I’ve been writing a lot lately about web-based apps, including ones that you can use to automate social tasks (ifttt) or just save time and batch your updates (Buffer). Each of these apps can help save you time while still allowing you to participate in social media. One of the apps I haven’t talked about yet is an app I use every single day. Dropbox is a free app that allows you to sync files (through the cloud) and access them anywhere you can connect to the internet. In today’s world, work no longer lives 100% at the office and personal matters no longer live 100% at home. That’s where Dropbox comes into play.

You can easily access all of your files at Dropbox.com, through their intuitive web interface but one of Dropbox‘s strengths is installing it to your computer. A quick install and you can either create a new Dropbox folder on your computer that Dropbox will always keep synced or you can specify which folders you want to be synced anywhere on your computer. For example, you can sync your My Documents folder to ensure that all of your docs are synced.

I have created a separate Dropbox folder to keep my important files synced and within that folder, I’ve created a folder of portable applications, so I can access programs I use frequently on any computer where I have Dropbox installed, like my desktop computer at home (that’s little more than a glorified home server now) or my laptop, wherever I bring it.

You can also create shared folders with Dropbox. So, when my whole family is in town, I’ll take a bunch of pictures, then share that folder with everyone so they can download the pictures to their own computer. They can also upload their own pictures to the folder so we can have a private space that allows us to exchange files that might be too big (or too numerous) for email.

In addition to private folder sharing, you can also post files up that can be publicly downloaded. Do you have a whitepaper you want to post on your website? Store it in Dropbox and share the link for people to download.

Dropbox is a free download available for iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad – click here to download the iOS app) as well as Android devices (click here to download the Android app from the Google Play Store), so in addition to being able to access your files on your computer and via the web interface, you can also have your most important files wherever you are by accessing the Dropbox app via your mobile device. Another nice feature about the Dropbox mobile apps is that you can set it up to automatically upload any photos or videos you take directly to a folder in Dropbox. Doing so makes sure you have all your photos and videos conveniently synced across multiple platforms. You also get free additional storage space by signing up for Instant Upload.

If you’re interested in trying out Dropbox, be sure to sign up through this link. It’s a referral link and it means that once you create an account and install it on your computer, we’ll both get an extra 500MB of free storage space.

You can create a Dropbox account for free and get 2GB of space, but you can quickly add more free storage to that by sharing links via Twitter and Facebook or by downloading the mobile app and hooking up Instant Upload. You can actually get up to 16GB of storage space for free through various referral links. If you need more storage, you can upgrade to their Pro 50 account (50 GB – $10/mo) or Pro 100 (100 GB – $20/mo) accounts. If you’re looking to use Dropbox for your office, they even have corporate plans available as well. Find out more about the various plans they offer here.

*Note: I’ve used referral links to Dropbox throughout this post. If you sign up and install the desktop app to your computer through this link, we both get 500MB extra*

I recently wrote about how Buffer can help you easily share great content to your social profiles without having to spend all day online. ifttt is another app that can help you automate tasks you want to accomplish so you can spend your time on more important things.

Quite simply, ifttt (short for If This Then That) is an app that lets you create automated Tasks or Recipes (tasks created and shared by others). For example, I have a task set up so every time I post a photo to Instagram, ifttt will automatically save a copy to a folder in my Dropbox account. I also have another task set up so when I star an article in my Google Reader, it will automatically add that article to my Buffer account to be posted to my social profiles.

You can create an account at ifttt.com and you’ll get up to 10 tasks for free. ifttt currently offers 41 different channels like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Buffer, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn, Readability, SMS and many more. With all the channels they offer, the number of tasks you could possibly create are nearly endless.

ifttt continually adds new channels, so if one that you frequently use isn’t yet supported, chances are they’ll add it once enough people start using it. Below, I’ll explain how to go about setting up a Task on ifttt.

Each ifttt task starts having you answer a simple question: if this then that. For each stage in the process you’ll select a channel. For example, let’s say I wanted to create a task that would tweet out any picture on Instagram that I liked. Here’s how I would do that.

• Select the Instagram channel in the task creation section of ifttt.
• Click on New liked photo within the Instagram triggers menu

• Select the Twitter channel
• Select Post a tweet with image from the Twitter triggers menu
• Fill out any additional information (I added “Great photo on #instagram: ” to the beginning of each tweet)

• Click on Complete action and you’re done.

The screenshot at right is a tweet that was created by ifttt when I liked a photo on Instagram. If you’re just getting started on ifttt, it can be a bit overwhelming with so many options, but here are a few of my favorite Recipes for you to get started with:

• When Facebook Profile picture changes, change Twitter Profile picture
• Every time you’re tagged in a Facebook photo, save it to Dropbox
• When I star an item in Google Reader, send it to my Readability account
• When I favorite a video on YouTube, send it to Buffer
• Send any tweets I favorite to Evernote

Do you ever notice people that seem to always be online? Always posting to Twitter or Facebook? Just because they’re posting several times throughout the day doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on Twitter or Facebook all day long. They could be using one of several apps that allows you to schedule or spread out your posts throughout the day. One of the best apps I’ve found to do that is Buffer.

Unlike robust social media management tools like HootSuite and TweetDeck (both excellent tools), Buffer does one thing and it does it exceptionally well. Buffer is a status update scheduling tool, but unlike a more full-fledged social media management tool, Buffer doesn’t ask you when to post your updates. Buffer automatically chooses four times throught the day when you’re likely to get the best response from your posts. Each time you add a new post to Buffer, it simply throws it into the buffer queue behind your other scheduled posts. In the screenshot below, you can see that there are several posts scheduled to go out over the next 24 hours. This is how Buffer works.

Now, I can spend 20 or 30 minutes over lunch or in the evening reading news updates from my Google Reader account or (some of my new favorites) Flipboard (iOS app link), Zite (iOS app link) or even the Bloomburg BusinessWeek (iPad app link) apps on my iPad. Then, when I read interesting articles, I can add them to my Buffer knowing they’ll post later and not inundate my followers as I read each article.

Buffer also makes it VERY easy to add content, whether you’re sharing links of articles you’re reading or whether you just want to schedule a post without a link. Buffer has created more than a dozen different ways to add content to your account. In addition to being able to update from the website, you can also update with an Android app, iPhone app, Firefox and Chrome extensions and (one of my favorites) a way to add to your Buffer via email, it’s easy to keep your Buffer full wherever you are. Below is a screenshot that shows how to add an update to Buffer via email. You’ll receive your own exclusive @to.bufferapp.com email address and everything you send to that address will automatically get added to your Buffer. Just add the email address to your contacts and you can add to your Buffer from anywhere.

Buffer is a free service, but there is also a couple paid versions available. For free, you can have up to 10 updates in your queue, and you can have one account each of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. For $10/month you get up to 50 updates at a time, six social networks and up to two team members per account. There’s also a $99/month plan that gives you lots more.

I’ve been using Buffer for about six months now and it has become an indispensable part of my day and my social media routine. If you’re interested in checking out Buffer, click here (referral). If you sign up through my referral link, we’ll both get one extra space added to our Buffer queue.

On December 1, our office hosted our second annual New Media Workshop. This year’s workshop focused solely on the power of incorporating video into your marketing efforts. Our three presenters (find their presentations below) go through the whys and hows of video and even provide a case study (The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis).

For more information about how you can get involved check out this PDF or email Jeremy Williams at the Indiana Office of Tourism Development.

Joy Cropper – Williams Randall Marketing

Jenny Messmer – The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

Rocky Walls – 12 Stars Media

**UPDATE – Gowalla has been purchased by Facebook and the service will shut down at the end of January, 2012**

Gowalla is a location-based app that, until last week, shared a lot of similarities with Foursquare – the leading location-based app today. First launched about two and a half years ago, Gowalla has steadily grown to an active user-base of two million (about one fifth the number of users that Foursquare has). I’ve always liked Gowalla and I think they have a better interface and user experience than Foursquare, but there have always been so few people in Indiana who use Gowalla.

Just last week, Gowalla released a brand new version of their website and mobile app (iOS version here and Android version here) that really rebrands Gowalla. Rather than focusing on being a location-based check-in network (and, honestly, they were losing that fight to Foursquare. Even Facebook recently gave up on Places - their equivalent check-in service), Gowalla now seems to be more of a curated location guide app. If that sounds kind of weird, keep reading.

In the image above, you can see the new curated guide for the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. By working with staff at Notre Dame, Gowalla put together a great guide showcasing what visitors to the university needed to check out while they are in town. There are more than 60 curated guides available for cities throughout the world and Gowalla is working to add dozens more soon. While Gowalla has worked with select cities and destinations to create these branded and curated guides, you can still create guides on your own, both as an individual and as a DMO.

When looking at the tourism industry as a whole, there are benefits to using both Foursquare and Gowalla. If you own or work at a hotel, attraction or a restaurant, Foursquare makes more sense as they allow users to manage venues they own and offer check-in specials. But, if you work for a city, county, regional or state DMO Gowalla probably actually makes more sense to use. As a DMO, you have the built-in authority about your area and you can create great guides for anything you want – wine trails, food trails, museum guides, historic sites and more. When you create guides for your visitors, you’ve putting your stamp of authority on the guide and letting them know which things they absolutely must do before leaving your location.

Have you ever used Gowalla or Foursquare? Do you think Gowalla’s new curated guides functionality would be helpful as a visitor to a new place?

At its core, Pinterest is a social bookmarking site similar to Delicious or SpringPad, but where Pinterest differs (and where they really shine) is how their bookmarks are organized. Rather than saving a list of text links, Pinterest is 100% image-based. The visual nature of Pinterest creates a clean and easily browsable interface that can be extremely addicting.

So, how does Pinterest describe itself?

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

- Pinterest.com

Pinterest Wall - Places I'd Like to Visit

You’re likely to find boards and pins full of decorating ideas and recipes as well as just about anything else you could think of, but Pinterest has a really unique opportunity to be a great place for Tourism entities to set up shop. In fact, I set up an account for Visit Indiana a couple months ago and have received a pretty good response so far. I’ve created boards for Favorite Indiana Destinations, Indiana Artisan Products, Indiana Beer and Wine, Indiana Arts and Crafts and Indiana Experiences. Each time I come across a great picture of somewhere in Indiana or something Indiana-related on Etsy, I pin it and share it with everyone who follows Visit Indiana.

You can browse Pinterest in several different ways. You can view just pins from your friends or you can search for and browns pins in countless topics (travel, decorating, recipes, etc.). One of the coolest features on pinterest is the ability to “repin” other people’s pins. Just like sharing on Facebook or retweeting on Twitter repinning posts the pin on your board so your friends can see it. It’s a great way to catalog pictures or links you want to keep handy.

Regardless of what kind of tourism organization you work for (State, County or City DMO or individual attraction or lodging facility) Pinterest offers you the ability to share great photos of places in your area, locally-made products or hidden destinations for visitors and residents alike.

Note that Pinterest is only available on iPhone/iPod Touch right now.

Are you already using Pinterest? If not, do you think its a good fit for your organization?

Apps like Yelp and Foursquare let you take pictures and leave reviews at restaurants, but unlike those and other apps, Foodspotting is completely devoted to food and pictures of food. Like many other apps, you can hook Foodspotting up with your Facebook and Twitter accounts and start following friends through there, but where Foodspotting really differs (and really shines) is in the ability for you to follow not just friends, but places (specific restaurants) or foods you love (pizza, burgers, etc.). Think about that for a minute – you can follow specific foods through Foodspotting. If your favorite food in the world is a breaded tenderloin pork sandwich (if that’s true, then you really need to come to Indiana) you can follow tenderloin sandwiches and find the places near you that have the best ones.

Also, similar to the way Gowalla allows users to create Guides, Foodspotting also lets users to create Guides like Taste the Vintage in Bucks County - created by the Bucks County Conference and Visitors Bureau. This particular guide looks great on both the mobile app and on the website and it details some great wineries throughout the county. As a bonus, you earn a badge once you visit all the wineries within the Guide.

As a tourism office, you’re in the unique position to be the curator for great food in your area. Like Bucks County did, you could created Guides for great wine, great burgers, great ethnic food or anything else food-related for visitors and residents to complete and add to. The more people that jump on the platform and add their favorite foods, the more useful and robust the app will become.

Check out the screenshots below for examples of the Footspotting mobile app (Foodspotting is now available for iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile and Android devices right now – a Blackberry app is coming soon). Have you used Foodspotting before?

Last week, the Indiana Office of Tourism Development hosted Dr. Suzanne Cook at The Toby Theater at the Indianapolis Museum of Art for the 2011 Indiana Tourism Summit. After 30 years of service at the U.S. Tourism Association, Dr. Cook now a senior advisor to the association. As a well respected voice in the tourism community we were very excited for Dr. Cook’s presentation on the U.S. trends and outlook for 2012. Below is the full presentation.

Did you attend the 2011 Indiana Tourism Summit? What did you think?

Rumors have been swirling for more than a year about Google’s new social network to rival Facebook or Twitter. No, it wasn’t Orkut (the social network Google bought that is still surprisingly popular in Brazil, Google Wave or even Google Buzz. A couple weeks ago, Google finally unveiled Google+ (or Google Plus – there doesn’t seem to be consensus yet) to a relatively small network of social media and tech industry insiders and influencers. I was lucky enough to get an invitation from a friend before Google turned invites off and I’ve been able to test out Google+ (I’ll refer to it as G+ from here on) for a couple weeks now and I wanted to give my thoughts on the new network.

First things first: The +1 Button

About a month ago, Google unveiled their +1 button in what seemed like an attempt to compete with Facebook’s ubiquitous Like button. I quickly added the +1 button to several blogs I manage so we could start taking advantage of people starting to use the +1 button. Google first launched +1 as a way to ‘bookmark’ search results that you’ve found helpful. For example, if I search for a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis and one of my favorites comes up in the list, I can +1 it and it will come up at the top of the list next time I search for a Chinese restaurant in town. Pretty helpful stuff. Now, with the release of G+, the +1 becomes even more useful. Before G+ there wasn’t a way to catalog all the things you +1′ed (search results, blog posts, websites, etc.), but within G+, there’s a +1 tab on your profile page so you can go back through everything you’ve +1′ed in the past – making it a better place to store true bookmarks and pages you’d like to return to than simply liking a site/post/etc. through Facebook (since there’s no ultimate catalog of the things you’ve liked outside of Facebook.com).

Circles

Circles are the foundation that G+ was built upon. While you can add friends to different lists within Facebook, it’s a feature that was added to Facebook after many people joined, so there isn’t a great adoption rate for the lists feature within Facebook.

G+: Add to Circle

Instead of friending people like you do on Facebook or just following them like on Twitter, you add people to your circles in G+. Unlike Facebook, you can add people to your circles without them having to add you back, but unlike Twitter, by clicking on the Incoming portion of your stream (which I’ll get to later) you can see the posts of people who have added you to their circles that aren’t yet a part of your own circles.

In addition to a simple drag and drop feature for adding people to different groups, Google also has a suggested users section to the right of your stream where you can hover over Add to Circles and easily add people to your circles.

You can also easily view content from and share content with specific circles very easily with G+. Say you want to share some photos with just people in your Family circle, it’s simple to do. If you want to share a link to an article with friends from work or share a photo with friends from college, you can do that as well.

Profile

If you had a Google Profile, it’s now your G+ Profile. You can fill in information like where you work, a bio, where you went to school, where you’ve lived as well as add photos and links to your social media profiles, websites and blogs. Just like on your Facebook profile page, you can add as little or as much information as you’d like. When people land on your profile page, they can view previous posts (but only ones that are either Public, Extended Circles or shared with a circle that they’re a part of), About, Photos, Videos +1′s and Buzz.

Stream

The G+ stream is just like the newsfeed on your Facebook wall. When you log in, you’ll see each of your Circles on the left side of the page. You can click on any circle to view updates from people in that specific circle if you don’t want updates from your circles mixing.

You can easily comment on, +1, and reshare posts within your stream. With every new post you create, whether it’s a photo, link, video or text update, you can select who you want to share the post with. You can specify any combination of circles, individuals and email addresses as well as with the Public, all your circles or (a really interesting option) Extended Circles. Extended Circles simply means that your post is viewable by everyone in your circles as well as everyone in their circles.

While G+ doesn’t have a direct messages feature like Twitter or a private messages feature like Facebook, you can post messages that can only be seen by one other person by making sure they’re the only person that you share the post with. If this feels a bit uncomfortable to use for private matters, you can always default back to another medium to send that truly private message.

I’ve tried out sending a more personal message just to an individual and they truly are the only ones who can see the message.

Tip: If you’re sharing a private post with someone, make sure you disable sharing on the post so they can’t reshare your private message.

Photos

G+ allows you to connect directly with Picasa (which will soon be rebranded as Google Phot0s) and share photos on your profile. With the G+ Android App (and the soon to be released iOS app), you’ll be able to take pictures and share them immediately with your circles.

Hangouts

In my opinion, this is one of the best features on G+ and one of the greatest differentiation point over Facebook. In short, Hangouts are group video chats. While Facebook just announced Skype integration to allow video chats directly from Facebook, G+’s Hangout feature is several steps ahead of the Facebook/Skype integration.

With Hangouts, you can have multiple people in the same video chat and you can also chat via text while you’re in the Hangout. This is a great way to share links or other information while you’re hanging out. Another unique feature is the ability to share YouTube videos with the Hangout. That way the entire group can watch a video together.

Tip: While you can specify groups or individuals who you invite to the Hangout, you can’t kick people out of the Hangout and anyone who is in the Hangout can invite anyone else. For that reason, if you want to have a private video chat, I’d recommend sticking with Skype or Facebook.

Sparks

The G+ Sparks feature is a combination of Google News and Google Reader. You can specify things you’re interested in and set them up as Sparks. G+ then feeds interesting news stories each Spark that you can read through or share with your circles.

Measuring Traffic

All these features are great and they could lead to G+ becoming a legitimate player in the social media space, but when push comes to shove, you really need to know whether G+ is driving any traffic (and, in turn, any conversions) to your site. If you have a web analytics package like Google Analytics installed on your site, you can easily track the referring links coming to your site from G+. Just like how Facebook redirects all links shared on their site through http://www.facebook.com/l.php? to enable accurate clickthrough tracking, G+ redirects all links through http://plus.google.com/url? and that’s easily trackable through your analytics pacakge’s referring links section.

Side note: I’m not sure why Twitter hasn’t implemented something like this. Maybe that’s where they’re headed with their t.co shortener. Since Twitter is accessed through countless apps both on computers and mobile devices as well as through Twitter.com, it seems that by redirecting all links posted via Twitter through one standard redirector (t.co), it would make accurately tracking all Twitter traffic MUCH easier for everyone. Twitter, you can take this idea, I don’t even need credit for it.

GPlus: Early Verdict?

It’s still way to early to say that G+ is a boom or a bust, but I see a lot of potential and quite a few pitfalls at the same time.

Pitfalls:

• Numbers: With 750+ million people on Facebook and 200+ million on Twitter, Google really got to this party late and it’ll take more than just luck to siphon people from networks they’re already familiar and comfortable with.
• No Business Options – Yet: Google has announced that they’re working on a solution for businesses who want to get involved on G+ – they just don’t want businesses creating profiles just yet.
• Growth Beyond Early Adpoters: Several people have started wondering lately whether G+ can grow beyond the early adopters who are on the platform now. Mashable estimates that there are nearly 10 million people using G+ already, but I can attest to the fact that the vast majority of the updates I’ve seen so far on G+ have been related to G+. Part of that could be the novelty of the platform and everyone trying to figure it out together, but there have been other networks (like Friendfeed) that have languished with only early adopters.

Potential:

• Circles: Google has come up with an extremely intuitive and easy way to place people into groups. Facebook’s similar feature is clunky at best and if you haven’t already moved your friends into different groups by now, chances are you never will. It seems that Google started with Circles as the fundamental element behind G+ and it shows. It’s so easy to share anything with as many or as few people as you want.
• Hangouts: I think this is the killer feature in G+. I’ve tested it out a couple time with some colleagues and we’ve had as many as 5 people in the hangout at the same time.
• In addition to being able to have a quick video chat with one or several people, you can make the Hangouts as public or as private as you want to.
• The fact that I had already used G+’s Hangout feature made me yawn when Facebook announced last week that you could now (finally) video chat via Facebook. However, since you can only chat with one person at a time, this feature was out of date before it was even released.
• Integration with Google: This is another one of G+’s biggest strengths. Google already has a huge user base of people on Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Maps not to even mention Google Search, and the fact that your G+ menubar stays with you whenever your on a Google property just means that people can stay connected to their network and share with them even easier than they can through Twitter or Facebook.

I just got an email today that ExactTarget just released another report in their fantastic Subscribers, Fans and Followers research series. Their ninth report is entitled Mobile Dependence Day and goes into depth about our collective dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. (You can see my previous reviews of the SFF research series if you want. I covered report #7 Social Mytbhusting here.) While I was reading the most recent report, I realized that I hadn’t blogged about the previous report: The Social Breakup, so this post consists of reviews of the two most recent reports as part of the Subscribers, Fans and Followers research. If you’re interested in downloading the reports for yourself, check out ET’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers page for the full reports.

Report No. 8: The Social Breakup

The eighth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on the “social breakup” – how and why consumers “break up” with brands and stop following them via Facebook, Twitter and email. You might be surprised at how much similarity there is across all channels. Here are some of the highlights:

• Email
  • 67% of subscribers hit the unsubscribe button to end the email relationship rather than just deleting (17%), reporting as spam (8%), ignoring (6%) or setting up a filter to auto-archive the message(2%)
  • Top 3 reasons people unsubscribed from emails:
    • Too many emails from the company
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Email overload – too many emails in general, cleaning out the clutter
• Facebook
  • When fans no longer want information from a brand they previously “liked”, 43% of them go to the brand’s page and click “unlike, 38% click the “X” in their newsfeed to remove them from the wall and 19% just ignore the posts.
  • Top 3 reasons people “unliked” a brand on Facebook:
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users walls
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • They only “liked” the brand because of a promotion, discount or deal offered to fans, and “unliked” once they got what they wanted.

• Twitter
  • Nearly half of consumers who created a Twitter account no longer use it with 52% saying they found Twitter to be pointless, 38% saying it became boring and 23% thinking that Twitter was too chaotic.
  • Top 3 reasons people stopped following a brand on Twitter:
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Tweet stream became overloaded with marketing posts, wanted to clean up
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users tweet streams

Notice the striking similarity between why people unsubscribe, unlike and unfollow brands? While there are different strategies to employ for brand to get the most out of email, Facebook and Twitter, online consumers – across the board – seem to all be saying the same thing when it comes to ending their relationship with a brand’s digital initiatives: don’t talk too much and keep the content interesting.

Report No. 9: Mobile Dependence Day

The ninth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on our increasing dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. Even within the past year, the share of US consumers with smartphones (as opposed to feature phones) has grown dramatically. Here are some of the high points about what it means for interactive marketers:

• 89% of US consumers 15+ own a cell phone. 41% of those have smartphones
  • Android: 33%
  • iPhone: 25%
  • Blackberry: 19%
  • Other: 23%
• Smartphone’s Big 5 (the five most frequently used functions on today’s smartphones):
  • Phone Calls
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Internet
  • Facebook
• How important is the smartphone to people who own and use one? Here is the percentage of people who would (if forced to choose) rather keep their smartphone than the following items:
  • Game Console: 72%
  • Dishwasher: 46%
  • Laptop: 40%
  • Microwave: 34%
  • Refrigerator: 13%
  • Car: 8%

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?