Do you know what they call businesses who don’t engage their interest communities? Closed.
Getting connected with people who share the same ideas or philosophies and getting involved with groups who share similar missions or goals is critical for a brand or business reaching out into the world. Being connected to your brand’s interest community will give you market insight, market foresight, and market nimbleness. (more…)
“10 Tips Obama Can Take From Tiger” was a monumental cover nightmare for Golf Digest. Hitting the newstands just as Tiger’s misdeeds were hitting the airwaves, most people saw this Photoshopped cover and saw nothing but a scandal. However, the most important thing on this cover had nothing to do with politics, sports or scandals. It was about branding. Specifically, their hats.
To most people, branding has fallen squarely into the business camp for quite some time. However, with the rise of the web, interest communities, and social media brands have faced a consumer populous uprising. This transfer of brand power is leading the way for the rise of a “new” type of branding—the personal brand. Much to many people’s surprise, personal branding is nothing new and the rules are strikingly similar to modern business branding.
From Pharaohs building steles, massive spires with their names on it, to the Roman Caesars putting images of their faces on coins, or to a staggering number of other examples—branding a person in one form or another has been with us for thousands of years. With the fall of monarchs and the rise of industry, brand power shifted away from the person and to the business. As businesses grew to global proportions, the idea of brand became firmly ensconced as a business concept.
Foursquare is a relatively recent (at least in the Midwest) addition to the social media world and is quickly gaining popularity. The question so many are asking is: what is Foursquare and how can it be used for business?
Foursquare is a combination of a game and a social media network that utilizes locations as venues in which points are awarded when you “check in” on mobile devices. Venues can be a restaurant, a store, or any other set location. While Foursquare has been address based, the system recently advanced to a pure GPS-based system for determining the venue’s location.
One of the most rapidly growing themes in social media is location-based interaction. Even though you may be in a crowded bar, you can immediately discover who in your network (friends) is there or see where they have checked in recently. Points are awarded for each check-in. Badges, or awards for frequent check-ins, adding new venues, or checking in with numerous people are given as the user gains points. Some cities or large events (CES in Las Vegas and the upcoming SXSW in Austin) even have custom badges for the savvy tech travelers.
Such games or networks have traditionally been viewed as purely recreational and not seen as having any business potential. However, like we’ve seen with many other aspects of social media, most anything can be used for smart business. In some of the more experienced Foursquare markets, we’ve seen the uprise of bars, restaurants and retail locations using Foursquare as a powerful networking and rewards tool. How? (more…)