I have to admit, it took me awhile to actually spend any real time with the location based social networks.  I didn’t see the value in it, not to mention, 90% of the time I would never really remember to pull out my phone to check in anywhere.  There wasn’t any real value to me to try to do it more.

I’ve been wanting to write more about these services, but not until I was able to really give them a good try and for the past few weeks, I’ve immersed myself into really 3 choices, Facebook Places, Foursquare and Whrrl.  And for my money, Whrrl is hands down the best experience of the three.

I know there are a few other players out there, but let’s be honest, just like anything else, there’s only room for a few.  Facebook Places will survive because it’s Facebook, and Foursquare has carved out a giant piece of the location based pie so they’re most likely in.  That probably only leaves room for one more player, and I certainly hope it’s Whrrl.

So why I’m I on board the Whrrl train?

1. Community.  It’s the only one of the three that truly has a community feel to it.  I love the concept of “societies” which involve real groups of different passions and interests.  Checking in to similar types of establishments earns you points towards those societies making you more of an influencer.  It’s unique and most importantly fun, which makes me want to use the app more.

2. UI/Design. I’m using their iPhone app and it’s beautiful.  Easy to use, and I love the design.

3. Beyond Checking In. With Whrrl, it’s not just about checking in that makes you influential.  Providing reviews and having your recommendations passed on earn you points as well.  You can share photos and create overall stories about your experiences.

That being said, they do have some work to do to make themselves a true player in the game.  As it stands, the # of users is nowhere near Places or Foursquare which makes it a bit tougher.  Not many in my network are Whrrl users and most people that would even consider using a service like this are only going to pick one.  I think they need a killer feature/offering to make it happen and if I were them, I’d be working the business partnerships HARD.  If they could get some national partnerships to offer up some nice deals they could make a dent here.  Or better yet, build up a sales team and hit the local scene hard.  There are TONS of small to medium sized businesses out there that would love the opportunity.  They just don’t know about it and need some hand holding to bring them along.  What business wouldn’t be on board with rewarding their most frequent customers?  It’s more scalable then offering a deal to EVERY customer, which makes it more likely they’ll be on board long term.

If you haven’t tried Whrrl, I highly recommend giving it a shot.  I think you’ll find the experience enjoyable, and I’m pulling for them to break through.

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As a thank you to those that visit and contribute to my blog, I’ve wanted to do some sort of giveaway for awhile, but wanted it to be somewhat relevant to what I do and write about.  My blog certainly doesn’t generate crazy amounts of traffic or revenue, so I couldn’t exactly get too crazy, but I think I’ve come up with something pretty cool.

So what’s the prize package you ask?  To one lucky reader I will be giving away the following social media book package:

• Socialnomics by Erik Qualman
• The Social Media Bible by Lon Safko
• Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
• The New Community Rules: Marketing On The Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
• Why Now Is The Time To Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

These are all books I have read and enjoyed and think you will too.  Yes, I must disclose they are “used”, but they are all in new condition as I pretty much read them very quickly and they’ve just been sitting in my office since then.  I figured I might as well let a lucky reader enjoy them.

BONUS!!  In addition to one copy of all the books above, I’ll throw in one copy of Tweetadder ($55 value) to the winner if they have tweeted/re-tweeted this post during the contest!

Overall that’s about a $150 prize package.  Not too shabby for a personal blog giveaway eh? 

So what do you have to do?  Pretty simple.  Just leave a comment on this blog post with one of your favorite social media websites or blogs that you frequent.  I figure why not get some great content in the process!  Be sure to leave some sort of contact information so if chosen you can be contacted.  Preferably a twitter username (so I can follow you if I’m not already), personal blog link or something that you are comfortable with.

Winner will be chosen at random on Friday, September 10th and will be contacted immediately at which point I’ll ship out to you at my expense.

Good luck to everyone and much thanks for all your continued support.

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I didn’t really get serious about blogging until the past year, and even then, I haven’t written as much as I would like.  Like many bloggers, I’ve gone in and out of writing, and that doesn’t help with maintaining a consistent flow of traffic to your blog.  At the end of the day, driving eyeballs to my blog isn’t really the ultimate goal, writing useful and appreciated content is.  But I like anyone loves to see people visit.  So I decided to dive deep into the analytics of my blog to get a true understanding of what has worked, what hasn’t, and pulling the curtain so that you can hopefully find some insights that you can find useful in your own blogging endeavors.

Let’s start with the following tables.  I’ve embedded them as images since WordPress doesn’t play too nice with real tables (please, anyone with any insights on this one, do share!).  My analysis and thoughts follow.

These were the top 10 visited blog articles I wrote in the past year.  3 of these were lists (no surprise there).  Most achieved a Postrank of higher then 6, and 9 out of the 10 articles dealt with social media.  For those not familiar, Postrank is a nifty little WordPress plugin that provides some analysis into the social engagement factor of the content you create.  For more details on how they reach these measurements, see here.

In this table we have the top 10 sources of traffic including time spent on the site and bounce rate.  Based on these figures, Linked In is where I’m attracted my strongest audience followed closely by Twitter.  There’s differentiating opinion on what a good bounce rate is, but overall, mine is not where I would like it to be which means I most likely need to focus more on a specific topic.

Here’s the top 20 keywords that were used to find my site once again including time spent on the site from those searches, and the correlating bounce rates.

Based on the data above, here is what I’ve learned:

1. Use Concise & To The Point Titles – All 10 of my top blog posts in the past year have titles that were to the point.  Bottom line, make sure your readers know what you are linking to, and it’s more likely they’ll visit.

2. Stick To Writing What You Know – The bottom line is anytime I strayed away from blog articles about topics I had a relatively deep experience with, my traffic suffered.  9 of my top 10 blog articles are social media related.  It can be tempting to use your blog to rant about things, but if you are interested in building an audience, focus on a specific topic.

3. Find An Angle & Run With It – One of the most compelling things I found in my research, was around the topic of WordPress Social Media Plugins.  Based on the keyword research, it’s clear that the most impactful blogging I did was around this topic.  My bounce rates plummeted on these blog articles down to a healthy average around 50%, and these visitors spent the most time on my site.  It’s clear based on this data, that I’m providing content that resonates with those that find me through these keywords.  I should be focusing on this area more in my writing.  When you find your niche, don’t stop there, be as specific as you can.  Find ways to take those niches, and make them even more specific.  You’ll find a nice little audience waiting.

4. Be Timely – In my Olive Garden Facebook post, I wrote immediately following stumbling across the scammy offering in my news feed.  I garnered a quick audience on this post, and it was one of the most shared articles on my site.  It struck a cord with people, and I was the first (and really only) person to dedicate a blog post to it.  Of course I added a social media spin to it to make it more relevant to my blog, but at the end of the day, I drove quite a few new people to my blog and I would imagine a few new readers in the process.  This article alone still brings people to my site as shown in the keyword data above.  Of course this is not the most relevant audience as also seen in the time spent and bounce rates, but still contributes to overall traffic numbers.

5. Share Your Ah-Ha Moments – Back when the iPhone only supported one Exchange account, I was frustrated with not being able to use Exchange with both my work and Gmail accounts.  I had to dig deep to find a solution, and being frustrated with their not being an easier way to solve, I felt compelled to share my findings in a blog post.  As the data shows, I get a good % of my traffic just from this one blog post.  Now the smart thing for me would be to combine this approach with my bread and butter topic of WordPress Social Media plugins.  My guess is those would be very successful blog posts.

There’s obviously more to be learned here, but this is a start for me to try and improve my blogging approach.  Numbers are never the be all end all, so only use them to compliment other methods in measuring what works for your blog, but ensure you have free tools like Google Analytics and Post Rank set up so that you can quickly and easily get a pulse of your audience.

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Starting or maintaining a small local business is no easy task.  This is especially the case when you offer a product or service that is provided by major players that are hard to compete solely on price with.  For every story of a mom and pop shop that has fought off the corporate giants, there are hundreds that did not share the same fate.

However times are changing, and technology is providing opportunities that were never even thought possible just a few short years ago.  While a well thought out digital marketing plan is a given, I feel there are 3 key things a small business or start up can do today that can not only give them a real shot in the sales arm, but build customer loyalty and retention.

1. Exclusive Couponing – As a consumer who has used the likes of Groupon, and Living Social, I can tell you with certainty that it works.  I have tried numerous new products and services from businesses I had neither heard of or would have considered.  Get your business on one of these sites for a day, and you are destined to drive significant business your way and if you truly have a great product or service, repeat customers.

2. Location Based Rewards – I love the idea of Foursquare, Whrrl and Gowalla.  I wish I wanted to use them more, but the reality is, unless I have incentive to, I just don’t find myself using them as much.  However as businesses have started to offer rewards to users who check-in, that likelihood changes dramatically.  If I were a local business, I would immediately partner with these companies and get an offer on the table, and window decals advertising the fact. 

3. Reputation/Review Sites – I find myself using Yelp more and more to make service based buying decisions.  It’s scaling, and there’s nothing more trustworthy then the opinions of the masses.  I love businesses that have window decals showing they are listed on Yelp.  It tells me that they care about what people say about them which usually results in good service and product.  I would take it one step farther and offer incentives to customers to leave feedback.  If you can work a nice Yelp rating, it will pay off in spades.  Similar sites like Urbanspoon (for restaurants), and Google (off there map searches) are other areas I’d have businesses concentrate on building a strong reputation on.  Embrace user feedback and good things will happen.

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It’s no secret that Twitter’s schedule of feature enhancements is fairly lacking and infrequent.  I suppose when you grow as quickly and as large as they have, and you’re a free service, you don’t necessarily have to do too much.  But if there was one stinking feature I so desperately wish they would add is a way to block Auto DMs.

I’m not entirely sure if this is even possible, or how it would be done, but I’ve got to believe there would be a relatively easy way to do this.  Seriously, just make this happen on the back end, and give me a simple check box giving me the option to block any automated DMs.  If I had this sort of feature, I could actually use the DM feature to communicate.  As it stands, I simply get way to much spam to even consider using it.

I know this probably is only the case for those with larger followings, but I still think this would be a valuable feature for all users.

And while we’re at it, why don’t we just implement a suite of spam blocking features?  Maybe another checkbox to block DMs with links.  Or easier ways to manage your inbox like mass deleting. 

If Twitter truly wants to become a true communication powerhouse, users need better tools to manage these things.  Or at the very least, open up the API to allow 3rd party developers the ability to create such features.

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The sooner the better I say.  There really is no reason to have to be dealing with word documents and pdfs anymore with the rise of Linked In (or even leading jobsites like Monster).  Any HR department with any common sense must certainly see the value in being able to simply get the information they need quickly without having to dig through email attachments.

There is a tremendous amount of value to having your resume be a living and breathing entity.  It gives prospective employees the ease of being able to easily update their career inventory on the fly and have it available to anyone, anytime.  One place to update and easily share with whoever you wish.

Linked In does have a little known feature that allows you to export your Linked In profile as a pdf, so if you do have old school requests, you can actually still send off a pdf version of your resume.  One nice feature I’d like to see Linked In create is to make this feature a bit more robust.  Right now the export is a fairly bland output.  It would be great to have the option to export into a few additional layouts so that the output is a bit more polished.  Something like that would most certainly make using Linked In as your exclusive home to your resume a done deal.

So what say you?  Are you close to making your resume a web only experience?  Or are you still stuffing inboxes with attachments?  And if you are a recruiter or in HR, what will it take to completely move away from the old school methods?

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I’m a big fan of the local deal craze.  It’s really such a great concept and simple.  One great deal a day, take it or leave it.  So many reasons it works well.  Consumers aren’t slammed with all kinds of things to buy every day, and businesses get one day exclusives on eyeballs and potential new customers.  It’s a win-win, and the craze is growing fast.  I also keep my eyes on Living Social and Tippr to name a few.

Groupon is taking it to another level today with deal personalization.  The idea is to give consumers deals that are more tailored to their interests, but more importantly (in Groupon’s case), the ability to sign on more businesses.  It gives Groupon the ability to showcase more advertisers each day, without breaking the formula too much.  It will be interesting to see just how well the implementation works.  As it stands, it’s pretty basic just asking for some localizing questions, but over time I would imagine more personalized profiling will take place to really zero in on each consumer’s needs/wants.

Either way, if you’re a local business and haven’t looked into it yet, you should really check out Groupon, Living Social or Tippr ASAP and think about getting your name out there through these channels.  It’s a great opportunity to drive new customers and increase loyalty.

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Social Media has certainly become THE trend over the past year or so, and everyone and their sister is jumping on board.  Tweets, blog posts, and articles are peppered with how to-s, trends, and best practices.  Hell, even I’m guilty of over saturating my twitter feed with social media tweets.  But there’s a reason for all of this, and quite simply it’s because technology is providing us the ability to communicate in ways that we’ve never been able to before.  It’s giving the little guy the ability to compete with the big boys. 

I’ve always tried to be fairly grounded and transparent about my knowledge of social media marketing.  I’ve never claimed to be a guru, and there are certainly many more people that know more then I do.  But what I have done is taken the time to understand how to use certain tools and strategies to leverage social media successfully for building my personal brand, as well as for small to medium sized businesses to get up and running from nowhere.  Below are some of these tools/strategies that I’ve used that may be useful to you in your quest to become social media relevant.

Disclaimer – All the products that contain affiliate links below are all products that I have used, love, and have been successful with.  I never recommend anything that I don’t wholeheartedly stand behind and have used extensively.

1. Have A Blog – This may seem obvious, but many individuals or businesses still don’t have a blog.  It’s the easiest and most effective method to build your brand.  Simply blogging 1-2 times a week about your expertise and knowledge can go a long way regardless of whether your goals are personal or professional.  There are a ton of great free options such as Tumblr, Posterous, and WordPress.com.  I personally prefer the self hosted method which is not as difficult or expensive as one would think.  I use Bluehost.com ($6.95/month), and with their idiot proof control panel, you can have full control over the look and feel of your blog as well as the ability to place advertising on it if your blog becomes popular enough.  On top of that, by self hosting, you have the ability to create multiple sites/blogs at no additional hosting cost.

2. Automate Twitter – Many people immediately balk at the idea of using tools that automate some of the tasks with Twitter.  I see Twitter as a tool that can work in a variety of different ways for people.  Some simply only want to follow and be followed by a select group of individuals and keep their Twitter streams clean.  Others (like myself), find the value in having a large (albeit, relevant) following.  Here’s the bottom line; I have gotten jobs, consulting gigs and opened doors simply because I have a large following.  That’s the truth, like it or not.  Of course it’s not the be all end all, but let me repeat, DOORS HAVE OPENED FOR ME BY HAVING A LARGE FOLLOWING.  Of course I’ve had to back it up with some actual knowledge, and in most cases I do.  The fact is I don’t have time to manually do what it takes to achieve this, so I find nothing wrong with using software that helps me free up time to do more important work.  TweetAdder has been a great tool in helping me identify relevant Twitter users to follow which in most cases results in being followed back.  Worth every penny, hands down.  If you want some tips or need help, don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know.

3. Leverage 2nd Tier Platforms – While the Facebooks and Twitters of the world are certainly the big dogs, there are opportunities elsewhere to capitalize on.  The top 3 that really come to mind are LinkedIn, Foursquare and FriendFeed.  LinkedIn (see previous blog post here), is not only a great place to network, but also to drive traffic and build street cred.  Find relevant groups and join the conversation and you’ll find yourself building credibility and learning from others as well.  Foursquare is a definite up and comer, and a phenomenal opportunity for local businesses to capitalize on the location based craze.  By simply linking your blog to your account, you have another potential audience to tap into.  I’m not a power user by any means, but that’s an additional 672 pair of potential eyeballs to my blog.  Also FriendFeed’s subscriber count feeds into Feedburner’s RSS subscriber numbers so it’s a no brainer to make sure you are set up there.  Yes, it’s not a true measure of actual “readers” on your blog, but again, perception matters in opening doors.  You just have to back it up with good blog content, conversation and real world knowledge.

4. Promote Your Following – One of the things I’ve done recently is make the size of my following more visible on my blog as you can see in the top right.  Now anytime someone comes to my blog, they instantly see that I have a fairly large following thus it’s more likely that they might stick around to read a few things and maybe even follow me.  Again, I try to back it up with interesting content, and I certainly don’t think that a large following in and of itself will do me any good.  But it’s a good start.

5. Read Everything – The fact is, Social Media is changing everyday.  In order to stay on top of the latest tools, platforms, strategies, it’s imperative that you read everything you possibly can.  RSS aggregators can be your best friend.  I personally use Google Reader, and I’m able to glance through hundreds of blog posts and catch up on the latest and greatest.  It’s so critical to consume as much as you can as technologies and trends change almost by the day.  Browse other blogs, subscribe, comment, get in there and make yourself known.

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Oh the wonders and gloriousness of being followed on Twitter!  It’s a tiny gift from the digital world that keeps on giving.  An invitation from those that you’ve never met, to share your deepest, darkest secrets and happenings (I know, sentence fragment, but it’s my blog!).  But careful Twitter lovers, because violate any of these 9 Twitter laws and you’ll find yourself on an unfollow smackdown!

1. Under Tweet – If you don’t provide any value, what good are you?  You’re just Twitter waste and taking up space.  Don’t expect much of a following if you aren’t posting at least 1-2 times a day.  It’s 140 characters people!  It doesn’t get much easier!

2. Over Tweet – Just like under tweeting, too much and you’ll find yourself alone in the Twitterverse.  Nobody cares about your Foursquare checkins and what you ate at The Olive Garden last night.  Simmer down Captain Tweet McTweeterson.

3. Don’t Value Tweet – Striking the right balance on frequency is only part of the game.  Like I said before, most people aren’t interested in knowing that burrito you ate gave you a belly ache.  Provide value by sharing interesting articles and media you find online.  Share a laugh or two.  Save people time by sharing what you find.

4. Don’t Follow Back – If someone deems you follow worthy, shouldn’t they be granted the same courtesy?  This one has proponents on both sides, but with new tools like Tweetdeck, Seesmic and Hootsuite, it’s easier then ever to organize who you follow so no need to be elitist here.  Return the favor.

5. Conversation Tweets – Look, if you really want to have a back and forth conversation, use DM, email or IM.  Don’t clog the streams with things like @name Thanks! or @name That was so funny!.  Nobody else knows what you mean.  It’s OK every once in awhile, but keep it up and you’ll only have each other!

6. Only Tweet Your Stuff – Self promotion is great and expected, but we can only take so much before you become a Me Monster.  Pepper in some useful stuff that doesn’t involve you and people are much more likely to check your stuff out.

7. Auto DM – Now, this one I don’t personally care that much about, but lots of people do.  Nobody wants to get some spammy auto DM from you with an affiliate link to some crappy “how to make a zillion dollars on the web” link.  Be genuine, keep it clean, and save us from your ineffective marketing techniques.

8. Mafia Wars, Farmville, “Enter Crappy Web Game Here” – I don’t want to join your Mafia, I don’t want to build an online farm.  Seriously people, one time is all you get.  After that it’s banishment to unfollow land.

9. Re-tweet Your Tweets – Hey, if no one else did the first time around, chances are they won’t the second time.  We all swing and miss once in awhile, just step back up to the plate and take another cut with something new.

What are some of your Twitter faux pas?

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UPDATE: It appears this is actually a scam.  The official Olive Garden Facebook Fan Page posted such.  Obviously Olive Garden is not behind this nor supports it.  However rather then pull this blog post, I still think it raises some good points around the importance of social media awareness and protecting your brand.  The bigger culprit here is Facebook for making it so easy to facilitate this sort of thing on their platform.

I was so irritated by my recent experience with Olive Garden on Facebook, that I just had to blog about it.  Upon my most recent daily visit, I came across an offer by Olive Garden to “dine on them this week”.  I’m not a huge fan, but a free meal at a relatively decent restaurant was worth the click through.

Once clicking through, it was clear right away that this wasn’t going to be a simple, “Become a fan”, and you’re entitled to a free meal.  That would be a lot of free meals.  I thought maybe, you would have to get 5 friends or so to fan them, or something to that effect.

Nope.  You see for some crazy reason Olive Garden thought it would be a good idea to partner with your traditional spammy outfit that entices people to sign up for INCREDIBLE offers that seem RISK FREE on the surface.   You see to earn your free $100 Olive Garden gift card, you actually not only have to become a fan, but sign up for multiple offers through this 3rd party company.  It’s very confusing, misleading, and certainly it does not end up being “free”, unless in most cases you cancel these trial memberships.

What an awful way to use social media to build buzz and awareness of your brand.  Really?  Olive Garden thought the best way to promote themselves on Facebook was associate itself with this sort of outfit?  Sure, maybe quite a few people will be esctatic initially (if they actually even get the gift cards), but how pissed are people going to be when they forget to cancel all these services they signed up for?

I know it’s entirely possible that this isn’t an Olive Garden fan page per se, but whoever it is certainly would have had to have Olive Garden’s approval to do such an offer and use their branding.  Regardless, in my opinion, bad move all around.  Even if it’s not an official Olive Garden brand, the fact is, most people will associate the offer with it coming from Olive Garden.

There are plenty of more effective ways to use social media then this, and quite frankly I’m surprised a brand so widely known choose or allowed this path.  Of the many restaurant chains out there, I actually find them to be one of the better ones in terms of quality and service.

Shame on you Olive Garden (Shame on Facebook!).  Even I could have steered you in a more effective direction.

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