Paul Monaco .com

There’s a particular gas station in my hometown.  Along with gas they also sell the usual variety of convenience store items as well.  This particular store is especially convenient for me as it’s the only one on my route between my exit from the interstate, to my home.  I know I could shop around and get ever item in this store (including the gas)  from other stores for a significant cost savings but for me the convenience of it al far supersedes that.

Well one day the proprietor of this store must clicked the convenience store equivalence to “Get 1000 new followers instantly” and came up with the idea that if he programmed his “Pay at the Pump” machines to display the message “Please come inside for your receipt” that it would force people to always physically go inside the store for their reciept  and be so seduced by his selection of products that they would purchase more then just gas.

Now this shop is not quite so convenient as it once was.  Though not a very long walk at all, the prospect of doing just adds to the little things that clutterers my day and reminds me of my Buddhist principles of causality and how things are inter-related.  Now I must lock my car, take my keys and turn off the radio that I can hear while I’m filling my tank.

Sure in the big picture these are all very petty complaints and one could even say I am being trivial.  That said, this simple tactic of making me change my routine… adding one more step…  was just enough to get me to try some place else to get my gas.  On my outbound trip to work… to find a place where the aroma of freshly brewed coffee makes me want to come inside where the fresh donuts seduce me into yet another purchase.

Do I still go to the other store?  Yes, when circumstances force me to.  But now when I go I look forward to a potential series of blog posts ridiculing the proprietor as I document my visits on Brightkite.

So what’s the moral of this story?

Before you add that extra click to your site.. that extra splash screen… or that extra validation process…   make sure your visitors want your content or services bad enough to jump through those hoops.  There just may be another site out there with fresh brewed coffee and jelly donuts waiting to steal your traffic.

That’s right, I said, “Be There!”

If you’re reading this blog then most likely you are the kind of person who will benefit by attending a podcamp.  But I’m sure many of you aren’t quite sure about what it exactly is, so let me give this a shot…  first direct from the official podcampboston.org website:

If you’re wondering what’s next in social media, there’s no better place to find out than at PodCamp, regardless of whether you’re just getting started or you’re a veteran practitioner. Unlike other conferences which are just talking head affairs, PodCamp gives you the opportunity to learn, share, and grow your skills at any level, helping your community as it helps you.

But it’s so much more.. being an unconference it can truly be all things to all people.  I like to present it to people as the gateway into the next step of networking.  Social media is the fairway of the new generation.  If you’re not there, you’ll be left behind struggling with the old media thinkers.

At PodCamp, you have the opportunity to share ideas with people you man not normally have ready access to in the real world like CEO’s, venture capitalists, entertainers, programmers, experts and enthusiasts in every field imaginable.  Some are there to learn about marketing, public relations and brand building.  Others have a product or service to pitch.  Some are simply there absorb all the social goodness!

No matter what your motive is, if you have a dream or objective.. any at all.. then PodCamp is guaranteed to give you a return on your investment.  

If you’re attending, please look me up!  My Blackberry will be fully charged and online thru the whole event and I also plan on updating the mobile site and monitoring my email as well!

With the number of handheld devices on the rise and the general consumer become more tech savvy by the day I finally decided to fully take the plunge into mobile content.

Expect to find very concise posts in a timely manner, very conducive to mobile browsing on ANY device.  This venue is very new to me and quite frankly I’m sure experts in this media are few and far between as well.  You can expect a lot of adjustments as time goes on.

The 2-dimential barcode you see on this page is known as a “QR” code, short for “Quick Response”. Using QR scanning software on your camera equipped device you can quickly jump to mobile content embedded within the code.  

The dotMobi domain names comes with the requirement that the site meets a basic set of standards making it highly compatible with a broad range of devices, but fear not you can still visit the old fashioned way on a computer, by punching in paulmonaco.mobi into your favorite browser.

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A whimsicle theme built around green bubbles. Header photo dirived from a Creative Commons licensed image by flickr user woodleywonderworks.

At first I’ve resisted and resented store loyalty cards thinking of them as an evil way marketers track their customers to suck even more hard earned dollars out of their wallets. Being a (what I like to think of as) “typical guy” I don’t use coupons since I never really plan my shopping and wouldn’t have them handy to use otherwise. But I did start noticing a lot of special pricing available that you can only get when using your card. This made me feel much better about it and as time went on it was just another part of daily life.

After years of using a loyalty card and being loyal to basically one grocery store chain, the day came when I lost my card. Yea it was my fault, I left it at the register and walked off.

On my next trip to the grocery store I stopped at the courtesy desk and told them I lost my card, never to be found again and I needed to replace it. The associate asked for some ID, looked me up in the computer and handed me the hand-written paper card above.

Off I went ready to shop when I realized… over 50% of the check-out lines are self-scan and to further speed purchases they now hand out scanning wands so that we can ring up our purchase as we shop. All fine and dandy.. IF YOU HAVE A REAL CARD WITH A BAR CODE!

The two lines open that had a flesh and bones cashier had massive lines of seniors, all either paying with “exact change” or meticulously writing out paper checks. At that point I realized that shopping without a bar code was just not worth it.

As good fortune would have it I had a loyalty card for another store that was just across the street. I rarely used the other store because at my old house it was not convenient, but here at my new residence it’s just as easy to get to.

So guess what? I’m happy at the new store and even though I’ve been a life long customer of Stop and Shop it’s very unlikly I will return now that I’ve discovered shopping at Shaw’s.

So the moral of the story…. just as technology can increase your sales efficiency it’s failure can decrease it just as quickly.