Utah Business Networking

Since the dawn of digital gaming, what has determined the winner and the loser is the score. While location based social media application foursquare isn’t a game, it still has an addictive scoring system.

Today I’m going to talk about how to maximize your high scores each week so you can beat all your foursquare friends for online fame and …

If you don’t know what foursquare is, please see my recent article on Examiner.com about this newest player in the social media arena. For everyone else, the user aspect is pretty simple; tell your friends where you are. If you do, you earn points, profile badges and the biggest foursquare honor…a mayorship.

Foursquare points break down like this -

Check in to a new place – 5 points
Add a new venue – 5 points
Check in to a place you’ve been before – 1 point
Location multiplier for each place you go in a day – 1 point per location

So on a day I’m out doing business networking, the points would look something like this -

Check in at Paradise Bakery – 1 point
Check in at Buca di Beppo – 2 points…1 point for checking in and one point for it being my second check in.
If I go someplace else afterward, then points continue to get added.

This point system is compared to my foursquare friends who have checked in for the week and it now appears there are enough users in SLC to compare city wide. (At least the top 100)

Certain people in my friend group “win” week in and week out (points reset every Sunday) because they are so social. BUT, I have now found a way to outscore them.

How to outscore your friends on foursquare -
1. Check in everywhere! By putting together strings of check ins, you score more points for places you frequently visit. I’ve put my home office on there…I know I shouldn’t…so I can check in when I leave and when I return. While it’s only worth one point in the morning, it could be worth a lot more later in the day.

I forget to check in at gas stations and 7-11s, but I really should. You get first time points and if you go to the same places enough, you could become the mayor. I’ve been focusing on remembering this.

2. Add new places! This is a point gold mine because you get 5 for adding, 5 for checking in the first time and the multiplier. It also encourages people to try new places.

3. Try new places! We all have our habits and patterns, but by trying new places we can expand our horizons and get massive foursquare points. Bonus if you have to add it as well.

When I first learned about foursquare I never, ever thought it would get to this point, but I’m a junky! It’s fun to check in and find out about local establishments. Plus it’s addictive.

By using these tactics, I’ve been able to go from a perennial middle of the pack foursquare friend to a pack leader…even when I don’t check in as much as my other friends.

That is the psychology of a foursquare user. How can marketers leverage it? I’ll be speaking on that very subject May 6th for the Social Media Club of Utah Valley.

Of the social media platforms, changes in Twitter have dominated the year 2010.  First we had Twitter connections showing up in search engines and on Monday, Twitter announced a new functionality called @anywhere.

Twitter anywhere allows web visitors to tweet the link to the page they’re on without having to leave the site.  It will be easy to add the new framework to any site just by pasting in some lines of javascript.

When we’re ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube.

What this means for business is it just became a whole lot easier to talk about your product or service directly from your website.  Word of mouth marketing expert Andy Sernovitz preaches companies have to make it easy for their customers to talk about them.

It really doesn’t get much easier than this.

I keep talking to people about Twitter and they make statements like, “Isn’t Twitter a place celebrities tell you when they’re taking a dump?”  I kid you not.

The simple action plan for anyone interested in Twitter is to go create an account.  If you’re a business, you’ll want to use your business name or selected keywords people find you by.  Unlike Facebook fan pages, Twitter only allows one user name.  That means limited real estate.

Once you’ve set up the account, search for your keywords and start following people who are talking about your industry.  You will learn.  Once you have a feel for it, you can implement tools like HootSuite and TwitJump to help manage and automate your tweets.

Twitter is changing the social media game and at a very fast pace.  Pay attention!

Add Nestle to the growing list of big companies that have been embroiled in social media scandals.

In this situation, Nestle is taking heat for two things.  One involves environmental protestors and deforestation for the palm oil the chocolate maker uses to make its candy bars.  Not too big of a deal.  All businesses get complaints from time to time.

The other regards their policy of using their logo online.  In a heavy handed statement last week, the company announced on Facebook -

Again, not so bad.  Even though the future of the web is “open source” old school brands like Nestle like to think they still have control of their logos and intellectual property.  One of the things I love about Facebook and Twitter is they let people create with their logos.  Is it any wonder they’re growing as fast as they are?  Google is also creative with their logo by having their home page image changed for holidays and events.

The true sin Nestle is guilty of is how they actually responded to criticism.  Besides deleting comments they didn’t like, they were snippy in responses.  Again this article captured the mistake -

One company that stands out to me for handling criticism is Sears.  Last year a franchise store driver accidently ran over a dog during a delivery.  Though the franchise owner did nothing, once Sears corporate heard about the problem, they took care of it.

As a business, you can’t bend over backwards to every extreme demand, but you can recognize thatyou listened.  That was the lesson from Sears and the squished pup.  Nestle’s social media people are listening and fighting back.  You can’t win fighting people online.  Don’t try.

The Nestle battle is still going on.  This Australian article claims 4,000 Australians have fanned Nestle’s page…to post negative comments.  It will be really interesting to see how this gets resolved, if at all.

Review

“Deuze ably synthesizes a wide range of sources, writes lucidly even as he marshals a considerable amount of detail, moves unjarringly between different media sectors and offers a valuable synoptic account of the major charac (more…)