Nick Cifuentes

Foursquare – you’ve heard of it, probably even might be a member yourself. The quick-growing location-based social network is beginning to make reputable noise in the social space, and since August, traffic and user growth has soared for the new social noise maker.

According to co-founder Dennis Crowley, the platform is closing in on 500,000 individual users, with about 70% of the user base in the United States, and their international arm growing quickly – especially Tokyo, according to Crowley in an e-mail interview. These users are also checking in at an astonishing rate of 1.5 million check-ins a week.

If you are not familiar with Foursquare, the concept is simple – you sign up for an account and then you began the process of checking-in wherever you go; the majority of check-ins that are being done are through GPS-enabled mobile devices.

This social city-guide and game rewards you then for doing interesting things. The motive is to encourage people to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways. The rewards attached to this are tied to pseudo ‘badges’ a user is given for unlocking new places, times you check-in, how often, ultimately working your way to become the “Mayor” or “Deputy” of that locale.

In addition, the platform makes it very easy to connect your updates to your Twitter and Facebook profiles – seemingly synching your entire network with each update you post on Foursquare. Something that was not in place last year when Foursquare introduced themselves at the SXSW, but is working it’s way into a much more seamless process in 2010 and allows for a much higher engagement and viral distribution.

The concept is quite ingenious and despite it’s evolving stature; it is beginning to make quite the name for itself. Just in the past month, it’s been reported that Foursquare inked several major media partnership deals, including Bravo TV, Zagat, Warner Bros., HBO, the History Channel, ExploreChicago, and more.

These “branded” type of channels could be, if used and marketed properly, great engagement tools that focus around brand awareness, content sharing, and goes one step further and creates a physical presence with your brand using local stops where you instruct users to go. With the user taking part in the brand’s “game”, it allows the brand to create custom badges with Foursquare directly to keep user’s engaged and work toward further outreach goals.

Zagat @ Foursquare

Zagat’s official Foursquare page is calling the partnership “Foodie Love” and there is a custom badge to go along with taking part in the Zagat experience. The page offers people to follow Zagat and then take part and in various venues where Zagat wants users to check-in from, mainly a variety of restaurants throughout the country; check-in there, become a Zagat Foodie, and unlock the Zagat Foodie Badge. And through further engagement – Zagat is going to have a online video series on their website called “Meet the Mayor” where they will feature discussions with prominent Foursquare mayors.

Harvard @ Foursquare

The prestigious Harvard University has also partnered with Foursquare to create a channel where they list locations, experiences and ideas for students and visitors to go and check-in – taking part in the Harvard community; soon unlocking a custom Harvard Foursquare badge. Whether that helps with the admission process…I’m going to say doubtful – but hell of an engagement tool!

New York Times @ Foursquare

The NYT recently closed a deal with Foursquare and created a branded channel that is celebrating the 2010 Vancouver Olympics by sharing tips on what to see and where to go in Vancouver and Whistler. And if you check-in to two recommended venues you get to unlock the Olympics badge.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Foursquare is growing quickly, with the focus mainly on gaining users, not revenue at the moment, according to Crowley; with now nearly 500,000 users, this number is likely to grow fast! After the Bravo TV deal was inked last month, a number of major brands, as shown above, came knocking at the door to work with Foursqaure, no doubt helping them earn some revenue. And with the ability for locales to offer up free food, drinks, discounts, coupons just for those who might become the “mayor” or “deputy” of their venue; being on Foursquare could soon become like being on Twitter…maybe? In addition, Crowley did confirm that Foursquare is working on creating actual incentives for users who garner specific badges and points in their account - not just pseudo “Mayoral” titles.

To that end, Foursquare is working on a set of services and tools, according to AdAge in early February, to begin offering paid services on a three tiers: one for small (local) businesses, one for retail chains, one for large marketers. Begin throwing these offers around, and soon Foursquare will move pass just the “engagement” level that these major brands are seeing above as far as click, follows and check-ins; and offer nailed-down analytics (impressions, clicks, friends, etc…) and deals could be sold against impressions such as web ads, clicks such as search ads, or even what Kunur Patel in AdAge said, “ a completely new model: cost per check-in.”

As we now have buried our eyes & minds into a very exciting 2010, the focus on social media marketing will be ever growing. In fact, from this point on, I believe we are going to see a number of changes in marketing strategies, on and offline.

If you think closely, the world’s operating system is morphing. In the past, you have had a number of “closed” model marketing systems that prevented the singular idea that social media describes: collective interaction. In past years, marketing strategies have lived within specific business models and relied on “closed” channels to disseminate the message. For example, a newspaper would advertise a static ad, a direct-mail message would take a matter of days to make even a single impression. Once that message was delivered, the channel relied on a number of “closed” systems to tie into the medium properly, and the need to pause and wait for participation was often days, weeks, even months depending on the type and length of the campaign.

In today’s world, the operating system is being revamped, what took days, now takes seconds, and together this process of marketing evolution is pushing today’s marketing programs into an “open” system. This “open” system allows for instant connections with the customer, while the opportunity for response, collaboration, sharing, and growth increase tremendously.

Fundamental Shift

While this shift in marketing systems is underway, this “closed” to “open” environment is going to expand further beyond business into our everyday lives. Obviously, as marketers, we think of this in relevancy to the delivery of a message, in some manner. But, as time expands and social media begins to consume users’ lives online, the idea of an “open” system will fall into a number of funnels, including media and content, advertising, business solutions, education, legal environments, lifestyle, entertainment, love, religion, sex, etc…

And as this shift into an “open” system expands, a number of brands and individuals will be wary of moving so quickly into such an environment. A system like this is cluttered with a number of worries, such as “out of control”, “chaotic”, “risky”, or “feeling of being unsafe”.

This inescapable feeling of being in “risk” is common among brands, but learning to trust the system will be the hardest step to overcome starting in 2010 and moving beyond. If relating this change in marketing ethics to social media, the door must be swung open to attain any success. To what level you remain “open”, your business growth will be directly related.

Social Media: 5 Years Into the Future

12-18 Months: Social Media is CRM

As social media slowly becomes a part of everyone’s daily web interaction, this reality and change in systems means that YOU, your brand, must adjust and focus on agility instead of just optimization when it comes to integrating social media into your marketing programs. And as this becomes more of a reality, Social Media CRM systems are becoming a necessity, rather than option as more users begin to take part in social media and recognize your brand.

In the next 12-18 months, brands will work to close the gap on effectively managing dialogue with the market in terms of:

• sharing information
• fast-tracking problems
• responding to questions

Both internally and externally with customers, prospects, employees, other stakeholders, and the public.

Social Media monitoring devices such as Radian6, Visible Technologies, Buzzlogic, TNS Cymfony, Trackur, and other social media monitoring tools allow you to keep a finger to the pulse of your brand and see real-time data as social media mentions take place.

12-18 Months: Digital Jet Lag Goes Into Red Alert

As information already within social media is becoming clogged, expect a massive increase in the next 12-18 months with the uptick in both users and social media popularity. Because of this, expect filtering and curation to become a huge business. When it comes to finding methods to cull the information being pushed into the social networks and allow users to sort through it more efficiently, a step toward contextualizing and connecting with the ‘right’ information will step into the forefront with a number of new tools, platforms and systems to help control this excessive amount of content.

To be continued…

This post is part one of a continuous series that will be posted throughout the rest of January and February. Here is a sneak peak to some of the topics that I will be covering:

• Resistance to Change Ends?
• Privacy will become a MUST for Users
• Real-time, Social Mobile: Feedback, Rating, Comments, Tagging
• Uprising in Automated Social Agents
• Socially Augmented Reality
• FREE Access to a Global Network
• Social “Books”
• Smarter Social Advertising: Mobile, Online
• The End of One-Way Communications
• Social Advertising Budgets Explode
• The Extreme Reputation Economy
• The Importance of Social Capital
• The Global Social Brain

This blog series will also be posted on my work blog @ http://www.ovrdrv.com/blog

For the better part of 2009, Twitter and Facebook have been stealing the spotlight when it comes to discussions regarding social media “movers and shakers”. This is understandable as both have truly stepped on the gas in terms of increasing user base and improving functionality both in-house and externally through third party application development. Furthermore, both companies continue to dedicate significant time and research towards making their services useful for businesses, as we see new organizations join these networks daily and each with unique goals and strategies for doing so.

However, Flickr is a photo and video sharing social media channel that is also experiencing rapid growth and integration within many avenues of online business development and marketing, currently hosting more than 4 billion images, up from 3billion in November of 2008. With that said, Flickr should be researched and considered for use by many entrepreneurs as it too plays a large role within your company’s potential to benefit via social media outlets.

While there are a multitude of both personal and professional reasons to utilize Flickr, business owners should focus on implementing this platform to increase their level of personal interaction with current clients, build further awareness of their corporate brand, and perform strategic outreach campaigns to potential interested parties that would otherwise be unaware of their products or services.

Below are some simple starting points that will hopefully start your creative juices flowing as to how you can tailor the use of Flickr to your own company’s needs and strategies.

Flickr Facts for You & Your Company

• Flickr is an online web service and social community for sharing photos and video. As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images, up from 3 billion in November of 2008.
• Flickr allows for user interaction, commenting, categorizing of albums, and building of contact lists (like followers or friends, if you will).
• Flickr allows users to sign up for a Pro-Account, which provides unlimited uploading of pictures and videos for $25/year.
• Flickr Groups are used to enhance social sharing based on location, events, affinity groups, etc. This is a large asset for businesses to further reach potential clients and customers based on interests.
• Within Flickr, users can create online Photo Contests to increase user interaction and visibility to the channel.
• Flickr provides a very resourceful analytics program that allows you to track your photo traffic and views by very detailed metrics.
• Ties in very well with other social media channels to cross update and draw traffic back to the channel.
• Very effective tagging, batching, editing and grouping functionality with Organizr.

How Can You & Your Company Utilize Flickr?

• Share all photos and videos from both in-house and user submitted material to act as a live-time online photo album.
• Utilize the highly effective keyword tagging features to get your company’s material visible to SEO searches, as well as internal searches from Flickr users.
• Join many Flickr affinity groups to gather interest from those who may not be familiar with your company’s products, services, location or values.
• Photo contests and special promotions can be designed and executed with Flickr as the vehicle used to facilitate these activities.
• Connect Flickr to current website, Facebook Fan Page, corporate blog, etc. to smoothly cross post content among all of of your company’s online assets.
• Flickr has great API and Widget based functionality that allows you and your technical staff to utilize Flickr functionality within your current online assets, displaying your public Flickr content in ways that work best for your brand, purpose or intended delivery to your audience.
• Learn more about your community and the values, activities, events and experiences your users or fellow businesses take part in.

A very important thing to keep in mind regarding your use of Flickr for business is this - do NOT oversell. This is highly frowned upon by the Flickr team and, more often than not, those companies who practice this have their account deleted from the site altogether. Flickr has constructed a very helpful, light-hearted and colloquial set of guidelines that will ensure you are fully aware of what the Do’s & Don’ts are for using this service.

Entrepreneurs must understand that Flickr is not a billboard, rather it is an online photo sharing community, a virtual scrapbook if you will, for you to further connect with those who you wish to gain a more robust idea of who you are and what you value as a business.

So, take a tour and explore the various features and uploading tools available. Search for groups that would be of interest to you or your market. Ask questions and share your thoughts here by commenting below. As you research its versatility and role within the world of social media, it could spark creative and helpful thoughts as to how Flickr can be useful to your company and overall brand identity.

Guest post by Business Development Consultant, Guy Mitrano (@guybby) Mitrano is a Gen-Y entrepreneur, and CEO of Burlington Boatyard, LLC & business consultant with strong awareness of the needs, strategies, & goals of fellow young entrepreneurs and start up companies.

Blogs. 

As an Internet strategist - my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution - all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.  

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research - taking notice of the growing digital space around me - thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.  

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry - allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.  

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.   

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly - through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis - blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.

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NetSuite.

OK, I am not one that is normally critical of certain software or CMS programs – as all have their positives & negatives – but I have to stress the limitations of NetSuite and its astounding ability to ‘frustrate’ the creative design and marketing process of brand marketing.

If you are not familiar with NetSuite, it is an all-in-one set of online business software programs that include accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, e-commerce and website development.

NetSuite can be broken down into four main types of accounts:

1. NetSuite (Standard: Comprehensive Web-based solution for midsize businesses that integrates Accounting/ERP, CRM, Ecommerce and partner collaboration capabilities.
   
2. NetSuite (Small Business): One complete Web-based application for smaller businesses that integrates the front and back office, managing sales, service, accounting and Web presence.
   
3. NetSuite CRM: NetSuite CRM offers a Web-based CRM solution that gives your company all the traditional CRM capabilities you need to manage marketing through customer acquisition.
   
4. NetSuite CRM+: Total Customer Relationship Management CRM solution for businesses large and small with customer-centric view to manage initial and on-going relationships over the phone, in person, or on the Web.
   

What is NetSuite Good For?

NetSuite is ideal for businesses of various sizes – mainly small to mid-businesses, providing integrated accounting, CRM, online marketing, web management, inventory, and sales management, as well as vendor and manufacturer relationship management.  NetSuite keeps track of all product information, web pages, customer login information, vendor/manufacturer details, stock/shipping details, auto-responder and customer emails, SEO and ad tracking/web metrics information, online marketplace, as well as accounting/ERP details.

Otherwise, it makes the job easier for sales, accounting, and other internal groups within a business – providing a ‘streamline’ system that (doesn’t) always work.

The Various Troubles of NetSuite.

NetSuite has fixed a number of issues since its release in 2002, but many still remain. There is a plethora of issues that still remain when it comes to transferring a website to the NetSuite platform; such as setting up proper page redirects, setting up dynamic links, changing content, images and other aspects of the website – it often takes much time and calls to customer support to fix.  And when it comes to making changes to the website once things are setup  - it could take a few hours or sometimes even an entire day to show up on the website.

And sometimes smaller issues such as creating new items, losing customer order history, and more – although these problems seem minuscule, with NetSuite they take HOURS of extra work to fix, and can cost companies thousands of dollars in extra work and time wasted that could have gone into adding new products to the website or improving marketing and management systems.

The NetSuite Now.

Although NetSuite has grown to the point of debuting its own IPO, and grow exponentially, NetSuite is still only geared toward the small to mid-size business.  And at a price and support-process that seems very high and overrated respectively - you have to be careful when deciding to use NetSuite.

I am not here to ‘bash’ NetSuite – I think their software is wonderful for its all-in-one features and growing application development.  But, I also think that it really depends what type of ‘brand’ you are – whether you want to invest the time, effort, and often-headaches into the software system.

If you are an ecommerce brand that wants to just ‘sell’ your products and see a return – NetSuite is great.  But I will say this, if you are a ‘creative’ brand that really wants to stretch the wall with what you might have going on within the brand, from an internal and external marketing point – referring to design, development, UI functionality, internal marketing (NetSuite is good at), and external marketing such as social media and other ‘new media’ marketing tactics – you are limited.  Very limited.

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