an app for the iPad and Android platforms. So how does this work? You shoot a video, and you “Tout” it. The video gets uploaded to tout.com and can be seen by anyone. Shaq has been utilizing this site to the maximum; he gets a role on the Advisory Board and he also has a stock option for the startup social media company. He has been seen shooting videos at the Taylor Swift concert with his girlfriend, Nicole “Hoopz” Alexander, he’s shot videos of himself working out, or just being an all-out clown. Perhaps the best feature of Tout is that you can jump straight to the most popular “Touts” of the day.

So how can this change the social media world or even the sports world? When you Tout a video, you have the choice to cross-post it to your Twitter account. Since Twitter currently has a much bigger following, more people will view the videos. Now imagine this…

You’re at the United Center watching the Bulls pregame shootaround. You’ve got incredible seats near the floor. You shout out to Derrick Rose, and he approaches you. You bust out your iPhone and record the conversation you and the MVP have for just a few seconds as he signs an autograph for you. Within a matter of moments, you can share that video on Tout. Soon enough, you’ll have a video moment others can interact around and experience while you are still courtside. Maybe your mom can tweet you a question to ask the star as well!

Here’s a perfect example of the potential power of Tout. When the Dallas Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals on June 12, 2011, a controversial Tweet was sent from ESPN NBA guru Chris Broussard. The Tweet said that LeBron James had a postgame explosion in the Heat locker room. Minutes later, Broussard posted that someone had hacked into his account and that report was not true. Now, for the sake of conversation, let’s say that was true. Chris Broussard could have “Touted” live from Miami that LeBron had an explosion in the locker room. Nobody would doubt the legitimacy of that report.

Tout

There is something to be said for video. When you’re reading an article on a popular site, there usually is a video version of the article attached; most people prefer to watch the video and have it explained to them. Video social network sites, such as Tout, could be on the cusp of being a reputable source of news through social media. What if the people you follow on Twitter, your favorite athletes, celebrities, or even just friends could give you an up-to-the-second live report from wherever they are in the world?

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It Takes Time

by Ari on January 20, 2011

Recently BCV was thrilled to have one of its first clients, Piccolo Sogno featured in a Mashable story on how restaurants can and are utilizing social media. The article brought out a lot of things Piccolo Sogno does right such as respond in real time to clients, use rich media to drive interactions, and use social media as a way to develop real relationships with customers. However one thing the article forgot to mention was that a strong social media presence simply takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t even happen in 3 months. Piccolo Sogno has been utilizing Facebook, Twitter, and foursquare for well over a year. I can promise you in the first 4 months the level of interactions and the level of trackable ROI was not nearly as high as it is today. Piccolo Sogno also has a number of components that translate well to social media. For example, Tony and Ciro care deeply about the experience each customer has at their restaurant and that comes through across any medium. They value when someone posts on facebook or tweets at the restaurant and in turn want to take the time to thank the person and get to know them. In their latest video they share a recipe and invite fans and followers to test it out and call with any questions. (They also have the best and most authentic Italian food bar none, but that is my subjective opinion)

The point is this if you’re a restaurant and you view social media as an ad buy, a groupon, or something that needs to pay immediate dividends instead of taking a longer term view you are going to be deeply disappointed. If you value your customers and want to cultivate a community of people who believe in what your trying to do, social media is a great tool. It’s just going to take some time

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Hiring

October 12, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write the post about how we found our most recent team member, Katie Gear, for a few months now. Obviously it disappeared in the recesses of my mind, until a similar post by Digital Royalty and Barack Obama’s CNN Town Hall where they discussed hiring. Here is the deal, we are [...]

Is Your Company As Social As They Should Be?

August 27, 2010

All brands know the importance of marketing and advertising, which is why they pour MILLIONS upon MILLIONS into their advertisements, strategies, and methods needed to analyze the effectiveness. What they don’t seem to quite grasp yet is the importance of not only incorporating social media into their plans, but that they need to be paying more attention [...]

Google Places

July 22, 2010

It’s one of the most basic steps a restaurant should take, and lately I’ve noticed it’s one of the steps that restaurants are often overlooking. Google places is the aggregator of the most basic information that Google serves up when individuals are looking for your restaurant or looking for places to eat in your area. [...]

Is Starbucks killing FourSquare specials?

June 2, 2010

Being an early adopter of FourSquare means that you both love the product and recommend it to friends, AND are constantly wishing for more features, better stats and a simplified way of seeing specials data… or maybe that’s just me. A couple of weeks ago FourSquare partnered with Starbucks in a move that had me [...]

Social Media and the UK Election

May 11, 2010

a superficial rebuttal to a superficial Economist article What was the impact of new media on the UK election? We are not totally sure, and since we weren’t in the UK during the election or following it like a good voter should, we are not going to answer that here. However as new media enthusiasts [...]

Mr. Owner – Please don’t play foursquare

May 5, 2010

You’re at one of your favorite haunts, a small restaurant, a dive bar, or your Friday night spot which has somehow become your Tuesday and Thursday night spot. (We’re not judging) You come here often, you might be considered a regular, perhaps you even believe that you single handedly keep the fish tacos on the [...]

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