In the last two years I have been asked in countless times
to explain the differences between my way of working and the way the other drivers work.
Taxi drivers normally spend between 10 and 12 hours driving everyday in the city.
In my taxi, I have found a way to strengthen my possibilities.
I use my free time in a productive way.
When I stop,I try to position myself
in order to think creatively about improvements.
In the past I used books in order to learn all the time;
I now use the Internet and social networks to make good use of my time.
I am happy in the trap that fate has prepared for me,
that is the only difference, in essence,
between the other cabbies and me.
Every day
I leave home and I go to work,
I repeat the same sentence:
“Today I will be the happiest driver in the world”
Some days my plan is ruined in about half an hour.
Nevertheless,
many other days,more than you can imagine,
I consider my working day as good as the best day of holiday.
I find a hidden charm when dealing with all sorts of creatures
that inhabit the city and are users of taxi.
Now let me tell you
how I started on the Internet,
and how I managed to become known
as a taxi driver from Oviedo,in many distant places.
I started my existence on the internet as “taxioviedo” in 2003.
Until 2006 a certain amount of work did not arise in this channel.
In 2006 people asked me about budgets,
taxi services and other consultations
I managed to release a professional website.
The website had six sections;
in the heading there is an automated form of taxi request
that is sent to an email address.
This innovation encouraged me
to find more solutions in order to have email on the move.
Azazel is my green raccoon.
He also works as a blog editor.
Azazel is my antagonist in the entries in which he participates
and I have the illusion that someday
Azazel has the courage to write a tourist guide about Asturias.
I used several mobile phones Blackberry
where I received emails.
Now I use an iPhone
which is a multimedia tool indispensable for me.
I use it for a dozen of things.
When I need to make a phone call I prefer the Blackberry.
When I took into account the rise of various websites
in the taxi cooperatives in Oviedo,
I tried to understand the working process of
Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO)
and SEM or Google Adwords.
2007 was a year of hard work and also of reflection.
I tried to uncover what the client expected from me.
My favourite client is the one who reaches the Asturias Airport
and goes to Oviedo and the other way round.
It is a journey that covers 50 km and costs 50 euros.
I decided to create a website because
I want to be busy at the airport and do this journey at least once every working day.
For this purpose there is a regulation that forces me to know the name of my client
(which means purchasing the service in advance).
Once I have had more experience I have found other types of client who
use a taxi service to go to the Basque Country,Galicia, Madrid.
There are clients who like to go on holiday in a taxi for several days,
even to international destinations.
I am very interested in this sort of client because tourists
often choose to discover Asturias by taxi.
Furthermore,
I have reinforced my most effective strategy with tourists:
I have managed to be the best option
in terms of service, payment facilities,languages, etc.
I kept deliberating throughout 2008.
I ordered the best business cards in the world,
the most beautiful and certainly the most expensive.
I started my blog in order to strengthen my position
and to show the tourist routes I do in Asturias
(and I also show the beauty of the region).
I put myself in the skin of the client to see
what was the added value ...
I decided to buy a small laptop,
a USB modem, and I offered this service to my clients.
In 2009 I purchased a portable printer.
I installed a Wifi connection around the taxi for the four occupants.
This year, 2011,
I also offer a Mac Air and Wifi connection.
The password is 615980000
because it also is my mobile phone number.
I have managed to set an antenna which emits via Bluetooth a request to download
a personal mobile phone application
This application offers tourist information,personal information,
what to see and what to do in Asturias.
I created and printed thousands of leaflets and fliers
in which I offered tourist routes.
I sent them to the main hotels in Oviedo
in order to put them very close to the tourists.
I was getting experience and I understood
how tourists imagine before coming to Asturias
what they want to see when visiting this region
and what they like and what they find most attractive.
I think,
I am the only driver in the world that uses this advertising resource and
I am the only driver in the world that has a mobile app being autonomous.
In October 2009
I started my stage 2.0.
Enrique Dans is a professor of information systems
at “El Instituto de Empresa Business School”.
He has studied a master MBA (UCLA) in the University of California.
He has worked in newspapers and magazines and
he has one of the world's most important blogs in Spanish.
It is Spain's most visited blog.
It happens that when you write a blog
and you receive comments
and also you begin to participate in other blogs,
Enrique Dans answered a comment I made on his blog,
where I explained by typing a tweet what I had been doing on the Internet:
@Ruralworker: Have you ever seen such an interesting taxi driver in Oviedo?
I read this tweet on every channel that
I used to monitor my brand
and I was surprised by the power of Twitter.
That week @ruralworker or better said,
Juan Otero,
founder of the Forum Turismo.as,
the most important tourism forum in the north of Spain,
invited me to a meeting with entrepreneurs and relevant people in mass media,
press, tourism and Internet.
In this think tank
I took the attention of the audience as an exotic example.
That was an accomplishment very motivating for me
and I decided to introduce myself in social media
as much as possible, especially on Twitter.
Twitter users write a brief biography.
I am @taxioviedo
and my biography says:
"I do not do extraordinary things,
but ordinary things in extraordinary ways”.
Hire your taxi through DM (Direct Message).
What is Twitter?
Twitter functions as the architecture of the Internet in 2011
which is similar to the role that the Agora played in the architecture of the Greek Polis
in the II century BC.
It is where culture is exposed, where consumers are,
where elections will be lost and won, maybe not these elections
but certainly the following ones.
In Twitter social relations are also forged.
In Twitter users share what is happening in real time.
Twitter is faster than any other news channel,
even faster than radio or TV.
Censorship is only possible, as we saw in Egypt,
cutting the Internet throughout the country.
One question that everyone,
from my point of view should face honestly
if you decide to have a Twitter account is:
If I were someone else me,
would I follow myself on Twitter?
When I made that question
the answer was that I would follow myself.
I think I am funny enough.
----------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
How am I using Twitter in a professional way?
I talk about my day-to-day routine
I am someone who strives to enjoy my work,
and I work in a taxi.
On Twitter I talk about my city,
I am creating a real-time chronicle
of what I see happening in Oviedo.
I take pictures of what I see,
from the privileged place of observation
which is an anonymous taxi among other taxis.
I recognize that each time I am becoming less anonymous.
I upload those pictures on real time to Twitter.
I also report about events and conferences,
traffic circulation,demonstrations...
I try to humanize.
I walk around the Agora,the square,
with my eyes and ears open and attentive.
I do not know if Twitter will be relevant in five years
or if will be using it, but I know that I will learn through Twitter
whatever system replaces Twitter.
Benefits that Twitter Brings Me
About 15%
of the hiring services at the airport are via Twitter.
I have a network of professional contacts
which is a real privilege.
If I have a project I am sure that I will find someone who can help me
to professionalize or to turn my idea into something enriching,
interesting or appealing.
I have created a personal brand
(many people perceive me as an “ideal driver”).
Nowadays,
we see in social networks
how taxi drivers are evolving from a vision 1.0
of their business to a 2.0 dimension
in which they offer technology, Ipad, wifi, websites...
I call myself a taxi driver 3.0,
entrepreneur and inspiring to other taxi drivers
(or at least I would like to be).
I add to my job social networks such as Twitter
and Foursquare, and tools
such as Skype, WhatsApp, Paypal, Twittpay, Instagram, Viber, FacturaGEM, Adwords.
I improve the image people have of the profession of taxi driver.
We do not listen anymore to la Cope (Spanish radio program)
but we tweet information about our location.
FOURSQUARE
Foursquare chose me
as once “Foursquare ambassador” in Spain,
I was the first
My role is to help autonomous businesses
to establish special offers.
In Foursquare
you answer the question "where are you?"
same as in Twitter you try to answer
the question
"What are you thinking" or "What is happening?
I read the other on Twitter:
“Twitter and Foursquare
are not a place for paranoids”,
and later on he rectified saying:
“Although
the world is not their place
but most of us
are normal people,
we go to restaurants,
pubs, many businesses, hotels…”
This application
is very efficient to access
to the recommendations left by users.
It is gratifying to give advice in Foursquare.
Why do we give advice here?
It is the same
as when you tell your “real”
and not virtual friends
about
how good is the fish with salsaverde cream
in a restaurant.
In this respect you might
also want to share
this kind of information
with your friends from #4sq.
People like to be useful.
As a Foursquare user
I managed to collect a lot of badges
or medals that you add
to your profile as you succeed in your challenges.
Foursquare is very similar to a gymkhana;
for example if you check
in 5 different airports
you win a medal
that will be shown in your user profile.
The more medals you obtain the cooler you are.
My Official Offer in Foursquare.
I requested to Foursquare
an official special offer with “taxioviedo”.
They ave it to me in August.
As I said before,
my favourite client is the one that comes to Asturias Airport.
If a user checks in Foursquare at the airport,
Foursquare will indicate him or her
that there is a place nearby
where there is an offer.
Furthermore,
if someone checks in
“Oviedo Airport Taxi”,
a full screen banner
appears on the phone.
In this banner you can read
"10% discount
on your trip from Oviedo
to the Asturias Airport
or the same if you
do a “shout” and you send it to Twitter or Facebook
with the word @taxioviedo".
The Case “taxioviedo” in Foursquare
In September 2011
I was asked
to talk about my career
in social networks as
"a case of success"
at a conference organized by
the Centro de Tecnologías de Información y la Comunicación de Asturias.
They told me
they would like me
to explain
how an autonomous
or small-medium enterprises
can be positioned using Foursquare.
In the wake of this proposal
I decided to spend
more time
analyzing Foursquare
and learning who are the people behind.
I investigated the origin of the company,
dodge ball,
the financing rounds,
the investors, the CVs,
blogs and personal websites,
how they work, their ideas…
I realised that
if I manage
to create a special offer in my taxi,
they would like it.
In those weeks
I met @dypgijon on Twitter.
We used the direct message option of Twitter
and I suggested him
to make the "special offer" label
of Foursquare made of vinyl.
He gave a budget of 24 Euros.
I doubted. However,
he offered himself
to help me
and I thought he was a nice guy and I ordered them.
I prepared my strategy for a few days.
On 18th September,
after generating some buzz
with some kind of tweet such as:
"Is it possible
that CNN
or the BBC
to talk about a taxi driver from Oviedo
without him having to make a killing?"
I sent a tweet
with a photo of the vinyl Special Offer of my taxi.
"Dive now
into the experience of discovering your city
with @taxioviedo”.
I added @foursquare #taxi 3.0
and a link to a photo of my taxi
where you could see the vinyl of
" special offer "of Foursquare.
“Taxi 3.0” was hastag or label used
to monitor outcomes,
timeline printings...
This tweet was read and repeated by my followers
in their Twitter accounts and sent to other users.
Mary Shelbei,
designer of badges and other items in Foursquare;
@naveen Selvadurai,
Foursquare Co-Founder;
@Tristanwalker, Degree in Business
by Stanford University,
the person in charge of the negotiations of Foursquare
and The New York Times
, CNN,
MTV, Vodafone UK, STARBUCKS, etc.
(Tristan Walker has 300,000 followers on twitter:
they all mentioned my foursquare taxi
in their Twitter accounts on several occasions.
24 hours after
sending this tweet,
the photo of my taxi
had been seen by over a thousand people.
This has been a success that
I feel very proud of.
Although I have not contacted the CNN or the BBC,
mainly because it was not casual,
there was a planning at least.
Nevertheless,
the impact goes beyond this,
there was something even more surprising.
Two days after the release,
the Foursquare twitter account
(@Foursquare )
tweeted:
“Um, Who does not want to ride in the @foursquare taxi?
(Found in Oviedo, Spain)
and featuring a link to the picture of my taxi.
FOURSQUARE's Twitter
has over 200,000 followers.
In a few seconds
this tweet was tweeted by tens of twitter users.
Generating hundreds tweets with possitive feeling,
not negative tweets feelings
The visit to the photo
also reached
in a few seconds
3,000 viewings.
This was a worldwide top-tweet.
All the tweets were positive.
I received comments such as:
"This foursquare taxi is so cool, so cool, you should come to New York"
and
"we want to go to Oviedo from USA only to catch the Foursquare-taxi" etc ...
TIMELINE IMPACT 800,000-1,500,000
In short:
The 18th September
I put a picture of my taxi.
The 21st September,
between half a million or
a million and half people
could see my name @taxioviedo
and my tweet about the Foursquare taxi.
As you might remember the investment was 24 Euros.
Return on Investment or ROI
I am happier in my daily work.
Those in charge of business analysis
claim
that workers in companies that succeed
are happier.
In my opinion
this is not exactly like that:
it is not the success of a business
which attains workers happiness.
I believe
that if a company provides
the conditions or the circumstances
under
which their employees are happy,
the company sooner or later
is bound to succeed.
And now
let us come back to some conventional ROI.
I have been requested
for different budgets
coming from the United States, Italy, Mexico, Germany…
It is clear that
in half a million people
at least a few would travel soon to Oviedo.
I can say very proud
that I have been the world's
coolest driver for two days.
I like it!!!!
The Repercussion in Spain
Once you get to speak well of yourself in New York,
everything is much easier in Spain.
A friend posted in a website
in which news are promoted
an entry
that I wrote in my blog.
In this post I wrote what I had achieved
which is the same information
I am sharing with all of you at the moment.
This post became the cover of the website
in a few hours.
I received interviewing offers from the radio,
from newspapers,
TV and more than 80 blogs around the world.
If I had to pay these pages in the newspapers,
these posts, those minutes in radio and television
I would have spent between 20,000 and 50,000 Euros.
I had thousands of visits to my blog.
I have been quoted
in many books
on social media
(for example Thinkle has published a book "Sentido Social”
(an approximate translation into English would be “Social Sense”)
and that is the most complete book I have read so far.
You can download it as a pdf file from the website.
One Book One Euro.
If you pay a euro the money will go to SAVE THE CHILDREN.
I have received several offers about ways to recover the investment of time.
I have also
started an irreversible path
towards
a social corporate responsibility
in my job:
I have developed a report
to introduce corporate social responsibility activities
in my taxi 3.0
Let us understand that my taxi
uses LPG as fuel
and pollutes less than any conventional fuel.
It is cheaper and is ecological.
However,
this is not enough for me.
I have proposed that each month
I'll make an action
in Corporate Social Responsibility.
In March
I went to to a spanish organización of blind people in Spain
and I asked them
to translate into Braille my taxi fares.
I talked to a taxi cooperative in Oviedo
and I have managed to put it into 100 taxis.
I have shared this idea
with several taxi cooperatives in Pamplona,
Madrid, etc.
In April
I have to change the wheels,
I have chosen green tires.
In May I delivered another action
which comprises the type of paper I use
on my bills,
and so on...
I was thinking particularly
in communicating these actions,
many of them have no impact
when only one person does it.
Nevertheless,
these are proposals that might be considered
by other drivers
and extrapolated
to many companies
that have cars for their employees.
At the end of the year
I will write my ecological memories
remembering what I have done.
The Most Important Project This Year: THE # AVENTURA4SQ
My idea has to do
with a trip to the United States of America.
My goal is to collect badges,
these are Foursquare medals
which can only be found in USA.
For this purpose I intend to make a 50-day travel and
10,000 milles
drive through USA
visiting 17 of the most important cities
of the country.
In order to obtain the financial resources
I used a platform
related to collective project financing (www. Injoinet.com).
Finally
I am here because I have got many sponsors
and the collaboration of BBVA
one of the most important banks of Spain,
in USA BBVA is BBVA Compass
My journey, even if it is by car,
will be a journey to zero emissions.
by compensation providing money
for projects that correct or eliminate the CO2 generated.
I am doing this trip accompanied by Azazel, my pet.
You can follow my fousquare adventure in taxioviedo.org
There is a widget with all new information I am uploading in
twitter, instagram, my blog, flickr,youtube etc…
and a map which offers my geolocation at real time
developed by treelogic.com
downlading my android app TAXIOVIEDO
or iphone app:taxioviedo.
If you leed my services
I am preparing my new web, developed by PROCONSI:COM
it will be hosted soon in
taxioviedo.com
I summarize my strategy on three tactics:
1 .--- Think big.
I want everybody to know who I am
all over the world
and when I come back
people will also know me
in Spain and Asturias,
in Oviedo
2 --- If you want to have relevance,
presence in the future,
what if you actively
take part
in creating that future?
THANK YOU ALL, YOU HAVE BEEN VERY PATIENT WITH ME
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