This is pretty cool because now you can see how your contacts are connected. But how else can data visualisation help us?

Location:

I have been trying to track keywords and events based on location via social media tools for a long time. The issue with social sites like Twitter is that people don’t set their location correctly. For instance if a Twitter user enters Jamaica as their location then it assumes Jamaica, New York, USA, not the country. Also people use other terms like jamdown, jamrock, or just cities like Kingston or Montego Bay. When trying to find tweets from a specific area even if the person matches the keywords the location may be off.

So I first considered creating a list of Jamaican twitter users, however how will this be updated (migration etc.)? Then I thought of tracking interactions and then flagging users as Jamaican, but once again that would require alot of human interaction. Ideally I want something automated and dynamic. InMaps gave me a potential answer. Track interactions between users and then group them into subsets just like InMaps. Couple that with a metrics system, where a user with properly filled out Location or listed under multiple twitter lists with specific keywords or Klout has a higher metric than others. When users are associated with other users with higher metrics it helps to create focal points for the network.

Online communities are associated by content, relation (friends, family, groups, alumni) or location. By establishing the link between individuals online we can create a dynamic social mapping tool more accurate than what currently exists, even more accurate than what the user them-self knows. This would allow analysis of keywords by social-location-grouping or possibly by profession, education, and more.

What are your views?

This competition is different from a standard one because of the additional publicity social media garners. Not only do participants purchase Smirnoff products to be featured in the photos, but they also encourage their friends to “like” the page in order to vote, which increases Smirnoff Jamaica’s online fan base. Also most voters will scroll through photos and other content on the page giving maximum return for the branding effort. So far 3 of my friends have entered and through social media I know they have reached out to thousands of Jamaicans to vote for their photos.

Below are some of the entries:

Photo by Michelle Hamilton

Photo by Brittney Hughes

Click on the photos to view them on Facebook, or view the whole album here. Remember to click “Like” for your favourites!

Know of any other cool social media marketing initiatives in Jamaica? shoot me an email pr@dmitridawkins.com thanks!

What grades your social media efforts are interactions, how useful your tweets or facebook posts are, how it helps people, how it relates to others. Social media is building a relationship, with your friends, other personalities and brands. If your social media efforts do not help, or build relationships, then why bother? Now some people will add that hey, they are just trying to broadcast information  useful to their followers, this is also building a relationship because your followers then begin to trust you for quality content and in some cases understand you may not be able to reply specifically to them. The fact is trust, in social media people trust you for your content (opinions, blogposts, videos, photos, news, etc,). Changing or adjusting your content for better rankings or seo is not the aim, the community is the aim, build your community, word of mouth is a better recommendation than any search engine.

In all of your efforts, reporting, etc remember people first, ask yourself, are you helping someone or are you just pushing out useless content on a daily basis? It doesn’t matter if you have x amount of followers if they are bots, or you have no interaction, find your niche and provide for it.

Since then people have been killed, injured and kidnapped in Egypt as demonstrations continue.

Earlier today Kenneth Cole, a popular clothing brand released this tweet:

Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KCless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®Kenneth Cole
KennethCole

Here is an image just in case the tweet is removed:

I will put this in my books as what not to do for social media marketing. What do you think?

Update! Kenneth Cole has tweeted this in response to the uproar on twitter:

Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KCless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®Kenneth Cole
KennethCole

I am not sure if that counts as an apology, is there any way for them to recover from this blunder?

Update 2! A fake account has been created on twitter: @kennethcolepr which is tweeting more scenarios that Kenneth Cole tweets could disregard history. The smoke is building, will this go viral? 2700 followers in 2 hours.

Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

This new addition just adds to the company’s mission by integrating more social interactions into their products. Google has several social products, like Orkut which has been dwarfed by rivals Facebook and Myspace. They even tried microblogging with Google Buzz. However none of their social products have been dominant in their categories so far. With the addition of mobile check-ins Google will be rivalling Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places and other social apps that have jumped on to the check-in train.

Unfortunately Google has launched the service in their Android Application only, leaving Iphone and Blackberry users waiting to test it out. Another flaw is that users cannot add venues from the mobile app, which negates it’s effectiveness in poorly mapped areas. Additionally Google Latitude doesn’t allow you to share your location with other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Hey Google, this is 2011, people like sharing content between social networks!

The good thing is that Latitude will support automatic checkins, well sort of, it will pickup your proximity to venues and automatically prompt you to check in. Never forget to check-in again! Also Google has learned from their Buzz privacy issues and have integrated some key privacy options from the get-go which seem to be very customisable.

Overall I think it is too early to tell if this is a hit or miss, with 10 million Latitude users, Google will have a large customer base to try out this new service, even if it is currently limited to Android users only. Let’s see how this will change the geolocation market and how other services will adapt to stay ahead.

Chilitos JaMexican restaurant in Jamaica is a huge fan of social media. They use it actively in promoting specials, events and to get provide better customer service. Chilitos is one of the first restaurants in Jamaica to use Foursquare (what is?) specials, giving away Margaritas to repeat customers. They are also heavy Twitter users, with over 290 Jamaican followers, proving that social media works for niche markets in the island. Recently Chilitos made a first by creating a physical Follow Friday board, to promote their most loyal twitter users:

With the Monster Foursquare Halloween Costume Party Chilitos is not only organising the first Foursquare event and meetup in Jamaica, but also attempting to unlock the swarm badge for customers. When 50 or more Foursquare users are checked in to the same place, they can unlock the swarm badge:

Currently I don’t think any Jamaican Foursquare user has the swarm badge, unlocking this badge will be valuable to the users of this popular geolocation service. The event is also being sponsored by Fiction Night Club, who will be hosting the after party and will also feature Foursquare specials all night. As well as NCB Jamaica who with My Elite Grocer will be providing prizes and surprises all night at Chilitos. Other attractions include foursquare specials all night, a taco eating contest and more.

For those planning on attending the event and tweeting, they will be using both #monsterja and #4sqpartyja hashtags, you can use either to see tweets about the event.

For more information please see the Facebook event page, tweet chilitos (@chilitosmexican) or call them 876-978-0537

Tweet

Vision 2030 Campaign

The first stage is to create awareness. This is a call to all the bloggers, twitter users, Facebook users. Share the Vision 2030 campaign online and talk about it with your friends, family and coworkers in person. There is no need to re-invent the wheel, many of your suggestions are already outlined in the National Development Plan prepared by the Planning Institute of Jamaica. You can view the development plan at the following locations:

On this blog: http://dmitridawkins.com/2010/10/jamaicas-vision-2030-national-development-plan/

On Scribd : http://www.scribd.com/doc/39056939/Vision-2030-Jamaica-NDP-Full

On Jamaica’s Vision 2030 website: http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/NationalDevelopmentPlan/tabid/73/Default.aspx

Ask your online social community to at least read the outline, send links to it as an email to all of your address book. The aim is that people can make decisions in accordance with the 2030 plan. This is not just a government venture, as individuals we all need to promote the development of our country. Share the link once a week, or even just once a month. It will help.

Corporate and Organisation Support

Every business and organisation has a core and followers. We need to spread the Vision 2030 plan to all involved, not just creating awareness but also making decisions according to it’s contents. Let employees and members know that they are responsible for executing the plan, that they each need to be a leader of change.

Greater Social Responsibility

As leaders of change for our nation, we need to hold companies and the government responsible for not following the plan. If a company’s business practices are not in line with the plan then support a competitor who is. If a government office or official is making decisions contrary to the plan then petition them, “loud it up”, or don’t re-elect them based on their policies. The only person in control is you.

Remember this is a people driven change, it starts with you, read the relevant sections to you and decide how you can make changes in your home and office. For this to work it has to be an effort from all involved.

I will write another post about this soon, please subscribe to my blog or just keep checking this category : http://dmitridawkins.com/category/making-jamaica-a-developed-country-by-2030/ for information related to the campaign.

This is a call to action for YOU to make a difference.

Thank you,

Dmitri Dawkins and future generations.

Tweet

I am not much of a fashion person myself, but on Tuesday I realised the importance of this event since we could use a common hashtag to track the influence of this event on Twitter and across the web. By Wednesday I had already messaged the Jamaica Observer to have them encourage all participants of Fashion’s Night Out to use the #FNOJa in their promotional tweets. I also encouraged friends to use the hashtag and shared it via several twitter accounts. Soon most Fashion’s Night Out related tweets were using the hashtag. I must say thanks to The Jamaica Observer for realising the need to track the hashtag and promoting it so well.

@jamaicaobserver Can everyone please use the #fnoja hashtag so we can establish Jamaican users vs. rest of the world? Thanksless than a minute ago via TweetDeckDmitri Dawkins
utenjm

So what did we learn from this? There were 1683 tweets about #FNOJa from 416 unique authors. 130 web links were shared in those 1683 tweets from 24 distinct domains. You can see more below:

#fnoja twitter stats

416 unique authors may not seem like alot, but those 416 authors had a potential impact of 152,000 views. Additionally this hashtag was specific to Jamaica, most of those 152,000 views were Jamaican. Additionally these views are better than any flier, because it is buzz, people talking to people about the event, creating greater online presence and awareness directly.

Using Hashtags is an awesome tool to help promote a cause, brand, or for tracking. Hashtags organise data to make it usable and easily found. I personally use hashtags to keep up on news on specific topics such as the #JamaicanBlogger hashtag that Jamaicans use when they release a new blog post, content from that hashtag is also retweeted by @JamaicanBlogger. Tweets using the #Jamaica Hashtag are also aggregated daily for an online newspaper using a platform called Paper.li (Thanks @brukins).

On September 10 we made our mark on Twitter with a truly local hashtag, let’s continue to use them as we organise and comment on more things using social media, to let Jamaica’s presence be known worldwide!

Tweet

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: