Foursquare, the location based social network, is purported to be the next big social media phenomenon despite ongoing privacy concerns.   Launched just last year in only a few cities around the world, Foursquare now has over 400,000 unique visitors (in January).  Since September there has been a steep increase  in activity as users catch on to this popular social networking game and this is only expected to grow since Foursquare went global last month.

Foursquare Growth

Playing Foursquare

Foursquare allows users to check in from their mobile phones when they are out and about at dinner, sports venues, tourist venues and even at the hairdresser.  As a user, each time you check in to a location you are awarded points.

Once you start accumulating points or visiting locations frequently you are awarded badges and titles (I am the Mayor of Stock Up, one of my favorite places to have lunch in Kerrisdale).   Foursquare apps are available for download to most major smart phones (iPhone,  Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre.).

If you think it sounds like more of a game than a serious business network, you are right but if your business is location based, it is a game you really should be taking seriously.   A little friendly competition can do wonders to bring people back to your location again and again and so businesses are beginning to clue in to the loyalty potentially and Foursquare as a tool to spread awareness: many businesses are offering incentives to those who become mayor and to visitors who offer tips about the location.

Foursquare Tips for Business

1. Make sure you are listed on Foursquare.  The best way to do this is by joining the community, downloading the phone app and adding a venue from there (read this post from Dave Tailor for more detail on how to do so).

2. Consider offering incentives for those who visit frequently and sign up with Foursquare to promote these.  Every time someone signs in to your location, their followers see this, so the more Foursquare visitors you have the better – its like free advertising!

3. Monitor Foursquare to see who is visiting and especially to track tips.  Foursquare users can provide tips about your location and since this is user driven you may want to reward positive tips and be prepared to go to bat if someone posts something negative.  Most of the tips I have seen to date are positive.

My Perspective

I have been playing around with Foursquare for a few months and it is fun but so far I haven’t been rewarded for my patronage – here’s hoping this post changes that!

Frustrated at the longer anticipated wait for sushi the other week, I posted this warning others to factor in time but there has been no response to that either.

Since Out-Smarts is virtual and not location based, we’re not on there but we do encourage all businesses to be aware of what Foursquare is, to make sure they are listed and to keep an eye on what is being said about their business.  If Foursquare does take off, as it is predicted to, then more and more of your clients will be using this tool to share their nights out, business meetings and fun.

Yesterday, we talked about how you can use LinkedIn for recruitment purposes, today we look at some of the other tools available to support your recruiting needs.

Plaxo – another prominent professional networking tool with over 20 million users, Plaxo is similar to LinkedIn in that it allows you to search job listings and to connect with people who are hiring but unlike LinkedIn, it does not have tools aimed solely at recruiters yet.

Xing – Another professional network which is becoming more popular with over 8m users.  It is very similar in its functionality to LinkedIn but posting jobs is much cheaper.  The downside is that lots of users are in Europe so its not the best tool for North American recruitment purposes.

Other professional social networks that facilitate recruitment:

Viadeo

Biznik

Social Networks – Facebook

Facebook Groups:  there are groups on Facebook dedicated to getting the word out about jobs.  To do so you can join and post or participate.  Examples include:

http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=jobs&init=quick#/group.php?gid=29593013279&ref=search&sid=745281396.2828234181..1

Facebook Pages – some companies have Facebook pages dedicated solely to helping them find staff.  The best known example is the Ernst and Young Facebook Page.

Facebook Events – having a hiring fare?  You can use Facebook events like this one to promote it.

Facebook Ads: allow you to post ads aimed at people you want to employ: location, education level etc.

Twitter

Twitter is proving a great tool to promote job openings.  You can use corporate or staff Twitter pages to Twitter to your community about job postings or you can even have your own dedicated Twitter feed that serves this purpose alone like KPMG http://twitter.com/kpmg

As with any Twitter effort, your follow strategy will be important.

Twitter Ad-ons

You can also use third party tools like Twitter Job Search to search listings and post your own.

Here at Out-Smarts, we are looking to hire an intern right now.  So far we have had 3 suitable and interested candidates contact us and all we had to do was post the fact to Facebook and Twitter.    If you are interested please contact us, otherwise good luck in your recruiting or job search efforts.

This month we’ve invited some guest bloggers to contribute. The first is by friend and colleague Guacira Naves (Owner, The Online Strategy House):

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Over a decade ago, an online marketing strategy was comprised by separate tactics that had only one concern in mind: to drive traffic to a site. The game was relatively simple: a site would be built, it’d be supported by email newsletters, advertising, maybe some traditional media, and that was all that there was to it.

Then, marketers became aware of the importance of search engine optimization, and added that component to their plan. Today, social media marketing is the new kid on the block. Not only that – it’s changing how the other online marketing elements interact with each other.

Below is a sample of how this interdependence plays out – and how you can combine each individual channel for the greater good:

Twitter and Google:

• Google’s new real time search results mean that tweets with your brand may now appear in search results. So, a strong visibility on Twitter can very well influence your site’s exposure on Google. That’s another reason to maintain an active Twitter profile, and populate it with quality content.

Twitter and Customer Opinion:

• Not only is Twitter the most important micro-blogging network, it is increasingly used as a search tool. It is a channel where people go to find the online equivalent to “word of mouth” about a product, service, etc. On Twitter, frustrated customers often share their gripes, and loyal clients rave about their favourite brands.  Here’s an example:

Imagine if you were looking for reviews on Virgin Mobile and came across the two tweets above.  They may very well sway your decision-making.

However, Virgin Mobile could have stepped in to have their say. It’d potentially have an impact not only on the three individuals involved in that dialogue, but Virgin’s update would’ve been found in searches made for that brand.

Here’s a positive example of how proactive companies observe Twitter conversations, and interact with users: on December 10th, I decided to try Pearltrees. I then tweeted this update:

Minutes later, I received a reply from Pearltrees CEO, Patrice Lamothe, with this message:

That update was not only relevant to me, but to any other individual making a search query for “Pearltrees” around that time.

So, the lesson is: people are going to use Twitter’s search tool to find information on your products or services. You might as well help them find information that is as positive as possible.

YouTube and Search Engine Optimization:

• YouTube videos are prominently represented in Google’s search engine results.You do have a YouTube channel, don’t you? Then, make sure that, among other things, your videos titles and tags are optimized. And guess what – this will help your presence in search engines, too.

YouTube and other Social Networks:

• YouTube also gives viewers the option to share a video via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, orkut and StumbleUpon, directly from the video’s YouTube page. You can also embed a video into your blog, and invite readers to share it – either by embedding into their own blogs, by adding it to Facebook, or inviting them to share it through social bookmarking sites like Reddit. Earlier today, I embedded this third-party YouTube video about Hewlett-Packard into my own Facebook profile:

I wasn’t the only one. According to the video statistics, it was watched an additional 279 times as a result of links from Facebook. Reddit, a popular content-sharing site, had also generated 1,317 views.

Blogs and Search Engine Optimization:

• By frequently adding fresh, relevant content to your company’s blog, not only will you improve your brand’s presence and clout in the blogosphere, but you will help your site become more appealing in Google’s eyes. That is because Google naturally gives more importance to sites that are updated on a regular basis.

Blogs and Twitter:

• Blogs can easily be set up to automatically promote a new post, as soon as it is published. You will be not only be driving traffic to the blog itself, but will also help to keep your Twitter profile active with new, original material.

I could go on and on. This just scratches the surface, but gives you an idea of how, nowadays, online marketing elements are so interdependent. When planned accordingly and executed in an orchestrated manner, these tactics will make the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.

About the author: Guacira Naves is an online marketing strategist who has 18 years of Internet experience. Her company, The Online Strategy House, develops and executes holistic online marketing strategies to help clients achieve their short, medium and long-term goals.

Thanks to Guacira for this.  If you are interested in contributing  a post – give us a shout!

Its almost the festive season, the sun finally came out in Vancouver today after three weeks of rain and there is lots going on online.  Check out our new media reasons to be cheerful for this month:

Grooveshark – groove to your favorite music while you work.

About Men – a new men’s health site in BC.

Twubs - making sense of Twitter hashtags #.

Twittersheep – see what your followers are Twittering about.

Sprouter – collaborative networking tool.

Slickplan – Create flowcharts and site maps for free.

SiteScan – verify your Google Analytics tracking codes.

Enjoy!

If you subscribe to Wired Magazine you may have noticed what they are hailing as the future of advertising – and they could be right (again).  A number of adverts contained in the publication are smart phone enabled using an application called Kooaba.  Once you’ve installed the Kooaba application on your smart phone you can take a photo of the ad, launch the app and it takes you to a specific landing page online.

The app is quick and easy to install but I did have to take 2 photos before the image was recognised.  I scanned the Glenfiddich ad and was taken to their landing page.  I had expected to be taken to a Wired specific landing page rather than the main page but with the approach still in its infancy and I guess that specific landing pages are yet to be built in.

Another example of smart advertising in use is at Metro News, the free newspaper,  where 2D bar codes appear on the print version of the paper allowing readers to scan using their smart phone and be taken to a mobile specific version of the article. To do this you have to go to their mobile site text GETMETRO or download the app and you are off to the races.

Here at Out-Smarts we are always keen to try out new technology so above you will find a 2D bar code allowing you to access this article on your phone. To scan it, download the Scanlife app for your phone, and scan using your smart phone to be taken to this blog on your phone. Neat huh? And it took only a few minutes to set up.

It can be a bit convoluted from the end user perspective but change is coming soon with the advent of NFC (near field communication) technology which promises to allow you to interact with print and TV ads in a highly streamlined way.

Making the user experience interactive and richer may be what will save traditional media, especially since they rely so heavily on advertising revenues.

Related articles:

NFC Enabled TV and Radio

A few months ago the buzz around social media was at its fanatical height. Everyone was talking about the new way to connect.  Why, even Oprah was Twittering.  Fast forward a few short months and now, thanks to media escapades like Balloon Boy, the news about social media is not so rosy.  Just this weekend, the Vancouver Sun ran an article warning that Twitter can be a legal minefield (and they are right).

Is social media losing its lustre as people begin to realize that its not the miracle cure for all business ailments?  Yes – and thank goodness for that.  Is social media about to implode? Not at all. What we are seeing is the natural process all new technologies go through in the market.  The Gartner Group hype cycle best illustrates this.

The hype cycle was created by the Gartner Group as a means to describe the hype and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of such technologies.  As you can see from the graph below taken from wikipedia, social media has reached its “Peak of Inflated Expactations” and is quickly beginning the descent into the “Trough of Dissillusionment”.

If you ask me, its about time social media was put into perspective.  Too many companies have jumped on board the social media bandwagon simply because its the in thing without giving much thought to their customers, product, brand or strategy and even worse without thought for the longterm consequences of their social media action.

Its time to realize that social media is a valid marketing tool and not a toy to play with.  To be effective in these forums you have to know what you are doing and go about it strategically.

This week we will be looking at some of the risks of social media and the best practices that help you mitigate these.

More on the Gartner Hype Curve.

In the early nineties when I was a rookie sales rep selling software practically the only way to communicate with our head office across the Atlantic in Toronto was to pick up the phone after 2pm and call them. Today, with the ubiquity of the Internet, communication  is much easier.  We have other instant options open to us like email, chat, Skype and social networks making communication much easier. Virtual communication is a breeze.  Or so I thought before I embarked on my recent transatlantic trip. What I forgot to factor off course was reliable Internet connectivity.

Here in Vancouver I take this for granted: every coffee shop has access, I have a wireless connection in the office and at home – its simply not something I give too much thought to and I expected the same to be the case in Europe.  Not so.  My plans for uninterrupted connectivity were thwarted more than once.

I am not sure what its like for visitors coming to North America but as a business tourist in Europe reliable connectivity was a challenge.  I should make it clear that if I was a “traditional” traveler, staying in hotels, my experience would have been different but that was not the case.

First stop on arrival – the Vodaphone Shop where I was pleased to learn that with the aid of a dongle I would soon be wired (as long as I had a credit card  and a permanent UK address for the credit check which being Canadian I didn’t).  Nice Vodafone guy advises me to go to 3.  Hiho, hiho its off to 3 I go.  I do indeed have more luck there and walk out with dongle in hand and 3Gb connection for a small outlay (and a very reasonable one at that) – I am well pleased.  Soon I am connected, via a very slow 2 bar connection but I am in no position to complain.

Next stop on the trip, I try to connect.  I am in the centre of Scotland, one of the most populace areas in Europe surely a reliable signal isn’t too much to expect.  3 fails me and its off to the Internet cafe pound coins clutched in hand  but its shut.  When I do finally get online at my folks place the connection reminds me of the days of dial up surely it can only get better in Spain….

Fast forward to Catalonia and indeed the 3 dongle shows four bars despite the fact I am in the middle of nowhere (more than I ever had in Scotland).  I try to connect via the 3 partner but get a warning message that it might cost up to a pound and 25p per Mb for partner roaming which sounds reasonable.  I click okay and get taken to the 3 site which tells me my credit card is not on file and that I should have provided this up to a week before leaving the UK.

I close my laptop and give up.  Time perhaps to wean myself off of social media at least for a few days and take a well earned break.  Thanks 3 for the vacation and to all of you who missed my blog posts or Twitter updates, I am back and what is more I have speedy wireless Internet connection (which I will never take for granted again) and intend to make up for lost time!

Our regular reasons to be cheerful post is long overdue so without further ado, lets get to it. New media discoveries that make us happy this month include:

When Is Good – A nifty little tool to help you schedule meetings.

BackUpMyTweets - back up your Twitter content and make sure it is always there should you need it.  They also have a BackUpMy Blog version.

SquareSpace - if you are a DIYer you will be interested in this innovative tool that lets you build your own website.

Twitoria - a tool that helps you filter your Twitter following and boot those not following you.

Tubemogul – online video analytics and distribution tool.

Cotweet – a Twitterlike alternative to Yammer for business micro blogging.

This week at a Fashion West Event, I participated on a panel alongside Liz Gaige of Market Navigators and Barbara Breuner of Blue Citrus Design.  We had assembled in order to provide our different perspectives on marketing and to answer questions from the audience.

During the intro Liz reminded us of the core considerations you should take into account when taking your product or service to market: the 4 P’s: Product, Price, Promotion and Placement.

Products are the products or service you intend to offer, who they are intended for and how they will impact your intended audience;

Price is how much you will charge for your offering;

Placement is how you will take your product to market (ie bricks and mortar store, online, distribution etc);

Promotion is how you will spread awareness of your product.

Social media is a means to promote your offering but it is only one of many tools that you can use.  Before you embark on promotion you should always take time to research and plan for the first three.

Always  use a mix of marketing tools to promote your offering, in addition to your social media efforts, for added impact.  Which you choose will depend on your audience and goals and could include online advertising, search engine marketing, direct marketing and so on.  The message should be consistent and complementary across each of these so that your brand becomes more recognizable.

By taking marketing fundamentals into account your social media and overall marketing efforts are more likely to succeed.

I can’t believe our Twitter podcast marathon week is almost over.  In our penultimate cast today, we talk with Sue Clement of Success Coaching.  Little did I know earlier this year when I encouraged Sue to start using Twitter as part of her marketing mix that she would take it to heart. I should have known better!  In a few short months she has built a following of over 1300 “Tweepl” and  is deriving many benefits from using Twitter to listen, learn and to get the word out.  Hear how she puts Twitter to good effect.

Podcast: Download