PasikBlogan #5: Ang Karangalan ng Pilipinas sa Social Media

PasikBlogan Challenge #5: A Different Tongue

Blog in a language/dialect that you typically don't blog in.
If you typically blog in English, now blog in Filipino (or your own dialect). Kung karaniwan kang mag-blog sa Filipino, gumamit ka ng Ingles o Cebuano.

Naawatam? Quamo mi paqueman? Anggapo la. Jaaaavid! ;-)


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Pinili kong mag-blog tungkol sa pasksang ito dahil sa kanyang pagka-angkop sa itinakdang madlang babasa nito.


Simula nang nailabas ang Google+ ng higit kumulang na ilang linggong nakaraan, ang paglago nito sa 24 milyong gumagamit sa buong mundo ay isang di pangkaraniwang pangyayari, lalo na't kung ikukumpara sa paglago ng Facebook at Twitter na kinailangan ng tatlong taon para maabot ang ganitong estado.


Alam ng marami na nasa listahang Top 10 tayo sa mga bansa na pinakamaraming gumagamit ng Facebook sa buong mundo. Ngunit sa Google+, ang India ang kitang-kitang nangunguna sa mga Third-World na bansa, at sila ang may pangalawang pinakamaraming gumagamit ng Google+ sa ngayon.

Ang aking pangunahing katanungan ay ito: hindi ba nararapat lang na layunin nating mga Pilipino na masali din sa Top 10 na bansang gumagamit ng Google+? 


Ano kaya ang pumipigil sa atin para maabot ito? Dahil ba may-kapit sa atin ang Yahoo at mas malakas ang Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail at YM, kung ikukumpara sa katapat na produkto ng Google sa bansang ito? Dahil ba nahihirapan tayo sa konsepto ng Circles kung ikukumpara sa Friends sa Facebook? Dahil ba mas mahilig tayo mag-Like, tulad ni Lola Techie, at nalilito tayo sa +1?


Bakit? Bakit?




Lola Techie, paki-explain nga po:

The Social Media Revolution video, update June 2011.

Created by Erik Qualman from Socialnomics, watch the video “Social Media Revolution” version 3 completely updated with statistics current as of June 2011. Nice soundtrack. Cool infographics. Astounding data. Enjoy.

From iMedia: Marketing Tools for Small Businesses -- 3 must-haves

3 must-have marketing tools for small businesses

By Eric Groves

February 02, 2010

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009
• Online survey tools allow you to easily request anonymous feedback from your customers
• Countless small businesses have made valuable connections through their participation in social networks

Small businesses naturally gravitate to tools and strategies that quickly generate revenue without incurring significant costs. So it's no surprise that web-based marketing technologies have become a boon to small businesses because of their low cost and ease of use. Tools that are purpose-built for small businesses project a more professional image and deliver a richer set of management and monitoring capabilities than online tools targeted to consumers, which are often ad-supported and limited in function.

The essential small business marketing tools described below encourage stronger customer relationships and are easy to use and affordable, which makes them must-have tools in the small business marketer's toolkit.

Get connected. To stay abreast of the latest developments in email, survey, and social media services, check out the exhibit hall at ad:tech San Francisco, April 20-21. Learn more.

Email marketing
Despite critics who have called email marketing's effectiveness into question, email marketing continually delivers the highest ROI for any marketing method. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009.

What makes email marketing so effective? It's simple: permission and relevant content. This means that the recipient is looking forward to receiving messages and considers the content of the emails to be beneficial. For marketers, this translates into a pre-qualified list of prospects and returning customers. All you need to do to keep them is stay in touch with content that is compelling and useful.

Businesses can achieve several important goals with email marketing, but the most important are strong, lasting customer relationships. With email marketing, you can consistently communicate your expertise, your offerings, and your brand, thereby building trust and recognition. When the time comes for customers to make purchases, they'll naturally turn to the businesses they're familiar with and loyal to, and they're more likely to recommend those businesses to others.

Online surveys
The most successful small business owners understand that listening to their customers is critically important. Yet, it's not always practical to engage in one-on-one conversations to find out what every customer is thinking. That's where online surveys come in. Online survey tools allow you to easily request anonymous feedback from your customers at their convenience.

Whether conducted frequently, such as after a purchase, event, or customer service issue, or just once a year, surveys are an excellent way to glean valuable information about your customers' satisfaction, experience with your business, or feedback on your product. For example, a retailer might survey his customers to find out what product lines they'd like to see expanded. A consultant could survey customers to learn what marketing challenges are most important to them for 2010. In both cases, the survey results will help guide important business decisions that neither business owner may have determined without the help of the customer base.

Another benefit of online surveys is the opportunity for your customers to feel like they're a part of your business. In fact, asking customers about the best way to communicate with them -- either via email, Facebook, Twitter, or some other mode or combination -- is a great first step in gathering useful feedback. By opening up a two-way dialogue and inviting them to offer suggestions and constructive criticism, your customers feel that they're contributing to your success. Knowing that you took their advice or considered their feedback creates a sense of loyalty that will naturally lead to longer and stronger relationships.

Your social network of choice
Everywhere you turn these days, someone is talking about Facebook, retweeting Ashton Kutcher's latest comment, or asking you to connect on LinkedIn. While all the hype can seem a bit frivolous, the business benefits of social networks are very real. Countless small business owners have made valuable connections, including new customers, through their participation in social networks.

Participation is the key to success when it comes to social media. Much like email marketing, you must first offer real value before you can expect to get anything in return. Simply being there isn't going to place your brand at the center of the conversation. You first have to establish your credibility as a member of the community and a legitimate expert in your field.

Establish yourself as a resource by sharing your knowledge. This may mean linking to your blog posts, media coverage of your product or business, or your email newsletter. You can easily add value and show you "get it" by offering your thoughts and commenting on another's blog post or tweet, or by answering a question on LinkedIn Answers.

Once you've committed to a particular mode of communication, be consistent in using it. Frequency of communications is always a challenge for busy small businesses owners, but a regular effort to communicate will help deliver your message most effectively. Eventually, your audience will begin to anticipate your outreach and even look forward to your next tweet, post, update, or newsletter.

Low cost, high return
Today's small businesses face an ongoing battle for mindshare among their target consumers. These low cost, high return marketing tools provide small businesses with the advantage they need to cut through the noise and get their messages heard without breaking their budget.

Eric Groves is senior vice president of global market development for Constant Contact Inc.

From iMedia: Social Media & Intellectual Property RIghts

How to avoid getting sued over social media

By Anthony J. Biller

February 02, 2010

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Traditional intellectual property rights still apply to the internet and online forums
• Make sure your agreements give you the right to use material in a new form of distribution
• If your copyright is violated, put the offending party on notice

The online arena is still an emerging landscape for intellectual property (IP) where it is easy to misstep in trying to avoid IP landmines. Whether you are a small business looking for content to help get your website up and running or suddenly find an image or text you created on another company's site, it's possible you haven't taken the appropriate steps to protect yourself and prevent IP theft.

Marketers and online content creators often struggle to understand how traditional IP best practices apply to internet content. Major companies like Toyota and Skittles have recently come under fire for their usage of user-created media.

When Toyota launched a new microsite to promote the 4Runner SUV, the company did what others before had done: aggregated content from social networks to help promote the brand. This strategy didn't necessarily break the mold. After all, Skittles launched a similar website earlier this year with a much-publicized social media home page including Twitter feeds, comments from Facebook fans, and content from Flickr and YouTube.

Skittles ran into a problem with the inappropriate, and sometimes vulgar, content that appeared on the site, Toyota faced accusations of copyright infringement from photographers who had posted images on Flickr.

Social networks are free and flourish with user-generated content. The platform lends itself to a sharing environment, where copyrights and trademarks often aren't considered. However, as these sites become increasingly popular venues for marketing, a basic understanding of how IP law applies to online property will help you avoid finding yourself on either side of a dispute.

Here are a few simple steps to prevent an online intellectual property theft accusation:

1. Traditional intellectual property rights still apply to the internet and online forums.
There is a misconception in some quarters that if content appears online, particularly in a social forum or blog, it's public domain material. That's false.

An author of a statement and a trademark owner still control the rights to their copyrights and brands when they place their materials on the internet. One common element for online content is that the forum host typically posts a policy that notifies contributors that by placing content on the host website, the poster is granting the host a license to use and republish that content. While such policies might provide a valid license for the website host to republish material actually owned by its posters, it provides no license or rights to third parties visiting such websites.

2. Register your IP and know the scope of your licenses.
These are fundamental prerequisites to IP management. Copyrights protect expressions, which include a wide range of on- and offline content including writings, drawings, songs, pictures and movies. Trademarks protect identity. Registering your copyrights and trademarks enhances your rights, provides significant leverage in enforcing those rights and, in the case of trademarks, provides constructive notice nationwide of your rights.

Also, if you obtain permission to use material offline, you can't assume that it's fine for you to post or distribute that material electronically. You need to verify that the preexisting license included the right to use the material in the new form of distribution.

3. Prominently display your IP protection.
Many people copy online content out of ignorance. To help prevent this, post your notice of copyright in near proximity to your works. The notice should state the year the work was completed, the legal name of the entity/person that owns the work, and the copyright symbol.

The following is a standard format: ©2009 by Coats and Bennett, PLLC. A copyright footer on each page is not highly effective for giving notice that particular works on the page are copyright protected. If you operate a high-content site, it's a good idea to dedicate a page to "copyright information" where you state your position on other people using your content.

4. Understand who really owns the content you use.
Even if you incorporate properly licensed art in your brand's online presence, look behind the license. While you may have licensed the right to use an image from a particular author, does the image contain elements that the author has no rights to license for advertising?

For example, if you license a photograph of a person driving a sports car for use in an advertisement, you are most likely only licensing the copyright in that picture. If the person or car is identifiable, has the person in the picture and the product owner licensed or otherwise agreed to the use of their images in your advertisement? Such embedded images raise trademark and publicity rights, beyond the overall copyright.

Also, explore if agreements that were in place before you put the content online give the right to use the material in a new form of distribution.

5. Take action.
If your copyright is violated, put the offending party on notice that they must immediately take down the image or text, or properly attribute credit and pay your licensing fee. Because there is a third party involved, you can also put the ISP and web host on notice that the website is violating your rights. If you receive notice that you are violating a copyright, react quickly. An uninformed mistake can typically be rectified, but you may face serious consequences if you ignore fair warning.

6. Don't confuse copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Copyright infringement occurs when someone makes an unauthorized copy of someone else's expression, or makes an unauthorized derivative that is substantially similar to the original works (when comparing the similarities). Plagiarism is passing off someone else's ideas or thoughts as your own. While it may get you expelled from some schools and professions, plagiarism itself is not illegal. Plagiarism might also involve copyright infringement, but not typically.

Plagiarism is avoided by giving proper attribution to others when you use and repeat their thoughts and ideas. Attribution avoids the charge of plagiarism, it is not, however, a defense or excuse for copyright infringement.

Conclusion
Managing copyrights and trademarks online typically involves applying traditional best practices and law to this new medium. Expanding to new forums like online sites can help grow your brand and connect with consumers, but also means that you have to steer clear of IP infringement and protect your content.

The old adage "if it looks too good to be true, it is" applies more than ever to online content. It is easy to copy and paste content onto your site or post it online without a copyright. However, this practice leaves open the possibility of an ensuing legal battle that could be far more costly and time-consuming than following best practices from the onset.

The potential consequences for infringing someone else's copyrights and/or trademarks include loss of your profits associated with the conduct, the other party's damages, enhanced damages, attorneys fees, and a permanent injunction prohibiting further publication, as well as corrective advertising explaining the past infringement. Under certain circumstances, a party can be liable for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each instance of willful copyright infringement.

The IP rights landmines are real, but with proper attention and knowledge, they can be avoided.

Anthony J. Biller, Esq., is a member of Coats and Bennett and leads the firm's litigation practice.

From iMedia: 4 ways social media can save you time and money

By Larry Weintraub

January 29, 2010

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ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• Don't concentrate on how many followers you have; instead, gauge success on how responsive and participatory they are
• You can, and should, target your PR campaign to web publishers that can position you with those you want to reach
• Take your market research budget and give it to your social media team to communicate directly with your audience

If you are just dabbling in social media, you may still not be sure what exactly it will do for you or where it fits in to your company structure. You've probably created a Twitter account, built a simple Facebook page, and maybe even added a company blog to your website. Good. That's a great start. Now step back for a minute and think about what this is all for.

Save the date! Want to learn more about how social media can strengthen your business strategy? Attend ad:tech San Francisco, April 19-21. Click here to learn more.

There are four reasons to use social media for your business. In no particular order, they are:

• Marketing
  
• PR
  
• Market research
  
• Customer service

All four of these are geared to do the same thing -- connect with your customers and interact with them. But don't hide behind trendy words like "engagement;" ultimately you want to do one thing: sell more products or services. Let's take a look at how each of these four components of your social media strategy can help you sell more.

Marketing
From a marketing perspective, consider social media as an enhanced, more touchy-feely version of CRM. Hopefully you are already running an effective email marketing campaign and properly communicating with your database of customers. These days you need to run several mailings lists. Your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., all have fans, followers, and subscribers. Just like with your email list, your social media-based customers and potential customers need to be communicated with on a regular basis. They need to be entertained, supported, and rewarded.

Don't get sucked into the numbers game. How many participants you have on your social media properties is far less important than how you interact with them. Instead of concentrating on how many Twitter followers you have, try instead to gauge success on how responsive and participatory they are.

Utilize the methods provided by each social media outlet to engage with your customer. One recent example of a company using the functionality of a social network to drive sales is Best Buy's Facebook page. Here, users can browse all the products that Best Buy has to offer and then ask the opinion of their personal network of Facebook friends whether they agree with the products they want to buy. This enables a customer to simultaneously browse for products while interacting with their friends via the Facebook platform. Best Buy not only benefits from an innovative social sales strategy but also has valuable research data that may help them determine which products to stock in the future.

PR
Publicity and public relations are no longer just about getting an article in BusinessWeek or The New York Times. Now there are thousands of influential blogs and online outlets that can create a positive effect on your business.

With numerous major print publications struggling to survive, most publicists have added digital media and the extended social media to their hit list. Going back to the point stressed earlier, quantity should not be the goal. How many people you reach is far less important than the quality of people you reach. With the proliferation of social media you can, and should, target your PR campaign to the web publishers that can position you with the people you want to reach. If your product is a piece of technology then you can find countless websites and blogs that focus on just that. Their readers and followers trust their reviews and advice. While these publications may not reach as many as The Wall Street Journal, oftentimes you will sell much more with an influential blog that has a fraction of the readers.

You can also create your own press exposure by dedicating time and resources to your own blog and social networks. Poignant and helpful essays, white papers, and research should be featured on your company's website, blog, and social networks. You will notice agencies like Razorfish who do this exceptionally well and generate a tremendous amount of positive PR by utilizing this strategy.

Market research
Thanks to social media you have incredible access to your customers. You have hundreds or thousands of "fans" coming to your social media properties looking for information and a dialogue. They want to know more. They also want to tell you what they think. So encourage them to speak freely. Ask them what they like about your product. Ask them what they don't like. Treat them like family and they will give you the tools to better your business.

If you are like many businesses, you have probably spent thousands of dollars hiring market research companies over the years. Those firms would locate ideal target customers and ask them for input on your product. No need for that now -- the people whose opinions you want most are opting in to your social networks. Take the money that you had previously spent on market research and give it to your social media team to conduct market research directly with your audience. And don't forget your employees. They have a lot to say too.

The best example of this is being done by Starbucks with their My Starbucks Idea concept, where they ask their customers and employees to suggest things they'd like to see at Starbucks. The suggestions reside on a dedicated website and then the community votes them up or down based on popularity. It's a simple yet brilliant idea.

Want to sell more? Who better to up-sell to than your current customers? Ask them what they want and then give it to them.

Customer service
Ok, this is the tough one because it potentially requires serious resources. But you can't avoid it; people are quickly learning that they can get your attention a lot faster by speaking to you via Twitter or Facebook than they can on the phone. So embrace it.

A tremendous advantage here is that if you help someone publicly via social media then others will see this. If you solve someone's problem on the phone no one knows except that person; but if you solve it online, in public view, others will notice and you may solve several people's problems at the same time. You have greater potential to be regarded as a customer friendly company, which will set you apart from your competition.

Companies like Comcast, Dell, and Ford have all excelled in this over the past two years. These are three companies that have all struggled with their customer service reputations but have had a positive impact with their public perception, as well as sales, as a result of their customer service efforts on social media.

Delegation
Understanding that social media touches these four very distinct areas and that most companies have departments set up for each of them, it can often be confusing as to who handles oversight of social media. Here's a radical thought: create a new division for social media with a direct connection to each of the corresponding departments.

Depending on the size of your company and the resources available, dedicate a member of the social media team to each focus that has one foot in social media and one foot in the corresponding department. That way everyone works together and it becomes less about being territorial and more about uniting to sell more products.

It is great to be the company that embraces social media, and 2010 is the year it becomes a bigger focus for the vast majority of businesses. You should be transparent, helpful, honest, and thankful. Put real focus and attention on the four areas described and establish measurable sales-oriented goals and expectations. It will work. Wouldn't you prefer to buy from a company that follows this plan?

Larry Weintraub is CEO of Fanscape.

From Adage: Study Says Consumers Are Not Annoyed by Ads on Facebook

But They're Not Exactly Embracing Marketing on Social Media, Either

by Kunur Patel
Published: January 27, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Good news for Facebook: It turns out users find ads on social networks no more annoying than any other ads on the web.

According to a study from research firm Dynamic Logic, consumers view brand messages on social-media sites as comparable to those in online video, and are only slightly more annoying to internet users than search or banner ads.

While that's better news for Facebook, which has been embraced by blue-chip marketers such as Procter & Gamble, it's a bit of a backhanded compliment. Indeed, all web ads pale when stacked up to TV and print, which can claim twice the favorability among consumers, according to Dynamic Logic's Ad Reactions 2009 study.

Among 2,000 consumers surveyed in August 2009, 22% expressed a positive attitude toward ads on social media, the same as online video ads, compared with more than 40% favorable to print and TV ads. Consumers expect and tolerate ads in offline media in a way that they don't online.

"Those numbers are very low," said Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital's senior VP-director of insights, and an Ad Age contributor. "I don't think social-media ads are a long-term marketing vehicle. They are good for pushing people into a bigger brand platform like a Facebook page, but I don't think this will be a hugely dominant platform."

That said, attitudes about online advertising have held steady since 2007, while consumer's view of TV and print ads have fallen. Most dramatically, favorability for newspapers ads fell from 56% two years ago to 42%, while TV has gone from 50% to 47% and magazines 53% to 45%.

According to the survey, we are becoming a nation united by social media. As indicated by Facebook's claimed 350 million global users, 80% of respondents said they had visited a social site and 59% claimed to be active users of social networks.

And some are perfectly willing to interact with brands while they're there. Dynamic Logic said 13% claimed to follow brands on social networks. The categories that won the most followers are retail, consumer packaged goods and technology, in that order. Information about new products, sales and discounts are the primary reason people follow those categories, suggesting that utility and value are the main drivers for consumer affinity to brands on social sites.

Among social-media sites, Twitter looks to be the best distributor of information. The micro-blogging site beat out Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace in making internet users feel more informed about current events, pop culture and politics. Since joining Twitter, 75% of respondents felt more informed about current events, vs. the 45% that said the same for Facebook.

Shiv Singh, who leads global social media at digital agency Razorfish, agrees that useful tweets and alerts work for unknown brands, but that rule need not be applied to well-loved, culturally relevant brands.

"If a brand has a home in pop culture, social media doesn't need to be just utility-driven," he said, noting that many big brands known for their cultural influence, such as Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola Nike and Apple "don't have to depend on utilitarian social-media campaigns."

One campaign that has managed to bridge the utility-culturally relevant divide was Burger King's "Whopper Sacrifice" from ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The campaign asked Facebookers to ditch 10 friends for a free burger. And while it mimicked the social behavior of "friending," it layered on the value incentive of free food.

Influencer Marketing: Best Connected Individuals Are Not the Most Influencial in Social Networks

This one's a nose-bleed. Geek alert!

But there's an idea there somewhere. From your POV, what strategies can you deduce out of this?

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Best Connected Individuals Are Not the Most Influential Spreaders in Social Networks

Who are the best spreaders of information in a social network? The answer may surprise you.

The study of social networks has thrown up more than a few surprises over the years. It's easy to imagine that because the links that form between various individuals in a society are not governed by any overarching rules, they must have a random structure. So the discovery in the 1980s that social networks are very different came as something of a surprise. In a social network, most nodes are not linked to each other but can easily be reached by a small number of steps. This is the so-called small worlds network.

Today, there's another surprise in store for network connoisseurs courtesy of Maksim Kitsak at Boston University and various buddies. One of the important observations from these networks is that certain individuals are much better connected than others. These so-called hubs ought to play a correspondingly greater role in the way information and viruses spread through society.

In fact, no small effort has gone into identifying these individuals and exploiting them to either spread information more effectively or prevent them from spreading disease.

The importance of hubs may have been overstated, say Kitsak and pals. "In contrast to common belief, the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people," they say.

At first glance this seems somewhat counterintuitive but on reflection it makes perfect sense. Kitsak and co point out that there are various sceanrios in which well connected hubs have little influence over the spread of infromation. "For example, if a hub exists at the end of a branch at the periphery of a network, it will have a minimal impact in the spreading process through the core of the network."

By contrast, "a less connected person who is strategically placed in the core of the network will have a significant effect that leads to dissemination through a large fraction of the population."

The question then is how to find these influential individuals. Kitsak and co say that the way to do this is to study a quantity called the network's "k-shell decomposition". That sounds complicated but it isn't: a k-shell is simply a network pruned down to the nodes with more than k neighbours. Individuals in the highest k-shells are the most influential spreaders.

The team has tested the idea on a number of networks including the network formed by 5.5 million members of LiveJournal.com, the network of email contacts in the computer science department at University College London and the network of actors who have co-starred in adult films as defined by the internet movie database.

Perhaps the most interesting outcome is that the new approach emphasises the location of the individual within the network relative to the information or virus that is being spread. In hindsight, that seems like an obvious point but one that has not been well accounted for in the past.

The team also use their new ideas to study the spread of infections which do not confer immunity on recovered individuals. They conclude that "high k-shell layers form a reservoir where infection can survive even if its contagiousness is well below the epidemic threshold." Not an altogether reassuring result.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1001.5285: Identifying Influential Spreaders in Complex Networks

From iMedia: 6 marketing opportunities on Foursquare

By Tony Felice

January 27, 2010

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ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:

• When bringing Foursquare into the marketing mix, there is an opportunity to gather valuable consumer research
• Given the availability of behavioral data, simple loyalty programs obviously spring to mind
• Foursquare has demonstrated a willingness to work with marketers in creating branded badges

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare is social network billed as part social city guide, part friend finder, and part nightlife game. The NYC-based startup is being hailed as the next-generation social network, calling on gregarious technophiles to broadcast their locations via geo-aware mobile devices. What sets Foursquare apart from many competitors in the "local social" space is its undeniably sticky platform. Users are awarded points for their check-ins, and they scramble to earn badges and vie for bragging rights as the most frequent visitor of popular places. In short, Foursquare is fun.

Many observers are quick to draw parallels between Foursquare and Twitter. Both services made their public debuts at South by Southwest (during different years), where both were hailed as breakout hits. One of the reasons behind Foursquare's current momentum can be found in the type of user it has continued to attract: early adopters and social media mavens -- vocal segments that others look to for trends in the space.

Stay informed. Want to hear more insights regarding emerging opportunities in social media marketing? Attend ad:tech San Francisco, April 19-21. Learn more.

Foursquare seems to be very keen to its marketing potential, and its founders certainly have their heads in the game. They are embracing ways to allow businesses to leverage the platform, ranging from integrated promotions and branded badges to fully customized campaign landing pages. Third-party application development has exploded, and we can expect to see marketers using the service in new and unique ways.

Foursquare connects social media to the real world. Finally, marketers have the opportunity to connect online campaigns to the "last 50 feet." This is undoubtedly the brass ring in many social media ROI formulas.

Read on for six steps that will enable you, as a marketer, to begin leveraging the service.

Take ownership of your location
Although Foursquare has a very large number of businesses listed, a good first step is to make sure your company's locations are listed properly on Foursquare. The easiest way to verify single locations is to log in and search for an establishment using the form in the top right corner of the page. One word of caution: The search will be limited to the area listed below the search field, so make sure that's properly set.

Once the locations are properly set up, you may highlight items of interest by using "Tips" and "Tags" -- but refrain from overt or blatant promotion. Among the lessons marketers have learned from other social networks, such as Digg and Twitter, is that these networks are communities first and foremost. Each has its own engagement model, and it takes time to experience and understand those paradigms. Don't crash the party.

Spread the word
Foursquare is rapidly gaining mainstream visibility and is growing at a heated pace. Over the past month, registration has grown more than 50 percent, to approximately 300,000 at the time of this writing. Despite this kind of growth, the service still has a relatively limited reach, and it's safe to say that most businesses' customers have either not been exposed to (or not become engaged with) Foursquare. For companies that want to start using the service to offer special deals to customers and entice them to come back, it's important to let people know about the availability of such deals.

Of course, the logical place to start is through the company website. This can be done effectively through a callout available from PlaceWidget. This Foursquare-branded widget quickly displays the name of the location, its address and phone number, and the number of people who have checked in there. It also shows suggestions from Foursquare users about what to try, buy, or do at that particular location. In the center of the widget, a photo of the Foursquare "mayor" is shown. "Mayor" is the title given to the Foursquare user who has checked in to that location the most, and these designations are one of the key reasons behind the service's popularity.

Identify your loyalists
When bringing Foursquare into the marketing mix, there is also an opportunity to gather valuable consumer research. A key part of the service's interface showcases which users have checked in at given locations. A programmer familiar with the Foursquare API can also demonstrate how many times each user has visited, the duration of each visit, locations each user has visited before and after coming to a particular venue, the number of other visitors that user is friends with, and the reach each visitor has. When evaluating Foursquare in this way, the potential of the platform is limited only by one's imagination.

Create specials
Given the availability of behavioral data, simple loyalty programs obviously spring to mind. The most obvious approach is to reward a location's mayor, as that user is the most frequent visitor and likely a heavy user of the service. Early on in Foursquare's evolution, a handful of venues that recognized this marketing potential created "chalkboard" specials. Following the appearance of grassroots incentives such as these, Foursquare announced formal support of such initiatives. Companies can now visit Foursquare for Businesses to get more information on the program and browse ideas that other venues have implemented.

Possible applications:

• Focus on new or repeat customers
• Target customers with heavy influence and reach
• Reward users who bring X number of other users with them
• "Easter egg" specials (e.g., a reward to the first person to create X number of Tips)

Custom badges
The gaming component of Foursquare is one of the key reasons for its appeal. As part of the game, users have the ability to "unlock" badges along the way. There are at least 32 standard badges, with varying degrees of difficulty. The sequence required to unlock several early badges is made apparent, while others are more obscure. Once a badge is earned, it remains on the user's profile indefinitely.

Although not discussed as overtly as the specials, Foursquare has demonstrated a willingness to work with marketers in creating branded badges. The most obvious of these is the Intel Insider, presumably earned by checking in or around the Intel booth at CES 2010. Another very interesting badge is sponsored by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. Regular commuters visiting BART stations can unlock the badge and are eligible to win $25 ticket giveaways through January. The official announcement from BART indicates that there is more engagement to come.

Here are just a few examples of branded Foursquare badges:

From left to right:

• Intel Insider
• BART
• Jobs (Apple)
• Thriving Ivory
• Harvard

Enhanced loyalty programs
Loyalty marketing hasn't changed much since moms started clipping Betty Crocker points from the sides of boxes, but it has changed the way consumers interact with the companies. Is it possible to build a better mousetrap? Perhaps.

Recently, Tasti D-Lite announced the rollout of TastiRewards, a rewards program that incentivizes customers to associate their social media accounts with membership cards. Customers earn extra points by broadcasting the program through social media. As Mashable points out, "This marks the first time that a restaurant chain has tacked on social media rewards for social media exposure to their customer loyalty programs, and it's been a long time coming. Finally, the connection between customers' social media behavior and their in-store behavior is coming full circle."

It's quite a remarkable evolution. Customers that redeem TastiRewards do so in front of a very wide and very public audience. Brand mentions spike, mindshare grows, and conversions increase in a virtuous cycle. Customers are innately bound to their online selves, leading the way to some very powerful and informative analytics.

Tony Felice is senior strategist at Red Door Interactive.