Facebook Places – Guess Where I am?

Facebook Places Screenshot

Facebook has announced the debut of a new feature called Places. Facebook Places is a location based tool, where you can check in and be visible to friends (or everyone) at a bar, restaurant or other venue.

As stated on Facebook the ” Who.What. When. And now Where“.  Tap the “Places” icon and check-in!

• Check in and your update will appear on the Place page, your friends’ News Feed and your Wall.
• Tag the friends you’re with so they can be part of your update.
• Appear in “Here Now” to friends and others nearby who are also checked in

Location sharing is enabled by logging  into mobile version of Facebook or an iPhone app. The service is only available in the United States and a roll out to Canada has not been announced yet.

Facebook Places will allow other third party based application like Gowalla to connect with them (Read API) and share their check-in data, badges and history. It’s really not clear how this will work, but we will all stayed tuned.  Since it is new, there have been features and bugs reported as well as privacy concerns regarding checking in and all Facebook users being able to see where you are.

For more information check out the Facebook Places page, and you might want to read the Privacy and Places FAQ pages too.
For more on Facebook Places see the links below and we welcome your comments on our blog:

http://www.facebook.com/places/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/203667/facebook_places_what_you_need_to_know.html?tk=hp_new

Blog Writing Tips – PDF Download

Your blog can be the most powerful online marketing tool you’ve ever had, and best of all it’s completely free. All it takes is some time, practise and a bit of inspiration. Here’s a link to a PDF that we have compiled to help you get started on the road to blogging.

Social Media Introduces a New Kind of Marketing Consulting

2009 was certainly a big year for Social Media but like any new technology there is a lot of confusion about how it should be used. With this new Marketing tool on the rise many businesses start to lose control over their brand. In the “old” days a company would hire an external agency to develop their brand and advertising campaigns. Today, these agencies are not dominating as much as they did in the 1990s because the advertising monologue, from the company to its customers,  is decreasing rapidly. Today, this monologue is becoming a dialogue, and consumers are slowly but surely taking over brands. Does that mean that businesses should be scared? Of course not, as long as they are aware of how Social Media is re-writng Marketing rules and protocols.

Businesses need to be active on an ongoing basis to achieve a significant Internet and Social Media presence. Through building the foundation of your Social Media channels with many small initiatives overtime makes the success of a bigger campaign possible. It takes active participation from people with expertise in your product because only they can offer relevant information that can eventually convert your internet audience to clients. This, of course, lays a new question on the table:

Should businesses continue to outsource their Marketing efforts when it comes to Social Media?

We believe that technology and the Internet are evolving so fast that small and mid sized businesses simply don’t have the time to keep up.  Having Social Media marketing consultants can have a range of benefits:

• Advise you on which Social Media tool suits your business best and how you can combine them (Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, E-Mail Marketing, etc.)
• Monitor your Social Media channels and help you increase your visitors and decrease spammers.
• Keep you informed on the most relevant channels of information for your business where you can participate and increase your visibility .
• Inform you of new technologies on the rise that might benefit your business.
• Improve your ROI and increase your website’s conversion rate.
• Assist you with technical expertise if you chose to use video, graphics and sound.

There are many other tasks that Social Media consultants can perform. If you wish to know more about how Social Media can benefit you watch our video ‘Blogging and Social Media’ or feel free to drop us a line here .

Social Media Integration….

Did you know that there is Social Media content management tools out there that can save you a lot of time by using them to integrate your Blog with your Facebook and Twitter account? This information could be useful for beginning or intermediate level bloggers and social media enthusiasts.

If you have Twitter followers who are not suscribed to your RSS Feed, or if you have Facebook friends or fans who aren’t following you on Twitter you can still mantain those channels fed with information from your blog without having to enter your articles multiple times on these different sites.

Here at Standard Marketing we have integrated our Blog feed into our Notes on our Facebook Fan Page. For Twitter, we use a plugin called Twitter Tools. It allows our Twitter account to broadcast our blog posts. Because Twitter allows only 140 character posts you can use URL shortening services and integrate them with your tweeter to link back to your blog posts.

Social Media and the ROI

On December 9^th we had the pleasure of attending our 3^rd IIMA event. The topic was, what everybody is talking about these days, Social Media. It’s a very hot topic for many people involved in big and small businesses alike, non-profit organization, political organizations, marketers, you name it. Of course, there are always the sceptics who prefer not to get involved, but usually time takes care of that when it comes down to new ways of doing things, especially when it comes down to business.

I mention the sceptics because there are a lot of questions surrounding Social Media and this IIMA event’s objective was to address an important one: Where is the ROI in Social Media?

The 3 speakers at the event were:

• Stephen Smith, the CEO of Webnames.ca, Canada’s original domain registrar.
• Warren Sukernek from Lift9, a social media consulting and research company.
• Darren Barefoot, co-founder of Capulet Communications who has recently co-authored a book called “Friend with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

There were no promises or overblown expectations at the meeting. There were however 3 guys with plenty of experience in the field presenting some real life situations and their own opinion.

Here are some snippets of the presentation:

First of all, broadcast media is on the downfall. We are not going to throw fancy numbers out there but according to statistics TV, Newsprint and Radio have declined in demand about 30% in the last year. A lot of people are still watching TV of course but there are some factors that are less than ideal for businesses when it comes to traditional media. Two very important ones are the very high cost and the inability to measure accurately its effectiveness.

 In contrast, Social Media is highly measurable due to Internet technology. Businesses can reach their target easier and cheaper. Social Media is also very customizable and adaptable to your business’ needs.

Search plays a very important role in your business’ visibility. That is where SEO and Social Media start to mix. Today Google is the biggest search engine and usually they are the first to set example of how search should work. Google is always evolving around technology and they are widely embracing Social Media. If you post on your blog, comment on other people’s blogs, tweet and have a highly active facebook page then you are already increasing your presence on the web.

Here is the bottom line: Social Media is not the answer to your prayers, at least not the immediate one. Social Media will work for you if you already have a strategy laid out, if you are actively participating with other people on the web and if you have patience. This new marketing tool is all about the little things. Start small, think big.

Yes there is ROI in Social Media and there are already many examples we can mention but we’ll leave those for another post. The important thing is, if you are a business that wants to prosper and grow, and don’t have a clue about Social Media, now is the time to get involved.