In the last year, the popularity of foursquare, and location-based services in general, has grown significantly.  Last weekend foursquare hit another milestone by passing the three million-user mark.  This is less than two months after they topped two million users. With the growing popularity among users, brands have been trying to figure how they can leverage foursquare as part of their marketing mix.  Several brands have run programs on foursquare featuring branded custom badges, unique check-in tips, and custom landing pages featuring lists of to-do items. While user adoption of foursquare is growing at a staggering pace, many brands are taking a “wait and see” approach before adding foursquare to the marketing mix.

Yesterday, Awareness launched the foursquare Social Marketing Toolkit, which is collection of five pieces designed to help enterprise marketers understand how to leverage foursquare as part of the marketing mix. It’s designed to help sophisticated and novice location-based marketers alike and contains some great sources of information. You can download the foursquare social marketing toolkit here.

For me personally the most informative piece is “foursquare for the Enterprise”, a 45-minute webinar featuring Jason Keath.  Jason weaves actionable advice with real case studies giving marketers an overview of how they can begin to use foursquare in their marketing efforts immediately.  Below is a list of the other pieces included in the toolkit.

1. “Top 10 Ways Enterprise Marketers Can Leverage foursquare” – graphic eBook
   All the salient points of a 45-page eBook boiled down into an easy-to-consume PowerPoint-like document. Included in the eBook are not only the Top 10 Ways Enterprise Marketers Can Leverage foursquare, but also the top 4 challenges of marketing with foursquare.
2. “The State of foursquare” eBook
   foursquare is a social network focused on connecting users and allowing them to broadcast their locations using mobile devices including the iPhone, Blackberry phones, and Android phones. In this eBook we will discuss foursquare and how brands can leverage the network as part of their marketing mix. The report features data gathered over the course of the last two months and observational analysis of key brands running marketing programs through the channel.
3. “foursquare for the Enterprise, A Brave New World” webinar with Jason Keath
   foursquare and several other location-based services (LBS) are the new pretty girl at the party. This webinar breaks down how your business can leverage foursquare and other LBS platforms, reveals emerging foursquare marketing best practices, and how these LBS technologies can improve your other marketing efforts.
4. “Chapter 21: The Social Marketing Compass, Creating a Social Media Plan” — complimentary download of an entire chapter from Brian Solis’ Engage!
   Brian Solis, author of Engage!, defines the Social Marketing Compass as pointing, “…a brand in a physical and experiential direction to genuinely and effectively connect with customers, peers, and influencers, where they interact and seek guidance online.” He goes on to state, “At the center of the compass is the brand; essentially, everything you do will revolve around it.” He details how the players, platform, channels and emotions all tie together with an enterprise brand to provide you, the Enterprise Marketer, with a Social Marketing Compass to lead you through the new web to help build, cultivate and measure success for your business.
5. “Chapter 1: Word of Mouth Goes World of Mouth” — complimentary download of an entire chapter from Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics
   Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, describes the current social media movement as a time when, “It’s important to free your content from being trapped in a “walled garden” because people have quickly grown accustomed to the news finding them, and there is no turning back,” and, “Businesses don’t have a choice on whether or not to DO social media, their choice is how well they DO it.”

A few weeks back our CTO Dave Carter released two eBooks on the State of Foursquare and the Top 10 Ways Enterprise Marketers can Leverage Foursquare.  If you haven’t had a chance to view them yet, check them out, they are both great reads.  During that same time Awareness released Foursquare Perspectives, a free tool that allows marketers to research announced new functionality that provide brands with valuable and useful insights about how Foursquare users are interacting with their physical locations. In addition, we announced that the Awareness Social Marketing Hub supports publishing tips to multiple Foursquare channels.  The message is we believe Foursquare is an underutilized tool in the enterprise and when used correctly it can be a powerful part of an enterprise social media strategy.

I have also been asked to put together a presentation that talks to the challenges and benefits of Foursquare which is below.  The presentation kind of took on a life of it’s own and has grown into an extended graphical version of Dave’s eBook. It uses some of the information included in Dave’s eBooks but goes deeper into case studies and tools utilizing other resources and references.

I’d love to hear from you with any feedback you have on the presentation.  Hope you enjoy it.

How do you Maximize Engagement across the social web?  That was the question I was asked during an interactive panel discussion at SXSW.  Joining me on the panel was a team of marketing and engagement experts including, David Meerman Scott, Eric Qualman, David Carter, Chris Heuer, Paul Gillin, Brian Solis and Peter Fasano.  We met at the Social Media Clubhouse to discuss this topic in detail and chat about how brands using the Social Media tools to engage with their customers.

The complete video footage is below.  Hope you enjoy the discussion!

Here is a segment of my session at Web 2.0 – The Elephant in the Room: Social Media ROI.  While the session was on Social Media ROI this segment focused on the 7 Misconceptions of Social Media (Truth be told, this could have been be a session in itself).  I had a blast delivering it and heckling some of local Yankees fans.  All I can tell you is when a group of Yankees fans can appreciate a Sox fan has to say about social media you know all is right with the world.  I hope you enjoy it as well.

The top 7 list mentioned in my presentation are:

1. Build it and they will come
2. Use social media to BROADCAST, not listen
3. What if it all goes wrong?
4. It’s FREE!!!!!
5. We only use the FREE social web
6. We are tracking the wrong stuff
7. We have no plan or objective

What do you think… Are there any misconceptions I missed?

Are you part of the Revolution?

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you have already seen this video.  At over 1M views on YouTube in the last 3 months, it’s one of YouTube’s more popular videos.  In case you haven’t seen it yet, check out the video below:

I have seen the video a bunch of times and the stats continue to impress, particularly:

1. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
2. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
3. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
4. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

These stats tell the story – for brands social media isn’t a fad, it’s the way consumers communicate.  To keep up, organizatons need to join the conversation and participate.  Do you agree?

Who knew that talking to a crowd of Yankees fans could be so much fun?  Last week I led a discussion at Web 2.0 in New York titled “The Elephant in the Room: Social Media ROI”.  After catching some flak from the locals on being a die hard Red Sox fan we got down to business and discussed ROI.  During the talk I walked through a case for ROI and presented some case studies from companies I have worked with in the past.  The conversation sparked some interesting questions, some debates and a lot of interesting dialog.  I’m hoping to have a recording up in a few days (stay tuned)… The slides from the presentation are below, hope you enjoy!

Mitch Joel, Six Pixels of Separation

Is it important to be connected? Mitch Joel, Author of Six Pixels of Separation and President of TwistImage believes we no longer live in a world of six degrees of separation. In fact, we’re now down to only six pixels of separation, which changes everything we know about doing business.

Last week we had the chance to sit down for a session with Mitch who discussed how the world of new media and how to market with a brand-new perspective that is driven by compelling results. The smarter entrepreneurs and top executives are leveraging digital channels to get their voice “out there”-connecting with others, becoming better community citizens, and, ultimately, making strategic business moves that are increasing revenue, awareness, and overall success in the marketplace-without the support of traditional mass media.

It’s was great chatting with Mitch and I, personally, learned a ton during this session.  He has great insight and case studies and has a unique way of simplifying social media marketing in a way the makes it easy to understand the benefits as well as how to get started.  We talked a little bit about the future of social media, how to build vibrant online communities and how marketers can be successful using social media.  The recording is below, I hope you enjoy it.

The conversation on Twitter was also terrific.  Here are my top 10 observations from some of the people joining the conversation on Twitter:

1. @JayFleischman: 48% of leisure time is spent online
2. @elysa every single day 20% of ALL searches on Google are searches that have NEVER been done before #awarenessinc
3. @MVMNT_Mike: If you want to enter social media, do something now! Don’t worry about mistakes, learn along the way #awarenessinc
4. @REMdreamtime: strategy component is sorely missing from digital agencies via @mitchjoel #awarenessinc
5. @NunesThompson: Always ask WHY! Say why you’re on #SM, not the fact that you’re on it. #awarenessinc
6. @AprilMPhillips: “It’s more about your attitude and not about your age.” // @mitchjoel on social media // So true! #awarenessinc
7. @elysa: 6 things you can do RIGHT now: 1)acceptance 2)digital augments not instead of traditional marketing #awarenessinc (cont) 3)every opt is chance to build/share/grow 4)open up and share more 5)it’s about your attitude not your age #awarenessinc
8. @garyasanchez: brands need to create online strategy: why are they on twitter rather than just being on twitter – build community! #awarenessinc
9. @RonArden: #awarenessinc The shiny new objects are just a bunch of tools. You need to decide what to do with these tools to make them useful.
10. @tamadear: Why are peer reviews trusted more? Because we think our peers’ motivation is closer to our own. #awarenessinc

Last Thursday I hosted a panel live from the Inbound Marketing Summit titled: “End the Social Media Hype“.  It was particularly exciting for me for a couple of reasons.  First, it featured an all-star panel of individuals that I have a lot of respect for in the social media space: Jason Falls, Paul Gillin, C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, and Brian Solis.  Second, it was the only panel to be streamed live from IMS – thanks to our friends at Visible Gains (formerly PermissionTV).  We had a great conversation, shared some interesting case studies and had a deep discussion on metrics and social media ROI.

I want to thank all the panelists for their time, honesty and insights during the session, Visible Gains for providing the streaming technology and Justin levy from New Marketing Labs for helping to pull everything together.

Below is the link to the session and I hope you enjoy it.

End the Social Media Hype

Finally, a special thanks to Matthew Mamet and the team at Visible Gains for helping to bring this session together on such short notice! As you view the highlights notice that the video has been edited to focus on the areas that are most interesting to the viewer. This is both cool and beneficial as is makes for an awesome viewer experience. If you are looking for software to support streaming video, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to check them out.

I have to admit, at first I was hesitant about participating in this.  I have never been into fashion.  In fact, I’ve never really gone clothes shopping before.  I mean, I have obviously purchased clothing in the past but for the most part those purchase were impulsive.  If I see something I like I buy it.  If it looks comfortable and relaxed chances are I’ll wear it.  The one criticism I typically receive is I buy clothes multiple sizes too big.  I hate wearing things that are tight… I hate being uncomfortable.

This is important because a few weeks ago I was asked by my good friend Christine Major if I’d be interested in getting a “make over”.  She told me I’d be perfect for an event called “Making over the Men of Social Media“.  I’m still not sure if being told that “I would be perfect for a make over” is a good thing or a bad thing, but I digress…  Frankly, I didn’t think I needed a makeover.  I’d classify my look as “casual” – jeans, sweatshirt, birkenstocks – the kind of style that would make Bill Belichick jealous.  However, after consulting with my wife, I decided it may not be a bad idea to take @AskEmmi up on her offer and go through with the makeover.

My initial vision of the make-over was that I would be taken to some high-end store and attacked by the guys from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and would involve getting my nails done, body waxing, eye brow trimming and all of those “stereo-typical” things associated with make-over’s.  To my surprise, this was all about shopping.  With credit card in hand I met up with Emmi on a beautiful Saturday afternoon on Newbury Street in Boston where we went shopping at stores like Frank Stella and Lord & Taylor.  Here is the video of my personal shopping experience which was shown at the show that took place earlier this week.

I ended up getting some great stuff that complimented my style at Frank Stella’s in Boston.  The event was great and I should have video of that soon as well!  It was especially great to hang out with the other models (Jeff Glasson, C.C. Chapman, Stuart Foster, Adam Zand, and Mike Schneider) in the “green room”.  Thanks @AskEmmi!

Had a great webinar yesterday with Adam Broitman, founder and ringleader at Circ.us.  I met Adam for the first time at last year’s New Marketing Summit (now the Inbound Marketing Summit) when we sat down for an interview on the state of new marketing (click here to view it).  Adam has great insight into the agency world (spending some time at Digitas, Morpheus and Crayon) and has a very unique (some may say “innovative”) way of thinking about marketing and social media.  He’s also a lot of fun to chat with and, as you we see in the recording below, he’s both an entertaining and thought provoking speaker.

Before you view the recording and slides of the session (both are available below), here are the top eleven tweets form yesterday’s webinar highlighting some of Adam’s insights (they are in no particular order):

1. @abelniak: scary stat: 40% of the major corporations that existed in America in 1975 no longer exist today.
2. @awarenessinc: 2 core principals central to marketing: participation and innovation
3. @blmoon: Technology is no substitute for creative ideas, per @adambroitman
4. @Yelitze: easier to remember a story you’re involved in than a story told to you
5. @shartlen: Marketing may not be saving lives, but it has the capacity to change lives
6. @socialmediawave: Improvisation and comedy are the basics in formulating a fun and engaging campaign -it’s also FUN
7. @cmee: It’s not a risk when you propose creativity
8. @FTPlanet: It takes more than a platform to make a community successful. Communities are made of ppl, not tech.
9. @cmee: when you’re faced with adversity there’s also opportunity
10. @anthonycerreta: 9 Successful Brands Launched During Downturns; http://bit.ly/8hGyl
11. @abelniak: The Dunkin Run used technology (though not the core component) to MAKE ‘being social’ innovative

Slides: