Originally posted on Travis Murdock’s Blog.

Guide to location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, for PR and marketing professionals.

I checked in on Foursquare as I arrived at a networking event the other day and I was greeted with a free drink if I showed my phone to the bartender. My excitement grew when Foursquare notified me that the restaurant across the street had a two-for-one dinner deal. I grabbed some colleagues to go with me. When we finished, I noticed that the bar across the street offered a free appetizer. So, we trouped across the street determined to follow our Foursquare adventure to its end even if we were already full. When we finished we had consumed drinks, dinner and appetizers all for less than $10 each.

As my experience shows, people are willing to give their location if they know they’ll get something for it. JiWire’s Insights report found that 53 percent of people are willing to show their location to get more relevant ads. Nielsen reports that 24 percent of Americans have a smartphone and we know that most of the new models have GPS. Foursquare has rapidly grown to 500,000 users and 275,000 check-ins in one day. Mashable reports that the other location-based check-in game, Gowalla, has about 100,000 customers. Additionally, nearly every user-generated review service is adding location to its mobile app because of its benefits to customers and the hope to attract higher advertising rates.

As a PR or marketing professional it is about time to add location-based services to your marketing mix and reputation management programs. Your customers are already mentioning your brand in these services and their comments are showing up in search results. It isn’t hard to understand that like other social media, location-based services need active engagement and monitoring. Chuck Reynolds daftly details the impact of these services on local search and search engine visibility in this blog post.

Although not sanctioned by the company, there was even a Foursquare Day last month on April 16 (4/16) that fans put together. I know you have a lot to monitor already in the fragmented social media fracas, so here are some tools that can make it easy to keep an eye on public comments on Foursquare and Gowalla. Both Check-In Mania and FourWhere allow you to search for your business and view the shouts and recommendations people leave.

I love to see the updates and advice from my friends as they check-in throughout their day. It helps me find better restaurants and gets me to try new businesses. As a PR person, I’ve seen it create real-time buzz around an event and drive longer-term search engine results. It’s time to check-in on your brand’s reputation before your customers check-out.

Disclosure: JiWire is a client.

Originally posted on Forbes.com.

Social networking started out as “things”–destination sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that we browsed through and used to connect with our friends, family and co-workers. Now, however, it is poised to become “everything.”

Just as water blankets the Earth’s surface area (and sustains life), social-networking technologies will soon cover 70% of the Web. This will breathe ubiquitous global social connectivity into once solitary experiences. The impact for luxury brands will be dramatic.

For decades, luxury brands have appealed to an insatiable emotional need that millions share. As a society, we aspire to purchase products and services that make us feel wealthy, either financially or emotionally. This often changes with the times–and it’s steered by local cultures as well–however, the trend spans centuries.

This raises a key question: In an era of ubiquitous social networking–one where every online and mobile experience is enhanced by the lens of our friends–how will luxury be defined?

Where once a single TV show or a celebrity could define luxury, that’s no longer the case. The media environment is too fragmented today, and it’s increasingly personalized by the connections we keep. This means that luxury is fractional. A brand that’s achieved luxury status among thirty-something moms in Los Angeles could be considered taboo by the same demographic in New York–all because of the types of social connections we keep online and how they shape our worldview.

With this dynamic in mind, here are three steps that luxury brands should consider to either maintain or grow their iconic status:

1) Make every online experience a social one.

Every day consumers are talking about luxury brands online. This means we form opinions based on what we see and hear from our friends. To succeed, luxury brands will need to turn once static experiences into social ones that are personalized so that the right message is communicated at the right time to the right group of individuals in the right context–all while appealing to their higher emotional needs.

Facebook’s new social tools, introduced last month, are a great first step in this direction. Levi’s has deployed them across its website, turning every experience into a social one that’s filtered through our friends.

2) Develop coveted social objects.

Luxury goods are coveted. Many of us want to be seen carrying our Louis Vuitton handbag or wearing a Rolex watch. This could translate online as well. Just as millions hope to one day be able to afford luxury brands, they also might want to achieve some level of similar status online within their social network.

Enter luxury brands. Every single one of the iconic companies on Forbes’ list of Platinum Brands has the opportunity to create and launch social objects that consumers can earn the right to embed and/or share on their social profiles.

3) Map and tap networks.

Every individual has role models. It used to be, however, that celebrities dominated this space. Today, however, it’s possible that our view of role models is changing, perhaps moving closer to the company we keep online.

Luxury brands that can understand how role models are formed, map these networks and tap into their power will be in the best position to capture attention in a highly personalized environment.

When it comes to driving positive brand awareness, it takes a lot of time and effort to maintain a company’s online reputation. Wikipedia says that a reputation is the opinion (or social evaluation) of a group, person or an organization based on certain criteria. With the dynamic nature of the social web and given that sharing content is as common as saying hello; it’s imperative for brands to monitor their reputation before a particular message or allegation becomes viral that probably shouldn’t have.

This is equally as important for individuals. I don’t remember the last time I didn’t Google someone I was about to interview. In fact a recent Microsoft study (client) showed that 70% of hiring managers have rejected candidates because of what they found on the Internet. It’s not all bad news, though, because 85% said they were influenced by positive information as well.

Here are some tools I have used both professionally and personally to manage my reputation.

Twitter Search

I hate to sound like a broken record but Twitter search is a great tool and their search functionality also works in applications like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. I use Tweetdeck and what I normally do is create search columns for my full name (Michael Brito) as well as my Twitter handle; in case someone references me and forgets the “@”.

Not everyone is grammatically proficient as they want to be so I often search for common mistakes made with the spelling of Michael (i.e. Micheal, Michal, Michel) and my last name Brito (i.e. Britto). You would be surprised how common spelling errors occur.

Twitter search is free and captures everything being said about you or your brand on Twitter. You can also opt to use TweetBeep and subscribe to the search results which tracks conversations that mention you, your products and your company. The tool also keeps track of who’s tweeting your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL; just in case they don’t mention your name in their tweet (i.e. this company has horrible customer service – http://bit.ly/4hIed2), linking to your site.

Social Listening Software

There are a multitude of social listening platforms available to business and enterprise customers like Scoutlabs and Biz 360; but if you are a consultant or just managing your own personal brand, you may not want to make such a hefty financial investment in these tools. There are some free tools available like Social Mention which scans blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. for your search queries. I recommend using Boolean search techniques when using this tool (or any tool for that matter); otherwise you will most likely retrieve irrelevant results. Additionally, Social Mention results can be parsed out in different categories (blogs, microblogs, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, video, audio, Q&A and networks.)

Similarly to Google Alerts, Social Mention also has “social media alerts” which will provide daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest about you.

Google Alerts

I have been using Google alerts for years. I subscribe to multiple alerts with several variations of my name coupled with any recent company I have worked for (i.e. “michael brito” + “intel” or “michael brito” + “edelman”). I used to receive daily alerts but opted for weekly instead because I am not that popular. I also subscribe to alerts for “Britopian” which is my blog title, Twitter handle and my profile name for many networks that I belong to.

Facebook

Believe it or not, Facebook’s search capabilities have improved over the years. For example, when searching for “Nike”, the results yielded various fan pages, profiles that mention Nike and various status updates. They also serve up a few web results at the bottom. The only caveat is that the status updates are only from friends in your network. However, if I worked for Nike and with 2.1 million “what used to be called ‘fans’ of my brand” there is an opportunity there to get more effective results in the search query.

Search Aggregators

I used to use Monitor This a few years ago. It basically searches for your query in 26 different search engines and allows you to subscribe to the results via RSS. Leapfish is a search aggregator that retrieves results from other portals and search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Digg, Twitpic, Blogs, Videos etc. The difference between these two tools is Leapfish’s real time capabilities. I also enjoy the their Facebook and Twitter integration and the ability to customize the home page.

At the end of the day, the source of your online reputation can always be traced back to Google. Jeremiah Owyang summed this up over two years ago and it’s only more true today. Google is not just your corporate home page, it’s everyone’s home page. Everyone uses Google to search about people, brands, sports and you name it. And, with “real time search”, it’s even more important that brands and individuals pay attention to what’s being said about them “real time” on the social web.

On behalf of myself as a professional communicator, I want to apologize.

If you are a company, I’ve misled you. If you are a consumer, I’ve used you. And as much as I’d like to change the future, there may be no turning back.

Somehow I managed to take the most engaging and exciting advancements in communications since Gutenberg and turn them into something cold. I took what used to be called “stories” and changed them into “content.” I used technology to communicate, and in doing so turned communication into something technological – not “read” or “watched” but rather “consumed.”

The more that people like me use words like Content, Engagement and Post to represent how we tell stories and connect with each other, the more distance we create. Calling social media a “tool” is just another way to emotionally detach.

Instead of bringing us closer, the words we use and the values we assign to them are pulling us apart. Even Edelman, my employer, has hired a Chief Content Officer – I can only hope that “telling stories” will win out over “creating content,” and that helping clients be “media companies” is secondary to helping clients be storytellers.

Content may want to be free, but content should not be free of context. Narrative has a place.

This is our job and our responsibility as communicators. Here’s how we can start:

• Employees are at the core of a company’s story – they are both manifestations of and conduits for the brand. Encourage employees to share if they choose, starting with creating clear “social media engagement guidelines” (don’t call it a “policy”) so employees feel empowered and supported.
• Find your best customers – better yet, make it easier for them to find you via search and social interaction online. Their stories are the companies’ stories, and in many cases are more credible.
• Drop the Veil – in other words, be human. Companies aren’t buildings, brands aren’t logos. Even the Tin Man discovered he had a heart.
• Be Real – all good stories have conflict and drama, so embrace yours. If there is a crisis, attack it head on; if you screw up, apologize and show how you are correcting the problem. Transparency and even some humility are the clearest paths to a happy ending.
• Play – innovation thrives in the unknown; play around, do something new, have adventures, fail often. It may not always work out, but think of the stories you can tell.

So let’s return to stories and narrative. That’s how brands will cut through the clutter. Tell a story and stand for something. Be in the conversation for the long haul, not just the product launch.

And who knows — maybe we can change the future after all.

Originally posted on PRmoment.com.

Big businesses have risk aversion coded into their DNA. Structurally and culturally, they are often incapable of making a brave choice, and the right decision for any middle manager in a big corporation is almost always to do nothing.

In the communications and marketing disciplines, this manifests itself in truisms like the one that I heard a client repeat recently: “No one ever got fired for making a TV ad,” he said in the midst of our meeting. And while I’m sure I could find more than one chief marketing officer who moved quietly into ‘consulting’ after a failed ad campaign, that isn’t really the point.

Fear can be a healthy thing. It keeps us from taking risks that might imperil ourselves. But when fear holds us back from necessary progress, its utility disappears, and it’s simply an obstacle.

When it comes to social media, fear of doing something new, something unproven, or something different from what they did last year is holding many companies back.

For some, it stands in the way of doing anything at all. Others have established a Facebook presence, but with their wall limited to broadcasting their own messages and their discussion boards deactivated. And how many companies have started Twitter feeds, but only to broadcast links to their press releases?

This behaviour is understandable, and no one should suggest that organisations with control and order as their founding purposes are going to wade into the disorderly anarchy of conversation overnight. They fear doing, but what they fail to appreciate is that they should equally fear doing nothing.

In every sector and every vertical, some businesses are changing their behaviour and getting more engaged. People’s expectations for businesses are changing.

Sitting still – making that uncontroversial decision to do nothing – now means falling behind.

So what do you fear? And what should you fear? Consider a couple of examples:

• Are you blocking access to social networking sites because you fear your staff will waste working time? You should fear that your best employees will soon leave because you don’t trust them and you treat them like children.
• Do you limit dialogue on your web properties and Facebook page because you’re afraid someone will criticise you? They’re doing it anyway. And you should fear what they’re saying, and the perceptions they’re shaping that you have no ability to influence.

There are many more.

Still, the bottom line is simple: If you’re going to let fear drive your decision making, that’s fine. But make sure you know what to fear.

Last week I asked the @EdelmanDigital Twitter followers the question below.

The @EdelmanDigital followers quickly chimed in and all the feedback they gave were points that companies should consider about their social media programs. Here are a few key responses to my question:

• @eric_andersen: How to thank people for mentions and respond to replies – so simple, yet so few do
• @krlooney: “When using social media I wish more companies knew what they believed.” variation: “the future they stand for”
• @joachimschulz: “how”
• @pcambron: You can’t simply transfer traditional tactics online. You need to converse and add value before you simply sell
• @jordanlangdon: How to maintain two-way conversation instead of solely promoting themselves.
• @cecipf: Realize the value of quality vs quantity
• @jamesonbull: that it is okay to show that you have a sense of humor.
• @sethgray: it’s about me, not them

In a time when more and more companies are getting involved in online communities it’s imperative that they understand how to approach and properly participate in discussions before they take a blind dive. Companies should also understand the true importance of social media and how powerful it can be. As a follow-up to the first question I also asked, what’s the most powerful thing about social media. @EdelmanDigital followers responded with…

• @sosully317: branding yourself.
• @annahardman: the ease in which it allows you to build new and valuable relationships (Edelman employee)
• @DanFugate: its ability to connect people and information.
• @bsniz: Radical transparency.
• @abrill: Mobilizing communities

After seeing the responses to both of my questions I thought I should weigh in with my own response. In my opinion social media has the power to give everyone a voice and if you aren’t listening you are missing opportunities to evolve and engage. As I said earlier, I do believe companies tend to jump in without investing time in research and education. You wouldn’t code a website without learning the basics so why start tweeting without figuring out the lingo and etiquette.

To me this post is just another way for companies to listen. I have crowdsourced information from real people in the community that are willing to listen, engage, and participate and that are trying to encourage others to do so and do it well.

Add to the conversation, what’s powerful about social media and what do you wish companies knew as they try to get involved?

Another month, another visit to Silicon Valley – my home away from home – and, with it, another visit to the Googleplex in search of insights. This time I chatted with Karen Wickre, who oversees Google’s growing armada of blogs and Twitter embassies.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, has a culture of openness. Often a company’s culture shapes its communications strategy. And that’s certainly the case with Google. So social media comes naturally.

Karen first launched Google’s corporate blog back in 2004. Today the company has digital embassies for virtually every product. This armada spans dozens of blogs, Twitter profiles, YouTube and more recently Facebook.

Back when the Official Google Blog launched, posts were conservative. Wickre, a former tech journalist, told me over breakfast that early items were almost whimsical, focusing on the food at Google (which I can assure you, rocks).

While the blog still features some trivial fare, no one could call it – or any of Google’s other digital assets – a light weight. In fact, the opposite is true. Google uses its armada to take on hard issues like China, public policy and privacy. And it largely eschews press releases, unless they are financial or material to shareholders.

While Wickre doesn’t oversee all these embassies, she serves as a beacon for the teams that manage them – subject matter experts like product managers, engineers and marketers. Like a good coach, she provides templates and best practices and answers questions as they come up. Wickre, in the meantime, is turning her attention to how the company can strategically use its own Buzz product.

Wickre is one of an emerging breed of professionals that companies hire to manage/lead companies down the social media path. Not nearly enough credit goes to people like her. These individuals are often the ones who have to effect change – with the help of partners like us.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, is a model of social media success. One reason is that they tap into the three key trends that I wrote about earlier. They are real-time, visible and data driven. However, what they do best is embrace using multiple messages, formats and stories.

I subscribe to a fire hose feed for all the Google blogs as well as their Twitter and Facebook embassies. On any given day you will find a wealth of news, tips and stories that are tailored to specific interests. Only care about Gmail? There’s an embassy for that. How about policy? That too.

However, Google’s social media success goes beyond just having lots of teams engaged. Each venue slants the content to the reader/viewer’s needs and utilizes different formats – short form, long form, video, images and more. The end result is that Google creates massive surface area that make them hard to miss in an age where information choices are ubiquitous.

The takeaway here for companies is that, when possible, they should consider creating several blogs and – more likely – digital embassies inside existing communities. One Twitter presence might not be enough. The same goes with Facebook. (Note that this is just one approach and not the only one. Some advocate centralizing content into a single place. There are pros/cons to each.)

Businesses today need to consider having multiple streams that are mapped to high priority interests. This creates surface area and lots of entry points for stakeholders to get engaged. What’s more, the content should be “hand crafted“- eg tailored to each community. And these spaces should be managed by identifiable employees who are subject matter experts.

This is how I am tailoring my own content. I use Twitter for sharing/conversing around links and news. My new Facebook community is for discussions and sharing insights and observations. While my Posterous blog site is for essays, videos and the occasional digital doodles.

Now scaling might intimidate some. According to a recent Smartbrief survey, time is the chief obstacle to engaging in social communities. However, if a business makes social media a team sport, as Google does, anyone can succeed.

There have been many different subtopics of online health communication discussed in the last few Health Digital Check-Ups. It’s somewhat daunting to digest it all, so before going even farther down the road with more about the specifics, we thought it may be a great time to refresh and just lay out the entire landscape.

Instead of walking through alone, though, we are going to enlist some help from one of the most iconic bands of American pop culture: Journey. Because everyone loves Journey, right?

So here’s a quick view of where we stand with the musical inspiration of Steve Perry. Let us know if we missed something.

Separate Ways

While it isn’t necessarily a catch-all for everyone who communicates about health, it’s sometimes easy to think about the space as holding three separate groups, and each has a very separate way of interacting on the online channel. The health space often feels limited to patients interacting with other patients about conditions or health status, healthcare professionals talking with their peers about news, and health companies dipping their toes in but reluctant to fully engage with the public.

I’ll Be Alright Without You

There are some pretty strong data points, most notably in Pew’s 2009 study on patients and health information, that consumers are often quenching their thirst for health knowledge at many places beyond a doctor’s office. Much of this is happening online: 60 percent of people who report looking online for health information (roughly 2/3 of American Internet users fall into this category) say that what they found on their own affected their decision about how to treat an illness or condition. It is not a complete transition, though: physicians still rank as most credible source, and as the Health Engagement Barometer showed, 88 percent of people validate the information they find online with their doctor.

Wheel in the Sky

In this metaphor, “the wheel in the sky that keeps turnin’” is the ever growing innovation of online technology. There are new communication platforms constantly appearing in the digital world, and with each new channel, it is our challenge not only to figure out how people may use them to communicate about health, but also the marketing regulations that are still yet to truly be defined. Google’s SideWiki made us rethink the idea of “ownership” of a Web site, and it had a unique impact on sites for pharmaceutical products. We don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow, but you can bet it’s going to keep health communicators on their toes.

Open Arms

If recent years of the e-patient movement are any indication, the growth of communities specifically focused on a condition or disease states is likely to continue. That means that understanding how to work with patients – and not try to talk at them – will be the key to success. We shouldn’t have anything to hide, and we need to believe what they say. After all, for these groups, it is their health; as communicators, we need to respect that.

Don’t Stop Believing

There are a few more things that need to be worked out in the realm of online health communication. There still is that divide between the different groups, making transparent engagement across parties a little bit of a challenge. However, it is absolutely plausible that this will not be this way forever. We will find a way to connect patients and the people who can help them the most with their health. Until then, just don’t stop believing.

After a recent conversation with Adweek’s Brian Morrissey—it hit me that this is likely the year where we will see more senior people from the marketing & business community descend upon SXSW for a number of different reasons. In the past, SXSW has largely been populated by the hard core tech folks and digerati. This year, it will be more common to see people from all backgrounds and companies ranging from Humana (client) to Hilton to, you name it.

So the question is—if you are either going or sending someone, what’s the primary reason? Share your thoughts here on our anonymous poll. We’d love to know why you are going and what you hope to get out of it.

We’ll be at SXSW in full force and hope to see you there.