foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Pegshot, Brightkite – LBS overload – oh my! I’m likely missing a boatload of LBS services currently available on the market, but you get the picture that there are a lot. If you haven’t been on some remote island or on a Carnival Cruise for the past six or so months, you are likely aware that LBS or Location Based Service is a sizzling hot topic. Even my mother is talking LBS (Oh geez…first Facebook, now foursquare!).

While there are dozens of LBS’ out there, one in paricular that has dominated the market is foursquare. With two million members and 15,000 new members joining daily, it has quickly become the new pretty girl at the party that everyone wants to be friends with. 

According to Wikipedia, Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for “checking in” at venues. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook or both. Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency or for other patterns such as time of check-in.    

If users check into venues multiple times over the course of several months, they are reigned the “mayor” of that venue. I have become the mayor of several venues including Bikram Yoga Studio, Red Hook Brewery, and Boloco in Concord, NH.    

While the majority of venues don’t even know what foursquare is and that they have their own mayor, there are those few businesses, the early adopters, that are jumping on the foursquare/LBS bandwagon and taking advantage of how they can incorporate this new technology into their marketing mix. Boloco is one of those businesses that is testing the waters with foursquare to figure out how they can use it. For the mayors of their individual locations, they receive a discount on each order. This is a great way to build loyalty among their most passionate barritoistas (yes, I just made that word up).    

It certainly works for me, but I recently lost my mayorship to another yahoo and working hard to get it back!   

So, many of you might be saying to yourself…yeah so what does this mean for my business? And even if I did care, how do I begin to leverage foursquare and other LBS platforms within my organization? If this is the case, then I encourage you to tune into the next Awareness, Inc. webinar on 8/11 “Foursquare for the enterprise, a brave new world” with Jason Keath, founder of Social Fresh, a social media education company. Some key takeaways which Jason will discuss during the webinar include:  

• Asking the right questions before using foursquare for business
• Experimenting with foursquare as a user first
• Listening to customers through foursquare
• The basic marketing pieces of foursquare (tips, specials, badges)
• Extending offline community through foursquare
• Integrating foursquare marketing
• How to train for foursquare
• Promotion of foursquare marketing

 Hope you can join us. To register for the live event (which will be recorded and available on demand later) click here. 

I was recently asked to keynote the final presentation at the NH Travel Council’s Governor’s Conference on Tourism in Portsmouth, NH. My focus was (shock, surprise) social media. But instead of just talking about social media, which frankly, I think there is too much talk about social media and not enough doing,  I decided to share some real examples of organizations within the travel & tourism space who are doing social media and doing it well.

I have to admit, I was really nervous about this presentation. I mean, I have spoken before, but never as the “keynote” and certainly not for a whole 60 minutes! So, in preparation for my big keynote debut, I leveraged my network and put a call out for some great examples of travel & tourism organizations having success with social media. I got several responses, one of which was from The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire.

Being familiar with The Museum from working with them for one of my NHTweetUp events and because they are local, I chose to include them as one of my featured case studies. So, I took my kids and my video camera and made my way to The Children’s Museum to speak with Heidi Duncanson, director of marketing for The Museum.

I was impressed. Really impressed with how Heidi was spearheading The Museum’s social media efforts. With their Facebook Page and Twitter account combined with their email newsletters (what BlueSky Factory calls the “Social Glue”), The Museum is able to connect with its members while building and nurturing their community.

During my video interview with Heidi (click below to view), she shared the Museum’s social media strategy along with some great examples of how just simply listening resulted in a visit from an out of town travel blogger who then wrote about her experiences within her blog that caught the attention of several other travel writers.

In later posts, I will share some other great examples from my presentation including my talk with Taste of Portsmouth about their social media efforts including their involvement with Foursquare Day in Portsmouth.  Please check back for that.

Hope you enjoy my video interview with Heidi. In case you are wondering who those two little cuties popping up in the porthole of the submarine are – they are my girls!

Know any organizations actually jumping in and doing social media and doing it well? Shoot me a note here or on Twitter @cmajor to let me know. I am always looking for great examples to capture and share.

According to OurCompassion (OC), the community, which was launched in June 2009,  is “a place for all of us to come together and get organized on behalf of children living in poverty.”

This is an amazing organization that serves more than 800,000 supporters who are sponsoring more than one million children worldwide. The OC community serves as a place for supporters to share, organize and speak up on behalf of children living in poverty.

During our discussion, Katie shared how the OC community was instrumental during the Haiti Earthquakes as it played an important role in facilitating communication with supporters around the world. Through this tragedy, the community went from being a new, young endeavor into a key player in the grand scheme of Compassion’s social media strategy as it became an integral part of their disaster response approach.  With the community, they were and continue to direct Compassion sponsors to the community for further support and information.

What they also found was that through this, the community naturally displayed new levels of “social maturity” (commonly looked for on social networking environments) as members showed deeper levels of friendship and honesty as they all worked through this tragedy together.  

My video interview with Katy is below. Please take a moment to hear what she has to say about OurCompassion.org and please check out their community for more information on how you can get involved.

I recently had the pleasure of working with Brian Dresher, marketing manager for USATODAY.com for an #AwarenessInc webinar he presented with us yesterday afternoon. It was a great session that showcased some of the innovative social media initiatives the USATODAY brand is working on including:

• The transformation of the news brand from macro to micro – a news brand traditionally represented journalists, but with tools like Twitter, journalists now represent the brand. This macro to micro transformation has an impact on breaking news, news curation, and audience engagement.
• Social Blog – USATODAY.com is one of the first mainstream media organizations to have a blog about social media. This is aimed to share and communicate with advertisers and its audience about what they are doing in social media and to share best practices. http://social.usatoday.com
• Fark – learn how this deal came together and why it benefits both brands, http://fark.usatoday.com
• Twitter Index Page, general, http://twitter.usatoday.com, and for Olympics, http://content.usatoday.com/twitter/Olympics.aspx
• Internal social media training to generate awareness and educate staff
• Learn how USATODAY.com evaluates ROIII (yes, three Is! Investment, Interaction, and Influence)

If you were not able to join us for yesterday’s webinar or want to watch it again, we have provided the recording below for you to view. You can also view Brian’s slides via Slideshare here.

Continue the discussion!

Just because the webinar is over doesn’t mean the discussion has to end. If you have any questions for Brian Dresher or myself, please feel free to ask away in the comment section or if you feel like tweeting your question, tag it with #awarenessinc #usatoday and we will be sure to respond.

This is among the preliminary results of a multi-client research study undertaken by Paul Gillin Communications earlier this year.

These and other findings were shared by Paul in a recent #AwarenessInc Webinar below. During the webinar Paul also highlighted several case studies with brands such as Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, Cisco Systems, Dell and Sodexo discussing the value each achieved from individual platforms, the metrics they each used to judge success and the insights businesses have learned from their early experiences.

The complete webinar can be viewed below. If you want to go deeper into the research, a copy of Paul’s report can be downloaded for free here.

Enjoy!

I recently wrote about Erik Qualman’s #awarenessinc webinar titled ”Socialnomics: It’s a People-Driven Economy, Stupid.”

Well Erik had so much content to cover during the hour long webinar that he didn’t have time for Q&A at the end. I asked Erik if he would take a moment to answer some of the questions that came through via Twitter and, the nice guy that he is, he graciously agreed to do that for us.

We received many questions and Erik went through and picked out the top three questions that he felt the audience would benefit from the most and provided answers to each. Those top three will also receive a copy of Erik’s book, Socialnomics, provided by Awareness, Inc.

Here you go!

Q:  @woodarml: “Ravelry” Do you think niche social networks are equally impt/worth your time as larger ones like Facebook?

A: Great question.  Some of it depends on what you are selling.  If you are selling Yarn or knitting patterns than Ravelry will be near the top.  For most, it’s analagous to when the search wars were going on.  You’d start with Google and than work your way to Yahoo, MSN, Ask, Excite, Looksmart, etc.  So, always focus on the ones that give you the greatest return and once you think you have a good handle on that go to the next one with the most potential and so forth rather than trying to boil the Ocean all at once.

Q: BuckLLC: How do B2Bs use Twitter effectively? Harder than B2C, yes?

A: A good use of Twitter for B2B is to see and capture insight into your customer’s customer.  Hence, if you are Intel and sell chips to Apple and Dell you will want to know of any issues or benefits the customer is experiencing from your product.  Whatever it is you sell having insight into what pain points and benefits your customer’s customer is experiencing will always make you a more valuable supplier.  This is particular true if your customer isn’t very savvy on social media so they may not even know this type on “intel” is possible.

Q: aharbourne: Quality vs quantity of followers? How targetted/niche should SM activities be? Multiple strategies per segment?

A: It’s all about quality of followers.  Quantity may look good, but if they aren’t active they aren’t going to do anything for your business.  This is similar to e-mail from this standpoint.  Good companies constantly update their e-mail data base to purge inactive accounts rather than “fool” themselves with an inflated number of e-mails.

I had no idea that the Vatican was driving the whole “Religion 2.0″ movement, but after attending Erik Qualman’s #AwarenessInc webinar, ”Socialnomics: It’s a People-Driven Economy, Stupid” the other day, I did. Not only that, I also learned that even the Pope has his own iPhone App!!  Wow….Just like Chris Brogan! Who knew?

Well, Erik’s webinar was not about Religion 2.0. It was about Socialnomics – The way in which we can leverage social media as individuals and for business. If you missed the webinar, no fear. It is available to view at your leisure below along with another video that Erik shared – Social Media ROI: Socialnomics - which offers some great stats on the state of social media now. Of course this will need to be updated often as it is rapidly changing.

There were lots of discussions during the webinar on Twitter using the #AwarenessInc hashtag, some of which I captured below. This could also be due in part to Erik giving away copies of his book to those who were the first to answer his questions correctly.

What are your thoughts on Socialnomics? Join the discussion by adding your comments below or via Twitter using the #AwarenessInc hashtag. 

Video: Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

Webinar: Socialnomics: It’s a People-Driven Economy, Stupid

Image_Marketing: Enjoyed the #awarenessinc webinar yesterday, which showed some mind-blowing stats about the rise of social media http://tinyurl.com/nutlrj

 TonyNaldinho: RT @awarenessinc: Negative comments are an opportunity for brands to reach out to that person, start a discussion and turn things around #awarenessinc

DidrikE: #awarenessinc .. Great video .. Great message .. Great music ! BIG I LIKE !

@SarahTrujillo: Fail forward, fail fast, fail better! #awarenessinc

woodarml: Facebook- baby seat example — reminds me of previous #awarenessinc webinar — “If you suck off line, you're going to suck online”

@rbrt_rothschild: “..its not a Mad Men society where u sit around a conf room for hrs & talk about your brand any longer.” #awarenessinc

mrobin032009: #awarenessinc @equalman Utilize crowdsourcing – Good content doesn't always have to come from within.

@InfoSara: Your customer today can be your competition tomorrow #awarenessinc

johnavola: Social Media: Our customer today can be your competition tomorrow… #awarenessinc

BenReetz: The 4 main components of Social Media Listen, Interact, React, and Sell  #awarenessinc

djwaldow: McDonalds: “Our head of social media is our customer” via @equalman #awarenessinc – I get that, but not really. Ha ha. Help?

jerrycameron: Social Media = Braggadocian Behavior (It’s all about me, me, me) #awarenessinc

@DidrikE I like this – shift to survival of the FASTEST #awarenessinc

@dmarotta: #awarenessinc “whats worse than being talked about?” “not being talked about.”

If you aren’t listening, then you will never know. 

During a recent  #AwarenessInc webinar, “Answering the Social Phone,” David Alston of Radian6 discussed what organizations should listen for online, what to say when you engage, and of course, how to measure your efforts and ‘convince the boss’ on the importance of using social media to answer that social phone. Because if you’re not answering it, your competitor who is more involved and engaged will.

It was a very informative and interactive session for the social media novice and even those who have been around the block a few times. If you have never heard David speak before, I highly recommend taking a peek at the video below for yourself.

While tracking the discussion during the webinar online,  I pulled out some key points from the audience. What are your thoughts? Get involved in the discussion yourself by tagging any discussions with #AwarenessInc like these webinar attendees did below.

stephen_lamb: RT @BostonSarah: Think of ROI for social media in terms of “Return on Ignoring.” What is the cost of opportunity lost? -David Alston #awarenessinc

jerrycameron: Purchased mass media is essentially the “rental” of eyes and ears. Social media is about hearts and minds; engaging with them. #awarenessinc

@sarahnohr: If you suck offline, you suck online. Best quote of the day. #awarenessinc

BostonSarah: There is no silver bullet on measuring social media. Set your objectives up front. -David Alston #awarenessinc

AlexisDias: Why are people obsessed with the number of followers? Let’s  focus on ENGAGEMENT instead… #awarenessinc

mrktgeek: Do “Targeted Listening” to find conversations that you can add value to. #awarenessinc

btrandolph: thank you @davidalston #awarenessinc for saying “numbr of followers not always the most important thing” #beyondcpm

mrktgeek: Building community through connections with #awarenessinc

tanmoyroy: “The brand is the sum of all conversations” – @DavidAlston #awarenessinc

ajrinaldi: From @davidalston The beautiful thing about social media is it is digital…[and] leaves digital bread crumbs #awarenessinc

During the webinar, Caroline shared with us the top ten operational barriers to social business success as well as the ten best practices for socializing your business. I outlined those in this post for you, but I definitely encourage you to check out the complete webinar below.

Top 10 Operational Barriers to Social Business Success

1. Organizational Silos
2. Command and Control Management
3. Top Down, One-Way Communication
4. Social Activities Not Integrated Into the Workflow
5. Employees Measured on Individual Performance
6. Competitive Culture
7. No Guidelines or Training
8. No Methods for Measuring Social Value
9. No Executive Sponsor
10. No Role Modeling

If a business truly wants to become a social business, they should definitely focus on overcoming barriers #9 and #10 and go beyond just signing up and purchasing social media tools. I refer to this quote from Scott Monty of Ford quite a bit because it rocks and it is very applicable here – 90% of social media is just showing up. What I mean here is that employees typically follow the lead of their leaders and if the upper managment isn’t particpating in social media, what is their motivation to do so?  To truly socialize your business, everyone must participate and incoporate these activies into their daily jobs.

As Caroline pointed out, IDC believes social media is transforming not just how we communicate, but also how we conduct business.  Corporations will not be able to easily adapt to this new order if the CEO is not on board. Social media use by employees for work purposes is coming into corporations, but the opportunity to harness it needs support from executives.

 Top 10 Best Practices for Socializing Your Business

1. Start small – take baby steps
2. Lead With a Corporate Initiative
3. Tie Measurement Back to Core Business Objectives
4. Put your Social People in Front to Champion
5. Establish and Official Framework for Participation (Social Media Guidelines)
6. Provide Incentives for Community Participation
7. Keep HR, Legal, IT Involved in the Process
8. Executive Sponsorship
9. Role Modeling
10. Ongoing internal education, training and outreach

Attendees were also sharing some key soundbites and commentary tagged with #awarenessinc during the session (highlights below), but the one statistic that seemed to resonate the most with everyone was when Caroline shared the results from a national survey of CIO’s by Robert Half Technology which showed that 54% of CIO’s completely prohibit public social networking site usage at work.  This study, as you can imagine, gained a lot of attention because this statistic was higher than many expected. Caroline went on to explain that with social media entering the workplace under the IT radar – the CIO has been put in a reactive position and challenged to address employee use of public social media in the workplace.

 bellatrixr: Ok, so I have baggage w/this: And in whose hands it rests — “Technology is only as good as a user.” (RT @awarenessinc

 karyncooks: AMEN! RT @kayhaswingsNo one should “own” socmed. Shouldn’t be separate dept, should be discipline of entire company. #awarenessinc

dmourey: Need to integrate into biz objectives & empower those who want to bcome cust. advocates, crowdsource ideas, demonst expertise #awarenessinc

 aaroncarter: #awarenessincshould there be a social executive officer? I think this depends on structure and needs of your organizaion.

 tallbonez: #awarenessinc What is the op operational barrier to SM for your company: 31% said getting colleagues to participate

 k8johnson: Technology enables, but doesn’t guarantee success. Culture is a major definer of social & community success via @cdangson #awarenessinc

dmourey: soc media is not just mktg. but across functions- cust. serv., prod dev., recruiting, just mktg limits orgs chance to chg. #awarenessinc

 tomassteele: social media is the discipline of the entire company!! #awarenessinc

 llgraham: Marcomm the lucky “winner” to own social media in recent survey #awarenessinc

 Ignitus: 47.5% of organizations implementing social media do not have published social media guidelines #awarenessinc

 christinelexa: Purchasing social software doesn’t make your biz more social – Amen. So true. #awarenessinc

Have your own thoughts to share? Please continue the discussion here or on Twitter by tagging with #awaressinc and @socialbiz  – Thank you!

What’s Next??

The next Awareness webinar focusing on Social Media Engagement is scheduled for January 14, 2010 at 2pm ET with Katie Paine,CEO of KDPaine & Partners, a NH-based company that provides customized research that measures public relationships and brand image. You won’t want to miss this one! Register Here: http://bit.ly/KatiePaine

The answer is certainly not from corporations. Scott pointed out that according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, it’s certainly not the companies that consumers go to first. In fact the 2009 Barometer revealed that globally, 62% of people trust corporations less than they did last year. And its even worse within the U.S. where 77% of consumers are skeptical of anything that comes from a corporation.

So who do consumers trust to get their information from? The answer Scott provided was that most consumers get their information from third party experts and journalistic sources such as Consumer Reports and Wall Street Journal. But most importantly people trust the information they receive from others like them and with whom they can identify with such as a family member, friend or someone from within their network. Those are the people they will trust and ultimately influence their decision to buy.

Paraphrasing Woody Allen, where he said ”90% of life is just showing up,” Scott shared with us how Ford subscribes to the Woody Allen philosophy of social media which is “90% of social media is just showing up.” Its about being where people expect you to be.  Showing up is easy, its the other part that is hard and is often where the majority of corporations fail. Well Ford is certainly doing more than just showing up. With Scott to guide them, the corporation that has experienced its share of challenges,  is now seeing significant success in their social media efforts through their many campaigns. Proof of this success could possibly be attributed to the company’s recently posted profits of nearly $1 billion in its third quarter.

Twitter was also buzzing about Scott’s discussion as many participants were rapidly sharing some of the highlights and soundbites during the webinar using the hashtag #awarenessinc. Some of my favorites are highlighted below. As you watch and listen to the webinar yourself, what are some of the key highlights for you? I would love to continue the discussion via Twitter (with the tag #awarenessinc) or in the comment section below. P.S. Scott’s slides can be accessed via Slideshare here: http://bit.ly/2I4Mhx

1. C3CreateConnect: RT @awarenessinc: People trust those that are part of their network- friends/family- hose they can identify with – @ScottMonty #Awarenessinc
2. christinelexa: #Ford has been in a tough place recently. @scottmonty wanted to get back to Ford & its roots – the people & innovation. #awarenessinc
3. RonArden: #awarenessinc Connecting with people on an emotional level with your products or services is what we should all strive for.
4. bostonmike: 90% of social media is just “showing up” from @scottmonty #awarenessinc
5. awarenessinc: Who is @Ford Motor Co? “We are a Green, Global, High Tech Company that is improving people's lives” #awarenessinc (@ScottMonty)
6. k8johnson: Technology is not holding us back, it is the behavior & culture change that is… (via @scottmonty #AwarenessInc)
7. GreenSoil: Talk to your customers like human beings – both online and offline #awarenessinc (@ScottMonty)
8. MetroplexTBC: #awarenessinc Measureing SM ROI is like trying to justify why you should put on pants, not doing it will have some serious repercussions
9. jalexander0204: #awarenessinc – understand your business and industry first
10. 14str8: As mentioned by @ScottMonty on #awarenessinc webinar Fathers Day – Mustang Video http://bit.ly/16y5tn