Four-what? Go-where? Why be (geo)social?

With the furor over yet another privacy violation by Facebook over its new geosocial application Places, one wonders what the point of “checking in”, the practice of sharing your location with everyone, is.

The most common objection I hear with regards to geosocial networking are the same people have to microblogging and “social networking”: “I don’t want people knowing what I’m doing”. What’s funny is sometimes these objections even come from regular twitter users who understand that twitter isn’t about telling people what it smelled like when you left the bathroom.

Although foursquare was only available where I lived in October 2009, by December, I had made the following prediction in an interview with NetSquared: “Geosocial networking will facilitate community building and allow people to connect offline and take on bigger challenges together.”

Maybe we’re not at the point where we’re using it for community building but I really believed that 2010 would be the year of geosocial and with the explosion of apps from foursquare, which was *the* app at SXSW 2010, allowing you to check-in anywhere in the world, to the appearance of gowalla, whrrl, rummble and company and on to sites like yelp, qype and twitter becoming “check-in” enabled. Let’s not forget all the location-enabled flirting apps for smartphones either!

Even 2 of Friday’s 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now post on Mashable are related to geolocation!

Whilst I agree that you don’t want just anyone knowing where you are at any given time and that dark side of geolocation has shades of Orwell’s 1984 (and even Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451), it is still entirely up to you which locations you do and don’t share.

Personally, I only share locations I am comfortable having people meet me in spontaneously. I don’t hey why people check-in to their couches or beds. I understand that there is a gaming element to most of the apps and that, yes, the badges *are* fun and that they give you something to brag about. I also understand that mayorships and sometimes even single check-ins give you freebies and discounts but if you don’t want people to know where you are then don’t check-in.

For me, using geosocial apps to meet people at events or finally connect face to face has a lot of value. It helps to break the ice and it sometimes even resolves scheduling conflicts. The best is when your friends from out of town are visiting and you get a notification that they’re in town! That’s always a nice surprise! I also use it to share places that I loveand that I want to see thrive. That being said I’m not telling you where the best assam laksa in central London is! At least not via foursquare.

The benefits to business are huge as well. I am most familiar with the foursquare model so I will use it as an example. Businesses who have registered a presence on foursquare can offer specials either for mayors (the person who checks-in the most frequently) and/or just for checking in. This creates a reason for others not only to come in themselves when they see a “special nearby” notification but also to tell their friends. As Brian Solis put it in his “Foursquare Means Business: Have you checked-in yet?“ post: “foursquare and the like are introducing trusted opinions and real-life networking into the mix [of reviews and referrals] that reward exploration and experimentation. Businesses can only benefit by playing along.” ‘Nuff said.

I still have hope that my prediction will come true and that geosocial networking *will* facilitate community building and allow people and businesses to connect offline and take on bigger social challenges together.

So next time you check-in, consider inviting people to come join you. Or conversely, the next time you get a notice that someone you’ve been meaning to meet is around the corner, just hop on over and say hello!

*It is important to keep in mind that not everyone uses twitter to “talk shop”*

There are quite a few people out there – including myself - looking for work in new/digital/social media.

Many of them are calling themselves “social media experts”. In fact, according to this post by B.L. Ochman, there were over 12,000 self-proclaimed digital or social media gurus/experts on twitter in June 2010. While some of them may indeed be experts, you’ll probably want to check out their credentials. You’ll often find that it is the ones who aren’t calling themselves “experts” who know what they’re doing and have the experience to prove it.

Since recruiters have told me they have difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff and not all of them have gotten their heads around twitter, I thought I’d do a short “how-to” to help them out.

One good way to tell if someone “gets” this medium is to have a look at their twitter profile to see if they know how to use this platform. Surely if they work in digital marketing, they’ve at least got an account right?

 Here are a few things to look for when evaluating a twitter profile for know-how:

Bio (and link):

Have a look at what they say about themselves and where they link to. Is it believable? Is the link a blog? A LinkedIn profile? A MySpace page? Unless they’re in music, linking to a MySpace page is probably not a good sign since MySpace has very much fallen out of favour.

Following/Followers:

The numbers here aren’t nearly as important as the quality of the accounts a person is connected to and the quality of the connections themselves.

Personally, I have a wide range of interests so I follow a lot of people and a lot of people follow me. While I get that this probably means I know how to use twitter, there is no guarantee that my numbers aren’t inflated by spammers. It’s probably safe to say that at least a quarter of the average twitter user’s followers are spam and it’s not terribly realistic to expect that one sustains contact with each and every one of the accounts that they are connected to.

A good way to tell is just have a look at the accounts involved by clicking “following” and “followers”

For a more in-depth look at why some numbers mean nothing on twitter have a look at this post by Glenn Lesanto with that exact title.

 Lists:

 Lists give you an idea of what someone’s interests (and possibly areas of knowledge/authority) are.

You can see the lists a user creates (listed below Favorites) and the lists others put them on (click “listed” to view).

Favorites:

Have a look at the tweets they have marked as favorites. Are they funny, interesting, relevant? All of the above?

 Tweets:

Most importantly, look at what they’re tweeting. Are they using @ replies to have conversations? Are they sharing other people’s ideas and content by retweeting (RTing) it? Are they participating in offline events or online chats by using #hashtags? Or are they just tweeting “get more followers”/”make money online” links?

Search:

You can search twitter for the candidiate’s username to see what people are saying to or about them. This is also a useful tool for seeing the kinds of conversations they have on twitter.

Tools:  

There are other tools outside of twitter that will help you evaluate a profile. However, their methodologies are not necessarily foolproof and may not give you an accurate picture of how the person in question uses twitter. If you want to use tools oneforty.com, a great resource for twitter-related applications, lists some analytic ones here.

Was this helpful? Please let me know! My personal twitter account is here: http://www.twitter.com/amoyal and my microblog for advice to brands on twitter is here: http://www.twitter.com/DearBrands

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Thank you to Lindy Asimus, Charlie Southwell and Lynne Gray for their help!

I possibly have a different definition of brand engagement than others, so I thought I might share my views. I'd love to hear your thoughts too!

What is a “brand”?

Unlike a person, organizations are made of many people with different personalities. What an individual and a brand do have in common is a vision, a goal and the approach to that target. The identity that is created to represent these things forms the brand. A brand comprises many aspects: look, feel and values which can be viewed as the brand's “personality”.

Like people, brands represent themselves differently to the various segments of their communities. For example; a brand may be portrayed differently to businesses as opposed to individuals. Despite this, there are always basic elements that are constant.
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All of these facets of a brand are what people interact with when they connect with that brand.

This counts for:

• employees
• suppliers
• subcontractors and their employees
• competitors
• collaborators
• enthusiasts
• detractors
• physical community members

All of these are communities that exist around the brand.

What is “brand engagement” then?

Brand engagement is the set of activities a company is involved in to strengthen relationships with these communities.

This includes:

• internal culture
• advertising,
• marketing,
• public relations,
• sponsorships
• and last, but certainly not least, their social and environmental responsibility.

For more on brands and corporate responsibility read my interview with triplepundit here. 

Why engage?

By the definition above, brands are already engaging. Ignoring the conversations and communities is also a mode of engagement. So it's not a question of "should" but a question of "how"? Engaging in a constructive, unified and clear way strengthens the organisation by strengthening the relationships to their communities. When people feel good about their relationship to a brand they are a lot more likely to recommend it to others. Word of mouth, which includes social media, is still the most effective mode of marketing there is. So give them something to talk about and make it good!

What about "control"?

While it is important for brands to respect their brand identity guidelines, it’s not realistic to think that others will. The opportunity for “control” here is not in keeping brand communication close to the organisation’s “chest” The opportunity exists in participating in conversations. Being part of the conversation ensure that the information disseminated is accurate and reflects the brand accurately. This usually ensures that the outcome is productive for the organisation and its communities.

Great! Where do we start?

In order for these activities to be successful there must be clarity around the brand identity itself and clear goals for engagement activities. Once these are established, internal processes must be primed for participation, both proactive and reactive, in conversations and activities connected to the brand.

I came across a really cool example recently: An intercity bus passenger who used the brand's SMS feedback service to tell them he thought his bus was too hot. Apparently, within minutes the passenger got a text back advising them that the driver had been contacted and that he was going to adjust the temperature. (Sure he could have gotten up and done that himself, but that's not the point!)

True or not, this is a perfect example of internal processes being properly set up to deal with issues raised by the brand's communities.

You don’t have to have it exactly right to get started, especially if people are already talking about the brand online but this is really important and should be a priority for management. In fact, if you wait for it to be perfect, you'll probably never get started!

Employees – ambassadors or enthusiasts?

Part of this is employee engagement. Keeping them happy and engaged with their work effectively keeps them close to the brand. Ultimately, done properly, it will make them all brand enthusiasts! This is not the same as brand ambassadors because effectively all employees are brand ambassadors, whether they're excited about the brand or not. Their friends and families see how they feel about their work and the way they answer the question "Where do you work?" speaks volumes about the brand to people they meet.

Next steps

The next steps are unifiying communications from the perspective of established brand identity guidelines as well as hiring the right people to speak officially on behalf of the brand in all channels. Personally, I believe these people should be internal as I've expressed in my previous post about the role of agencies in brand community management.

Two second takeaway:

Brand engagement is about connecting with people, both inside and outside organization, by listening, sharing and responding quickly to the brand’s communities This will increase brand affinity which leads to increased brand awareness and eventually to increased revenue!

So what do you think? Is this brand engagement?

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Thank you to Glenn Lesanto, Blaise Grimes-Viort, Lindy Asimus, Lucy Payne and others for their help! Special thanks to Rachelle Houde for a big save!