All the major US and Canadian sports leagues are looking to grow their social presence, digital business and fan experience. With these goals in mind it would seem that a marriage between Foursquare and these sports leagues is a no brainer.

It’s odd that Foursquare has not incorporated events into the fold but I would suggest that a partnership with the NHL, MLB, NBA and NFL would be an easy and mutually beneficial place to begin. Let’s me take the perspective of the respective sports leagues and their teams.

The major sports have all been able to grow their business in the digital world through partnerships (e.g. fantasy gaming is huge) and content syndication but none have really been able to take a leadership role in the social space. With the knowledge that social interaction and building upon the passions of sports fans in an effort to connect them to their team in a social manner will ultimately translate into a more one-to-one sales and marketing relationship (see upcoming pieces for the value of Social CRM) and a better customer experience, better feedback loop and opportunities to direct sell, these leagues need to figure out how to do more than have Twitter accounts and Facebook fans. One thing that is clearly working in social media is the idea of “check-ins” and using these check-ins with business discounts driving sales and loyalty programs there is nothing for sports leagues to lose. However I wouldn’t suggest it for just those reasons, they’re obvious enough.

An Instant Loyalty Program

I believe that if the major sports leagues worked with both Foursquare and each of their digital media departments they could immediately grow their social presence. By making every game in every park/stadium a check-in opportunity the leagues could easily run contests to reward the most loyal fans, the fans who traveled the most to see their team etc – an instant loyalty program! However if you really want to get social, the check-in at the game should instantly send the user a special offer for league merchandise at the game (upsell) and with it an opt-in chance to be part of the game community. Other offers could be made throughout the game, but the key would be that during and after the game an instant community (people are checking in from mobile phones and iPads after all) can emerge where Tweets are all hash tagged with the check-in tag, users are able to vote on in game polls, participate in fantasy games and have a fully social experience at the game. After the game it can’t stop there, the leagues can then continue to populate the community game page and fold the users into the larger team and league social community.

Simply by taking advantage of the growing user community of Foursquare users (a partnership tat Foursquare would jump at) the major sports leagues could open the door to a hugely social group of fans and be able to increase their social presence both at the game and afterward.

The key would of course be in the execution of how the league and team used the check-in to open the door to an in and after game social experience but there is a tremendous opportunity out there for one league to take the lead and explore.

I do know that the leagues have all formed partnerships with Fanvibe, but trying to force users onto a sports only site is of no advantage to the leagues when Foursquare is already at approximately 2,000,000 users and growing each day – this is one of those times where you go where the people are you don’t try to build your own competing service.

What do you think, are the leagues missing an opportunity here?

There is no doubt that 2010 is all about mobile, geo-location and ultimately reviews, either through actually writing them or word-of -mouth generated by a check-in which is usually accompanied by a Tweet. This post is a compilation of my thoughts from a couple of events that randomly seem to fit together.

First the power of reviews and why I include them in a post entitled “Check-In Currency”. Reviews are the one area where Google knows they dramatically need to improve in order to have search become more complete. I don’t think this is conjecture on my part because it is no secret that Google recently tried to purchase the review site Yelp. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Search is pretty awesome these days, you can search for most local businesses by name and be directed to a page that includes the phone and address, hours of operation as well as a Google Map. There will often be some pictures posted and perhaps the odd review. I don’t think you could ask for much more. However try to do the same search for local coffee shops and you get a listing of them and even though there are some ratings its tough to get a real semblance of which one is best, perhaps closest but best, I’m not so sure. So if you’re Google you don’t want to lose people to sites like Yelp, because, while you’re Google. So you first try to acquire them but get rebuffed, and know everyone realizes that reviews are worth a big pile of cash to Google and everyone cares about something Google really cares about.

Moving on to why reviews and check-ins are tied together.

Foursquare Mayor Deals

If you’re Yelp you better figure out a way to fight Google and that is going to take (1) money and (2) a dramatic increase in the number of reviews. The first part was simple enough, Yelp recently went out and raised a bundle of cash. The second part however is not so easy. But Yelp was sneaky and realized that they needed to make you think of their app every time you visited a new establishment, and as such make a review. How to get users to always think of Yelp when they went to a new spot?Yelp took a look around and realized that Foursquare was doing a pretty amazing job at making it semi cool to check-in at each location. So Yelp went ahead and released a new version of their iPhone app that takes direct aim at Foursquare’s “check-in” feature. Whereas Foursquare was not asking users to review places directly, you don’t have to work very hard to realize that each time someone checks-in and Tweets it to the world it ends up being about as good a word of mouth review as you could hope for, even better since it goes to a huge potential audience. So Yelp went right at Foursquare’s check-in feature and built it into their

iPhone application. It may or may not work but it makes me fairly certain that check-ins and reviews are going to be linked for quite some time.

Finally I’ll sum up with why this all builds to the idea of “check-in currency.”

If you’re a savvy business owner and you realize that if people Tweet every time they visit your establishment it will be great for business then you’ll put in place a system that actually rewards customers for checking-in at your establishment. Case in point both Tasti D-Lite who has added Foursquare check-ins to their loyalty program and what are now regular advertisements in the Metro newspapers (see image) that reward both check-ins and the Foursquare “Mayor” of each establishment. The establishments have now actually given check-ins a tangible value, something Foursquare has to be extremely pleased with. So check-ins now literally equal currency, it’s quite an amazing little phenomenon.

Given my propensity for nerdiness and specifically my passion for entrepreneurial businesses in the online world I often get asked by friends, family and tweeps about what company or service I would recommend for this or that related to the Internet or online marketing. I am happy to give one of advice but find myself recommending the same companies and services time and time again so I thought it would be worthwhile to break down months of recommendations into a usable list of technologies and/or services I use or recommend you use in your business. I’ve tried to include some brief information on why I use the company/service and what I find valuable about that particular company but there are two things that you can be sure are true of any company that makes my list. First the company must be hell-bent on customer service, if there is one thing that every company (online or offline) should be passionate about, it is customer service and creating customer evangelists (I think I qualify as example A with this list) so if a company has made my list you can expect that while they might not be Zappos, they’ll treat you with respect. Second, to make my list the company/service has to be one that does not require a second mortgage on your home to use, if it’s on this list then in my estimation the benefits of use far outweigh the cost.

I’ve tried to break these down into some sort of usable categories and would be happy to expand on my experiences with any of these companies so feel free to drop a comment or ask anything that’s on your mind.

So here is my inaugural list of companies that rock!

Collaboration/Communication

What good is working in a vacuum or not being able to effectively collaborate with team members regardless of whether they are in the next office or a different continent. As a company like WooThemes has shown, with some ability to be tech savvy and the occasional early morning (or late evening depending on time zones) video call you can create and run a successful (and profitable) company across geographic boundaries with people you may or may not ever meet in person. Most who read this post will not be in the boat of the WooThemes guys but they’ve proven that it can be done and done well. So here are my favorite companies and tools for collaboration.

Skype

Traditional communication through the telephone and ultimately the dreaded conference call can and should be replaced by a better and cheaper method, the combination of ubiqutous high speed internet access and voice over ip has made there many better ways to communicate and collaborate with your team than simply using the telephone but Skype is still the most user friendly.

I am quite sure I do not need to give you an overview of what Skype is especially considering Oprah seems to love it, but if you want to communicate with colleagues (or friends) in a free manner there is no reason to look beyond Skype. With the smooth video to video calling capability you can not only collaborate in real time from across the world but you can do it face-to-face. For people who feel that it is important to have that “face time” with clients or colleagues there really is nothing more practical than Skype.

Yammer and P2 Theme

There is no doubt that Twitter has exploded communication across the Internet and that if you could harnass just one small bit of that communication in your own business it would be a very powerful thing. With that in mind I have two recommendations.

Yammer is Twitter but behind the corporate firewall and P2 is a WordPress Theme that mimics some of the functionality of Twitter. I have included both Yammer and P2 in the same area because although I think P2 is an excellent (and free) alternative, it requires that you or a member of your team have much more technical knowledge (you need to at least know WordPress) and it certainly does not offer the applications (e.g. iPhone or BlackBerry client) nor support of a paid product like Yammer. Both offer your team increased ways to communicate and collaborate, it really just comes down to the functionality and support you require.

Yammer

I’ll start with Yammer which I have described as Twitter behind the corporate firewall. I am sure the company would list about a billion different ways to describe it’s features but at the end of the day that’s the difference maker that I see in it and the value of Yammer is really in that it is a private version of Twitter. In organizations where people are in at different times or where teams are trying to collaborate with people they don’t often get to see face-to-face, Yammer can be a good way to ensure that those teams are talking and sharing links, resources and ideas.

If however you (or a team member) has some technical knowledge and you don’t really need the full feature set of Yammer then I highly recommend you check out the WordPress theme known as P2.

P2

I was originally alerted to this WordPress theme through an article written by Matt Mullenweg (if you don’t know who Matt is, he is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web) entitled “How p2 Changed Automattic“. An article with that title from a person of that amount of knowledge and influence had it book marked in Instapaper (more on that below) for a long period of time before I got around to reading the article. With that said and if you’ve taken a moment to read Matt’s article you will immediately have a great use case for just what p2 is and why do I recommend it.

At the end of the day P2 is a free theme for WordPress that allows a traditional blog to to operate in a Twitter like fashion by supporting features like inline comments on the homepage, a posting form on the homepage, inline editing of posts and comments, real-time updates so new posts and comments come in without reloading, and more. I could do a more full job explaining the feature set, but there is a pretty slick video on the demo site that gives you all you need to know.

Go To Meeting

You really can’t talk about collaboration amongst team members without giving them a tool with which to collaborate or share documents in a conference or video call setting. With that in mind GoToMeeting is about as reliable and cost effective solution as can be recommended. The level of customer service and number of customers using the product (hence most problems are sorted out quite quickly) ensure that this is a service that will continue to advance. They’ll give you a 30 day trial and you can pay monthly so it’s a good service when you need it.

Rypple

Feedback is one of the most important things you can solicit from customers, colleagues and friends. The team at Rypple has made that pretty amazingly easy and slick. Using a customer acquisition model that seems to be based on employees at corporations falling in love with the service and then recommending it to their company – with the company paying to implement on a larger scale – Rypple is a company you should watch and get on board with.

Email Marketing

Mailchimp

For most small businesses email marketing or having a newsletter is one of those things they know they should do but don’t really know where to begin. I can tell you that email marketing works time and time again and getting started is not only easy, it’s also free. Sign up for an account at Mailchimp and you’ll be sending beautiful emails in no time. I can’t stress enough how much you should be working to get email addresses and beginning your email marketing. As you get more at ease read the Mailchimp blog and get some inspiration here.

Productivity

Perhaps my favorite items on this list can be found here, whether you’re a casual Internet user or hardcore these services will come in handy.

GetDropbox

Perhaps the most useful on the list, Get DropBox is a free service that will let you store files on the cloud and the retrieve them from any other computer or even your iPhone. It’s much better than emailing yourself and if you’ll have Internet it’s much better than any USB key. Go get yourself and account and you will not be sorry I promise.

Evernote

Whther you’re on a Mac or a PC, an iPhone or Blackberry, Evernote is another one that should be on both your desktop and your phone. We all have some method of keeping notes to ourselves, whether it is where you parked your car or your latest business idea, Evernote is the place to store them all. You can go so far as to take a photo with your camera and save it as a note with all the text shown in the photo searchable, it’s semi unbelievable. Notes sync with your desktop and phone and are basically available to you everywhere.

One non-business use for you is to save coupons as pdfs to Evernote and then have them available in store, the clerk can scan the upc from your phone.

Instapaper

This one is specifically for iPhone users but it’s an amazing and free little app that will allow you to access any web article from your phone while offline. You can all relate I’m sure, you’re working and come across an article you’d like to read but dint have the time. So you click read later and when you’re on the subway you’ve got a set of things to read. It’s a great app.

Twitter (Social Media) – Caveat, I do not know the customer service levels here

There are many who have covered the numerous Twitter clients and services better than I ever could (see this from Mashable, and this from Twitter) but I have a few services you should take a look at.

I’ll first say that my Twitter desktop client of choice is Tweetdeck and that on the iPhone I prefer Tweetie2 but here are some Twitter related sites and services.

Social Oomph

Previously known as Tweet Later, this company will allow you to schedule tweets days in advance and have them drop at a time of your choosing whether you are online or not. You can do some key word tracking using the site but that’s not its strong suit, it really is just a great service for pre-scheduling some tweets and then sitting back and watching them go.

Peashoot

There is no sense saying that you are going to use Twitter as a serious marketing vehicle if you’re not going to track your Twitter based campaigns and try to learn from them. Peashoot tracks your conversions and shows you how to improve your future campaigns. I’ve toyed with this but have not used it seriously yet but the company says it’s Audience Builder automatically follows people on Twitter who are relevant to you or your company. Over a matter of days Peashoot can increase your total audience size giving you more people to connect with and help spread the word about you or your company. More importantly the application lets you Measure ROI and respond to campaign activity. The company offers what it calls “Active Listening” technology whereby Twitter activity about your campaign is included in your campaign reports.

What The Trend

Trends on Twitter are a good way to keep yourself in the loop as to items which are topical and will hopefully draw visitors to your blog and comments if you hop on a trend and write something interesting. What the Trend is not one of those sites that you need to visit daily, but it’s a handy little place to get some topical blog post ideas.

Of course we’ve all heard the sentiment that a satisfied customer will tell a few people but an unsatisfied one will tell anyone who will listen. When the Internet started to become a more social place, companies started to realize that their customers now could tell the world about their negative experience – just look up any company with the word “sucks” after their name. Companies that already had good customer support realized they had to do even better while those with crappy support were at least more exposed.

There is no doubt that this is good for the consumer, but recently I was giving a speech on customer service and I gave a tidbit from my personal consumer life that seemed to really resonate with the crowd. I explained to them that there is transparency in the levels of customer service that current customers are receiving and that as a potential consumer it is actually pretty simple for me to gauge the number of support issues and the way they are handled. This transparency can and does impact sales well before the point of purchase.

In the offline world when someone has a customer support issue they generally will have one of two ways of resolving it. Either they call the support number provided or they have to head to the store and seek live support. In either case generally the exchange between company and customer is private to the outside world.

However in the online world one of the ways I like to investigate a product or service that I am contemplating buying is to head directly to the support page or forums and see what problems customers are having and more importantly (to me anyway) the responsiveness of the customer support staff at said company. It’s a level of transparency and a window into what life would be like as a customer of this company that I can’t get elsewhere. I of course can and do search the blogosphere and use Twitter to seek out other’s opinions, but I find that by doing a quick scan of the support forums I can find out (1) if the product is plagued with issues and (2) how quickly and efficiently those issues are dealt with.

Some companies make you register to enter these forums and that’s ok, I don’t mind giving up a little information if it means I get to look behind the curtain of PR and Marketing to see what’s really going on with the product and company.

So what’s my point? You can and should be using this tidbit as a way to look at your own company.

Try dealing with your company as a consumer – what are the difficulties? Where does the company fall down? Take the time, call your customer support line, is it a good experience? Head to the support forums on your website and post a problem – how long until someone gives you a well thought out (not a pre-written form letter) response?

Every once and again you need to step back and put yourself in the shoes of your consumers experiencing problems – how does your company look then? Where can you make improvements?  The transparency of support is something that can be a big plus if your company does it well but I just don’t think enough companies remember to put themselves in the shoes of the consumer in an after sales capacity.

As always your thoughts and comments are appreciated.

As Oprah pulled up at the Twitter table last week it seemed like the party was over. There are no shortage of people who declared that the reason to use Twitter was dead now that it was being taken over by celebrities like Aston Kutcher (@aplusk) and the aforementioned Ms. Winfrey.

I guess that is one way you could view the happenings, yet I’m going to ask you take a look at a different group of people (all of whom are celebrities) and I think you will get the sense that while Oprah is undoubtedly like your parents (and why not follow my Dad – @actonroad) chaperoning and then deciding to dance at your prom, if you take the time to follow some of the great athletes that have embraced Twitter you’ll get a totally different view.

I am going to start by saying that I do not really think it’s fair to put Shaq or Lance Armstrong in the same column as Oprah when it comes to their “cool” factor, but I think it is essentially fair if we are just trying to compare celebr-twit to celebri-twit on my invented “this person is autograph worthy” scale.

Neither Shaq nor Oprah need any more people trying to cover their every move yet there both of them are on Twitter sharing with the world. The difference between Shaq and Oprah is that Shaq – like most athletes on Twitter – inherently seems to “get it”. I mean you really only need to look at Shaq’s tweet where he put Oprah in her place to see that he is actually protective of the Twitterverse.

Ok you say, so Shaq and Lance Armstrong seem to like Twittering and they aren’t so completely self-interested that every tweet is about themselves or their cafe macchiato – what’s the big deal?

It’s not just Shaq and Lance that get it is what is the big deal. There are a ton of athletes on Twitter who are actually using it in much the same way you or I do. They’re chatting with friends, throwing random questions at their followers and for the most part are some of the most “real” Twitter users you will find.

I could have listed numerous examples but will stick with just @jalenrose because after following him for a bit I actually think that for him Twitter is not about stroking ego.

So before you declare Twitter dead and the party over, remember that there are all types of people on Twitter – celebrity or not – and nobody’s forcing you to follow @oprah.

If you’re looking for a list of athletes to follow on Twitter there are no shortage of them out there but I found the majority of the ones I follow at Athletes That Tweet and would encourage you to check there first.

As a marketing professional I like to consider myself a pretty creative thinker, I mean I can come up with an effective campaign and absolutely execute on it but I’m not sure if I would have been able to come up with this idea let alone believe that anyone in public office would consider it. Yet there it was in photographic form, the man we all know as the KFC Colonel had his face spray painted ever so nicely on a newly repaired (covered) pothole.

You see, Kentucky Fried Chicken has for some reason decided that they can tie repairing potholes across the USA back to greasy and fattening chicken. In a statement on their website it seems awkward at best, “For more than half a century, KFC has “filled up” its fans with the Colonel’s world famous, freshly prepared fried chicken. Today, in a marketing first, KFC is celebrating its continued dedication to freshness by launching a pilot infrastructure renewal program, becoming the first-ever corporate sponsor of “fresh”ly “filled up” potholes in up to five major cities across the U.S.”

KFC Missed An Opportunity

Now normally I am not one for gimmick marketing, but I will grant you that this has the potential to be a really fun campaign and one that if done right could be modeled after the brilliant Burger King Whopper campaign, it’s just that KFC has not done anything more than the gimmick leaving me scratching my head.

I mean if you were going to undertake a stunt like this then surely you would want to have a microsite dedicated to it, get YouTube involved and have hilarious videos of the work in progress, hand out free chicken at toll booths across America, and certainly I would ensure that the Twitterverse was buzzing at all times. Yet when I do a search on Google and Twitter or boot over to YouTube, I am left with only the company’s press release and the blog posts of people like me who have picked up on the campaign. It seems backwards to me to have gotten involved in a stunt like this but in no way used it to bring people in and connect with them.

People obviously like the idea of the Colonel and nobody is eating KFC for the nutritional value, so why not capitalize on the fun factor of this stunt and take a page directly from the Burger King hand-book. They have managed to turn that creepy oversized King into a hilarious character and they’ve been able to centre it all around the Whopper.

The Colonel Could Learn From The King

Take a look at how brilliantly the Whopper campaign was done by BK, there were multiple microsites – Whopper Virgins – Whopper Freakout – both of which have produced videos viewed on YouTube over 100,000 times and have spawned viral parodies,  and if you are not following @theBKlounge, then you are missing out.

I’ve got to admit that I am really impressed with the way that Starbucks has been able to utilize the “halo effect” of the American Presidential election and specifically the renewal of promise brought by now President Barack Obama in a way that is not gimicky or based on novelty. Starbucks has effectively been able to bring a network of its customers together through a combination of online/offline marketing efforts like the I Voted or now Pledge 5 programs. At the same time the company has built much brand equity by discretely attaching themselves to all that Americans (and the rest of the world) have come to hope for in Barack Obama.

While it is obviously the execution of any marketing program that makes it worth doing, with these two campaigns Starbucks has been able to utilize the halo effect from Obama as the reason to call its consumers to action and in doing so has been able to use the Internet to connect the brand to its consumers and consumers to other consumers through their ideas, ideals and sacrifices.

Americans are fiercly patriotic and during the Internet Era never before have they been so encapsulated with a President or even the idea of the Presidency. It is easy to capitalize on this with novelty items, even some big companies that are terrific marketers like Ben & Jerry’s, Kripy Kreme and Jones Soda have gone that route. However it is much more difficult to craft a smart campaign that is not built on novelty but is built on the actual marketing principles of wanting to connect the brand and consumer with mutually shared ideas, ideals and experiences. Starbucks has found a way to get in the side-car next to the momentum train called the Obama Campaign and eventual Presidency with two separate yet connected campaigns that never directly reference Obama but absolutely grasp onto the emotions that his Presidency evokes in Americans. While this could have come across as a cheesy way for a big corporation to pretend they care I don’t think it has that connotation at all and kudos to the marketing teams who worked on these campaigns for that.

I think that the lesson for me is that if you find a way to connect with your customers over a subject that you are mutually passionate about (and is not controversial) it can be a tremendous way to engage them and show them that your brand’s support for their passion is genuine and not simply a marketing gimmick.

You can check out the latest Pledge 5 ad below, I would love your comments and thoughts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xAwKBywrEk

“My Mom Is Better For Your Brand Than Tiger Woods”

Let’s face it not very many of us are ever going to be in a position to spend millions of dollars on a celebrity endorsement of our product or service (even GM decided that they couldn’t or wouldn’t foot the bill to put Tiger Woods behind the wheel of one of their cars) but regardless of the size of your company, your Tiger Woods is out there, you just need to find him (or her). Let me explain.

Tiger Woods is undeniably one of the most recognizable people in the world and having him drink Gatorade in a commercial or sport a Nike golf shirt on a Sunday is absolutely noticable, but is it an effective spend of resources? While Tiger may be dynamite with a 3 iron, none of us really believe that drinking Gatorade or wearing a Nike swoosh is going to get us out of the sand trap, but if you actually saw Tiger Woods buying an item he didn’t get paid to endorse – say a bottle of Robaxacet – I bet you would be influenced by his purchase the next time you had a tweak in your back

Authenticity Means More Than Star Power

The influence seen from the Robaxacet purchase comes from the fact that his usage is authentic and speaks to the fact that he must actually believe the product works or he would just call Advil and tell them to give him a lifetime supply (along with millions of $$) and they could stick his face on the bottle. Ok you are saying but Tiger Woods is not using my – insert product or service here – so I don’t have the ability to leverage his star power. Ah but you do I say!

You may not make a product or service sold on the mass scale of the products that Tiger endorses but again my point is that you have the ability to use influencer marketing in much the same way. People out there are using your product or service and thus must have formed some opinion about it. Currently those people might only be telling their neighbour (or their FriendFeed, Facebook groups etc) that they love your company and that is where the opportunity to make them your Tiger Woods comes in.

You Need To Scout For Your Celebrities

People have passion for all sorts of things. I may not know the first thing about Mah Jong but I know my Mom is so enthralled with the game that she regularly goes online to discuss it with people she has never met. If Mah Jong was your company, then my Mom could be your Tiger Woods, the thing is you need to be looking for her because she is not looking for you.

You need to seek out the users of your product/service and engage them in conversation. Figure out what it is they love (or hate – see my post on the Motrin Moms) about your company and then help turn them loose on all the people they can influence on your behalf. This will mean different things to different people but the main thing you should see is opportunity.

Again let’s use my Mom. She’s fairly Internet savvy but she is not going to start a blog or be Tweeting about your product so how can she be your Tiger Woods? She can be if you understand her and the fact that she probably represents a good percentage of your consumers/audience. They too are not blogging or tweeting about your company, but dig a little deeper and you will learn that she hosts games of Mah Jong weekly for over thirty of her friends and friends of friends. Just with that single tidbit of information you now know that she is the centre of a circle of influence and that enabling her to promote your product/service means that you have just found a passionate and authentic endorser of your company for the low cost of simply listenting and engaging.

The Center of Influence Will Help Your Message Ripple Out

Let’s stick with my Mom and Mah Jong for a bit longer…It might seem that there is no real promotion opportunity here, but what about the fact that each week she always puts out different exotic chocolates for her guests – If I was a chocolate company I might send her a box each month – Or how about a florist sending her little center pieces for each table – surely people would ask where the beautiful flowers came from. Of those 30 people who she talks to that day, how many people will they mention the chocolates or flowers too? What if you took it a step further than just giving her chocolates or flowers and enabled her to pass on a 15% discount to all the people who attended her Mah Jong game…And then what about those people, once they’ve ordered (using the unique code you gave my Mom) you not only know how you acquired them as customers but you now have an opportunity to engage them as influencers and grow the circle larger and larger.

My example is decidely low-tech, but I chose it for that exact reason. If your product or service is digital or you choose to engage users that are more wired than my Mom your task is much the same only you need to approach it with different tools (I have written before about providing your users with the tools they require to create content).

My point is that it is the authenticity that my Mom brings to her circle of influence that you should be grabbing on to and nurturing. She might not sink 35 foot putts as consistently as Tiger Woods, but in my mind her recommendations to the group she plays Mah Jong with are as influencial (I would argue more influencial) than the 100 million impressions/views that are reported when Tiger drinks a Gatorade at half-time during the Super Bowl.

So The real question you should be asking yourself is not how can I grow large enough to pay someone to promote or be equated with my brand? It is “who is already so passionate about my brand that given the right tools and love they will perform like myown personal Tiger Woods?“

One of my favorite sites is Trendwatching.com. It is not the type of site I visit daily but I am always sure to download their monthly report on what the latest trends in consumerism are. In the latest report entitled “Half a dozen consumer trends for 2009” there are of course six consumer trends discussed. I will leave it to to read the seven page report but I decided to comment on one of the trends identified.

Feedback 3.0

I recently wrote about the My Starbucks Idea website which solicits Starbucks’ customer ideas about how to improve virtually every aspect of the Starbucks experience. There is no doubt that this type of interaction with consumers is only the tip of the iceberg and companies better get up to speed quickly (see the Motrin Mom’s for an example of why). Called Transparency Tyranny by Trendwatching, the trend was first noted in 2007 where it was “big”, it was “bigger” in 2008 and it will be “even bigger in 2009.”

I called the Starbucks idea Comment Cards 2.0, Trendwatching introduced me to the idea of Feedback 3.0 as quoted below

• Feedback 1.0 (early web) – Saw an outraged individuals posting scathing reviews, feedback and complaints, often to the delight of other netizens Brands remained unaware or chose not to listen, dismissing these outbursts the way they’d dismissed any kind of customer dissatisfaction for decades.
• Feedback 2.0 (where we are today) – Is about these rants — and some raves — having gone ‘mass’. The long-predicated conversation is finally taking place, albeit amongst consumers and not, and intended, between corporations and consumers. Companies have started to take note, but to a large degree still choose to listen, not talk back, trying to ‘learn’ from the for-all-to-see review revolution. Which is surprising to say the least, since a quick and honest reply or solution can defuse the most damaging complaint.
• Feedback 3.0 (which is building) – Will be all about companies joining the conversation, if only to get their side of the story in front of the mass audience that now scans reviews. Expect smart companies to be increasingly able (and to increasingly demand) to post their apologies and solutions, preferably directly along-side reviews from unhappy customers. Expect the same for candid rebuttals by companies who feel (and can prove) that a particular review is unfair or inaccurate, and want to share their side of the story.

With this information in hand I give you a few of my tips for ensuring that your brand does not miss out on the conversation as it is certainly going on.

• Set up Google Alerts – It is really easy to miss the conversation going on if you don’t try to listen. Google Alerts are most certainly the easiest way to track any conversation that is going on about your company or brand. Choose the right keywords and get the digest sent to yourself everyday that way at least you will not go more than 24 hours without knowing what is going on.
• Claim Your Twitter Account – This again is a really simple thing to do and is one that you should do immediately if you have not done so already. There would be nothing worse than someone squatting on Twitter using your company’s name and responding as if they were your company. Jeremiah Owyang has a good article on this you should read.
• Search on Twitter – One thing you can be sure of is that if there are any (and I mean a single one) consumers or people who have interacted with you, your brand or a product produced by your company (including being the ad agency for a corporate brand) it will eventually come up on Twitter. So use Google Alerts to ensure you are on top of the situation daily and use Twitter Search to keep up to date during the day as response time is crucial.
• Gather Your Own Feedback – While your company may not have the money to invest in a large campaign like Starbucks or Dell, there are many ways you can solicit ideas and feedback from consumers, partners and employees. The important part is not to how you solicit the ideas, it is that you act on those ideas and some how (use your blog, employee newsletter etc…) relay the information that you are taking action to those who took the time to give you the suggestions in the first place.

Those are my ideas for you, I do recommend you sign up for the Trendwatching newsletter.

As I get more and more involved in social media and specifically work to launch this site there are lots of lessons along the way. One that recently came to my attention was the fact that people who take the few minutes it requires to set up their Twitter profile page (see mine here) are doing themselves a huge service whether they realize it or not.

I am not sure how everyone else uses Twitter and whether they take the time to head to people’s profile page but I can tell you I certainly do. I save up my Twitter follow notifications in my in-box and every couple of days I make a point of going to the the profile page of those people who I have recently started following or who started following me. Twitter allows you to personalize your profile to a certain extent by filling out a brief biography, listing a site that you blog on or otherwise etc. However if you do not take advantage of the rest of the landscape offered to you, I would submit that you are missing out on a great opportunity to both personalize your existence on Twitter and more importantly market whatever site, life philosophy or even charity you wish from your profile background picture.

I generally don’t love asking people to come to my site via Twitter (although it is sometimes necessary) but I do believe that when I post something of value or when someone else is kind enough to suggest people follow me, my profile page is my platform (litterally) for letting them know the quick hits of information that I wish to promote at that day in time.

As you can see on my profile I have the three most important pieces of information (my email and two blog sites) I wish to get across easily visible and more importantly easily revisable if I decide I want to promote something else.

The process took me ten minutes. I picked a royalty free photo from istockphoto, edited the sign in Pixelmator and uploaded it to Twitter. Now I have a personalized space, people easily know where to find me and more importantly my 2 blogs are promoted to everyone who visits my profile page. I would strongly suggest you do the same.