I have a confession to make.

I've become rather addicted to FourSquare lately.

FourSquare is a recent addition to a number of social sites that facilitate "life streaming", or, as I like to call it, "lifestyle web impressions".



Wiki describes it as thus: "Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices, and game. Users "check-in" at venues using text messaging or a device specific application. ]They are then awarded points and sometimes "badges."

However, having played around with FourSquare I see it as much more than just a game. It has the potential to become a serious business tool.

Mark Krynsky, in his recent LifeStream blog, shared this important insight:

"The act of performing a "checkin" is an important gesture that is a universal action that will we be applied to many services over the next few years. Location is a piece of data that when applied to other objects has become a very valuable way to add context and other functionality to a piece of media.

By providing location data to photographs we added great value to that media. We can now visit sites like Google Maps and Flickr and other services that use location as a data point to search and view photos. The act of the checkin now ads the gesture of saying "I'm here" paired up with location and time. This will also offer a similar valuable piece of context across many platforms in the future".



Vanessa and I have already seen a business application for FourSquare with regards to our holiday lets.

We've tagged them on FourSquare so that they will be visible to anyone who "checks in" to the area. FourSquare allows you to comment on the location (or share a tip) and I have therefore added a brief description to the tag, describing the cottage, number it sleeps, and phone number to call to book it etc.

I will also encourage our guests to write testimonials on FourSquare, which can be viewed by anyone in the area.

FourSquare shows you everyone who has been in the area, and you can connect with them via Twitter and FaceBook (if they have shared that data). This is a free and quick way to connect with people who have visited, and therefore have an interest in the location. A targeted database that you can leverage and use to make some powerful and relevant connections.

Thinking laterally with a generic example:

If you are a restaurant owner, you can see who has visited your restaurant and connect with them via Twitter/Facebook (if the customer has shared this information on their profile). Foursquare can tell you how many times a customer has been to your venue or the frequency of their visits. Many venues are now using this data to reward their most loyal customers with freebies or discounts and drive more traffic to their business.



If a Foursquare user is at your bar/restaurant, FS offer a JV programme allowing you tell them what they have to do to unlock a free snack or discounted drink. If they happen to be across the street or two blocks away from your venue, FS will let them know that your business gives special treatment to foursquare users and that they should swing by for a visit, again driving more traffic to your business.

FourSquare are currently developing some analytic tools to help businesses get the most out of the application.

Property-related examples:

If you are an interior designer, how about writing a short appraisal on FourSquare of the interior design of the premises you visit? The business owner may well see it, but so will everyone else in the area. A simple way to get visibility for the service you provide.

Or you may be a lettings agent.  How about having visibility in the localised web "High Street" where people are constantly checking in and may need your service?

As a customer yourself, every time you check-in or create a FourSquare comment/tip, you can tweet this out on Twitter and FB, thereby providing easy content generation to keep your feeds active and share your experience of that venue/business. Another "lifestyle web impression" that is as individual as you are.

I see so many opportunities with this tool in the property industry. It's a global site with highly localised relevance.

It's all about leaving a "lifestyle" imprint on the web that will give you enhanced visibility and facilitate deeper insights and greater context to what you (and/or your business) are all about. It's another way of making easy and targeted connections. It's another way to leverage those all-important user generated media impressions.

Your customers will generate your social media for you. You and/or your business can generate more lifestyle imprints to enhance your own visibility.

It will tell your customers what they want to know, when they want to know it, sometimes it might even be so targetted, that it tells them before they even realise they want to know it!

A bit like you didn't know you wanted a Versace tie until you came across it while searching for something else on E-Bay!

99% of your competitors are not even aware of this capability ... yet.

Do you see opportunity here?

I do. I see this site becoming the user-generated "Yellow Pages" of the social web.

Having the right knowledge at the right time determines how successfully you play the business game.

Might this be another way of leveraging FREE web tools to build a highly successful business by pre-empting your customers' needs, without resorting to pushy sales techniques or needing a large marketing budget?

Certainly seems that way to me.

I hope you have found this blog thought-provoking?

These are the kind of insights we share and discuss at our Surrey Social Media Tribes networking events.

None of us is as smart as all of us ... so come and join us at THIS month's event.

Date: Thursday, 15th April 2010

Venue: Club Suite, The Holiday Inn, Egerton Road, Guildford.

Time: 18.30 to 21.30.

Parking: Ample and free

This month's subject: How to use free web tools and new highly sophisticated software to "listen" on the social web.

Price: £10.00 in advance or £15.00 on the door on the night.

Please click >>> here to register and pay....

And don't forget to check-in to "Surrey Social Media Tribes" via FourSquare when you arrive!

However, if you have already seen the light with regards to social media and you're ready to get going with it, then check out my "How to implement a social media strategy for your business" training day, taking place near Milton Keynes on the 17th April. There are a few places left on this ground-breaking course and your first customer generated by social media engagement will pay back the £149.00 including VAT course fee.

We are so confident in the quality and value of our training that we happily offer a 100% money back guarantee that your course fee will be refunded in full if you do not feel it was value for money or that social media is not for you. So you have no risk and nothing whatsoever to lose ... but everything to gain.

Please click >>> here for full details.

Thanks for reading this blog.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to join the discussion on Property Tribes >>>> here.

Nick Tadd

Today we have had the honour of being featured in "The Community Challenge" blog/club on ecademy. Penny Power asked us to write about our business journey over the last 6 years and how we have come to embrace "social media" and the web, illustrating how we use it with our businesses.

We thought we would share it with you here.

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So what are we all about, now there hangs a question!

Well there's two of us: Nick Tadd and Vanessa Warwick ... ahem, G'day.

We met late in life so I suppose it's only right that we have a paragraph each to explain the story before we met - bring you "up to speed" so to speak. You might note that we have a fairly musical back ground, Vanessa being a VJ on MTV and me being appreciator of melody, not only that but film buffs to boot. Therefore, we thought it would be quite appropriate to interject lyrics and quotes throughout this piece to give a flavour to who and what we are ... let alone the reason behind it.

So without further ado ... enter stage right Mr Nick Tadd.



In the immortal words of The House of Pain  "Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin ..."

Quick potted history: After school and becoming a qualified fashion designer and an Art history buff I immediately dropped out and picked up a surf board. This was in the latter end of the 80's/ early 90's and I'm sure you recall a recession at that time. This did not bother me as I was too busy enjoying my 20's and living the beach life and, to afford it, I started designing surfboards (graphic/logo's etc), then windsurf boards which evolved into jet ski racing teams ... cool.  Living on a beach and being creative….

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." Dead Poets Society, 1989

I had no idea what a recession was, so I just carried on! With designing jet-ski racing teams came Motorsport, and between the early 90's and the early 2000's that's what I did, design racing cars ... not the engineering you understand but the graphic/s.

 

Ford motorsport (Rally cars), Janspeed (Nissan touring cars), Toms (Toyota touring cars, F3 and LeMans Gt1 cars) even a 2.5 litre Harley Davidson drag bike – jeez that was fast!

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Coutesy of Mike Fruchter of MichaelFruchter.com (Twitter/FriendFeed)


When it comes to just starting out with social media, there is no magic bullet for success. Nothing happens overnight, and if it does, it's usually short-lived. Like anything else is in life, it requires consistency, patience and perseverance. Last week, I expanded on the importance of how sharing and self promotion is always a two-way street. This post touches upon 10 general tips to help beginners generate inbound links and sustained long term traffic.

1) Ask for link exchanges:

It never hurts to ask first. This does not always work, but what do you have to lose? Most people are still courteous and do answer emails. Send an e-mail with a short personalized note asking for a link exchange. If you are just starting out, it's good practice to link to others first, wait a little while, and then ask for reciprocation. Look at the site first, if they do not have a blogroll or links to other blogs, then don't waste your time. If their not linking out to anyone else, then they probably wont link out to you, much less respond to your email.

2) Quality content is key:

You have heard this one a million times before, but there is a reason why. Your content defines you and the message you are trying to convey. Quality gets noticed above anything else. Create newsworthy, thoughtful, intelligent content that has immediate usefulness. Give people a reason to share and bookmark your site. Give people a reason to keep coming back for more. If your blog is informative, original or interesting, people will keep coming back. If your content is recycled or of poor quality, your fighting a downhill battle.

3) Separate personal from professional:

Maintaining a balance is very important. There is nothing wrong with straying off course every once in a while. If posts of a personal nature are imperative to you, and must be publicly published with some frequency, create a new blog for it. The occasional blog postings of baby pictures or a family outing is nice, they expose the human side of you, which everyone reading can in some way, shape or form, relate to. The same goes for bloggers who must auto-import bookmarks and tweets into their blogs, put it on a separate page, or minimize it to your sidebar.

4) Be a two-way blogger:
There are two types of bloggers. One way bloggers and two way bloggers. One way bloggers are basically just talking to their readers. While there is nothing wrong with that, the more experienced you get, the more you move up the food chain. By nature, this will lead to less interaction with readers. This is especially true when you are just starting out. It's crucial that you be a two way blogger. Two way bloggers engage with their readership, rather than one way bloggers who just talk to their readers. This means if people leave comments, take the time to respond. Go a step further, if the readers who leave comments have blogs, visit them, find a topic worthy post and leave a thoughtful comment in return. Encourage your readers to follow you on Twitter, or FriendFeed, and be sure to reciprocate the following. See what we are doing here? We are taking an interest in the reader.

5) Encourage comments:

Interaction with your readers, by encouraging commenting, is very important if you are seeking sustained long term repeat traffic. Ask questions in your post. Ask the readers for additional tips or thoughts on the story subject. Do not require registration. Make commenting easy and not a chore. Shine the spotlight on your blog's top commentators. Most third party commenting applications such as Disqus offer sidebar widgets that will allow you to do this. There are Wordpress plugins available as well.

6) Empower your readers with the tools for promotion:

Let your readers promote your content by bookmarking and sharing your content. Add to your blog and postings promotional tools such as social sharing and bookmark services. I would recommend addthis.com, but there are plenty to choose from. Lets face it, people tend to be lazy, why not make it easier for them. Also make sure to clearly place RSS icons and text links on your blog. This makes it easy and also encourages people to subscribe to your blog.

7) Don't forget SEO, at least the basics:

By default if you are blogging, you are somewhat ahead of the game in terms of optimizing your content for search engines. But regardless of what type of site you run, paying attention to the basics of SEO will generate more organic long term search engine traffic. You must ensure that your page titles, headlines, url formatting, and content, all contain the blog topic relevant keywords or phrases. That's the tip of the iceberg. I wrote a more detailed post on 15 tips for improving search engine visibility, which is a good starting point.

8) Establish and build power passports:

Just as you would need to establish your credentials in the form of a passport when flying to a foreign country, the same is true with the territories we embark on in social media. Passports are the social profiles that we create on other social networking sites and platforms. Other than a blog for the most part, these are our online credentials. Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google profile are all passports. More importantly, they are all sources that generate search engine traffic. The sites mentioned above are all authoritative. As a result, links established on those services rank higher in the search results. Consistency is the name of the game. All of your online profiles should share the same information. Make sure to use the same usernames. If possible, use the same profile pictures, logos, and contact info. Always link back to your blog, and your other passports. Maintain a recognizable, uniform presence across all social networks, professional and personal.

9) Develop relationships with other bloggers:

Successful social media marketing/branding/self promotion or whatever you would like to call it, is always a two way street, never a one way. It's actually about giving more then you get. When first starting out, it's vital that you develop friends, a following and a network. This will take weeks to months, and that's okay. As with life, offline relationships take time to form, grow and blossom, the same is true for online. Just because you decided to follow me on Twitter, or FriendFeed, does not mean we are instant friends. You have taken the first step, which is good because it shows that you have expressed interest in me or my content. The next step is staying on the blogger's radar. Most likely some of the bloggers you decided to follow will already have an established and large active following. With that being said, sometimes you might need to stand out from the crowd to get noticed. The easiest way of doing this is by participating in the blogger's circle. Leave thoughtful comments on their posts, retweet their content, and share their content. Fill the vacant slots on your blogrolls with links to their blogs. Lastly, show them some real linklove. Write a blog post and positively link to them. Your network can make you or break you in some respect. Associate with the wrong people, and risk damaging your brand, and wasting your time in the process. Associate with like minded thinkers and doers, and propel yourself forward, it's really that simple, I promise you. The name of the game is time. If you are willing to contribute and spare a lot of it, it will payoff in the end. These means do justify their ends.

10) Use your treasure chest wisely:

Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site is just as important as anything else. It starts with a good analytics package. The treasure, your traffic data, lies inside. Two points I will touch upon with this is the ability to track search engine traffic by keyword, and the ability to find anyone and everyone who has a link to your site. Establish relationships/linkbacks with the sites linking to you. You can also gauge, track and readjust any SEO marketing efforts. The driving point here is you need direct access to url referral tracking. Use widgets such as MyBlogLog to help build community on your site. However, it also serves another purpose, which is that it tracks and reports incoming urls to your site (how people got there) and what they clicked and viewed on your site. Be as informed about your traffic as you possibly can. Never be too afraid to step out of your comfort zone and experiment with new technologies.

Click here to watch tech videos 

Between the Romans and the Renaissance the world of "information" belonged to the Church, Feudal system, or the Monarchy.

Then came the Renaissance which included the most important invention until the turn of the 20th century... the printing press.

The only problem is that most people could not read!

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Sorry - this has nothing to do with property. However, I write a tech blog - click here - and I found this on the net the other day which I thought was funny enough to share.

Nick

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