Common Paradox Tech Blog

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

There are many times or reasons that a small business will receive an influx of new customers — such as around the holidays for retail stores, during a new product or service launch or after a local advertising campaign. While new customers are great, returning customers are even better. Social media offers a number of opportunities to turn your new and existing customers into repeat customers and fans.

Hook New Customers on Social Media

The first thing you should do is direct new customers to your social media accounts. A good way to do that is to incentivize that act of becoming your friend, fan, or follower. Offer those who have just made a purchase a discount on future business in the form of a coupon, but tie it to your social media presence. For example, retailers could let customers know at point of sale that if they become a fan of your business on Facebook, they’ll receive exclusive offers for discounts on future purchases. Or customers could be given instructions to tweet out a special hashtag with a message about your store after they follow your Twitter account, and once that’s done you could send them a direct message with a special offer.

This is not unlike the common practice of taking down e-mail or mailing addresses for mailing lists, but social media puts the user more in control since, when properly used, it is a two-way medium. That’s actually an advantage to small business owners because active, engaged customers will be more likely to give you their attention.

Concentrate on Building a Community

Once you have users signed up to follow you on social media sites, the trick to retaining them as customers is to keep them wanting to come back. That means constantly engaging them with new content, exclusive offers and information they can’t get elsewhere. The best way to grow your community is to consistently offer them quality content. That means forgoing the sales pitch most of the time.

Customers join communities because of the quality of information and because they want to be privy to news about sales, coupons, deals, new products, or changes to your business (e.g., new hours, changed location or updated menu items). But that doesn’t mean they want to receive constant sales come-ons. Delivering quality, helpful tips and information to your customers will make them more likely to want to do business with you and help build your online community.

Restaurants could share recipes or tips for properly reheating leftovers, for example, while plumbers could offer instructions for simple home fixes. Retailers could offer honest reviews of new products, and doctors could offer alerts about the latest medical research or health care policy updates. Get creative — what sorts of information can you provide your customer community? This type of content will help to build your social media community and turn new buyers into return customers.

Play Favorites

Social media is a great place to promote your general sales and events, but you should also consider offering your social media fans exclusive deals that cannot be had elsewhere. Online-only offers will keep fans returning for more and it will help to build a community around your store, service or brand, which is what social media is all about.

It’s certainly true that you should treat all of your customers well, but it doesn’t mean you should treat them all the same. Those customers that have taken the time to sign up as your fan, friend or follower have shown a heightened interest in your brand that should be recognized. By plying your social media followers with occasional exclusive deals or discounts, you can help turn customers into fans that will evangelize your business to others. That way, you can turn new customers into return customers, who in turn attract more new customers for you. That’s the type of cycle that social media, when put to work properly, can help you create.

More small business resources from Mashable:

- Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses

- Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business

- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business

- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy

- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MorePixels, timsa

Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: business, how to, List, Lists, small business

Sometimes, famous people from the West go to Japan to act in weird, surreal ads. It’s not a big secret; after all, everyone has seen this video, and there’s a whole movie that revolves around the phenomenon.

Still, every time it happens, we’re in awe. Check out the ad (below), featuring Quentin Tarantino performing kung-fu to Star Wars Romeo & Juliet music, a real dog, a plastic dog-speaker and an angry women yelling at the telephone.

What’s happening here? What is Tarantino trying to do? What, exactly, are they selling? It’s all mostly a mystery, but it sure makes for one funny viral video, and that’s enough for us.

Tags: crazy Japanese ads, Quentin Tarantino

A Detroit judge sentenced Alan Ralsky, a spam mastermind who headed an elaborate international organization, to 51 months in prison. Ralsky was convicted of wire fraud, mail fraud and violation of the CAN-SPAM act for his schemes.

Ralsky and his cohorts netted millions from pump and dump stock scams which were bolstered by their spamming. He pleaded guilty in June and will be serving time along with his son, who was sentenced to 40 months. [Ars Technica]

Prices? What prices? Doesn’t Google give out everything for free, one may ask?

Relax. We’re talking about extra storage; for example if free storage that comes with Picasa Web Albums or Gmail isn’t enough for you, you can purchase extra storage space for a price.

Today, Google is dramatically slashing that price. You can now buy 20 GB for $5 a year, which is pretty darned cheap compared to the old price: 10 GB for 20 bucks per year.

Furthermore, Google has increased the amount of storage you can purchase. If you have a lot (we really mean a lot) of family photos, you can store them all at Google’s servers in the clouds, as the cap is now 16 terabytes.

Extra storage will act as an overflow for the free storage, meaning it only starts being used when you reach the limit of free storage. If you already have an extra storage plan, it will be automatically upgraded.

Reviews: Gmail, Google

Tags: cloud, Google, storage

There are implants which are purely aesthetic, and then there’s the Digital Tattoo Interface concept. It’s a blood-powered electronic interface which is embedded under skin to mimic a tattoo, display videos, or act as a phone or computer.

As great as it seems, this concept is seriously creepy because it powers itself by converting the glucose and oxygen found in blood into electricity. Though somehow getting your blood sucked by a gadget is worth it for the endless potential applications. I’d probably just end up using it to moderate comments, but what would you do first with your implant? [Core77 via Geekologie]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It’s about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature’s ultimate machine.

Think about your workspace and imagine if your furniture or your desk or cubicle could automatically reconfigure for different applications with a simple wave of the hand. Now check out the reality of Clemson’s Animated Work Environment (AWE).

Essentially, AWE is a programmable wall with varied displays that can switch between six configurations just by activating a proximity sensor. For example, when the wall is hanging overhead like a ceiling, the act of standing up triggers the sensor and instructs the wall to move out of the way. The project is in it’s infancy, but it is easy to see how future applications could lead to a whole range of dynamic, multi-functional furniture that automatically reacts to its environment. [AWE Project via IEEE Spectrum via BotJunkie]

Apparently Microsoft’s COFEE software that helps law enforcement grab data from password protected or encrypted sources is leaking all over the internet. So not only can you steal the software, but break the law by using it too.

Yep, it’s all out there on the internet, but if you use it to grab private data from someone else’s computer chances are you’re in for a world of legal hurt. It’s one of the few pieces of software I can think of where the subsequent use is more illegal than the act of downloading it.

But I know it’s not the only one. What else can you guys come up with? [CrunchGear, Pirate Merch]

Zynga changed their lead gen scam policy this morning (the whole Scamville background is here, see updates at bottom as well). And now RockYou is taking steps to clean up their act to, according to an email we’ve been forwarded.

In an email to RockYou’s publishers, they say that they will begin complying with Facebook’s rules on offer scams (and like you, we’re not sure why they haven’t been complying all along, but lax enforcement is likely the cause).

Two interesting nuggets from the email though. First, RockYou says that from now on you’ll only see “clean, safe surveys from top tier brands advertisers.” All of the surveys we’ve seen are mobile subscription scams, so I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a clean, safe survey.

Second, the email says “the Facebook compliance team will be keeping a very close eye on offer walls starting tonight.” We’d heard that Facebook is coming down hard on app developers around scams right now, but Facebook won’t comment about it other than to say that they have always been monitoring application offers and enforcing the rules. From what we’ve seen, that enforcement didn’t bring much in the way of results, but perhaps they’re more serious about the situation now.

The full email:

The EyeTV iPhone app is supposed to allow you to stream media from a computer to an iPhone over a Wi-Fi connection, but it comes with a little bonus that must’ve slipped past Apple’s approval process: streaming over 3G. Updated.

I don’t even know if this can be called a “backdoor” with as easy as it is to bypass the “Wi-Fi only” warning on this app:

Tap the OK button, and the app will act as if it can’t receive broadcasts. However, tap the text of the warning message instead, and the Eye TV app will stream live TV over a 3G connection.

Easypeasy, and you might as well snatch up the app before Apple or AT&T react.

Update 1: Looks like Apple reacted pretty quickly and yanked the app already.

Update 2: There’s a statement from Elgato, the folks behind the EyeTV app explaining what happened:

Some test code that enabled live TV streaming over the cellular network was accidentally left in the the EyeTV App. Apple requested that we remove the code since their agreement with AT&T does not allow redirecting TV signals over the cellular network. The code was removed and a 1.0.1 version of the EyeTV app was submitted. We expect EyeTV to return to the App Store when the 1.0.1 version is approved.

Update 3: Reader Tony wrote in to say that, while he could not download the EyeTV app through the iTunes link, searching for it on the iPhone App Store allowed him to purchase, download, and use the app to stream over 3G without any issues. Is anyone else able to still get the 1.0.0 version like this?

[ElectricPig via Boy Genius Report]

E-mail has played a large role in my life for roughly 13 years and in that time, it has also been the catalyst for a few embarrassing moments. That’s why I dig so many of the Gmail Labs features dedicated to trying to make those embarrassments a little less likely.

In the past, Google has introduced Gmail Labs additions like Mail Googles (to prevent those potential drunk-dial by e-mail moments) and “Undo Send” which let you cancel sent messages if you act fast enough. Today Gmail Labs is introducing a new feature for the user with lots of contacts with similar names, “Got the wrong Bob.”

“Got the wrong Bob?” is for those times you send a group mail that includes the wrong person. If you have multiple friends named “Adam” or “Dan” or “Chris” for instance, you might sometimes select or send the e-mail to the wrong person.

“Got the wrong Bob?” looks at the people you frequently e-mail and points out irregularities — like if you have an e-mail that is normally sent to a group including Adam H. instead including Adam O.

It’s a pretty neat idea, but keep in mind it only works for e-mails sent to more than one person. It still won’t stop you from sending a personal message to the wrong Erik.

What is your favorite Gmail Labs feature?

Reviews: Google

Tags: gmail, gmail labs, got the wrong bob