What does this mean for your business?

If you have an offline business, you stand to immediately benefit from location-based services. Here’s a few of the most popular mobile location-based apps you’ll want to leverage:

• Businesses using the mobile app foursquare engage in friendly competition to get locals back to their venue more often.
• Gowalla is a popular mobile app that allows customers to share their comings and goings with their friends, and every time they check in somewhere, their “passport” gets stamped, and they can win more prizes. Every city has featured Featured Spots and Recommended trips that your small business can become a part of.
• Every month, millions of customers turn to the mobile location-based app Yelp to share their experiences with local business. Small businesses can get a wealth of market information with the tools Yelp provides. The customer review power of this service is 26 million users strong.
• Another similar service is Loopt, which according to it’s website, “helps friends connect on the fly and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events.” You’d be smart to get your business and events listed on Loopt.
• Google Buzz is one of the newest mobile location-based apps to keep your eyes on. The site says that Buzz for mobile lets you “See what’s going on nearby, post a message tagged with your location, and follow your friends on the go.” Since it’s from Google, you can bet that Google maps is baked right in. Businesses promoting upcoming events have a huge opportunity for traffic with Buzz.

There are new mobile location-based services springing up all the time, but the most important thing you need to know to leverage these services is the power they have to fuel your business. Location-based apps increase traffic and sales to your business through the power of word-of-mouth. A customer is much more likely to come through your door if he knows her friends are there and love the place. A customer is more likely to impulse buy if the reviews about your business rock. An event venue is much more likely to be packed if people in a user’s geographic location are checking in with their mobile app. Businesses who ignore this inexpensive way to connect with their customers will leave millions of dollars of revenue on the table. Don’t be one of them.

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1. It hijacked my pages and redirected my US visitors to a China sex site (NSFW but not really porn)
2. Some of the ads on the redirected site featured pictures of people like Chris Pirillo and Darren Rowse who seemed to be celebrity sponsors (I really doubt they were!)
3. Ironically, there was even 1 video ad for Lysol disinfecting wipes at the redirected site!
4. My web host, 1&1 (in the Philippines) could not see the redirect when I phoned them for customer support — or else lied because they didn’t want to help

This was definitely unexpected and no bueno, but I had backups to fall back on in the case of something nasty like this happening. What about your business? Do you have a disaster plan in place?

Please consider running a virus/malware scan if you were redirected to some random site from ghennipher.net. I’d hate to be viral in a bad way.

Did any of you have other experiences with my hijacked site?

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Image by Ludwig Gatzke via Flickr

Do you have social network profiles that you just can’t seem to keep up with? If so, I’ve got a little story to tell you. A recent client of mine, a small corporation, once had an employee who created social network profiles all over the internet. This employee finally moved on to other things after 2 years, but left the CEO with no idea exactly where the company’s social network profiles were registered, or how to manage them.

Here’s how it all started. This corporation is very humanistic and communicative, but since it’s also a startup, funds are tight and they hired interns to take care of the ‘non-critical’ social media marketing. They definitely had a lot on their plate and didn’t really know where to start, so they took the scattergraph approach and created profiles at as many social networks as they could find. I know some of you are already starting to feel the pain…

After a couple of years of this, they were seeing no results and brought me in to work with their team. I started by looking at all of their social network profiles. I used a social media monitoring and analysis tool to find out exactly what was happening with their brand, and the kind of communiques their employee had put on social networks.

What I found is that in almost 2 years, most of their social network profiles were abandoned. There was some spotty engagement in Facebook and a business community, but for the most part, as far as these social networks could tell, the company might as well be out of business for all the interaction it had with the communities it was a member of.

But what’s the real cost to a company of keeping these social profiles active? Or more specifically, what’s the cost of allowing them to go dormant?

In working with this client, we identified 3 specific difficulties abandoned social network profiles caused for this company:

1. Missed Opportunities: This company was proactive in their marketing materials, and included their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles on their business cards. But they didn’t include social media in their communications strategy, and therefore lost business due to their lack of engagement. In a very uncomfortable meeting one day, we read the comments customers left for them in various social networks when they first registered. When these questions went unanswered, there was a quick drop in interest, and as expected, no additional customer communication.
2. Sullied Reputation: As much as the CEO thought the company was doing business the Web 2.0 way, the employee in charge of social media was really unclear about his role. Corporate social media is more about customer service and communication than it is about sharing news articles in Digg and Reddit.  2 years after the initial social network profile creation, we found that this employee thought social media marketing meant that he should spend his time favoriting funny articles in Reddit and Digg than providing solid customer service in social networks and community building through the blog.
3. Expense: This small corporation couldn’t handle their social media management in-house because they weren’t sure if all of the company-branded profiles out there were really theirs or not. They had a lot of cleanup to do and realized that hiring a pro to work with their team was the only way to fix it. As we worked through the mess, we found even more issues that were a bit easier to deal with, but their loss in productivity and money was significant.

In my experience of working with companies ready to develop and implement social media, social media literacy is critical to success. This list defines the ABCs of social media literacy:

• Assessment: Always start with an assessment of your company’s social media readiness before you jump in. An assessment should build on the foundation of your business objectives and company culture. You’ll want to assess your strengths and weaknesses in Leadership, Innovation, Engagement. You’ll need to ascertain the competitive landscape and learn if other companies in your industry are successfully using social media in their corporate communications and marketing.
• Buzz: Do your research. Find out what people are saying about your business or products, and find out what they’re also saying about your competitors. It’s easy to let this project engulf you, so break it down with tools. Some popular ones are Google Alerts, Techrigy, and Radian6.
• Communication: The real value in social media for business lies in how it’s broken down communication barriers between customers and companies. The latest tools and trends, the latest apps, and everything that people are talking about indicates how people’s preferences for how they want to communicate is shifting. It’s your job to stay fairly updated on these things. You’ll notice that a “social media campaign” is not at all similar to a traditional media campaign. You can’t just give it to the agency and forget about it. Don’t stay current, stay ahead.

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If you’re not familiar with Blogalicious, it’s the first conference of it’s kind for women of color. It was last month (October ’09) and gave women of color who are bloggers an opportunity to be recognized for their contributions to social media. Unfortunately, women and particularly women of color are overlooked in lists of Social Media Leaders, so Blogalicious gave us an opportunity to truly be recognized. Blogalicious was pivotal in educating marketers on the importance of women of color in today’s marketplace, and helped us build relationships, was very inspiring and motivated us all to create successful blogs.

I’ll be talking about my experience at Blogalicious, and I’d love you to join me tonight and ask me some questions about my work in social media. The call is at 9PM (EST), and here’s the link: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/42015

See you there!

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The internet witnessed tremors of excitement when 100,000 exclusive invites to Wave were sought after by surfers who were curious, passionate, and addicted to Google.

A sense of Déjà vu is hard to avoid. Google sent out similar invites when it launched Gmail in 2007, to build hype. Privileged invites led marketing has been a potent weapon that Google has learned to wield well, and with Google Wave, it intends to go for a big kill…

Read the rest of the article at http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=1631

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• Ideas Worth Spreading (sylwiapresley.wordpress.com)

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Image via Wikipedia

That, in itself, is not odd since I’ve been speaking at web conferences since 2002. What has been different this time is the types of conferences I’ve been asked to speak at lately. They’ve all been conferences directed at Women and particularly, Moms.

Why all of the seemingly sudden interest by corporations in marketing to multicultural women? Perhaps the stats can help tell the story:

• At $1 trillion, the purchasing power of women of color represent the 10th largest global economy — as large as Brazil’s GDP! (Source: World Bank Indicators Database, Sept 2004)
• The earning power of women of color is highest.
• Businesses owned by women of color represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy.
• African-American women are the primary household decision makers.
• The ethnic beauty industry is expected to grow to $11.0 Billion by next year (2010)

Clearly, it’s easy to see why marketers are looking for ways to promote their products to a more diverse audience of women. The economic benefits are really exponential if marketers get it right and don’t market to stereotypes.

I’m honored to be considered an expert in marketing to women of color online, as a woman of color myself, who’s been involved in web marketing since 1999.

My overriding goal is to help marketers understand and target multicultural women better. I help marketers to nix stereotypes, nix generalities, engage better, build growth and loyalty.

Kudos and many thanks to the conference organizers who have asked me to speak to their largely female audiences about social media marketing on behalf of all women of color.

• Blissdom
• Touchpoint
• Blogaglicous

I’m looking forward to building a future with marketers who recognize this incredibly important market. If you’re a marketer who wants a bit more information on what multicultural women’s needs are, check out these key takeaways to our Blogalious panel on Social Media and the Woman of Color.

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In it, I share some of the best secrets I’ve learned about how bands are using social media to promote their tours and music.

If you have a band, or work in music promotion, get started using social media by using these secrets:

1. Your artist or band website: This is really your home base, the hub around which all of the other social media tools can revolve. If we were in the brick and mortar world, your own website might be the equivalent of your company’s main office. Some points you may want to consider for your site include:

• The site should be, among other things, user-friendly, creative in a way that is reflective of your band image, yet still as clear and uncluttered as possible.
• You want people who come to your site to easily find all of the vital information about your act (i.e. your bio, electronic press kit, show/tour schedule, email list sign-up, booking info, management contact, music, and merchandise, etc.). It needs to be a place for fans, yes, but also for the professionals to come for information access (for example, the press, booking agents, club and venue owners, labels, etc.).
• While you might create a blog or a conversation corner where fans can comment about your shows or whatever artist-related topic they’re up for, you might also direct them to your MySpace site instead and invite them to participate in your blog there. This will help create differentiation between those two sites.
• Your website can also be a great location for your band store. It can enable you to make your highest margins on your merchandise (T-shirts, posters, caps, etc.) and your CDs (you may want to consider having a third party handle the actual fulfillment of your CDs and merchandise, unless you have friends or fans who…continue reading here:

More about the article author, Christopher Harding: “Christopher Harding has spent 20 years as a songwriter, author, filmmaker, producer, and executive of film, TV, and music.”

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Come join us Sunday, July 19, 2009 to help the author of  The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, Tara Hunt and the crew to live her “dream …to quit my job and karaoke across America, bringing peace, love and brotherhood with me along the way.”

RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=97903985919

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Twitter is yet another example of where brands have to accept a loss of control. In this case, it is not about putting the brand in the hands of the market but in the hands of the people for whom the brand is their livelihood. A certain amount of letting go is a necessity. We will undoubtedly see a few missteps in C-tweets, and we’ll learn and move on. Ultimately, the medium may change but basics of branding still apply — both for the brands themselves and for their executive stewards: Be true, be relevant, be transparent, respect your brand and your customers, don’t make a promise you can’t keep.

Check out the rest of the blog post about C-Level Tweeting at AdAge.

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Last week, Yahoo released a real-time Twitter monitoring tool called Sideline. I’ve been playing around with it for a few days, and though it’s no Radian6 monitoring tool, it does have some neat features your company may find useful.

Trending Topics on Twitter

Want to know what the cool kids on Twitter are tweeting about today? Check out Sideline’s Trending Topics screen. This is great for monitoring topic trending related to a conference, new product release, or any other much-talked-about situation that affects your brand name.

Engage Customers Better

You can also create and group custom queries by topics of interest. This allows you to create as many search groups as you’d like. Theres also a Favorites button, and you can reply directly from the Sideline interface to any tweet in your group.

Customer Attitudes Matter

My favorite feature on Sideline is the Advanced Search Builder. It allows you to build a Twitter Search based on Words, People, even Attitudes. Smart companies pay attention not only to mentions of their brand on Twitter, but how people feel about it. A huge credibility free-fall is when a company auto-follows any mention of their brand without taking the time to see if the tweet is bashing the product or praising it. Granted, for some companies, it’s a LOT of work to weed through mentions to ascertain the attitude of the person toward the brand — but this Sideline feature makes this very important job a little easier.

One more note about Sideline: It’s an open-source tool, so have your developers take a look at it.  It’s an Adobe Air app aimed at users looking for info from the Twitter public sideline. Definitely a tool worth taking a look at.

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