With the avalanche and proliferation of smartphones, applications for smartphones, and the adoption rates for the iPad on the rise, why are people under utilizing geosocial (“Check-in”) services like Foursquare? According to the latest Pew Research survey “5% of cell owners, equaling 4% of all adults use their phones to check in to locations using geosocial services such as Foursquare or Gowalla.”  Before attempting to answer the question why more people are not utilizing geosocial services, the following findings provide an interesting snapshot.

Pew Research Mobile Statistics

• 28% of American adults use mobile and location-based services
• 28% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location
• 9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services
• 10% of smartphone users have used a geosocial service
• Smartphone owners ages 18-49 are more likely than those over 50 to use either geosocial or location-based services on their phones

The Anatomy of a Foursquare Deal Done Right: Hotel Los Gatos

Our best experience with a Foursquare deal was during a recent local weekend trip. The Hotel Los Gatos, in beautiful Los Gatos, CA, created a smart check-in special for their guests. Guests that check-in on Foursquare to the the Hotel Los Gatos receive a $10 credit for their in-room mini bar. That’s it? Here is what the deal delivered to us and to the Hotel:

• Mini Bar: the Hotel priced their alcohol and food items very reasonably. Due to there price structure, we were able to enjoy two premium beers (Heineken) and a food item- jar of almonds.
• Goodwill: the moment we confirmed our “free” Foursquare deal at the front desk, we felt a sense of goodwill. We felt the establishment would take care of us, provide us great customer service, and that they cared about our perception of them
• Economic Impact: Because the hotel invested in us, we invested in two more food items and a split of wine. Net result: we spent $18 on mini bar items we would have never touched
• Onsite Sales: materials in the mini bar, branded with the Hotel Los Gatos’s in house restaurant Dio Deka, led us to investigate the restaurant. Although we did not stay for dinner, we will return to the restaurant for a future night out

How Can Businesses Attract More Foursquare “Check-Ins”?

• Simplicity: create a simple, valuable offer that people will enjoy. Give your product, service, or expertise in a manner that is generous enough to make a visitor feel special yet economical enough to make sense for your business
• Top Down: ensure that everyone in your business, and most importantly those people coming in contact with the public, understand the Foursquare offer
• Give It Away: do not create an offer that requires consumers to spend triple digits before receiving something in return. Instead give away your product, service, or expertise first. Give first before asking for something in return
• Ensure They Return: create an offer that provides an incentive for consumers to return to your establishment
• Rewards Card: in step with keeping your consumers coming back, create a geolocation check-in rewards card. Allow consumers to accumulate points. Brand the points with your name and logo. Give them something to keep in their wallet or purse, something they will show friends, and something that is elegant enough to inspire them to continue to carry it with them

ting, salesforce, scrm

Do you plan to utilize QR codes in your marketing program? If you do the following are some solid steps to consider when implementing your QR code campaign into your marketing mix.

Questions to Consider for  Your QR Code Campaign

1. Security: more articles are being written about malware that has been designed to completely disable your smartphone. Before creating your QR code campaign, research QR code security so that you can assure your consumers that they will remain malware free

2. Plan Your Goal(s): what do you want your QR codes to do for your business? Do you want them to showcase your product-service pages, videos, photos, ecommerce store or are you providing a buying incentive through a coupon?

3. Call to Action: once you have your purpose aka goals in mind what is your call to action? How are you going to get your prospects, consumers, clients, affiliates, and friends to perform an action you wish them to take?

4. QR Code Design: it has been called "robot barf" but what do you want your prospect to see when viewing your QR code? Is a standard code enough or do you need to find a designer QR Code theme?

5. Mobile Landing Page: if you think that you will simply link your QR code(s) to your website's pages you are in for trouble. There is nothing more annoying to a someone who takes the time to load a QR code than to get to the point of reading the information and realizing that it is not optimized for smartphone consumption. Simply put, unless your prospect-consumer has X-ray vision he/she will never be able to read your message.

Creating a mobile landing page that is optimized, allowing a smartphone user to read the text, is the key to any QR Code campaign. Without this component, don't bother trying to utilize QR codes.

6. QR Code Analytics: Mashable's Hamiliton Chan nails it when he identifies the most important analytic for you to concentrate on measuring:

"The most important metric of a QR campaign should not be the number of daily scans. Rather, the length of engagement time that your code is generating should be a marketer’s primary indicator of campaign success."

As Hamilton states "having a low number of scans should not discourage the advertiser. . . "

7. Social Media Analytics: are you broadcasting your use of QR codes on your Facebook page, Google+ page, blog, website, youtube account, and other social network sites? If you are making the effort to broadcast your QR code campaign are you tracking the analytics from these efforts?

This is not a tutorial, how-to piece, case study, or opinion. The following is reality and what I noticed immediately after launching my personal profile on Google+. There is one reason why you must launch a Google+ personal profile or business page: search engine optimization.

Google+ Bias

The shocking and disturbing truth about Google, the search engine, is their bias toward indexing their own products in search engine results pages aka SERPS. Although never disclosed, many SEO experts have identified a number of algorithmic characteristics that help or hurt your search rankings on Google. One of the most important factors is the "seasoning" or length of time a blog, website, video, podcast, or social profile. Unfortunately, Google has decided that Google+ accounts, no matter how new the social network still is, are more important than sites with years of seasoning.

#1 Reason to Adopt Google+

What happened to the SERPs after I launched my Google+ personal profile in October 2011? Nothing short of a miracle. According to Google, my personal profile on Google+ now ranks #1 page one on a search of my name: Dean Guadagni.

My Social Online Presence

The following is a list of profiles, sites, entities I have created on the Internet beginning in 2007. The most important factor to understand is the seasoning or length of history I have online.

• author deansguide blog March 2007
• deansguide Twitter account June 2007
• dean guadagni Facebook profile 2008
• dean guadagni Plaxo profile 2008
• dean guadagni LinkedIn 2008
• ActiveRain.com Real Estate Social Network 2009
• dean guadagni Quora 2010
• author InnerArchitect.com 2008

In addition I have written guest posts or had my writing featured on SearchEnginePeople.com, TheLadders.com, ChicagoSunTimes.com, ComputerShopper.com, Reuters and a number of other powerful sites.

Bing, Yahoo, DogPile, Ask, AOL, DuckDuckGo, Yippy

Fact: None of these search engines, making up the rest of the search pie, rank my Google+ profile (5 wks old as of this writing) #1 on page one of a search query for "Dean Guadagni."

A recent, excellent and instructive Pew Research survey showcasessome interesting results for marketers to consider. Although Millennials have been leading all online age group demographics in web, social networking usage, older generations are beginning to adopt and use at a rate that is encouraging. The following are points from the Pew survey about Millennial online habits and the shared online habits of each age demographic. Do you see any opportunities?

Millennial Online Habits

According tothe Pew survey (chart at bottom), Millennials are “more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone.” In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online when it comes to:

• Reading blogs
• Use of instant messaging
• Use of social networking sites
• Using online classifieds
• Playing online games
• Participating in virtual worlds
• Listening to music

Shared Online Interests Across Demographic Age Groups

Yet there is a continuing change taking place as both Millennials and their elders are beginning to share some of the same interests in a way never seen in the past. The following are online activities that are becoming “uniformly” popular across all age groups:

• Email
• Search engine usage
• Searching for health related information
• Getting news, breaking news
• Travel reservations, purchases
• Buying products, services
• Performing online banking
• Seeking religious information
• Giving to charities
• Rating products, people, services
• Downloading podcasts

The following is a guest post written from the archives of Innerarchitect and modified for deansguide. The study centers around social media ROI and case studies of success stories within the tech and media industries. The example below, CNET’s successful campaign which yielded a five times increase in social network growth, is further proof and indication that social media activities can lead to profits. What is most important to remember is that ROI studies must examine specific actions taken by marketers within a strategic framework.

Are you are in-charge of your company’s social media marketing program? If so you have a difficult decision tree to maneuver.  You must figure out if you should rely upon a massive ad campaign to drive consumers to your Facebook page and follow your Twitteraccount? Or should you instead implement a grass roots, multi pronged, organic approach that utilizes fundamental principles with testing as the backbone of your program? The decision was easy for CNET’s new social media manager Nathan Bransford: go organic and don’t throw cash at the challenge.

CNET Social Media Program Results

Since his hire and take over of the CNET social media marketing program in December of 2010, Nathan Bransford has accomplished the following growth by utilizing a grass roots, advertising cost free, organic social media program:

• Facebook Page: increased likes from 69,000 to 430,440
• Twitter Followers: increased from 24,000 to 106,222

Organic Social Media Marketing Strategies

The following are some of the strategies implemented by Bransford

• Facebook and Twitter Buttons: include these buttons in your sites toolbar and make them available on every page
• Customize: optimize the size and look of the Facebook and Twitter buttons
• Testing: monitor what works and what does not work aka test and observe
• Over messaging: post no more than 4 to 6 times per day on Facebook and tweet between 10 to 20 times per day on Twitter (Note: in the case of a media firm posting 4 to 6 times per day on Facebook is permissible but this is a violation of Facebook etiquette for virtually every other business niche)
• Interact: social media is about interacting with people not simply and repetitively broadcasting of your message
• Tools: use Hootsuite and Bit.ly to schedule posts and track links
• Competition: utilize Wildfire to understand how your competition is performing on Facebook and Twitter

Inner Architect Testing Tips

We believe the most important strategy highlighted by Nathan is testing. The following are some tips to keep in mind when testing your messaging on any channel:

• Subject Lines: do you utilize email as a channel to engage your customers? If so testing copy for the subject line can make the difference between a consumer opening your email or sending it to the trash
• Time Frame: do you analyze the best times and days to post your Facebook messages, Tweets, blog posts and other communications?
• Call to Action: do you test your call to action copy to determine the best method to ask for a consumer to perform a specific act?
• Control Group v Test Group: are you setting up your testing with the correct parameters? You should have your control group, consumers receiving messaging you have utilized, and test the results against a test group of consumers who receive new messaging
• Keep Your Laboratory Clean: assuming you are utilizing a control and test group to understand the effectiveness of your testing, are you keeping the “laboratory clean” by ensuring each group is the exact same sized population? Are you sending the messages out at the same time on the same exact day?

For many C-level executives, statistics are often the basis of “proof” required in order to launch a social media campaign or ongoing social network marketing efforts. Everyone wants a ROI metric like conversion rates or response rates that prove the influence social networks have on consumer sales. Yet for every brand that waits for “proof” that social influences consumers to purchase their products or services, there are hundreds of their competitors engaging the same consumer audience, influencing sales for their brands, and creating a life time value metric that only comes with long term concerted marketing efforts within the social channels. What’s a CMO to do? Here are some interesting statistics worth considering at your next big meeting. The revolutioncontinues.

Social Media Usage

• Small Business: the use of social media  has grown in recent years, rising from 12 percent in 2009, to 24 percent in 2010 to 31 percent currently Search Engine Watch
• Facebook Users: the ubiquitous social network of our times, so far, now has 750 million users Techcrunch
• Google Search: Google handles over 11 billion queries per month comScore
• Social Media Advertising: spending for advertising will quadruple from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $8.3 billion in 2015 Direct Marketing News
• Buying Habits: online users say they are more likely to buy from a brand that answers their questions on Twitter Techcrunch
• Mobile: 40% of US subscribers regularly browse the internet on their phone 60 Second Marketer
• Mobile Purchasing: 12.5% of all e-commerce transactions will be performed on a mobile phone by the end of 2011 60 Second Marketer

The numerous, vital, and long lasting benefits of social media networking for companies todayplace pressure on a marketing team to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience, within the right social network. Combine these “must haves” with the right testing procedures for each campaign, and companies begin to realize and uncover the ROI of their social media networking. In my opinion without question, the most powerful social network for viral marketing is Twitter the micro-blogging platform. One of the simplest and most effective strategies for companies to increase more clicks and viral sharing on Twitter is through the Retweet.

Viral Sharing of Your Content: How to Get it Done

When consumers and companies begin to recognize your brand’s content via the Retweet,  try the following steps:

• Curate Content: write a solid article and showcase it with a succinct tweet:

• Thank You Tweet: write a tweet thanking the person-brand that RT’d your content. Do not cobble your thank you at the end of their RT of your content. Instead, honor their kindness by thanking the person-brand first:

• Copywriting: after completing your thank you copy, describe (“adoption & measurement”) the post you are referencing. By referencing and describing your post, you help your RTing partner to remember their RT of your content easily. More important is the fact that this description may be viewed by Twitter users who may have missed your article when it was originally tweeted and subsequently RT’d

• Link: remember to add the original shortened link at the end of your Thank You tweet. This completes the strategy by giving those Twitter users who missed your original tweet or the subsequent RT the opportunity to click through to your content

Our social digital world, ever expanding growth through rapid adoption, continues to evolve as information is shared and created at a mind numbing rate. Whether you are a professional digital marketer, web journalist, or hobbyist, keeping up with the onslaught of news, new networks, applications, devices, strategies, and messages is a 24-7 proposition. The following list is my personal library of blogs, publications, and agencies I rely upon to keep informed and on point. Please let me know if you have a favorite.

Learning List (in no particular order)

1. Mashable: up to the minute news, self help guides, massive volume
2. Techcrunch: I miss Arrington, who would’ve ever thought. Up to the minute tech news, tell-it-like-it-is stories
3. GigaOm: Om is not scared to say it and he has a staff of excellent writers. Great fresh takes
4. RWW:  up to the minute tech news, social media news, solid writing
5. Gizmodo: Fantastic gadget posts, raw language, in your face don’t care attitude- awesome
6. Compete: great articles packed with data
7. ComScore: solid case studies with data
8. Searchenginewatch: massive volume of important search engine optimization articles, case studies, strategies
9. eMarketer: webinar offers, case studies, graphs, statistics, solid writing
10. Webguild: a bit snarky but solid breaking tech news
11. Fortune: traditional print giant with online magazine feature top business stories, case studies, social and tech news
12. Forbes: more establishment than Fortune yet still able to return great value through consistent writing and research
13. Time: once the most important news print magazine should have a place on this list
14. Searchenginepeople: excellent social media, seo articles. Nice mix of guest contributors and subject matter
15. Searchengineland: a very well written site packed with search engine optimization strategies