In January’s edition of Scientific American MIND, David DiSalvo wrote an article entitled “Are Social Networks Messing With Your Head?”

He raises some interesting points about Social Networking sites, how they are used and how they can often fall short of a users expectations. What I found very interesting was his and others observations that these sites can actually increase stress and lower feelings of self-worth. Something that many of us who use them on a regular basis might find counter-intuitive.

I Hate The Social Media A List

There are plenty of rant posts out there, that boil down to this basic statement. Someone somewhere doesn’t like a prominent Social Media/Social Networking “A Lister”. Whether its Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan or some other person. It often struck me that many of these rants were the result of jealousy. I know Chris Brogan in particular had a rough patch late last year with attacks on him. These were always a surprise to me, as having met Chris several times in person, he is one of the nicest guys you could meet and definitely not a “Its’ all about me, celebrity”. Reading DiSalvo points to a potential reason for all this angst, the people making them are lonely.

DiSalvo quotes a study by John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago in which two groups of subjects were shown images while undergoing an MRI. One group typed themselves as Lonely, the other non-lonely. The group whose brains showed a higher response to pleasant images of people and situations were those who were non-lonely. Those whose brains showed a higher response to unpleasant images of people and situations were the lonely ones.  DiSalvo states that “Lonely people have a heightend sense of social threats. Snubs, insults, alienation & gossip all elicit higher levels of stress in the lonely”.

I Want More “Friends”

Those joining sites like Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn to “connect” to more people may in fact be doing themselves more harm than good. SoHo workers & Stay At Home Mom’s in particular often make statements like “Twitter is my window to the world”, ” I love the support I get from my Facebook friends”. However, in reality, seeing other build larger networks, and having more conversations with those people who are perceived as being “influential” may actually heighten feelings of loneliness.

Laura Freberg of the California Polytechnic State University defines loneliness as “the deficit between what you want & what you have” and goes on to say “Social Networks can make this worse”.

The key here is that those who use Social Networking tools to support their existing friendship circles do better than those who center their friendships on these sites. It seems that meeting in real life is always going to win over just meeting online. Which is why Tweetups, Social Media conferences, and social sharing tools like Foursquare are becoming increasingly popular. Don’t just tell me what you are doing, come do it with me.

I am, as usual, a little late to the party, but I’m here Colin Alsheimer threw down a challenge to a few bloggers to see if they could come up with a list of 10 – 15 blogs that they read that are not on the Technorati Top 100 or Adage 150. I was happy to join in for a variety of reasons, not least of which I get to share some of my favorite blogs but also because I get to see the lists that others are putting together and expand my reading.

So here is my initial list:

Christine Gilbert – writes at almostfearless.com Christine left her job as a manager at a Fortune 500 company to travel the world. She sold her belongings to travel the world, to write & take photographs. Some might think this an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially in the current economic climate, others yet might wonder at the bravery that it takes to undertake a journey like this. I love to keep up with Christine’s travels. A real world, Where is Waldo?

Amy Derby – writes at Write From Home Amy writes in a real world style. She is both engaging and though provoking. Her blog is ostensibly aimed at aspiring or new freelance writers, but her messages are as equally important to anyone, writer or not.

Cheryl Phillips – writes at The Daily Blonde Cheryl is part of the group referred to as “Mommybloggers”. I am always uncomfortable with terms like that, firstly because it seems to be exclusive, as though the writings of this group will only appeal to other Mommy’s. This is definitely not so with Cheryl. Her blog is about being human, about being real. Sure a lot of what she writes about is her family, but she writes in an unapologetic, real world, take it or leave it style that appeals to me.

David Lano – writes at davidlano.com I found David’s blog after he started following me on Twitter. I really like David’s writing style, accessible, informative and he asks good questions.

Tawny Press – writes at Innoventions Tawny & I met through LinkedIn. She has been my Social Media mentor and encouraged me to get back involved with Twitter after I had given up on it. She is “officially” a corporate educator, but her ability to educate the rest of us regarding the best practices in Social Networking is what will keep you visiting her blog. She has some wonderful How-To’s on using Twitter and associated tools. She writes these not from a mechanical perspective but from the practitioners perspective, she has used the tools, documented her use and then written the How-to, saving the rest of us hours of trial and error.

Christa M Miller – writes at Vocational Duality Christa & I met through LinkedIn when I answered a question she had posed about using Twitter. She represents that great dynamic of professional non-fiction freelance writer (Law Enforcement is her specialization), mother, wife, fiction writer. All of these influences make appearances in her blog which makes it all the more readable. She can discuss items as diverse as personal branding issues using great personal examples of googling potential collaborators, to discussing the challenge of writing with a two-year old on your lap.

Doriano Carta – writes at dorianocarta.com he shares a lot of great information. Known on Twitter and other places as “Paisano” there is nothing peasant like about his writing style. He also editor-in-chief of Dad-O-Matic.

So that’s my list for now, not quite 10 – 15 but I don’t want to overwhelm you all. More to be added to the list I promise.

I was having an interesting conversation a few days ago discussing the various merits of Social Media for business. The conversation started to focus on the various ways of “relationship” building, customer “engagement”, pipeline “nuturing”.  These are of course the stock in trade phrases rolled out by Social Media “guru’s” and those who follow them blindly.

Social Networking & Social Media

Firstly I want to clear up a common misunderstanding between Social Media & Social Networking. They are very different, though often conducted using the same tools, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Social Networking is the nice, kumbaya, lets all hold hands, hug and generally be nice to each other activity, also known as Socialist Media.

Social Media on the other hand is the activity of promoting a brand, service or product to the masses with the intent that some or all of the recipients of the message will buy, use or encourage others to do so.

With that clarification, lets clear the decks for the real meat of this post. Social Media is not about making friends, it’s not about customer engagement, it’s not about creating warm fuzzies with your prospects or existing customer anymore than any other  form of messaging is. If a brand has 1.2m fans on Facebook do they have the bandwidth to create a deep and meaningful relationship with each of those fans, no of course not. So lets stop kidding each other.

Uncle Phil

At the Enterprise level, and even at the Small & Medium business level, Social Media activity can best be described with a family analogy. The picture at the beginning of this post is our imaginary Uncle Phil, he comes to all the family gatherings, he’s an ok guy, takes an interest in our lives, even remembers our kids names and what grade they are in at school. But you know, somewhere between the Turkey & the Pumpkin pie, he is going to lean over, press his slightly sweaty palm onto your arm and say “How is your insurance coverage looking these days?”. Yep, he wants to sell us something. All that chatting, all that “getting to know you”, was just a front.

“Transparency” is a word so thrown around in Social Media that it has become, like so much other jargon, almost meaningless. If brands are to achieve real transparency in their Social Media activity then they need to put out their shingle up front. Some do, some are very good at it. Only a completely naive person would imagine for instance that Ford loaned Fiesta’s to reviewers so that they could experience having reliable transport for a few months. The Fiesta Movement was created with the sole intent that people get excited about the product and go and buy it.

Selling Isn’t Shameful

There is nothing wrong or shameful about selling your product, there is nothing wrong or shameful about using Social Media to sell your product. What is wrong is trying to hide it. The Social Media audience is evolving quickly, their level of sophistication is rising exponentially. They no longer truly believe that Brands want Fans so that they can invite them over for dinner, or find out about how little Johnny is doing in school (if in fact anyone ever believed that).

Some Social Media guru’s/agencies are still touting the “engagement/conversation” model. The “Touchy Feely” campaign creators. The problem with that model is, where is the ROI? Yes, exactly there isn’t any. I prefer the “Ouchy Bleedy” campaign. Yes it’s going to hurt the kumbaya crowd, but its more honest. Hello my name is Simon & I want your wallet. (the image is from a t-shirt I was inspired to design from LOLCatz – I’ll be wearing it at future conferences).

What about you? Do you want Hugs from customers or dollars?

Living in Austin – the self proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World”, it is not too surprising that there have been attempts to also dub it the “Social Media Capital of the World” or at least the US. I was part of some banter on Twitter a few days ago on just this topic, the challenger being Boston,Mass.

Most of the conversation centered around who lived in those particular cities and what they represented in terms of Social Media leadership. To be honest, given the talent in both I tended to say that they jointly held the title.

However, it got me thinking. Often when you are part of a sub-culture it is all too easy to become blinded to the fact that not everyone shares your interests. So I decided to do a little research using Google Insights for Search to see where, in the US, people were actually searching for Social Media. The results were surprising.

Search Terms

I used the year 2009 for the search period and used the following search terms as the basis for showing interest in Social Media marketing:

• Social Media
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Marketing
• Facebook Marketing
• Facebook for Business

I arrived at these terms after testing several others to see which produced the highest results.

What the results show is, that far from being the Social Media capital, Austin, or more specifically Texas didn’t make the top five (actually it didn’t make the top ten), Massachusetts comes in at number two, so its fairly safe to assume that a reasonable number of the searches came from the Boston area.  Illinois is no real surprise, being home to Chicago, and a lot of companies being based there.

Minnesota, Oh ya

What really surprised me was the appearance of Minnesota, whilst obviously home to the Twin Cities, with a population of 5.2m (US Census 2008 figures), it is considerably smaller in population than Texas (24.3m), home to Austin. In fact Texas’ population is almost double that of Illinois and more than 40 times bigger than that of the District of Columbia, both of which register with higher numbers. I would have expected that simply given the higher population numbers there would have been more searches.

The fact that Texas doesn’t make the list could simply mean that they don’t use Google to find their Social Media services, or know that they are so well served with agencies, conferences & other resources that searching for them is unnecessary. It could be that they are using search terms that are completely outside the realms of those I used (though I think this unlikely).

For whatever reason, in terms of where those people live who are looking for information on Social Media, for now at least, in the discussion between Austin & Boston, Boston is the clear leader.

Where do you think Social Media is most wanted?

The last installment of the Foursquare series takes a look at B2B and how Geo-Location services like Foursquare, Gowalla & even Twitter can be used by them.

Successful use of Social Media by the B2B space is a bit of a holy grail amongst marketers. Some have even gone so far as to dismiss the technology as it currently stands because they see no real method of seeing returns on their investment.  If services like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn are a hard sell, how much harder is it to sell a service like Foursquare which seems to reside firmly in the B2C space and be little more than a game?

I was talking this idea through the other day with a friend who read my first post in this series and she extrapolated a very interesting concept for me. I was proposing the use of the technology by B2B service organizations, such as HVAC, copy machine repair etc. Her extrapolation of my idea was to incorporate the heat maps that I showed in the first post into a CRM/Lead Generation environment.  I can definitely see this being used, especially by small B2B outfits.

Imagine being a service based organization that has some type of field force, whether they are making deliveries, making maintenance calls etc. By using heat maps you can see the frequency of visits in a particular area, and by field force member. The heat map would show you where your calls were and where they were not. This would immediately give you valuable information for targeting either customer service issues (too many maintenance calls) or sales opportunities (no deliveries). While I am sure that there is enterprise level shipping, tracking or delivery scheduling software out there, I am equally sure it is beyond the budget of a small B2B businesses trying to compete with bigger organizations. I posted the link to wheredoyougo yesterday, here is another service, checkoutcheckins (produced by Danny Pier) doing a very similar thing with heat maps – still in Alpha.

Location, Location, Location

Of course the key here is still a physical presence. What of companies that do not have a physical product, for example a Marketing Communications Agency?  How do they leverage geo-location services to advance their marketing, especially in the B2B space?  The quick answer is they don’t, not directly. After all the key to geo-location social networking is exactly that, location. However, in much the same way as companies are now starting to feature select staff member twitter streams on their websites, I could definitely see some companies showing select staff member check-ins on their websites. Why? If for no other reason than to show that the company has more than a passing knowledge of how to leverage the technology. More than this, it can provide subliminal messaging showing your potential customers who you are already working with. Of course, it has to be managed correctly, and there is the question of just how much transparency you want with your organization.

Other concepts that have been proposed all revolve around having a location, even if its a temporary one such as at a trade show or conference. This is still a good idea, though temporary locations really do go against the spirit of geo-location social networking, insofar as the idea is that you can repeat the experience of others. If your “friends” are checking in at a conference that you aren’t at, then you have no way of repeating their experience.

Changing The Game

B2B Marketing through geo-location social networking is a much harder proposition. If I were the marketing manager for a company such as Avery Dennison, how would I use Foursquare or services like it to market my message to potential customers? Having access to an individuals’ check-ins doesn’t help me much.

Because I lack the other information about that person, are they authorized to make purchases on behalf of the company etc.? Just because I see that they have checked-in at Office Max doesn’t mean they are buying labels for their company or at all. So no point in pushing them discount coupons. So what do I get from a geo-location service that helps me get my message through all the noise that potential & existing customers are already experiencing? I reverse the concept. Instead of trying to use the service to simply promote my products, why not use my products to promote the service. For example, market to restaurants, bars, coffee shops etc. that are using Foursquare, labels that they can give away to “Mayors”?

Overall, I think that there is a long way to go for geo-location services. We will need to see a greater convergence of both current software technologies and new adaptations of hardware technologies. I certainly see a role for RFID technology in geo-location social networking, having a product check-in for you as you buy it will certainly expand the B2c potential of these services. Quite where B2B will go with Social Media in general, and geo-location in particular, remains to be seen. But there are some very smart people out there figuring it out and you can be sure that, given the right incentive, we will see some innovative campaigns using these tools.

Share your predictions for these services with everyone in the comments below.

Read Part One of this series.

Read Part Two of this series.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Foursquare for users, today I’m going to look at Foursquare for business, in particular the Business to Consumer market (we’ll look at Business to Business tomorrow). During this series I’m making several predictions, mine are based on research, they are generated by getting involved in the development community and talking to people who are actually building these applications. When I see smart people like Mike Langford of Tweetworks diving into the Foursquare API it’s a clear indication that some good apps are just around the corner.

One reason businesses get involved in any new technology is the rate of adoption by the broader community, e.g. their potential customers.  The chart below shows the increasing rate of check-ins in 2009, an increase of approx 900% over the year.

(thanks to John Wiseman for the graph)

In considering the B2C market, I’m going to segment it into large brands & local businesses. While the core of this series of posts focuses on Foursquare, it really covers all geo-location services and their potential uses.

There are two major elements for businesses to consider when getting involved with any Social Media service. Firstly, what can they achieve by using or encouraging use of the application? The other is what can they derive from the application if anything?

Large Brands

Large brands are usually associated with large budgets. What this means is that they can, if they so choose, spend more to acquire a customer than smaller businesses. However, the mindset of doing that is changing. Social Media has made it possible to lower that cost. Geo-Location when used as a part of the Social Media movement can be leveraged quite cheaply.  There are some very obvious quick wins, which large brands can and do use when using Social Media. Promotions, discounts and activity based rewards are all a part of their arsenal.  All of these can have a geo-location element. Gowalla, another of the popular location sharing services uses these to promote its own service. They hide rewards at locations and provide clues to their existing users. This type of “Treasure Hunt” is a common use of marketing in geo-location and is inspired by geo-caching as a game.

The advantage of this type of marketing is that the brand does not need to have their own physical location, they are leveraging other locations, usually notable ones – The Golden Gate Bridge, Grand Central Station, Sydney Opera House etc. This means that brands like Coca-Cola or Hanes can compete with brands like Disney, Marriott etc that have well known physical locations.

The real win for brands is not however in the simple B2C competition, but in leveraging the fact that geo-location services like Foursquare and Gowalla are social. The real win is in the B2C2C space. This might be a reward not only for you but for getting your friends to take action as well. E.g. if you check-in at X location you will receive Y reward, however, if you get 10 of your “friends” to check-in at that location you will get YY reward.

An Open API Leads to Greater Adoption

The fact that, certainly for Foursquare, it is possible to extract this type of data via their API means that brands can promote rewards far more easily through networks.  Foursquare in particular, having opened its API, is making it possible to construct applications that have far reaching potential. Because Foursquare allows its users to auto-post their check-ins to Facebook & Twitter, any application that utilizes the Foursquare API also gets this benefit. In effect they piggyback on the permissions already granted by a Foursquare user.  So a brand could set up a location based competition application and have users take part and promote their activity to their entire network, without the brand ever having to gain direct access to that network. This is a very powerful application of, and extension to, tools like Foursquare that we will see more of in the coming months.

Local Business

The most commonly considered method for local businesses to use location based services is loyalty programs. This is a quick, easy and free/low cost method of using these services. Simply ensuring that your business location(s) are entered in the tool correctly and waiting for people to check-in is great way to achieve a small amount of free promotion. By actually telling people that they will be rewarded for checking in it is possible to increase this dramatically.

In fact, Foursquare actively encourages this on their website by providing a form for businesses to fill out when they offer specials at their location(s). While this is great, it isn’t the only way local businesses can utilize these tools.  Just offering a discount or a freebie will only work so often and for so long. Again, as for large brands, the real killer is not in just communicating with your customers but having them communicate with others and spreading the word. Services such as Yelp have gone a long way in doing this, but they lack the instant nature of geo-location services like Foursquare.

Unlike large brands, local businesses do not usually have the funds to invest in the creation of applications to leverage the networks of users, so they have to do it in a more analog fashion. Referal business is at the core of most successful small businesses, by encouraging referral activity via the use of social tools, small businesses are able to leverage the large networks that users build without cost. For example if I owned a dog washing service I might offer a free dog wash to the “Mayor” of my location, however, if a user brought in 3 other “friends” I might want to offer something more. Using the physical location to show these offers, combined with online announcements, encourages people to take part in these activities.

In the B2C space we are likely to see a lot more integration of applications. As more applications open their API to each other it will be easier for businesses to have their advocates share their message to a broader networks. So what would a future business to consumer app look like in the near future?

You have a local business that sells a major brand product, you want the local customers, the brand wants the loyalty of your customers. As a supplier they provide you with an incentive for your customers, some kind of promo, but instead of a coupon that has to be redeemed, it is validated via geo-location social networking. Having installed the brand’s application, when the customer makes a “reward” purchase, that reward is promoted to all of their network as well. “Matt just earned X, you can too”.

What features do you think Foursquare should have to get businesses to use it?

I’ve been using the mobile location service Foursquare for sometime now. Originally via the mobile web and more recently as part of the Beta test group for the Blackberry – sorry but I can’t reveal anything about that at this point. What I want to cover in this post is the more basic question of  ” Why the heck should I bother with another app?” Over the next two days I’m going to try cover this from two angles, that of the user and that of the business looking to leverage another Social Media platform.

From a user perspective Foursquare appears, on the surface, to be nothing more than a game. Check-in more times than your friends and claim the title of “Mayor” of a location. So what? In much the same way that new Twitter users are stumped by the question “What are you doing?”, new Foursquare users find the act of checking in at a location somewhat pointless. As a friend of mine says, other than enabling stalkers what exactly are you getting out of it?

It’s true that the current actual value of Foursquare to the average user is minimal, if you stay mostly in your home town, you might find you are checking in at the same location as friends, possibly you might get a recommendation for an alternative to the location you are at, but that’s it. If you travel then you are likely to get more from it in terms of recommendations for places to visit, things to do and the potential of meeting other users – the core of Social Media.

However, just as Twitter as a service has spawned numerous add-on services and applications (see OneForty for the definitive list), so Foursquare is doing the same thing by opening up their API.  The heat map of my checkins below was created by WhereDoYouGo.

Ok so it’s a pretty picture but, again, so what? Imagine being able to layer your friends check-ins over the top and see it all graphically. You would, at a glance, literally be able to see the “hotspots” of your location. Much more useful, now add to that augmented reality applications like Layar – put the two together and you have a real-time city guide written by you and people you know.

Imagine being out for an evening, hold your cell phone camera up to a bar front and instantly see layered over the image reviews by people you know, see who you know who is in the bar without going in and what the special offers are for users of the application. Sounds like science fiction but all of the tech to achieve this already exists and is rapidly converging on a phone near you very soon.

Ready to sign up? Go on try it, and send me a friend request at the same time.