For most business owners it’s been a struggle attempting to leverage social networking sites and an even greater challenge trying to measure their value.  Yes, the potential to reach a massive audience through Twitter and Facebook is undeniable, but are people listening? I can only speak for myself and those I associate with, but in my experience people won’t pay much attention to branded social networking. If a product or service isn’t extremely groundbreaking and VERY specific to someone’s tastes, they’ll  just ignore it.

This could soon change with a new kid on the scene called Foursquare. 

The basic premise of Foursquare is similar to Twitter; updates from a phone are sent out to all your subscribers to let them know what you’re up to.  The key difference is that Foursquare is location based; users ”check in” at various places to let their friends know what they are doing. Foursquare also uses a point system to reward its users with badges irreverently named things like “crunked”  for discovering new places or becoming the most frequent patron of a particular spot. Foursquare will even let you see tips people have left for the locale you’re checking into and suggest nearby spots you might enjoy.  Twitter on the other hand is primarily used to find out what Ashton Kutcher is having for lunch.

Foursquare essentially makes life into a game.

Who cares?

At AgencyWeb we’ve seen some potential in Foursquare. There are ways for business owners to leverage this service and to *gasp* measure its value!

The most obvious use for Foursquare is basically to do the Twitter thing. Start an account for your business, talk your customers into subscribing and then blast them with updates about sales, events, renovations, whatever. You might find that this annoys people however, and besides, it’s boring.

Try this: If someone becomes the most frequent patron of a specific spot on Foursquare they become the “mayor” of that spot. Why not offer a 5% discount to the mayor? Others may start coming through your door more often just to claim the title.

How about instating a “bring a friend” incentive. Perhaps you own a bar. You could have a Monday special where if someone brings five friends through the door with proof of the Foursquare message that got ‘em there, the one-person street team gets a couple of free drinks.

Use tips to your advantage too. Have a “secret” mixed drink. The only way to find out about it is to check in on Foursquare and receive the tip. This type of “game” will keep people coming back.

These are just the tip of the iceberg with Foursquare. Since it is specifically geared towards local communities, there are countless ways businesses can use the service to their advantage. I find myself checking in to spots I wouldn’t have even glanced at on Twitter or Facebook.

I guess my point is to keep an eye on this thing. If you like friends, and you leave your house occasionally, you’ll probably end up using Foursquare.

Just some advice from your friends over at AgencyWeb.

The first thing most potential customers will do is search for the name of your company and start to look at the sites listed instead of going directly to your domain. The more spots you have the easier it will be to control your message.

According to Jakob Neilsen the web’s leading usability expert and author of several books including “The Web User Experience”

“When we let users loose to go anywhere they wanted on the Web, they went to a search engine 88 percent of the time. Only in 12 percent of cases did they go straight to a Web site. In 93 percent of searches, the users in our study only visited the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page), which usually held ten search results plus a number of ads. In only seven percent of cases did users page on to a second SERP. Only 47 percent of users scrolled the first SERP, which means that 53 percent saw only those search hits that were ‘above the fold.’ “

So why would you want to create, actively work, and link these social profiles? Would you rather own 5 or more of the top spots for your company name or leave them open to potential competition, or bad press. Additionally these are the types of sites potential customers will visit to research more about your brand to gain a complete understanding. Sites like Twitter, Flickr, and Linkedin are well known and hold lots of weight. With fresh quality content, proper linking strategies and a little time we are finding these pages displaying right along side corporate sites. Then new platforms like our own Local Mojo is up and coming and also starting to show SERP results.

If your online reputation is important to your business it needs to be treated in such a manner with serious resources dedicated towards it. It is a continual process that needs to worked, and measured for optimized results. If you think we can help your company out with these services go ahead and contact us.

We have been recommending twitter to our clients as a way to communicate with their client base and potential customers, as well as an easy way to get into blogging. We found that approach works good, if a client can keep up with their simple twitter account we can graduate them to a blog. If they struggle or don’t have any time to put into something simple like twitter then they will never blog.

I think this is an interesting strategy to drive traffic. Everyone will know to go to vw.com or vitaminwater.com if they want to look at the official site or find more information about those companies. But driving traffic to a social site like Facebook can help them build another web property and focus their message or campaign around a specific topic that otherwise may not flow with the message of the corporate site.

I guess there are some potential drawbacks though by not having the ability to have your own analytics installed on those pages to measure traffic and conversions. Though you have to assume that Facebook is providing them with some type of metrics and traffic reports on their custom pages. Either way you look at it it’s an innovative way of building our brand and directing traffic to a web site.

For many companies their reputation online is a new and scary thing. In the past corporate sites would dominate the search results, but today hundreds of different types of sites can dominate the search engine results page. A twitter page can easily out rank a poorly designed corporate site, or a YouTube video created by an independent sales associate can display above official corporate press releases. Because of this fast changing world it is important to manage your online reputation seriously. Of course if you have a bad business and terrible support nothing can hide that.

We have recently started to use Twitter here at AgencyWeb and for some of our other projects and clients. If managed properly and updated regularly it’s a great way to put out short bits of information or provide links to longer articles. Those companies who embrace technology and balance the cutting edge with the proven methods are in a position to separate themselves from the competition.