But first, consider two points that help explain why locations based social networking is going to be huge:

1) There are over 4 billion mobile phones in use around the world: that is 4 phones for every Personal computer. In 2009, phones overtook PC’s as the preferred means to access the Internet.

2) Humans are social by nature. Since the days of the cave, we have enjoyed the company of others. It is in our nature to want to share with others; to do things together; to tell them where we are going and to invite them along. We like our “tribe” to know what we are up to and thanks to LBSN we can now do that in real time.

Location Based Social Networking

Location based social networking  is a form of geosocial networking, which, according to Wikipedia is “is social networking in which geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics”.  In other words, you can use Internet based services to share where you are and what you are doing in real time and based on where you are and where your tribe is at that moment.

For example, Foursquare, one of the top location based social networks, 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 your connections are alerted and you are awarded points.

Some of the top location based social networks include: Foursquare, Facebook Places, Loopt, Gowalla and Yelp.  Here is a resume of each:

Foursquare

Foursquare is “a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with.” Launched in 2009, Foursquare now has over 3 million users.

Gowalla

Gowalla is a location-based social networking where users ‘check-in’ at Spots in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile application or through the mobile website. As a reward users will sometimes receive items from check-ins. Items have developed to become a promotional tool for the game’s partners.

Yelp

Yelp is a website that connects people with local businesses and allows users to rate, comment and share their likes and dislikes and review said businesses. Founded  in  2004, Yelp  now has communities in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and France and is available on your mobile phone. Yelp now has over 38 million regular visitors to the site.

Facebook Places

Launched in August, Facebook Places is a social utility that connects people with their friends: it allows them to share where they are and connect with friends who are nearby.  Right now Places is only available on iPhone and in the US but given the clout that Facebook carries, it is surely set to be a major player in this arena.  Of especial interest from a business perspective is the fact the businesses will be able to use places to create hyper local ads to targeted users.

Loopt

Another location based networking pioneer is Loopt, a company that builds mobile applications that use location to help you enjoy the friends, places, and events around you right now.  Formed in 2006, Loopt now offers a suite of  5 mobile applications that run on over 100 different phones and are enjoyed by over 4 million people.

Which Tool To Use?

Judging by the following Compete graph analysis of unique visitors, Yelp seems to be the most trafficked location based social network at this point but this could change on the turn of a dime: when Facebook Places launched, Foursquare saw record sign ups for new users.

Check out the location based tools mentioned above and choose the one that best fits your social network and lifestyle preferences.  If you are using Facebook extensively already, then it will make sense to use Facebook Places rather than have to learn and maintain another network.   If you eat out a lot, then Yelp might be the best choice.  If games are your thing then try Gowalla or Foursquare.

Whichever tool you use though, be cognizant of privacy settings and make sure that only those you want to have access to your whereabout can access this information.

]]> http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/09/07/location-based-social-networking-explained/feed/ 0 http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/09/07/location-based-social-networking-explained/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Out-smarts/~3/9rKFkT3ZuuA/ http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/08/05/social-media-round-up/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:15:35 +0000 mhairi http://www.out-smarts.com/?p=4006 As always there has been a lot going on in the social media arena in the past week.  This is a summary of the major (and minor!) developments.

Facebook Questions

On July 28th Facebook announced that it was going to launch Facebook Questions.  The tool is set to allow you to crowdsource the collective intelligence of the 500 million and growing Facebook user base to ask questions and get answers.  Set to compete with tools like Ask, Yahoo Answers and Answerbag, you will be able to ask any question and hopefully get the right answer practically instantaneously.  The functionality isn’t live yet and is only available to a small number of beta testers but to find out more you can read this Mashable  post about the 5 Ways Facebook Questions can be improved.

Google Wave

Google waved bye bye to its Wave product which was launched late last year.  At the time there was much clamoring to get on the communication and collaboration tool which was supposed to allow people to easily work together online.  Unfortunately, Wave didn’t really catch on and today it is no more.  In typical Google fashion though, it would appear that they are turning the failure to their advantage. On a positive note Google yesterday announced that business can now respond to reviews on Google Places.  Not before time.

Twitter Fail

The Twitter fail whale was omnipresent for much of the afternoon which prompted diehards to take to Facebook to voice their complaints and comments and to vent to relieve their anxiety withdrawal.  This leads me to conclude that the Reuters article in today’s Washington Post highlighting a study that found that social media is costing businesses in the UK billions in lost productivity, could in fact be true across the Twitter world!  Twitter is back up much to the disapointment of businesses in North America who saw productivity peak in the last few hours.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: links are like gold online, the more your website has the better its ranking will be.  Link building can be extremely time consuming and can seem like a fruitless task but its worth it.  Here are 10 ways that you can easily build links back to your site:

1. Blog Comments – find blogs that are relevant to your industry and business and post appropriate comments with a link back to your website.

2. Directories – there are gazillions of websites that simply list the URL’s of other website (rather like the Yellow pages but online).  Submit a link to your site on the ones that have a good page rank.  Avoid the ones that ask for payment or reciprolinks to save you.

3. Articles – if you blog regularly or write articles then use that great content and submit your articles to online articles sites.  Again, choose articles sites that have a high ranking like Ezine articles.

4. Events – if your business is a service that regularly hosts events then list your events and link back to your site in so doing.  Read this blog post for more.

5.  Social Networks – use your social networking presence to link back to your site.  These links count and are really easy to create.

6. Relationships – ask partners, clients and organisations you are a member of to place a link on their site back to yours.

7. Bookmarking – sites like Delicious or Stumble Upon allow you to submit sites that you like.  Submit your own (carefully) to build valuable links back to your site.  Read this article for more.

8. Press Releases - if your company regularly creates promotional pieces or press releases, use free PR release sites: submit your press releases to these sites with a link back to your website.  Here’s an article all about how to go about doing so.

9.  Content - make sure that the content on your website or blog is great.  The better it is the more likely people will find it and link back to it.

10. Advertising - consider advertising online:  Craigslist can be a valuable way to to this – not only does it bring visitors to your site who might link to your content (see 9 above) but it also gives you the ability to link back to your site from another high ranking site.

Thanks -wink- for the great Flickr image.

Why take advantage of RSS? There are many reasons:

1. Pull rather than push – articles come to users rather than them having to hunt them down;
2. Subscribers get the latest and greatest information as its posted;
3. An RSS link encourages traffic to your site;
4. Users can have a bunch of sources of info in one place – much like a newspaper;
5. RSS can be used internally to disseminate information too.

How to set up an RSS feed?

• First get your site set up to support RSS by adding a few short lines of code.
• Place code on your site that the RSS feed readers can find your info.
• Publicise your feed by telling the world and everyone you know in it at every opportunity.
• Add the RSS feed button to your site so visitors know you the can easily subscribe. Feedburner has widgets to support this on their site.
• Submit your feed to syndicators and search engines to make it easier for your audience to find you.

Once that’s done, your good to start publishing your own data feed over the web.

Most bookmarking sites allow you to download a widget to your browser allowing you to easily bookmark sites that you like and want to share.  Each time you find a site you like you can click to add it and to organize with appropriate tags.

Some of the most popular bookmarking sites are Reddit, Delicious, Stumble Upon and Digg for a more comprehensive list go to Wikipedia.  These are all social networking sites: online hubs where people connect, build community and communicate and interact online.  Like other types of social networks they can be very effective in driving traffic to your website, building online connections and increasing your online exposure.

If you think bookmarking sites may be a good tool to consider using as part of your Internet marketing strategy, you should take time to take a look at the sites above to ascertain which is most appropriate given your target audience and content (by exploring tags or categories and the type of sites contained therein).  As with any social media marketing activity, to be effective you need to add value, be consistent and to connect and build community with others.

• A new way to brainstorm online using Mind Meister mind mapping tools.
• Social media demographics from Flowtown – who is using which social networking site.
• Create your own newspaper in 60 seconds.
• Create astonishing presentations both live and on the web with Prezi.
• Location based social networking is currently the in thing – check out Carticipate and Gowalla and check out this list for more.
• Know more about who you know with Gist.

Enjoy!

It is best, in fact,  to deploy social media marketing strategies that involve using only a select  few of these tools in highly targeted ways.

How to decide which social media tools to use?

In order to ascertain which social media tools are best you need to know a few things – some good old market research is needed:

1. Customer – if you don’t already know this then you should.  Understand who it is you want to do business with and what it is that you do that solves a problem for them.  Take some time to listen to what is being said about your company or industry in these forums.  Doing so will help understand the online habit of your customers.
2. Company – consider your organisation, its products or services and determine which media are most appropriate to showcase these.  Consider too, the resources you have at hand (what are you and your staff great at?) and use these strengths to build your social media campaign.
3. Convenience – where is the best place to reach your audience online?  Which tools  you use will depend on knowing this.  For example, LinkedIn is great to reach business people, Flickr is a great place to showcase art, photography and design companies – you get the gist.
4. Communication – always remember to be consistent with your messaging and branding.  Your online brand and message should be consistent with your overall branding as well so as not to confuse.   The goal here is to build community, so consider ways to communicate and interact online that will add value, encourage interaction and grow your following.

Take these four C’s into account and your social media marketing is more likely to hit the mark.

Tips For Effective Email Campaigns

1. Avoid the hard sell – People get so much spam these days that if you try to sell to strangers via e, you’ll hit the junk file faster than you can say spam. Newsletters that add value are better than sales letters that harass;
2. Keep in Touch – It is easier to keep an existing customer than to get a new one. Email is a great way to keep in touch with clients; to reinforce your brand; add value, to remind them you are here and to give them special incentives to do more business with you;
3. Email Marketing Tools – use a tool that allows you to easily create and mail your newsletter to contacts.  It is important to choose one that allows you track who opens, when they open, what they click on etc: this will allow you to assess whether your campaigns are working.
4. Action – Use a call to action in the subject line – one that is brief, catchy, intelligent that will entice people to open the mail. I’ve noticed a lot of people use titles that are completely unrelated to the content of the mail – this, to me, is deceptive and not the actions of a company I would do business with;
5. Unsubscribe – Always ensure there is an unsubscribe button or hyperlink in the content so that your mail is perceived as more professional and law abiding – just remember to delete those who unsubscribe from your mailing lists – always.  Also, don’t make people jump through hoops to unsubscribe, just get it done without any annoying “are your sure” messages;
6. Links - Drive them back to your website by including links to related articles or pages – you can then easily track click throughs to make follow up calls more targeted;
7. Keep it simple stupid – The old adage applies here too: don’t add too many fancy images or graphics,  it will just clog people’s mail boxes;
8. Incentives - The body of the text should include some incentive to act, but don’t overdo it with too many calls to action -  this will simply dilute your message and confuse the reader;
9. Keep it Simple – War and Peace just isn’t appropriate in an e-mail. You newsletter should be short and to the point if you want people to read it;
10. Think outside the box- email content should be unique and should tell your audience something they don’t know about your product, company, service, the industry or niche;
11. Build your List -  Encouraging visitors to subscribe online (add a subscribe form to your site); tell people about your newsletters in the real world and give incentives to readers to share with their colleagues;
12. Don’t Over Do It – If you send out newsletters too frequently, there is a good chance that your open rate will decline and that more people will unsubscribe.  Respectthe fact that people are busy and don’t overload their already heaving in boxes with even more stuff.
13. Don’t SPAM – ever, ever. Always use valid e-mails from people you have actually met or who have given you business cards at events and shows. If you don’t its the fastest way to get an unsubscribe.

Once you have created a Facebook Page for your organization the challenge becomes attracting an audience and getting people to “like” your page. Here are 10 tips that will help you do so.

Tips To Get More People to Like Your Facebook Page

1. Content - content is key to growing your following. If your content: adds value (by that I mean tells your audience something the didn’t already now) and stimulates conversion, more followers will come.

2. Website widget – add a Facebook widget to your website so that people can click from there to like your page.

3. Invite friends – use the suggest to a friend link to find and send invites to friends but be selective and only invite Facebook friends who might actually be interested.

4. Add your Facebook Page URL to your business cards.  Once you have 25 Facebook “Likes” you can request a vanity URL like ours:  http://www.facebook.com/outsmarts -which is much more concise and easier to fit on your cards.

5. Tell people – when you are networking both online and off, tell people about your page.  If you use Twitter or other social networks, link and tell your followers in those forums too.

6. Update regularly – update your Facebook page regularly (refer to 1. when doing so!).  You should update at least once a day but not so frequently that your posts become intrusive and annoying.

7. Place an ad – Facebook ads are highly targeted. Use them to spread awareness of your page with people who will be interested.  You might be surprised as to how many new “likes” this will generate.  You can also use Google adwords campaigns but this isn’t as effective.

8. Avoid selling – it is not good Facebook etiquette to simply use your Page for promotional purposes.  Use the 20/80 rule and ensure that you only promote your company, products or services 20% of the time (focus the rest of your posts on adding value and building loyalty with your followers).

9. Make your Page Stand Out - use FBML to make your Facebook page more unique and attractive to potential new followers when they first pop by.

10. Promote your Page – make sure your Facebook Page URL is highlighted on all direct marketing and tradtional advertising vehicles, add “Like on Facebook”  information to letters, packaging and shipping materials to spread the word in other media.