SEO Werkt!

The picture I chose for this post is of my kids playing with one of those displays that are so prevalent at movie theater lobbies these days. The goal of such a display is for you to mess with it, take photos, and share them all over the internet, thus making people interested in the movie. You get something. The movie gets something. Hooray. Lord knows if it sells movie tickets. I checked around for some case studies, but didn’t find any. But it’s more fun than a poster.

Can You Build Interaction Points Into Your Business?

In launching Blog Topics: Master Class, I put into place a handful of interaction touchpoints. First, I invite people upon signing up to hit reply every time they want to talk with me or ask a question. I then prompt them to do so in the first email, so that they know I’m serious.

I also created a private Facebook group for students in the course to interact with each other, and although I don’t promise to be there myself very often, I have been there to greet every single newcomer to the group personally, and introduce them to everyone else.

There will also be some realtime events like a live Google+ Hangout where we can do even more connecting. Further, I will promote various people’s work as a part of class, thus highlighting what participants are accomplishing, and sharing some of the great experiences coming out of the project, which is one way to give back.

What Does This Do For Your Business?

By finding ways to encourage repeat interaction, I’m tied much closer to my “customers’” experiences (I don’t much like the word, but I’m using it so you can translate this to what you’re doing). It means that no one ever feels like they played into the “bought and forgot” loop. It means that you’ll hear rather quickly if something isn’t working well, and have more potential opportunities to correct the issue at hand.

This also means time, however. Many businesses are built to actively seek ways to remove human interaction, to streamline anything that can be streamlined, to reduce interaction as it’s a drag on “productivity.” This line of thinking is accurate: to be very interactive with a customer/client/participant takes a lot more human capital than just selling something and wandering off.

But the process also has benefits:

• Faster awareness of issues that could cause revenue loss.
• More opportunities to adapt the product or future products to customer needs. (You can sell better or more.)
• Improved opportunities to encourage word of mouth marketing.
• Reduced error handing time allotted, as your marketing time and customer support time share a “budget.”
• Much improved perception of trust, care, and customer interest/advocacy.

How would this apply to your business? What does it mean for you?

Movie tickets are becoming more and more expensive, and with quick home releases there are fewer reasons to make a trip to the theater. You may get an enormous screen and high quality sound, but you can also have that in your home for a lot less than you’d think. With a little extra work and know-how, you can put a movie theater in your home on the cheap. More »

Going to the movies is fun! Paying lots for movie tickets is not. Luckily, Slickdeals member RandallMarshall has gathered up all the Fandango deals currently available, as well as a great trick for combining multiple promotions on Fandango. More »

The cost of going to the movies is higher than ever, especially if you’re in a big city like New York or Los Angeles, but you can cut that cost significantly by buying tickets in bulk from the theater’s corporate web site. There are often two kinds of tickets: one that lets you into any movie anytime and one that lets you see a film that’s been out for a couple of weeks. Film blog Not Worth Admission explains the details: More »

You probably know stores like Costco are great for discounted groceries and clothing, and you might even know they’re great for discounted electronics. Weblog SmartMoney notes some other products you can grab for steep discounts, the most surprising being movie and theme park tickets. More »

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets:

A Cheerful Memento Mori Clock For Your Home Or Office
Lego Tries Augmented Reality With “Life Of George” Game
Sony To Stop Comping 3D Glasses For Theaters – Because Movie Tickets Aren’t Expensive Enough Already
Sync By 50 Headphones Leak Early, Appear To Be Appropriately Street
Huzzah! A Wooden Frame For Settlers Of Catan

Sony, which provides many theaters with the projectors and hardware needed to display 3D cinema, has informed those theaters that starting this spring, it will no longer provide 3D glasses for free. From now on they’ll have to foot the cost themselves — and by “they” I mean “we,” because obviously the theaters aren’t going to voluntarily pick up this extra expense.

Most theaters use a passive 3D system (often RealD), since expensive active-LCD glasses aren’t really an option to deploy in bulk. The polarized glasses (not pictured, obviously) are cheaper, but still cost ~50 cents per moviegoer. Multiply that by the millions of people who might see any given 3D blockbuster-type movie, and you’re looking at quite a sum. Sony’s been footing that part of the bill, but has decided they’ve had enough of that. Their letter to exhibitors puts May 1st as the last day they’ll be providing glasses.

Theater owners will be angered (no one likes an extra few million in red ink) but I’m guessing Sony wouldn’t do this if it didn’t feel the balance of power was on their side right now. You may or may not like 3D, but it’s a part of the business right now and big 3D movies are likely the highest-margin showings a theater will have all year. They can’t afford to be the one theater in town that doesn’t do 3D, so they’ll pay.

Studios like Disney and Fox have also chipped in for glasses, and never implied that the comping program would last forever. Still, it seems like the life support is being pulled a little early, and, as always, the cost will be passed on to the consumer.

CityDeals.com, one of probably far too many online daily deal sites, has been acquired by Seven Peaks, which owns and operates a number of water parks in the United States.

Turns out CityDeals.com recently decided to call it quits, leaving merchants and customers alike hanging.

Seven Peaks was one of the company’s creditors, and decided that the business should live to die another day. They recently stepped up to the plate and acquired CityDeals’ assets – but not its liabilities – for an undisclosed sum.

Seven Peaks says it was a longtime CityDeals customer, and a satisfied one at that. The company plans to continue to operate the daily deals site going forward.

Furthermore, Seven Peaks says it is currently working with merchants to ensure all deals sold online to date through CityDeals will be honored, and also working out arrangements to take care of any merchants that have been awaiting payment from CityDeals.

Dear Seven Peaks, there’s an expression in Dutch that goes like this: schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest. I have no idea what the closest equivalent expression in English sounds like, but it’s probably something like this: stick with what you know.