Journey

Facebook Places, Failure to Launch?

// August 19th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Social Media Marketing, Technology

Using the Tagline Who, What, When, and Now…Where Facebook has officially announced the introduction of Facebook places. Will this be a killer for geolocation services Gowalla and Foursquare? It’s a bit early to tell however they may have taken a wrong step by not including certain features.

Places is currently only available in the US first of all, whereas both Foursquare and Gowalla support international venues. Places was also only released with an iphone app and a website for phones that support HTML5, this excludes millions of Blackberry and Android users from using a native app to check in.Given these facts Facebook may not gain traction as quickly since it lacks a single killer feature. Also most smart-phones are not able to use the online checkin since HTML5 is still an emerging technology. The lack of international support really is another issue especially in developing countries like Jamaica where check-in based service Foursquare is one the rise.

Facebook does have one feature that trumps both Foursquare and Gowalla, when a friend tags you at a location you are automatically checked in there. Facebook also shows friends nearby, so you can link up. Both features raise serious privacy concerns though, especially if they are turned on by default. Also if you can be tagged anywhere how is this verified?

It is clear Facebook plans on monetizing the service, with a places for business section under their help page (so they are definately competing with Foursquare). Facebook has also promised to have a read API ready (allows applications to work with Facebook Places) which should allow Foursquare and Gowalla to integrate their apps with Facebook’s new service. By allowing Facebook checkins through Foursquare, Foursquare could increase market share by being THE major app for third party checkins on Facebook, since there is no official app got Android or Blackberry (that would be ironic).

It is still too early to tell but with lack of international support and no native applications for Android and Blackberry this seems like a case of deferred success. What do you think? Please comment below:

Your Name is Your Brand

// August 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Life, Social Media Marketing, Technology

Search engines, everyone uses them and now people are using them to find you. When you start a new job or project and people first hear your name their first instinct is to look you up online. If someone searched for you online what would they find? For most people the first page is their Facebook account. Other social networks like linked in, twitter, myspace, youtube, formspring, foursquare may also show up. Some people may have personal blogs which will also be featured in the search.

So what do those pages say about you? After all you want to give the right impression to those searching for you. Do your top search results include items which you would prefer to be invisible? With social networking becoming more and more integrated personal information and activities are available online.

To help reduce your visibility online I suggest you adjust your privacy settings on Facebook, only share what is necessary and only to your friends. Also if you have a blog or account with questionable content, then share it using an alias (nickname or different last name). Most blogs also give you the option to turn off search engine crawling, which prevents search engines from indexing your blog. Also search for yourself regularly, don’t wait for something embarassing to pop up before you do something about it. Remember your name is your brand, protect it, once it loses integrity it is hard to reclaim.

For more information and tips subscribe to @DM3Tips and @DmitriDawkins or click like on Facebook!

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Online Ads: Location is Key

// August 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

The first time I ran an online campaign I was amazed at the multitude of options I could select. The level of precision that I could target my ads was impressive and immediately I thought, standard advertising is dead. Well standard advertising isn’t quite dead, but social media marketing is quickly gaining traction as an effective marketing tool for nearly every type of business. Before we continue let’s understand the following:

Analytics

Website analytics are used to track what visitors are doing on a website. This information cannot be used to identify a specific person, however it can share information such as their city/town and country, as well as what they clicked and how long they spent on each page.

Conversions

A conversion is when you get a visitor to follow a specific path to complete a given task. This could be signing up to your newsletter, or purchasing  a product or filling out a survey. In your online campaign one can have several aims and track the channels for each conversion.

So….

Given these two terms we can then create a very precise standard online ad campaign. When standard online ads are coupled with social networks like Facebook, it is made even more powerful. Facebook allows you to target ads based on age, adding another option to location and keyword fields targeting. Given these tools one can create an ad for a specific area (Kingston, Jamaica) and specify an age group (18-25) who are searching or reading about cars for an upcoming product targeted to that area, age group and interest. Not only that but using analytics an online ad manager can see exactly how many people interact with your ad, what they do on your web-page and track subsequent conversions. The higher the conversion rate, the more successful your ad campaign is. The best part about this is there is no guess work and you know how effectively the online ad campaign is affecting your sales or interactions (by tracking conversions).

Creating an online presence

Even if your ad viewers are not interacting as you would like you are still increasing your online ad presence. What is an online presence? Well it is the level of brand awareness online. How can we track this? By looking for keywords on Twitter and Google, to see how people are discussing your brand, see who is sharing your content and to see which online personalities have the most influence. Sometimes the buzz generated by those with high influence is so great you can make the person a brand ambassador.

So in short, when creating an online ad you don’t have to worry about creating a huge campaign that is going to be visible to the whole internet. You can target the ad to a specific parish or city, age group and specific keywords, for maximum effect and minimum cost. Traditional media sells blanket advertising, online ads are specific to your target market only. How have you interacted with social media advertising?

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Foursquare For Business

// August 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing, Technology

Foursquare is a steadily growing social networking that allows people to checkin at different venues. So what if you own/manage one of these venues? Well you can claim it on Foursquare and view detailed statistics on checkins as well as setup Foursquare specials. There is a whole lot more information available on the Foursquare website. However let’s go through some of the dynamics that are not covered on the website.

Foursquare Tips

Foursquare allows users to add a tip to your venue. These tips are there to help other users get the best service at a given venue. Sometimes these tips will be negative which will be a clear sign as to what to improve. Other times the tips may coincide with specials, like enter free before 11pm, or happy hour is between 8-9. No matter what the tip is, you want your customers to leave tips, it is crucial interaction that will help to promote your venue.

Foursquare Specials

You can create specials to reward repeat customers and also to increase the frequency of their visits! Every business has repeat customers, so why not reward them? If someone knows they are appreciated they are going to come back more often. Plus using Foursquare you can reward based on frequency, so for every x checkins within y days you can give them a special! There are so many ways to leverage this feature of foursquare and it is not just giving away products/discounts, it is creating buzz for your business. When someone earns a special then they tell their friends, who then share the story or try to get the special as well. What does this mean for you? The best advertising ever, direct referrals from friends.

Foursquare and the snowball effect

Foursquare allows users to connect with other social networks, namely Facebook and Twitter. According to Facebook the average user has 130 friends. The average twitter user also has 126 followers. Foursquare allows users to share their location with Twitter or Facebook, thus immediately notifying people that they are at a location. Earlier we mentioned creating buzz about a venue, when people see their friends visiting a venue on Foursquare they are immediately more willing to try it (it is viewed as a direct referral from a friend).

When a user shares their location on Facebook then an average of 130 friends will also see that the person has checked in at your venue. Many people have much more friends than 130, I have 750+ which means that potentially you just received free advertising to hundreds of people. Have five Foursquare users share their location in a day and that is 650+ on average. Have just 5 users check-in every day and that’s 19,500 per month. Once again this is direct friend referrals. How does that compare to your standard advertising methods (Radio, TV, Print)? The great thing is, many venues are already getting more business because of Foursquare, by claiming your venue the benefit is being able to track the statistics as well as create specials to generate more business. Think of it as the yellow pages on steroids.

Foursquare is a wonderful accessory to any social media marketing campaign. It can generate huge buzz for your venue online and the results are trackable, you can see in numbers how much your brand is being mentioned. Via tips and tweets you can also see what people are recommending to friends/family and take notes on areas to improve on. You can also find out who are your most loyal customers and reward them!

For more information on Foursquare and how to claim your venue, please contact me: info <at> dmitridawkins.com or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dmitridawkins

Why I love Jamaica Hashtag

// August 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Social Media Marketing

Earlier in the year, after learning more about social media etc, I wondered, why can we not find more information about Jamaica online. I started tagging tweets with the #whyIloveJamaica hashtag so that people could easily find reasons to visit Jamaica. Currently the Jamaica Tourist Board is doing a great job with their @visitJamaicaNow and @askJamaica twitter accounts but we can do more!

Strawberry, Pineapple and Mango Mojitos from Twisted Kilt in Montego Bay, Jamaica

So when out and about in Jamaica while posting that great sunset photo, or even remembering moments just tag it! #whyIloveJamaica! I have also created a twitter account with the aim of re-tweeting those that use the hashtag, so that visitors can have a non-stop stream of reasons from real people and not just paid marketing. The internet wants real reviews, let’s give it to them!

How to use one Gmail address for multiple Twitter accounts the efficient way!

// July 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Social Media Marketing

Earlier I saw the following tweet in my feed from Ingrid Riley: