Facebook CEO Didn't Tip for Lunch

Story first appeared in USA Today.

When in Rome, Facebook's honeymooning co-founder and CEO reportedly did as most Romans do: Pay for a meal without adding an additional tip beyond the already-included service charge.

But by failing to leave a separate gratuity on their 32 euro (about $40) lunch of deep-fried artichokes, fried pumpkin flowers and ravioli stuffed with sea bass and artichokes washed down with bottled water and a pot of tea, the CEO and his bride have set tongues wagging on both sides of the Atlantic.

Waiters at Nonna Betta, which specializes in Roman Jewish cuisine, were amazed by the parsimony, not just because of his huge wealth but because of Americans' reputation for tipping generously, as is expected of them at home.

So was he playing by the rules of European etiquette, or just playing Scrooge after his considerably smaller than expected IPO windfall?

It is not customary to tip for meal service in Italy. In the States, servers are paid less than minimum wage and are expected to make up the difference in tips. In Italy, servers are paid a living wage and tips are for extraordinary meals and/or service.

In most sit-down restaurants, especially the nicer ones which have no counter service, you may find both 'il coperto' and 'servizio incluso' written on the menu. 'Il coperto,' generally one or two euro, takes care of things like bread before the meal and a glass of tap water. 'Servizio incluso' means they've already figured in a tip for you – usually around 15% – so the total due on your final bill is all you'll owe.

If the service has been particularly outstanding or you've had an exceptional experience, leaving a couple euro on the table is a lovely gesture. But there are plenty of Italians who are actually annoyed when they see tourists leaving big tips, because they're afraid the waiters will begin to expect it – thereby ruining it for the locals.

Not leaving a tip is a bit of a faux pas, but really because of Italian expectations of Americans."

Europeans know or expect that gratuity is almost automatically included. But Americans absolutely have a reputation for tipping, and many Italians have come to expect a tip when serving them.

Readers, what do you think? Should he have ponied up more as a grazie for his Roman lunch?

For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

Internet Traffic Will Grow by 2016

Story first appeared in USA Today.

In four years, we will take about Internet traffic in zettabytes.

What's a zettabyte? It's one trillion gigabytes, and by 2016, global Internet traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes, says a study by Cisco.

Broken down monthly, Web traffic around the world will make a fourfold jump compared to 2011, according to Cisco's findings.

Cisco predicts more than 18.9 billion connected devices will be available in 2016, an average of 2.5 connections per person.

Along with more devices, there will be more people around the globe hopping on to the Internet. Cisco expects 3.4 billion Internet users in four years, equivalent to 45% of the world population.

Among other findings:

-- Wireless Internet connections will slowly take over wired links. More than half of all global traffic is expected to come from Wi-Fi.

-- More than 1.2 million video minutes will travel the Web every second. To put it in perspective, that's equal to 833 days.

-- Mobile Internet traffic will surge in the next four years. Cisco finds it will increase 18 times by 2016, to 10.8 exabytes (one exabyte is equal to 1 billion gigabytes).

For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

Mobile Ads The Future of Advertising

Story first appeared in USA Today.

Mobile ads are the Holy Grail of revenue for anyone with a social-media plan.

The market for the ads that dot smartphone and tablet screens is expected to soar to $10.8 billion in U.S. sales by 2016, from $2.6 billion expected this year, according to research firm eMarketer. That's a tiny slice of the $169.5 billion market for media ad spending in the U.S.

Yet mobile ads are crucial to the growth of many companies, including newly public Facebook, though few businesses have been able to capitalize on the promise.

Some speculate that the popularity of such devices, in part, comes from their lack of ads. Others think the larger screen expected on Apple's forthcoming iPhone is a concession to demands for extra space to accommodate content and ads.

Mobile Web traffic is up 35% in less than a year, while all Web-browser use on Windows-based PCs declined 10% in a six-month period from 2011 to 2012, says market researcher Chitika Insights. About 20% of traffic comes from tablets and smartphones, it says. Retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Macy's have noticed, and are charging into mobile ads, which will become staples as millions ditch PCs for smartphones and tablets, ad experts say.

Everyone 'gets' the implicit contract that free content comes with ads.

Sites such as Forbes have optimized the mobile experience with clean ads at the top or bottom of the screen, with content in middle.
Google has the early lead in the U.S. in monetizing mobile, with 51% of the market, largely due to its success with mobile search ads, says Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst. Phone numbers embedded in mobile ads on Google's click-to-call feature, for example, generate about 15 million calls per month.

Facebook barely registers yet, though the company has the potential to rake in $2.54 billion from mobile advertising, according to Chitika. Facebook Sponsored Stories — an ad that appears on a member's Facebook page, and generally consists of a friend's name, profile picture and an advertiser the person "likes" — now appears in a user's mobile news feed.

For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

Facebook Ads Useful or a Bother?

Story first appeared in USA Today.

Do they really, really like you on Facebook? Or did they click the "like" button because they got something?

The Federal Trade Commission holds a workshop today that will look at how companies should disclose incentives on social-media platforms that allow only short messages or a simple sign of approval.

Incentives for consumers to "like" companies on Facebook fall into a "gray area" that depends on whether the number of likes a company has influences consumers in choosing their products. The FTC's advertising endorsement guidelines require compensation to be disclosed, as with Twitter hashtags such as "#paid."

The National Consumers League's says consumers on social media need the same protections as with traditional advertising. Consumers need to be protected from false and deceptive advertising in new media.

Recent plugs with perks:
•Target was offering a free "beauty bag" with makeup samples last week in return for a "like." The company has 1.8 million likes on its Facebook page. The company would not comment about how many were received in return for the bags, but a spokeswoman says Target has given away a million beauty bags in this and another Facebook giveaway.

•Amazon was offering $3 instant video credits last week to people who sent out a pre-written tweet for them.

•Mattress Discounters in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, entered recent buyers into a drawing for a $100 gift card if they hit their Facebook "like" button, posted pictures of their beds and added comments. The page has 492 likes.

A resident of Woodbridge, N.J., clicked "like" on Target's page and tweeted for Amazon to get the freebies, but says social media doesn't affect her shopping decisions. She finds it "irritating" when her Facebook news feed is full of brand-related tweets when it is obvious that they are being paid.

But companies can't rely on loyal fans to spread the word about products, says Christopher Barcelona, of digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. That makes incentives more important than ever.

For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.

Lessons Learned from Google

Story first appeared in USA Today.

When people talk about Google and its organizational culture, they are equally fascinated and hopeless, believing that the magic behind Google lies in the deep revenue streams that make it possible to feed its employees three meals a day. Small businesses, especially, tend to dismiss Google as a wholly unattainable model for running a business.

However, there were core lessons learned at Google that transformed the way people look at problem solving and strategic thinking. There were statements that were heard early and often that guided decision-making at every level of the organization. These mantras are at the core of innovation for Google but translate readily to any business to create agility, employee engagement and ultimately, stronger business results. Google's success owes far more to these mantras than the food in the cafes, and even better, they cost no money to implement.

1. Launch and iterate. Even the smartest of the hyper-educated Google leaders cannot predict which products and features will attract a sizable user base. Instead, they urge teams to launch quickly and iterate — in other words, stick with, and perfect, what's working — based on what they learn from their users. Rather than spending time perfecting a product that might not work, get it out there, and let the feedback guide future development.

For a small business, this means trying out a lot of services, products, marketing, sales and other tactics in really small ways, gauging the success and then building on the ideas that work in reality. Resist the urge to perfect — if your customers understand that you truly want their feedback to shape products and services, they will enthusiastically share their opinions.

2. Fail fast. If you try a lot of stuff by launching early and iterating, you'll fail at most attempts. This is the secret to innovation. Failure is not a bad thing, but slow failure in the market is. Launch, iterate and declare the failures as quickly as you can. Most importantly, learn from those failures to help guide future efforts.

Do a weekly retrospective for your operations, lasting no more than 30 minutes. Ask your teams to answer three simple questions: What worked well? What did we learn? What can we do differently? Then, pick the one change that will make the most difference and put it in to play.

3. Focus on the user. Your customers or users should be your singular focus, always. A question asked incessantly to maintain this focus is: "What problem are we trying to solve for our customers?" Every product or service must be linked to a problem or challenge that will make their lives easier.

4. Ask forgiveness, not permission. This mantra was important to mobilize every Google employee in the company to do the things they felt were right without worrying about what approvals they needed to do it. The idea is to remove barriers and to empower employees to act quickly.

Reward employees for taking initiative, and treat their missteps as any other failure — something to learn from, but not to dwell on. What is most important is they become stewards of your company to make the best decisions without seeking 100 approvals to do so.

5. If you see a void, fill it. This is a favorite lesson from Google. It gives explicit permission to employees and the expectation that, if something is broken, everyone is empowered and responsible to fix it. If there is a spill in the kitchen, clean it up. If the copy machine is broken, file a ticket. And if you see a void in the market for an application you believe users will love, then build it.

This creates an environment in which every employee is 100% responsible for making your company better every day in little (or big) ways.
Put together, these five mantras create a responsible organization fiercely devoted to making the lives of customers better, one tiny step at a time. Free bagels are optional.

For more information on website optimization or for the latest SEO News, visit the SEO Done Right blog.

For more national and worldwide Business News, visit the Peak News Room blog.

For more local and state of Michigan Business News, visit the Michigan Business News blog.

For more Health News, visit the Healthcare and Medical News blog.

For more Electronics News, visit the Electronics America blog.

For more Real Estate News, visit the Commercial and Residential Real Estate blog.

For more Law News, visit the Nation of Law blog.

For more Advertising News, visit the Advertising, Marketing and Media blog.

For more Environmental News, visit the Environmental Responsibility News blog.