@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Branding & Marketing

Google’s New Algorithm

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Do you stay glued to financial news for the biggest trends, or failing ones, to keep your business thriving and productive? If so, you may want to take a seat for this one. Designed to improve search results, Google has initiated a new algorithm.

For those who have made a habit of providing the highest quality content, you are about to be rewarded. However, low ranking sites that regularly copy content or provide low quality information, should expect to take a bit of a beat down.

The new algorithm will target a few key issues about the way content is promoted by their search engine. Content that is rich in helpful informative information, charts and graphs,  properly key worded and updated regularly, will get high priority by the new implementation, while those with second hand content and low quality outlines will be bumped further down on the search results regardless of their current page rank or unique visitors. In fact, the new algorithm is likely to change the latter aspects for those fluffy sites altogether.

Google’s Goal

Google says their goal is to provide users with the most relevant answers to their search engine queries, and as fast as possible. They intend to achieve this while also reducing the search engine rankings of things like content farms and over advertised spam ad.  Considering the user ship of Google, it is fair to say that when we refer to us, we really do mean, the huge collective US, that will be greatly affected by these changes. This could literally make or break some online businesses.

Although an algorithm change such as this may likely turn the search engine world as we know it upside down, the service it should begin providing, with the changes having taken place immediately, should definitely be a positive one.

Positive for the effectiveness of the search engine users that is. For sites who may have raised their page rankings and traffic with less than notability informative content, they may have already noticed a significant loss of traffic due to their new rankings on this algorithm system.

Some Win, Some Lose

Google also acknowledges that any changes to their algorithms, including the most recent ones, can cause some websites to achieve much greater results in readers or consumers, it can also cause previous winners on this path to suddenly be set back greatly.

However, take note also that if your rankings have dropped you may either be the false positive, or a unfortunate casualty of Google’s new algorithm, or you may need to sit back and take a longer look at your site and determine the best course of action to ensure that it provides helpful and informative content, not spun or copied content.

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SquareUp – Your Credit is good everywhere & anywhere!

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As the story goes, the idea for this new service came about when Twitter inventor and co-founder, Jack Dorsey, happened to see a street artist which he liked.  Wanting to support him Jack found he didn’t have cash. The artist did not have a way to swipe a credit card.

With that idea in mind, a company was formed, co-founded by Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey. Money was raised (mainly from Digg’s Kevin Ross) and the prototype was unveiled to the world in beta trials at the end of 2009.

SquareUp.com enables merchants to accept payments via credit cards through their smartphones and tablets. No electricity is needed and it can be done any place where cellular reception is available.

By signing up with the company, merchants get, free of charge, an attachment which plugs into the earphone socket of their smart phones. The card is swiped through a slot at the top of the attachment.

When activating the program (as an app) on the smartphone or tablet, the process becomes very simple and self-explanatory. Input the amount, let the client sign with his finger and you get the approval very quickly. What’s more, you can send a receipt immediately to the customer’s e mail. A map helps you track where you have used the device recently.

As with any other credit card service, service fees apply. The current rate is 2.75% on a swiped transaction (with no additional FEE) and 3.5% + 15¢ per keyed-in transaction.

Who would use this?

On a Plum TV interview, Jack Dorsey put the example out there of, the Babysitter. Everyone from Babysitters to street vendors can find value in this new product, and he was just referring at the time to the recipient. Jack continued on to talk about how much convenience it makes for those of that simply do not carry cash and still want to purchase, support or partake in activities that until now had no method of payment besides cash, which less and less people carry.

What Can This Mean For Small Business?

Although most online businesses have methods for sending and accepting payments online, these systems are certainly not fool-proof, and often users in different countries may suffer from restrictions or high fees just to accept incoming funds. This has actually created quite a gap in money exchanges carried out online because just as with instant messengers, there are just so many to choose from, that users will select the one most convenient and manageable for them.

However, this does leave the aforementioned gap, some users simply cannot accept the form of payment that you may be restricted to.

If consumers suddenly had a way to accept credit cards on the spot, how much would this change how small businesses function? How much would this actually benefit those who are struggling to make a break into the world of bigger business? Who can really benefit from on the spot credit card charging access?

  • Street Sellers
  • Flea Market Vendors
  • Catering Companies
  • Musicians
  • Artist
  • Charities
  • Small Venues
  • Craigslist Sellers

I think the point is made. Those who previously had no other method to transfer funds, or the ability to sit down at a computer and manage their accounting from there, can now use their smartphone to manage funds literally on the go. 

Although service fees do apply, most small business or vendors will not mind the loss of required transaction funds, since some fee has always been associated with credit card processing and the fact that without the SquareUp application, they would have never been able to initiate the transaction in the first place.

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Sneak Peak: Digital Brand Marketing 411: Educate, Embrace, Brand

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So, the internet is flooded with 101 courses, be it Social Media 101, SEO 101, Digital 101, SEM 101 and so on. The shocking part is that we are well beyond Freshman year, perhaps now it’s time for an advanced course.

This is a book in progress and the purpose of this post is to get feedback and support from fellow professionals who will have the chance to help shape its final publication.

Educate, Embrace, Brand

If training programs are a natural part of any induction to new employment, then should we not use this time to maximize the experience both professionally and personally?

Imagine a company that spends time introducing its new employees to Social Media during the training, helps them set up accounts, teaches them etiquette and the role that each different social media has both in personal and professional communication, even if it is at the most basic level.

That same company now embraces its new employees, like a press release, announcing their employment on the company’s Facebook page, twitter accounts, foursquare and more. At stage one, the companies’ own Social Media, has just gone viral with opportunity that has yet to be realized by corporations.

Educating and supporting an employee’s personal brand with the company would touch every contact that the employee has on a regular basis (i.e. profile pictures that resemble something like a baseball card with the team name, or in this case, the company name). The natural progression of Social Media would give the brand a reach and repetition beyond traditional marketing campaigns (This is not even considering the value for professional outreach to clients, service providers and more).

Features, Benefits & Pitfalls

“This section will be the core of the book”

Why?

The ability to control your brand has been lost for some time.  The introduction of reviews, facebook, twitter and more have shifted the spectrum. The current chain of command climate, has corporations and their brands operating as spectators or participants at best.

Your employees are already doing it! A claim like “When John/Joan made that racist, sexist, ageist, etc. etc. comment on facebook, it was not endorsed or supported by [insert company name]”. That’s a PR nightmare, because we all know s/he works for you and now your associated with the people you surround yourself with, or in this case employ.

Already employees are engaging or starting to engage in social media.  In most cases, the biggest threats come from those that will not let you into their social network.  Social Media demands a proactive approach or a great damage control team and understanding stockholders. The best way to understand what your employees are doing on social media is to be an active participant and take a stake in it.

The Coca-Cola Example:

In 2006, The Coca-Cola Company stated that 71,000 people worked for that company.  Imagine what that means in the way of networks if Coca-Cola Educated, Embraced and Branded their people!

If each employee averaged a modest 100 unique Facebook Friends, that’s a reach of 7,100,000 people that will directly see the company name, product or message at least once, if not on a repetitive basis. Take a minimal assumption that 10% of them may do something that others find worthy of sharing in their networks just once in a month and you just doubled your direct impact to a whopping 14 million direct touches with your brand, product or message.  That’s 14 Million a month based on just one touch. We are more than likely talking about a more realistic value of about 30 Million at least once and most of them more than once. How much would you spend to reach 30 Million people? Remembering you have to do it with someone they know and possibly trust or value.

The influence for the book:

Social Media has transformed the way we do business, “This is a massive socio-economic shift that is fundamentally changing the way consumers and companies communicate and interact with each other”, Erik Qualman (Socialnomics, 2010).

Is this True?

I believe that Erik Qualman is correct. However, what most are missing is that we are still stuck in the entry level courses or just fulfilling our general education requirements and the time to be undecided is at an end.

Companies continue to adjust to the trend that Social Media dictates on how consumers spend. Their reactive state has paralyzed them, and no one has taken a moment to stop, think and produce a proactive campaign or policy.

Social Media 101 was the introduction of Away Messages, Chat rooms and Buddy lists. Social Media in the 200’s was all about the personal networks we build.  Whereas, Social Media 300’s have been a consistent battle to generate ROI for business and balance the separation of personal and professional.

Social Media in the 400’s (Senior Year) will be the race towards the podium. The first to Educate, Embrace and Brand will be the Valedictorian. This senior year has some big potential leaders that are laying the ground work. However,  there’s not a single corporation in that list!

The Preview

This is a part of the conceptual work of my book that will be released in 2011. This post is to introduce the concept and ideas of the power behind Social Media that has yet to be realized by corporations. I specifically target corporations because small business owners all across America are already transitioning into this next stage.  Stating “separation” as the key to a business or professional image is proving everyday in small business to be false.

The Naysayers

Some will be quick to jump at the hesitation of individuals to cross the personal and professional barrier, as much as, the companies they work for. However, social media has already crossed those barriers. For those that wish to continue to try and separate the two on a continual basis, Mark Zuckerberg has already covered that for them. That is why education is the first step in this process. There is no one way to accomplish this goal.  Like fire, we can get burned, but without embracing fire we would be hard pressed to stay warm or protected. Companies, Businesses and Organizations are made of people and now more than ever its harder to hide who we, or they are, it’s just a matter of time.

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Google’s Social Search

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A few days ago Google changed the way the company is dealing with social media.

Since the launch of its Social Search in 2009, Google’s social media was kept a little hidden from the general public. You had to know about it and opt-in through Google Labs. Once you did, Google’s search results page would display the results to your query as it is vetted by machines (logarithms) and by people – what did your personal contacts on the social  search wrote about it. The results of people’s recommendations were displayed at the bottom of the page. All that would appear only to those who signed up for the service.

On Feb 17, 2011 Google unveiled its changes to the Social Search, publishing it in beta and turning it on for all who are signed in, in English (so far).

With this new integration, which includes Google images as well, Google is introducing a tie to social search outside its own circle, from Twitter, Flickr and Quara. It uses social profile connected to your profile on Google to deliver items such as photos or blogs and tweets that come from you friends.

The search results will not appear, as they did until now at the bottom of the page, but will be integrated in the search itself, blended throughout the page. This is done through a system that lets you know when a friend shared a specific link or search result in the subject of your query. It appears in the search result page under the site’s url.

In other words, now you can see what your friends have recommended, not only what the logarithms have found out, making the search more personal and specific.

The other change is in its appearance in the search results. Any comment done by your friends on Twitter for example will appear as an annotation saying that your friend “shared this”. The more recommendations, the higher this site will go in the ranking.

Users have control over what gets displayed in social searches. The user page gives the ability to connect their profiles publicly or privately, to their other Google accounts, Twitter etc.

One thing this update does not include is a connection to Facebook. Not at the moment anyway. While still in beta, the rollout will occur in the next few days.

What does it mean?

Even though this announcement went through pretty quietly, it might create a shock wave as far as SEO goes. Search Engine Optimizations means making your site as visible as possible. To be visible, your site should appear on the first page of Google. The ranking on the page is determined by rules Google has put in place years ago: the size of the site, the activity on the site, the backlinks and the keywords that relate to the specific query, among other things.

Now, with the new Google social search – what was written about the subject using social media will have an impact on the placement on the page. The more people wrote and commented about the subject, the higher on the page the article or site will go. Social media, especially those sites connected to Google social search, have become more important in the placement of the search results.

What’s more; the search results may appear differently to different people depending on their circle of friends! If many of your friends talked about a ski resort in Alaska – this resort will move up in your page, but not in mine. Those who didn’t sign up for the social search will get different search placements without the comments, since only the user of the service will be able to see those elements.

With this swipe, Social Media has become more important in Search Engine Optimization. That is, if this service will grow in popularity.

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What is a Creative Commons License?

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With so much business being conducted online these days, it has become imperative to have methods to protect and copyright our works in a manner just as remote as how it was posted. Regardless of whether your work is writing, photography, or even coding or programming, you will want a means to ensure that regardless of what happens with those items, you are given credit for producing them.

When you apply for a Creative Commons license you can keep the copyright to your work, while allowing others to copy or distribute you work, as long as they give you proper credit, on the conditions you get to specify. You may choose to offer your work freely with no desire for crediting, or you may determine exactly the manner in which you want to be credited regardless of its use.

There are some more reputable websites that can help you to create your licensing for your work.

CreativeCommons.org  is an example of a reputable licensing site. You are able to choose a license and once done they will provide you with an HTML tag that will list your work as copyright restricted. However, CreativeCommons is not a registrar and will not retain records of your selections.

Flickr.com also offers create commons licensing and the format to help you protect your work. Flickr and CreativeCommons both have things in common. Their licensing types mirror one another perfectly.

CreativeCommons offers the following licensing options.

  • Attribution: An attribution license will let others tweak, change, build on, remix, distribute or otherwise alter your work, they also have to credit you for the original creation in the manner you request.
  • Attribution NoDerivatives: This particular license allows for commercial and non-commercial use, as well as redistribution, however, it must remain unchanged and all credit must go to you.
  • Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike: Like Attribution, users can tweak, alter, build on and distribute, however, they must credit you and license their own product or creation under identical terms.
  • Attribution ShareAlike: An attribution sharealike license will allow others to alter, tweak and otherwise build upon your original work for commercial purposes. They must however, credit you and license their own agreement under the same terms.
  • Attribution NonCommercial: Others can tweak, alter, rebuild or build upon your work for non-commercial purposes. Any new works should acknowledge the original creator and also be non-commercial.
  • Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives: The most restrictive license, this one only allows others to download or otherwise save your works and even share them with others as long as you are properly credited. This license does not permit users to alter your original creation in any way.

If you are new to creative commons licensing it may be important to read up before making the decision on your license choices.

This is also likely to be one part of your copyright policy and protection practices, an example of how this is used as part of a policy or image see: Copyright Info

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News and Social Media: The “New Media Press”?

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Social media has, without a doubt, changed how the established news media is handling The News. It has changed traditional media in the most important aspects; news gathering, news reporting and news distribution.

Factitious Example not a real press pass or any real affiliation.

  • News Gathering

One of the biggest benefits of social media is how quickly information can be discovered and shared. News organizations no longer are the main source of news, and they don’t “own” the news.

61% of adults get their news online – making it the third most popular news platform. Reporters have transformed from being the gatekeepers of information to gatherers of content from within a public space. Crowd sourcing it is called – the media of the masses, citizen journalism.

A number of top news stories were covered thanks to citizen journalism. The US plane which landed in the Hudson River, was first announced on Twitter. Twitter was also vital in the coverage of the Iranian elections and the unrest that followed.

  • New Reporting

The immediate and intimate coverage of the social media has inspired news organizations to create their own social media platforms. News agencies have come under tremendous pressure to beat citizen journalists by breaking news on the social wire. Social media enables real time updates. Readers get the information much faster thanks to sites like Twitter and Facebook. And that is especially significant in places were the regime controls the mainstream media and the internet; in Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain for example. Rulers can no longer control the information their Subjects get, and the latest turmoil in the Middle East made it proof positive.

  • Blogs

Debate continues to the role and validity of bloggers. However, Social Media pioneer Erik Qualman made great examples of how bloggers can provide more accurate and timely information then traditional news sources. While the debate continues around their practice and standards, one could argue that those that call themselves professionals have just as many examples of poor professional practices as with which we have seen in the blog-o-sphere. The blogger is likely to be a writer of specific content within a specific community or genre, their work is fueled by passion, which makes it hard to believe they do not have valuable insight or a pivotal role to play in the age of the New Media.

  • News Distribution

Today’s news readers have very different expectations from content providers. News sites are embracing the importance of community by integrating social features. It is estimated that 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about them or spread a news item.

News organizations have embraced social media to spread their content through Facebook, Twitter, Digg and others. Since news has extended beyond the typed word and now encompasses multiple media formats like video, podcasts, live streaming and cellphone images, the kind of news media you get depends on your attention span.

The integration between mainstream media and social media was never more apparent than in the case of Al Jazeera network which is headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Not many people in the USA get that channel; it is not included in many cable packages. Yet, when the last events in Egypt enfolded and it became too dangerous for Western journalists to gather the news, Al Jazeera reporters were on the ground, among the crowd. Their reporting got to the world via Twitter and other social media platforms utilized by Al Jazeera, not through the mainstream media. A few days later the Al Jazeera office in Cairo was torched.

Journalists like Nicholas Kristof who writes for the New York Times, uses his Facebook page to add personal observations to what he writes for the official publication.

 “I’m more worried about the 500 million or so people of Facebook versus the 2 million of Fox.” said CNN president Jon Klein, in March 2010. The integration of social media into the news media is so deeply entwined today, that it is inseparable.

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Lessons in Social Marketing and PR Disasters

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While it is true that smart social marketing can increase your business, it is just as easy to make mistakes that can cost your business in customers and reputation. It is important to learn from mistakes done by others and try not to repeat them.

Mistakes by small business owners frequently go unnoticed by the media. But when a big company does a faux-pas, the media is all over them like a wet suit.

A few examples:

  • BP: Trying to do damage control in the aftermath of the oil spill, BP started pouring money into advertising and public relations. During that time, they drastically increased the amount of the PPC (Pay Per Click). Their logo stared at you from many search result pages, increasing the resentment many people felt towards the company. On another level, they had a hacker. Someone started a fake BP Twitter account and posted satirical tweets about the situation. Things like “Look, cut us some slack. We’ve kinda just been winging the whole ‘deepwater drilling’ thing.” Social Media sites level the playing field and the company could do nothing about it. The fake account had over 200,000 followers and the real BP account had about 15,000. Today the fake Twitter account went dormant, and the real BP is up and updating regularly.
  • Nestle and Greenpeace: Nestle is a big company with many interests, thus is makes it easier to target. When Nestle announced a new product that includes Palm Oil, Greenpeace launched a campaign protesting against the palm oil because the production causes detrimental environmental effects, and cut on the habitat of orangutans. Nestle tried, unsuccessfully, to take their video down from YouTube and that caused the rage of many. People started commenting disparaging remarks on the company’s Facebook page. The company became defensive and posted “We welcome your comments, but please don’t post using a altered version of any of our logos as your profile picture – they will be deleted.” Becoming defensive and arrogant on social media will almost always turn out badly. Nestle eventually apologized, but the damage was done.
  • AT&T: A disgruntled customer wrote an e mail to the CEO of the company, complaining about the way he was treated. After sending two e mails, he heard nothing back from the CEO, but did hear back from the legal department threatening him with legal action if he will not cease and desist sending e mails to the CEO. The customer took it to the blogosphere and to Twitter and even posted the recording of the legal department. The story went viral and was picked up by news organizations. AT & T apologized, but the damage was done.
  • Honda: When Honda launched its hybrid “Crosstour” it gave a sneak peak of the design on its Facebook page. Fans were not impressed and wrote about it. One follower posted an extremely positive remark, and proclaimed how much he loved the design. It didn’t take long for fans to discover that the poster is no other than Honda’s Product Manager. Resorting to deception, Honda attracted the anger of fans. It apologized for using that tactic.
  • Domino’s Pizza: You probably remember the video which was uploaded to YouTube by Domino’s employee, showing what one employee does with the cheese (he stuffed it in his nose before putting it on the pizza). The video went viral and was picked up by the news media. Even though Domino’s swore that pizza was never delivered, it suffered a big financial loss. This is a good example of the destructive power of social media. It took Domino’s weeks to straighten things out, and this one video cost them a lot of money in customer loyalty.

 

What Does this mean?

Businesses and Organizations better get a handle on Social Media in a proactive way, policies need to be developed that invest time into employee education about social media. This provides two opportunities, first it helps prevent events and issues like this from taking place in the first place. Second, and more importantly, it provides companies with the opportunity to use the new media sources as tools for communication, outreach and sales.

Taking a proactive approach allows a company to develop a history of interaction and creates a more complete picture of its practices and personnel. This is useful in two big ways: It helps challenge bad media as it ends up one touch point or instance in a mist of values of positive history. It also educates a staff on how to handle an issue based on which form of new media the issue developed.

“Look at the New Media as a opportunity not a threat, in most cases it provides a chance to have a business, organization or individual shine, displaying who they are and what they can do. Now that’s credibility and value!” Basil C. Puglisi

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What is the SxSW? Why Would I attend?

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What is SXSW?

The SXSW, or the South by Southwest festival and conferences, regularly offers a widely diverse group of entertainment seekers the opportunity to find independent films, original music, and even up-to-date, and up-and-coming technologies.  

SXSW for Entertaining Marketing

Marketing is, of course, always targeted to those who can use a business’s products or services the most. The SXSW harbors the atmosphere for creating growth for creative and professional discovery for any and all ages and a large array of niches.

This huge pool of ideas in creative content, media presentations and musical and audio content can provide many opportunities for businesses and even for social media promotion.

How Can Business and Social Media Persons Benefit from SXSW?

The great thing is that the complex diversity of presentations during SXSW also provides a complex and diverse, almost limitless, list of marketing options.

First of all, this set of events is highly anticipated by many, giving any business person loads of time, indeed a year if needed, to plan their business and marketing strategies, and execute them intermittently.

Second, the opportunity for networking your business, its products and services, as well as its capabilities relevant to as many niches as your business caters to, is immense. This is definately the place to bring your impressive business cards, flyers, newsletters and all related material to show off and shine.

Third, you can freely sit in on some informative and highly motivational discussions and group sessions that will feature some of the leaders in the industries’ who have much wisdom to impart on any listeners.

With over 36,000 industry representatives at SXSW, you are sure to find some great new ideas to carry home to promote your own ventures, or even to delve into new ones.

Trade Show Exhibition Opportunities

Does your business directly correlate with one of the industries covered at the SXSW conferences? If you have products or services to offer the interactive, music, and film industries, than you may very well have a place as a Trade Show Representative. This could mean big business, big promotion and plain old enormous marketing capabilities, four days worth.

What Type of Business Does SXSW Need?

They need anyone from the newest start-up business with innovative ideas, to established companies and brands. Anyone who has an industry targeting studios, film, music and technology education, marketing agencies, associations, commissions and all related non-profits. Additionally there is also room at SXSW for:

  • SEO or other Marketing Services
  • Software and Hardware Manufacturers and Creators
  • Hosting and Infrastructure Providers
  • Social Media Services
  • Media Outlets

It may help to draw a more detailed conclusion on who and what types of businesses are the current exhibitors. As once you have full understanding of the types of industries allotted space at SXSW, you may actually discovery a new aspect of your own business or services’ possibilities.

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Social Media Analytics

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Social Media Analytics – Can They Be Measured and Tracked Accurately?

Since social media is one of the toughest things to justify in terms of ROI, current analytics simply are not well suited to measure this data accurately. There are many tools available that all propose to offer the most accurate results, better than any other tool available. This can create the notion that all you may need is the one wonderful tool. However, it is likely this sort of approach that has created inaccurate statistical results and other anomalies that prevents power users from building a proper foundation for analytics.

Some of the best ways to track you social media are:

  • Try Mashable Digg Analysts Tools.
  • Want to find out what people are talking about on Facebook? Soon to return should be Facebook Lexicon.
  • Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard can be a helpful tool and the first line of defense in brand management.
  • For those interested in mining social medias for hot and trending keywords should try buzz pocket mining tools.
  • Keotag is great for tracking tag usage.

However, remember that at best even these tools are limited to minimal measurement of brand mentions and tracking.

Additionally, it is important to remember not only the number of friends or followers on your lists when making statistical calculations, you must also take into account how strong those relationships are, which is once again an immeasurable aspect.

One of the strongest reasons for why analytics aren’t always suited to measuring social media effects properly is that the logs or even JavaScript tags are recorded from each visitor, which is where the fancy analytical information comes from. The problem is, what it needs to be able to read is all of your friends and followers minds. Back to square one again when you consider it that way, and you will continue to end up back there over and again until mind or mood reading technology becomes available.

I suppose that may be a slight exaggeration, but truly it is not as far off or as far out as it sounds. The point is, is that what you want to measure, record and analyze is the actual network of friends and followers. So although there are tons of helpful tools available, many of which provide incredible analytics for many aspects of your social media projections, the main thing you really need seems to continually go back to basics, and those basics still require a human behind the wheel. So what are some of the ways you can encourage social media networking on your own sites?

  • Send some business there way
  • Link to them
  • Answer questions they may ask
  • Send them helpful messages, not spam
  • Add them to your list or lists you support
  • Link to or shared their profile with your own users
  • Acknowledged accomplishments posted by them

I once posted about the blog statistics referring to 1000 visitors, in return I got questions like how many unique, how long did they stay, where did they come from, etc, etc  but none of these provided value for why I used the blog, after all if I have visits that I know are not mine, those visits consistently grow then the detail numbers are not as important as one would think. I found value in that if my blog had 100 page views today, that even if that was only 30 unique visitors, that those 30 unique visitors are stronger and more valuable than the 100 unique visitors with 110 page views that the next guy got. In this case my visitors where not brought to my blog on false pretences, my visitors found value in what was there. This is why they stayed and visited more than the page they landed on… this is success because I have caught their attention beyond the initial media that brought them here… now engaging them in comments, tweets and so on is another story.

So although once again, many of the social media tools have their purposes, the absolute best way to make sure your social media is effective for you and your business, is to build and measure relationships, their growth and their strengths. That is the best place you can focus on analyzing.

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Foursquare – Location Marketing and Check-in Technology

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Although the knowledge of location marketing may be old news to some, to those who are just tuning into the usage of Smartphones and as well as other advanced mobile digital equipment, it may be an entirely new concept to others.

I did an article about FourSquare a few months ago, but in review I thought it be useful to take a bigger step back and reevalute this so new visitors could see a better picture, or blog! (Original Blog Entry – Promotional Social Interactive – FourSquare)

Simple Concept?

It is indeed as simple as it sounds. Location marketing is marketing that is targeted to people based solely on their geographic location. With GPS available on Smartphones, this type of marketing is not only much more realistic, but much more lucrative. With the huge influx of Smartphones and other similar mobile devices, location sharing services seem to be drawing a large crowd.

Foursquare was quite possibly the first location marketing and sharing service to succeed. With Foursquare, Smartphone users can check in with nearby friends and family as well as take advantage of possible discounts from other Foursquare members in the area. With a unique rewards system that encourages users to take advantage of its features, it seems to have no trouble keeping many users rapt.

Who is Taking Advantage of Foursquare?

Although there are certainly specific demographics, usage can also vary depending on aspects of each locale. The statistical answer is that only around 4% of web users were utilizing the location-sharing services available to them, however, this still amounts to around 38.9 million people, certainly no small market. It is predicted that location-sharing services are expected to double between the years of 2010 and 2015.

Currently primary users are mostly younger men who use it to check in all around town to some of their favorite places, or with their favorite people. Over 70% of reporting male internet users between 18 and 34 say they have previously or currently use their location-sharing services capabilities. Females around the same ages report about a 64% usage of the same services.

Foursquare Highlights

The lady hunter. Wheretheladies.at uses Foursquare to do one simple thing, locate the ladies in the locale. Foursquare will actually retrieve public data from locations nearby and direct you towards the one with the highest density of ladies. Talking about tracking down the ladies! However, I think this is just technologically advanced enough to be considered unique and cool, and not stalky and worrisome.

  • National Foursquared?

The National Archives and Records Administration has been Foresquared. You can now check in at the George W. Bush library with Foursquare. You can now say you have step foot into the place where all former presidents have deposited some of the most important papers and archives associated with their terms. The claim is that by joining Foursquare with the National Archives, social medias can help to invite users to learn more about their nations history.

  • Check into Dinner

While McDonalds and Dominos have reported relatively good check in responses, there has been no real measure taken of just how good, and why it mattered. Even these corporate giants have no idea how many additional people, or extra sales the check in offer even generates.

  • The Best Check in Ever, The Big Game

The Superbowl has Foursquared itself too. On the recent Superbowl they created a special Foursquare badge that has fans checking in and being given a code that can be redeemed at NFL shops for up to 20% off of their merchandise.

  • Foursquare My School

Syracuse University became the third school to gain its own badge that users were able to unlock by checking in. Harvard and Stanford Universities also have their own badges as well.

There is no doubt that this kind of marketing capability could mean endless possibilities, and an endless flow of people in your area looking for your own products or services. It seems like it is just a matter of technology in mobile devices becoming more common in worldwide users, that may be preventing Foursquare from turning into a widespread GPS type of service that only directs us to where we actually want to go.

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