by Jen Salamandick

Welcome to Search & Tonic, where we like our links the same way we like our drinks; strong. Each Friday we will present links from the past week that wowed us, offered a unique opinion, or taught us something brand new.

Covered this week: Moving from face-to-face to Social Media for customer interaction; 6 reasons you should stop blogging (if you want to do the wrong thing); a 13 point list for improving idea generation; reasons why Google shouldn’t be your only traffic driver, and the unfolding food truck situation in Edmonton.

Social Media Replacing Face-to-Face Customer Interaction (Slowly)

1,700 CEOs from 64 different countries were asked about the ways they currently interact with customers, and the way the expect to in 3-5 years. I was surprised that Social Media was in last place, but the predicted 256% growth seems about right. I’d extend upon this idea to predict that a combination of a Social Media introduction + Face-to-Face interaction will become more common. I saw this in action this week when @DanaDitomaso tweeted to @theactfoodtruck when they parked across the street from our office, Unitb. When we headed over for lunch (which was amazing) she introduced herself again and was met with a friendly, “Oh! You tweeted that picture of our truck, thanks!”

The article notes that old school CEOs are reluctant to let go of the person connection that comes with face-to-face interaction, but the Internet isn’t a place to go to be anonymous anymore.

6 Reasons You Should Quit Blogging

“As Social Networks rise and fall, your blog will live on.” What a statement! For me it evokes an image of a powerful speaker delivering a speech to an enthralled crowd while alternating between fist-pumping into the air and banging on his or her pulpit. Blogging is tough work, and a lot of companies duck out on the process before the project really gets off the ground. This piece stresses that article ownership is important; what is on your blog is yours (and it always will be).

Point 5 – You want to play by someone else’s rules… wait, does anyone really want to play by someone else’s rules? Sure, sometimes it can be fun to spell things creatively or use clever abbreviations when you are crafting a 140 character Tweet – but your blog brings you freedom. Freedom from character restrictions and from the terms of service policies of various Social Networks.

I’ve always been a fan of passive aggression, so I really enjoyed the concept of this article!

How to Generate a Constant Supply of Ideas

This is about making idea generation a habit. Habits are hard to form. Doesn’t it take 90 days for something to actually become habitual? Pretty sure I tried to make going to the gym a habit last fall and the last time I went was last fall…

I like the concept of writing down ideas when the happen, and this is a habit I have actually been able to form. I’m just not always sure what they mean when I come back to them. I have a note file on my phone that is full of things that make little sense to me now. For example, “golf course river people” – where was I and what was I thinking when I wrote that down?!?

Point #7 discusses tracking the times of day when you are at your creative best, and this seems reasonable to me because I know exactly when I am at my creative worst. That happens from 12-2 generally because that is the time when I am hungry, but being lazy about finding sustenance. My favorite point on this list is simple, get a life. When you are out with the people, learning, struggling, celebrating – whatever! Things happen, you hear things, you are exposed to different areas of expertise and points of view and you will only become richer from this exposure.

Only 40% of Your Traffic Should Come From Google

Thinking that Google is the only traffic driver for your website is bad news and in doing so you are neglecting many other channels and the unique value each channel offers. Did you know that Google is not actually the only search engine? Sometimes I think I forget. Telling people how to search for you on other search engines is important and that info should be included in email newsletters and other publications as well.

MasterMaq talks #yeg Food Truck Bylaws

Drift Food Truck in Edmonton received complaints from a nearby cafe and one of the biggest problems to come out of this is that there isn’t any clear cut process to reach a solution. Mack Male breaks the issues down in this article and it’s obvious the city needs to create a system for handling food truck issues. One of the current ‘rules’ noted was that there can’t be more than one food truck on a street at a time. What a ridiculous rule that is!

Sometimes I want a sandwich from Drift and then I want two waffles from Eva Sweet for dessert. Why would that be a problem? I look forward to seeing how this progresses over the coming months – and I hope it progresses quickly… fingers crossed!