The Caffeinated Blog

Is Foursquare Making You Anti-Social?

For a little while, I sat back and watched many a tweet and Facebook post stream by saying things like "I'm at Bob's BBQ" or "I just became mayor of Mattress Emporium" as people jubilantly posted their whereabouts using location-based social network Foursquare. I admit, I was slightly envious. Then, I got my first smartphone - a Droid Eris - and I got to join the ranks of mayors and playas (OK, so not really the latter) playing on Foursquare as well.

The first time I used Foursquare, I was out on a "Date Night" with my husband. We arrived at our restaurant of choice, where I proudly pulled out my phone for my inaugural check-in.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a rather annoyed tone.

"I'm checking in on Foursquare," I replied. "It's my first one - I gotta know how this stuff works, ya know."

"OK."

The second time I checked in was the same evening at the movie theater after dinner. I again pulled out my phone, and this time my husband was not quite as understanding.

"Are you gonna put that away?" he barked. "I'm going inside."

And that's the first time I realized how anti-social I was being...by checking in on a social network, of all things!

One thing I've noticed with location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla is checking in is actually kind of an awkward thing to do. You have to:

1. Find the app on your phone, wait for it to load up, then wait for your location to be found.
2. If it's not found right away, you have to refresh the list of places.
3. If the specific place you're looking for isn't on the list, you have to search for it.
4. If you still can't find it, you have to add it. Which is a bit of a pain, especially if you're unsure of the exact address.

No wonder my husband gets exasperated! All the poor dear wants to do is spend time and talk with me, and here I am fiddling with my phone obsessively!

So now, I only use Foursquare in these two situations:

1. When I'm around others who also use it (so it's deemed more of a "socially acceptable" thing to do).
2. When I'm by myself.

Your turn - what do you think? Is Foursquare the anti-social social network? Do you have your own etiquette rules for checking in?

Whole Lotta Link Love Friday, April 23

It's been a while since my last edition of Whole Lotta Link Love, so it's high time I brought it back and shared some love with all of you. Are you ready for some link lovin'? Here are some of my favorite posts this week:

1. Mitch Arnowitz of Tuvel Communications (where I'm Social Media & Community Outreach Manager) talks about how tweetups can be used by trade show exhibitors to drive booth traffic and help build relationships with current and prospective customers. 
2. Jesse Stanchak offers some pointers on pitching to influencers over at the SmartBlog on Social Media.
3. I fully believe basic HTML is a skill every online marketer should have (no, I'm not talking about mad skillz, just knowledge of the low-level basics). HubSpot goes through some basic HTML for marketers here - read it, learn it and bookmark it for later reference, people.
4. Chris Rauschnot, who was a panelist recently at the 2010 NAB Show discussing "Twitter and the Entertainment Industry", offers his advice for defining a corporate social media policy in an NAB Show Blog guest post.
5. Social media marketing ain't easy. If done right, it takes TIME and EFFORT; but somehow this has escaped many marketers or business owners who think it's a "set it and forget it" marketing tactic. This is not the case, as Jay Baer explains at the Convince & Convert blog.

Have a great weekend, and I'll leave you with the latest episode of "Foursquare Cops" from the bright (but clearly crazy) minds at HubSpot. Enjoy!

7 Social Media Tools I'm Using RIGHT NOW

For the last 2 months, I've been joyfully toiling away, working on a couple of social media and blogger outreach projects for large conferences. I'd like to quickly share with you the tools I use on a daily basis that have been immeasurably useful to me on these projects (and I'm sure will continue to be on future projects as well). They help me track, monitor, communicate, engage and organize social media and outreach campaigns.

Google Alerts: where would I be without my precious Google Alerts. I set up RSS feeds of each of my alerts in Google Reader and organize them by project. Simple and incredibly useful.

SocialMention Alerts: like Google Alerts, except I can track mentions across a variety of social media outlets (including blogs, microblogs, forums and videos). All alerts are sent directly to me via email (alas, no RSS option yet).

Hootsuite: My new favorite Twitter social networking client. I can set up tabs for Twitter, Facebook (pages and profiles) and LinkedIn and post to all 3 at one time, plus I can set up multiple columns within a tab for keyword searches.

Ow.ly: Used in conjunction with Hootsuite, I'm able to track clicks on URLs shortened using Ow.ly.

Futuretweets: I use this to pre-schedule tweets for sessions and other big happenings at the conferences I'm working on, allowing me to focus on monitoring the conversations going on and engaging attendees. The best part about Futuretweets? You can schedule down to the second.

Twapper Keeper: Most conferences have hashtags, whether they're official or not (people just kinda create them if they don't already exist). Twapper Keeper is a great tool for aggregating all those tweets tagged with a specific hashtag and exporting them for later use (like for reporting).

Tweetwally: Create your own Tweetwall and follow tweets from a specific account on your own screen, or use their nifty "View for Projection" feature to display your Tweetwall on a large projection screen for an audience. Tweets update automatically in real time.

Getting Businesses On Board with Local Social Media Marketing

I’ve had a growing interest in how small, local businesses can use social media to grow their local customer base, and with geo-local social networks like Foursquare on the scene, I see the social media marketing game as changing for local businesses. It's becoming more and more important for these businesses to get on board with a social media marketing plan that allows them to become more active within the local community and engage patrons and prospects alike online.

I recently read a very interesting post from Don Powers at his blog entitled “Going Local – How do You Use Social Media to Boost Local Business?”  He talks about a large contingency of individuals and businesses who are not online  - and that probably the largest segment of this group of people are local businesses. This certainly does not surprise me.

 
The unfortunate truth is many local businesses are inherently resistant to marketing themselves through online channels. They may be accustomed to more traditional means of advertising and believe that it’s “doing just fine” for them, they may not have the time or resources to devote to it, or they just don’t understand it (which we all know is one of the biggest reasons people tend to resist change of any kind – lack of understanding or knowledge. It’s human nature.)

Don listed some common objections that a local business owner might have to implementing a social media campaign into their marketing mix and asked, “How would you answer these objections from a local business owner?”

1. How many people in my town, and more importantly in my target audience are actually using social media?  
2. I don’t have time to tweet, blog and Facebook - I’m running a business!
3. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work – we have not seen any increase in customers through our doors since we stared tweeting.
4.  I already advertise in the local paper and radio and that seems to be doing just fine for us.

These are all valid objections, but as savvy marketers we should be prepared with valid answers. Here are mine:

1. There are loads of market research tools out there that will help you identify local prospective customers who are themselves using social media. Now, it may turn out that social media is not the right channel for you to reach out to your target audience – and that, as Stuart Smalley would say, is OK. Social media is not for all businesses – but it’s certainly worth taking a hard look at to make sure you’re reaching your customers where they are and not leaving additional revenue on the table.
2. Social media marketing does take time – and if you’re willing to put time and hard work into growing your business, you should also be willing to put time into building your social media presence. The work doesn’t have to fall on your shoulders – you can hire people who can help, or even involve a current employee who has an interest in and knowledge of social media.
3. What kind of plan did you have in place for using social media before you started using it? Planning your social media strategy is a major factor in its overall success and should include who, what, when, why and how you will be engaging in social media. Also, are you talking with people or broadcasting at them? Is the conversation one-way or two-way?
4. Doing just fine in what regard? Bringing in just enough customers to keep you busy and profitable? As I mentioned before, social media is not for all businesses (see #1); but the fact of the matter is social media will cost you much less than traditional media channels like print, radio and TV. Plus, when executed properly, social media is a way to generate inbound leads – customers who are finding you rather than you finding them.

Your turn: If you had a local business client or worked for one, how would you answer these objections?

20 Ways You Can Encourage Engagement

The Social Media Club of Charlottesville had an open forum last night where attendees split into discussion groups and brainstormed various ideas for using social media and engaging customers. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend myself, but they posted photos from one of their brainstorming sessions, listing ways to encourage engagement through social media channels. There are 20 great ideas listed, which you'll also find listed below the photos.

 
 

1. Ask for feedback and/or ask questions at the end of a post.
2. Comment on other's blogs.
3. Barrier to comments BAD (in other words, don't make it difficult for people to leave comments).
4. Get someone to be the first commenter.
5. Mix in some company info (i.e. birthdays, successes, etc.) on your Facebook page.
6. Do a series of blog posts on a sub-topic.
7. Create a Facebook sharing app.
8. Use "list" posts (and lay it out in a simplified format).
9. Mixing it up (video, audio, text).
10. Guest posts (meaning asking people to guest post on your blog, or you guest posting on other related blogs).
11. Be extremely opinionated (or extreme).
12. Go against the grain.
13. Run Twitter searches for people with questions; answer with a link to your blog post (same could be done on LinkedIn).
14. Create "celebrity" status through opinions.
15. Contests/giveaways.
16. SEO tactics.
17. Good timing (current event, etc.).
18. Every Friday, just ask a question.
19. Keep up with regular posts.
20. Put recent comments in sidebar.

What are your ideas for encouraging engagement?

Google Buzz-Kill?

I still have yet to really wrap my head around what Google Buzz does and the value it provides; HubSpot has a really interesting, if not somewhat paranoid, take on Google Buzz, stating "At this point, Google probably knows more about you than the government does." While I'm highly doubtful of that, I am a little leery of Google's intentions with its newest product.

The author does bring up a good point regarding how Buzz will affect search results, given that practically everything Google does eventually does affect search results. It's also a little disconcerting that Google did try to buy Twitter at one point, and now they're out with their own social networking product. Whatever Google wants, Google gets...

As a marketer, it's good to know what the capabilities of Google Buzz are, but I'm not sure that I'm quite ready to jump on this bandwagon yet.

What is your take - is Google Buzz a social media buzz-kill, or the best buzz you've ever had?

New development: According to Marsha Collier, Google will delete your profile if you disable Buzz. Wah?

How Newspapers Can Connect with Readers on Twitter

This is a post I originally wrote for my Tumblr blog, My (Social) Life.

Earlier this week, I posted my response to an article on Econsultancy.com enititled “How Small Newspapers Can Make Money on Twitter.” The core of my response was that newspapers needed to connect with their readers on Twitter first before attempting to make money from it - and I intended to offer my own advice regarding this.

Really good timing for all of this, because I attended a panel discussion this week put on by the Social Media Club of Charlottesville, which centered on social media vs. traditional media and how 3 local media organizations - Charlottesville’s Daily Progress newspaper, the Charlottesville Newsplex (comprising of local TV affiliates) and Black Enterprise Magazine - use social media. I brought up the monetization topic to our three esteemed panelists, and the general response was that social media already held value and didn’t need to be monetized. These are three people who are already well-versed in the use of Twitter and know how it fits into their traditional media structure. They all understand the value of connecting with their community through social media and that it shouldn’t have to be directly monetized in order deliver any value.

Read more at My (Social) Life >>