What’s Foursquare?

Foursquare is a tool that helps people track where their friends are and what they’re up to. If your business is based on a physical location, you can use Foursquare to manage–and maximize–its popularity.

Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people
for doing so. We do this by combining our friend-finder and social city guide elements with
game mechanics — our users earn points, win Mayorships and unlock badges for trying new
places and revisiting old favorites.

Using Foursquare To Promote Your Establishment

As a business owner, you can use foursquare to engage your increasingly mobile customers with
foursquare “Specials,” which are discounts and prizes you can offer your loyal customers when
they check in on foursquare at your venue. Don’t forget to show extra love to your
venue’s Mayor! Additionally, if you offer foursquare Specials to your customers, you will be
able to track how your venue is performing over time thanks to our robust set of venue analytics —
for free!

If you want to dive right in, get started by claiming your venue right from its foursquare venue page:

Simple tools to create engaging Specials

We’ve built simple self-service tools to allow you, the business manager, to create different kinds of foursquare Specials,
manage multiple Specials and ultimately track how these Specials perform. We think these services will empower you
to develop more engaging ongoing relationships with you customers. You’ll be surprised how effective a
little friendly competition — over the Mayorship, over free fries! — is at driving customers back to your venue.

Use our tools to create a variety of foursquare Specials, customized just for your venue and for your customers:

• Mayor Specials: unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue. Who’s the Mayor? It’s your single most loyal customer!
  (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days)(“Foursquare has deemed you the Mayor? Enjoy a free order of french fries!”)
• Check-in Specials: unlocked when a user checks in to your venue a certain number of times.(“Foursquare says you’ve been here 10 times? That’s a free drink for you!”)
• Frequency-based Specials: are unlocked every X check-ins.(“Foursquare users get 20% off any entree every 5th check-in!”)
• Wildcard Specials: always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions
  before awarding the Special.

  (“Show us your foursquare Swarm badge and get a free drink!”)

• And more to come!

Promoting your Specials in-store

We’ve seen venues promote their involvement with foursquare via Twitter, signs at cash registers
and sidewalk blackboards. Go for it, and be creative! Also, we can help you market your Special
to your customers by sending you official foursquare window clings.

Once you claim your venue, you’ll be able to add your mailing info to the list, and we’ll send
some clings to you as soon as we can!

Real-time venue stats

Once you claim your venue on foursquare, you’ll be able to check real time stats about your venue, including:

Promoting Specials across the mobile experience

We’ve woven the Specials platform tightly into all of our official foursquare mobile clients
(iPhone, Android and Blackberry) and we actively call attention to venues that offer Specials
for foursquares users. For example, if a foursquare user is at your bar/restaurant, we’ll 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, we’ll let them know that your business gives special
treatment to foursquare users and that they should swing by for a visit.

Using Foursquare To Promote A Brand or Business Without A Physical Location

The official Foursquare corporate promotion system is great if you run an establishment. But with if you produce a consumer packaged good or are a service-based company?

Well, there’s a great workaround for that. Create a regular user account under your brand or company name (e.g. Coke Zero). Leave tips and to-dos at venues that tie in with your product, brand, etc. Here is a list of potential examples:

• A tanning oil or skincare products company could leave tips at parks and other popular outdoor locations reminding users to apply sun screen
• A beverage company could leave tips at bars and restaurants about drinks that include that beverage
• A restaurant could leave tips in the surrounding neighborhood with cool and fun things to do before or after a meal
• A web-design company could leave tips in geeky spots around town (e.g. bars that tech enthusiasts tend to congregate at or consumer electronics stores)
• A company that sells and installs air conditioners could tell about how to keep cool on a hot day with tips on places to cool off near outdoor areas where people congregate on warm days (e.g. parks)
• A brand with a personality as a mascot (e.g. Virgin Airlines) could have that person leave tips at his/her favorite bars, restaurants, and other places around town.

How To Set Tips & To-Dos

Foursquare is designed to be as much about sharing experiences as it as about connecting with friends and discovering new places. Every foursquare user has the ability to create both “Tips” and “To-Dos” for places. Tips are generally things you’d recommend to others (“Go to PDT and try the bacon-infused Old Fashioned”) while To-Dos are more “notes to self” (“Remember to come back and try the pesto noodles”). Whenever a user checks-in to a location, Foursquare will pop-up a tip left by the user’s friends has left at that location or nearby (you’ll be surprised how often these help users choose what to order at a bar or restaurant!).

Promoting Events

This is great for companies that attend conferences or sponsor events. You can then check-in to places to let users know that you’re there. For example, Coke Zero sponsors Nascar events. Whenever their promotions team is at a Nascar event handing out free Coke Zero bottles, they check-in on Foursquare to announce their presence.

To discuss how Foursquare and other location-based social media utilities can enhance your business, contact us or give us a call on 212-260-1978.

Typically, they start blogging, Tweeting, building Facebook pages and checking in on Foursquare simply because everyone else is doing it.

In other words, they approach social media marketing as if they were a kid playing with a shiny new toy. Ask a six year old what his “strategy” is in playing the toy truck and he’ll look at you like you were crazy.

Ask a small business owner what his social media strategy is, and you are likely to see the exact expression.

“I’m looking to get more customers,” is the most common answer.

The only problem with that statement is that “getting more customers” is a goal, not a strategy.

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Effective social media strategy begins with self-reflection.

• What is the core of my business?
• What differentiates my business?
• Who is my target audience?
• Once I get an audience, what messages do I plan on delivering?
• (Most importantly) How can I turn my audience in revenues?

Once you have clear answers to these questions, then you will be able to look at a variety of social media platforms and see which ones are best suited to deliver your message.

For example, if you are looking to establish yourself or your business as experts in your field, blogging and social community involvement may be the best way to go. If you are looking to enhance your customer service or make specific offers to your target audience, Twitter may be the best platform. For businesses looking to work with other businesses, LinkedIn may be the best bet.

In virtually all cases, though, a combination of platforms and campaigns is the best option.

So how do you figure out what will work best for your business?

Unfortunately, many businesses go the “trial and error” route. They dip their toes in the social media waters and fail to achieve their desired goals. They fail for any number of reasons: misunderstanding the etiquette of a particular platform, poor messaging or, even a failure to commit of time and resources.

This “trial and error” method costs companies (especially smaller companies) time, money, and even credibility. Most than just costing your company resources, a poorly executed social media campaign can cost your company credibility and even destroy your company’s hard-earned reputation.

That’s why it is so important to either have social media experts in-house or to hire a company with social media experience—a company that has produced quantifiable results for clients.

Getting Started

When Blue Fountain Media works with clients on their social media strategy, we start with a detailed question and answer process. There is no single social media platform or combination of platforms that work for every business. In earlier Business Learning Center articles, we have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging.

The objective of this Q & A process is to understand the your short-term and long-term business goals, to see what your other current marketing and advertising efforts are, and to determine what results the you expect from the social media marketing campaign.

Some of the questions we typically ask are:

• What is your commitment to the social media campaign (manpower, time investment, budget and duration)?
• What are the goals of the campaign?
• What are the criteria for measuring the success or failure of the program?
• How do you plan on measuring the success or failure of the campaign?
• Who will be at the “steering wheel” of your social media campaign?
• Does anyone in your company have social media expertise?
• More importantly, does that person(s) have the skills to deliver your key messaging through social media?
• To what extent are you willing to outsource your social media campaigns?

Armed with the answers to these questions, we work with clients to build their social media campaigns. In some instances, we just handle the front-end work: creating a strategic plan and launching the campaigns. In many cases, clients want us to run all aspects of their social media campaigns.

Either way, we have helped many clients with successful social media campaigns designed and executed to enhance their reputations, their business and, ultimately, their bottom line.

In Conclusion

If you have any questions about beginning a social media marketing campaign or wish to consult about your current social media efforts, please give us a call at 212.260.1978 and we will be happy to work with you.

When businesses are looking to create or enhance a web presence, they go through the often painful process of choosing which web design and marketing team to handle their project.

When potential clients come to Blue Fountain Media, they always bring a host of questions about our experience, expertise and results.

One question that keeps coming up is: How much experience do you have in my industry?

This is a fair question, but one that often leads potential clients to make the wrong choice. The fact is, no matter what industry you happen to be in, there are web design companies that specialize in serving your industry. Some do nothing but healthcare and pharmaceutical companies; others choose to specialize in law firms, universities or restaurants.

The Advantages of Going to a Specialist…

There is no question that by going to a company whose entire business is based on your industry, you save the time and effort of having to educate your agency about your industry, your targeted client base and your competitive landscape.

This knowledge can certainly save you some time during the “discovery” phase of the client/agency relationship.

Secondly, there are also certain industries, such as healthcare and finance, where it is important to understand the regulatory aspects of the business. In these businesses, you often have to be very careful of specific claims made on the site and understand what can and what can’t be offered through the company’s website.

Thirdly, there is the psychological “benefit” of knowing that you are using the same company that created your competitors’ websites (evening the playing field).

…May be Outweighed by the Disadvantages

As attractive as some of those “advantages” might seem, they are outweighed by the disadvantages. Think about it. Web design and marketing teams that work extensively for a single industry have a tendency to create cookie-cutter websites, using the same templates and ideas over and over again.

If you are designing your 50th restaurant website or your 50th law firm website, how original are you going to be? How unique can your marketing ideas possibly be?
When doing virtually the same thing, over and over again, it is almost impossible to be original.

Let me give you the example of a friend who was a sportswriter. As a “beat” reporter covering the New York Giants, he spent over 80 percent of his time writing about football. While he had great expertise in writing about the National Football League, he explained to me that his best writing often came when he was called upon to cover other sports.

He explained that when he was taken out of his comfort zone, it forced him to ask better questions, be more creative and it allowed him to be more original both in content and stylistically.

When you have a fresh eye, he explained, you often bring fresh ideas.

The Blue Fountain Media Experience

At Blue Fountain Media, we have been fortunate enough to have had clients in virtually all major industries. When we approach our projects, we look at each client as an entity unto itself, presenting unique challenges and opportunities.

Even when we lack any experience in a specific client’s industry (which is a rare occurrence these days), we take the time and make the effort to learn everything we can about our client, the client’s corporate culture, their industry and their competitive landscape.

Our account managers are expert at asking the right questions, listening to the client’s answers carefully, and then creating a website and marketing plan best suited to the individual client.

While it is important to learn the client’s business, what is much more important when hiring a web design or marketing firm is to hire a company that understand how to best use the web to drive traffic to your site and to convert that traffic into customers, clients and revenue.

When hiring a website design and marketing team the most important qualities you should look for are:

• Does this company have a track record of producing positive results for its clients?
• Does the company have long-standing relationships with most of its clients?
• Does the company understand how to create websites with great messaging, clear “calls to action,” “stickiness” and social media integration?
• Does the company have expertise in both web design and online marketing? Building a website and then going to a marketing company is like building a house and then finding a plumber to install the plumbing.
• Does the company understand the difference between eye-popping websites and sites that actually deliver revenues?

If you can answer yes to all five of these questions, then you are in great hands.

In Conclusion

If you are looking to create a web presence, market your web presence or just jump start your online presence, please give us a call at 212-260-1978. We would be happy to discuss your business goals and online needs.

They wanted to:

• Increase conversion rates on their website (raising the percentage of visitors who request an in-home consultation).
• Display their innovative counter tops with attention grabbing-graphics and Flash animation.
• Develop a system to allow franchisees to setup their own localized micro-sites through an easy-to-use content management system.

Traffic Sources

Granite Transformations got most of its web visitors from a national television advertising campaign. But this TV-driven traffic hid a problem: the Granite Transformations website did not rank well for product-related terms. In other words, their website was only being seen by people who had already heard of the company. They were capturing branded transactional searches, but ignoring the world of non-branded searches, which was orders of magnitude larger. People specifically searching for granite and table tops (solid potential customers) were being directed to Granite Transformation’s competitors.

The “Back-End” Issues

Granite Transformations is structured as a central business with nearly 100 franchises across the United States. Each franchise has its own “micro-site,” a website specifically targeted to the location and offerings of the particular franchisee. Granite Transformations wanted each franchisee to have the ability to edit their micro-site (to add or remove products, to reach out to visitors, and to interact with the local community).

The Plan of Attack

After an in-depth discussion (actually a series of discussions), we were able to identify Granite Transformations’ business goals and gain an understanding of their business.

Armed with this knowledge, we created detailed specifications for designing and marketing the website.

Some of the key changes to the website were geared to giving visitors easy-to-access examples of featured building materials, and showing them galleries of completed work.

As you can see in the illustration below, we made the navigation of the site simple and intuitive. Visitors can not only look at samples of the materials and the various colors offered, they can “try out” a variety of colors from a convenient palate with a “virtual makeover.”

On the back-end (the internal architecture of the website), Blue Fountain Media developers used PHP, a modern web language, to give the Granite Transformations a content management system that was both easy to use and filled with robust editing tools.

Blue Fountain Media worked with Granite Transformations to put these tools to work. We were able to revamp the content on their site so it targeted new customers, not just people searching for the company itself. We created an extensive network of off-site links, giving the main Granite Transformations site a steady source of new traffic and better rankings. And we created a popular, high-traffic blog that got the site links, traffic—and attention from a national media outlet.

Thanks to a powerful content management system, Blue Fountain Media and Granite Transformations could both spend less time keeping the site up and running, and more time making it great.

The Bottom Line

The results were impressive:

• Over six months Granite Transformation’s traffic nearly doubled.
• Since the beginning of 2010, the site has seen a 50% rise in requests for in-home consultations.
• Thanks to Blue Fountain Media’s search engine optimization and social media marketing efforts, Granite Transformations now gets more than half of their traffic directly through search engines.
• Granite Transformation now ranks on Page One Google results (the Holy Grail of search) for 43 high-value keywords, including “granite,” “counter overlay,” and ”countertop resurfacing.”
• The Granite Transformations blog was twice featured on ESPN.COM for a story about a major league baseball player turned quarry owner.

In Conclusion

An integrated web strategy, development and marketing plan can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. As a company with expertise in design, development and marketing, Blue Fountain Media can put a team together to handle all aspects of a client’s online strategy. If you need any further information or are interested in seeing what Blue Fountain Media can do for you, please give us a call at 21.260.1978.

By writing articles, blogs and white papers, companies can offer a real service to their current and potential customers and clients. It is essential, though, that the content be well-written, informative and understandable for your target audience. It is worth the investment to either have an accomplished copywriter on your staff or to avail yourself of the services of a professional copywriter.

Creating meaningful content is just the first step, though. The key is delivering that content to as wide an audience as you can. Fortunately there are many online platforms for the distribution of your original content.

It will require an investment of time and money to properly market your content across multiple platforms, but that investment is often rewarded with a spectacular ROI, as increases in viewers frequently translates to increases in clients, customers and revenues.

RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication)

An RSS feed is a simple way to “subscribe” to a blog, the same way you would subscribe to a magazine. You can use a program called an RSS reader (Google Reader is a popular and easy-to-use example) to subscribe to blogs. Once you’ve subscribed, you don’t have to check each site individually–just fire up your RSS reader, and you’ll see all of the new content that’s been created since the last time you checked.

Twitter, Facebook MySpace and other Social Media Broadcasts

If your company has a social media account (or multiple accounts) on a service such as Twitter or Facebook, use it to announce the publication of your latest content piece. Virtually all social media accounts allow you to hyperlink directly to your online content.

If your friends or followers like the content piece, they are also likely to tell people in their networks about it, creating an ever-growing audience.

Online Articles Directories

There are a number of online articles directories where you can “publish” your articles. These sites are used by websites looking for free content. Your article may be republished in dozens of websites, but that means you will have dozens of sites with links to your website.

Social News Websites

If you have created truly useful content, social news websites are a great resource for getting your message out and driving traffic to your website. The “general news” sites post news stories on a wide variety of topics.

Posting your article on Digg, Reddit, Propeller or Slashdot not only gives you a chance to broadcast your article to a wide audience, it also gives you the opportunity to get a link back to your website. A well written and entertaining article can go “viral,” attracting thousands, if not tens of thousands, of visitors to your site.

The social news sites also give you the opportunity to comment on other articles- ones related to the subject matter of your article. This is another great way of driving traffic to your site and getting your company’s message out to a larger audience.

Guest Columns

If you run a business, then you are almost certain to possess expertise in your field. There are many industry-related websites that are dying for content and would be happy to publish your articles as a guest or expert columnist.

This gives you direct access to an audience of prospective clients/customers.

The key to becoming a guest columnist is to make life as easy as possible for the host site:

• Provide a list of story ideas you could be writing about. Don’t just give a headline. Provide a detailed synopsis.
• Provide samples of other articles you’ve written.
• Give a detailed description of your particular expertise and welcome the site editor to suggest story ideas for you.

By serving as a guest columnist, you also get the benefit of any “broadcasting” of the article done by the host site.

Commenting

Most blogs allow for readers to “comment.” This can be a terrific way to get the word out about your content and your company. Find the most popular blogs that cover areas where your company has expertise. If you feel that your content can supplement the information contained in a blog or provide a different take on the information contained in the blog, then you can make a brief comment, linking your comment to your company’s original content.

Answering

Many social media sites, like LinkedIn, give members the opportunity to ask questions. If you join an industry group or interest group regularly review the questions written by group members. If you believe that your content can assist in answering a particular question, don’t hesitate to provide an answer with a link to your original content.

In Conclusion

Well-written original content tells the world that you are an expert in your field. By giving something of value to your audience, you enhance your company’s brand as well as your personal brand. Once you’ve attracted a wide audience, you then have the opportunity to market to that audience or to sell directly to that audience.

At Blue Fountain Media, we provide copywriting and content strategy services for clients in a variety of industries. If you are interested in learning more about our copywriting services or any of our other marketing services, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

This is especially true in smaller companies, where every member of team plays an important role.

Traditionally, hires were made based on the content of resumes, the interview process and recommendations. The problem with that is resumes can be deceptive. Recommendations can be unreliable. Interviews only let you see the candidate when they are “on”.

Fortunately, thanks to the proliferation of social media outlets, there are ways for businesses to get a far more revealing and realistic perspective on prospective hires.

When you list a job opening on an online job board, the odds are that you will be flooded with resumes. As a rule, companies can fairly quickly reduce the pile to a list of finalists- a group of candidates who seem to be worth bringing in for an interview.

Before arranging for an interview, it is a great idea to perform some online research on your top candidates. There is a wealth of information available online and that information can help you to avoid disastrous hires and to help locate the very best candidates for the open position.

The “Google” Search

The first step in the process is to simply Google the candidate’s name. Obviously, this works for any of the major search engines, including Yahoo! and Bing.

Since there are many common names revealing multiple results, it is often necessary to narrow the search with additional keywords. You can pair the candidate’s name with their prior employer, their college, or their area of expertise. As a rule, it won’t take very long to find the person you’re looking for.

There are a few key searches you should conduct: “Web,” “Blogs,” “Videos (or YouTube)” and “Images.”

• The “Web” search will give a general overview of the candidate’s online presence. Results will include registrations on social media sites (discussed below), any press coverage, and any published writings.
• The “Blogs” search will show if the candidate is a blogger (can give great insights into the talents and personality of the candidate). It will also show if the candidate is an active participant on other blogs.
• The “Images” search will show any photographs where the candidate is tagged. In our experience, the “Images” search has come up with photos of the candidate looking either drunk, high or engaged in some other inappropriate behavior. A single photograph of a candidate having fun at a party shouldn’t necessarily be damaging. But multiple photos of the candidate engaging in questionable behavior should raise a red flag or two.
• The “Video” search will turn up any videos either created by your candidate or featuring your candidate. This is yet another way to see your candidate with their “hair down.” It is also a great opportunity to see their creativity, personality and judgment.

While there are hundreds of social media sites, you can gain valuable information by checking out the candidate on several of the most popular sites.

LinkedIn

With over 50 million registered users, there is a good chance you’ll find your candidate on LinkedIn. If you do, use the information to:

• Compare work history with resume
• Compare education with resume
• Read online recommendations
• See if the candidate has participated in discussions (a good way to measure the candidate’s expertise and qualifications)

Facebook

With over 500 million users, your candidate is highly likely to be found on Facebook. Facebook gives registrants the opportunity to set their privacy settings (essentially shutting out unwanted visitors), but you’d be surprised how many people have unfiltered Facebook pages.

Some employers have been known to contact “friends” of prospective employees to get a look at any photos the would-be hire has posted.

Facebook postings often provide insights into the candidate’s personality.

• Would this person fit in with your company’s corporate culture?
• Does the candidate complain openly about a current or past employer?
• Do the postings reveal anything about the candidate’s expertise?
• Are there any indications of racism, sexism, homophobia or other attitudes that could prove damaging to your business?

MySpace

MySpace once dominated the social media scene, but has been overwhelmed by Facebook. Nevertheless, there are over 200 million users. Since MySpace profiles include education and work history, it is another tool to verify the contents of the candidate’s resume. Also, since MySpace allows for greater personalization than either Facebook or LinkedIn, it can give further insights into the candidate’s interests, personality and quirks.

In Conclusion

While it may seem a bit like “stalking,” doing a thorough social media search on job candidates can help a business avoid serious headaches (and worse) in the future. A candidate’s online presence can either enhance their job prospects or destroy them. At Blue Fountain Media, we counsel clients on all aspects of social media. If you have any questions about social media, web design or online marketing, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

Love it or hate it, Facebook is here to stay. With over 400 million Facebook users, there’s a massive untapped audience for your company’s or organization’s message. Your current customers/clients are on Facebook. Your prospective customers/clients are on Facebook.

Here are some of the most recent statistics:

As Facebook evolves, companies are trying to figure out just how much time, effort and money they should be spending on their Facebook presences. While some major companies have dived in with multi-faceted Facebook campaigns, others have stood on the sidelines.

The problem with Facebook is that the great majority of visitors go to the site for personal reasons. Users want to communicate with friends, post vacation pictures and just tell the world what they’re up to. As a rule, they are not in a “business” frame of mind. This is in stark contrast to LinkedIn, which is heavily geared to the business community.

Does this mean that businesses should ignore Facebook? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Getting Started

The first thing to understand is that there are two kinds of pages on Facebook: user profiles and “Pages.” Individual profiles are the personal profiles kids and adults (i.e. individual users) create to keep the world updated on their activities.

Pages, on the other hand, are designed to create a Facebook presence for brands, organizations, businesses. Pages are commonly used by businesses as marketing tools. Facebook makes it simple to create these pages.

Pages can be simple or elaborate. Since the page reflects on your business, it is important to do it right. Elements of the Page should include:

• Clear identification of your brand
• Photos and logos
• Brand messaging
  • Your services
  • Your products
• Company messaging
  • Humanize your executives and employees
• Offerings
  • Sales
  • Special events
  • Facebook “exclusives”

Facebook offers a variety of tools to make your page look professional, including Facebook’s own version of HTML to help style your pages, called Facebook Markup Language (FBML). As in any marketing presentation for your company, the more professional and fresh content you can provide, the more effective it will be in helping your company achieve a high ROI on its Facebook marketing investment.

Direct Links to E-Commerce

Your company’s Facebook Page is just one click away from your company’s e-commerce site. Parlay your captive Facebook audience into direct sales with compelling offers on your Facebook Page. Below is an example of how GAP uses Facebook to drive traffic to their store:

GAP on Facebook -> Click -> GAP Online Store

Deals

People are always looking for deals and Facebook gives businesses an opportunity to provide exclusive promotions to their Facebook fans. Not only do you reach a captive audience with each offering, you can measure the success of the campaign by having it exclusive to Facebook.

Modell’s sporting goods has embraced Facebook as a marketing and sales tool by offering a “Facebook Fridays” program where they offer discount coupons exclusively to their Facebook fans.

Integrate with Other Marketing Channels

Cooking.com regularly runs offers and contests exclusive to Facebook users, but promotes them across their newsletters. This allows the brand to connect newsletter subscribers to the brand’s Facebook presence, increasing the chances that future marketing efforts will reach them successfully.

User-Generated Content

Papa John’s has over 1.1 million fans on Facebook. They do a terrific job of engaging their fans both with special offers and with social engagement. Recently, they’ve encouraged Facebook users to click the “like” button (which connects users’ profiles to the Papa Johns page) in exchange for a a chance to “win a slice of the sales” and free pizza for life.

This is just one example of getting your visitors involved in your Facebook efforts. Other devices include contests, polls, lotteries and “featured fan” promotions.

A note on “Fans”: In mid-April, Facebook changed the “Become a Fan” button on Pages to a simple “Like” button. Facebook explained the switch: “We believe this change offers [users] a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which [users] are interested.” Nonetheless, “fans” (lowercase ‘f”)  is still used to describe users who “like” a page.

The Facebook Wall

Another major way of encouraging user-generated content is to allow fans make comments on the Wall. This has multiple benefits. It makes fans feel like they have a relationship with their brand. It gives them an opportunity to praise the brand, make criticisms, make suggestions and just let their voices be heard.

This, in turn, becomes a great vehicle for customer service. So long as the Wall is regularly monitored and the company is responsive to comments, then you have created a tremendous customer relations channel at relatively little cost.

While it may be impossible to respond to every post, when there are repeat concerns or suggestions, it is a terrific idea to reach out – directly – to your fans, listen to them and find solutions.

Facebook Ads

Facebook delivered more banner ads in the first quarter of 2010 than any other website. The reason for the explosive growth in Facebook advertising is that Facebook gives advertisers the opportunity to target ads with remarkable precision.

Advertisers can target ads based on myriad variables, including:

• Age
• Education
• Location (all the way down to zip codes)
• Sex
• Workplace
• Interests
• Relationship status (single, engaged, married)

Using multiple variables, you can actually use Facebook Ads to deliver an ad to a single individual. Facebook’s targeting tool will tell you the exact number of people you will reach with any specific group of targeted factors.

In Conclusion

We have tried to provide a small sample of the ways in which businesses are using Facebook to engage current customers and entice new ones. Before diving in to the world of Facebook, we encourage business owners to do a bit of research:

• What kinds of offers and services are companies providing on Facebook?
• What kind of presence do key competitors have on Facebook?
• What marketing tools are working for your company in other online platforms?

Any business that chooses to ignore a universe of over 400 million potential customers or clients is making a huge mistake. Blue Fountain Media counsels clients on how best to utilize their online and offline marketing budgets to their greatest advantage. For many clients, we find that Facebook advertising brings a very positive ROI on their marketing investments.

To discuss Facebook, Twitter, blogging or any other social media or online marketing, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

With over 50 million users, LinkedIn provides endless opportunities for individuals and businesses to network locally, nationally and internationally.

Individuals use LinkedIn to network, promote their services, locate business partners and service providers and even to get hired. Businesses and organizations can use LinkedIn to perform competitive analysis, monitor industry trends, establish executives as experts in their fields, locate potential clients and customers and to recruit key hires.

LinkedIn 101

If you’ve never used LinkedIn, think of it as a combination of resume database, business directory and business networking on steroids.

When individuals join LinkedIn, they are given the opportunity to create a personal profile, while companies can create a company profile.

Personal profiles include work experience, education, and a summary of your skills. Personal profiles can also include a photograph recommendations written for you by other users.

Company profiles include a detailed company description, a list of specialties, links back to the company website and profiles of current and former employees.

Both personal and company profiles are completely searchable (although you can set certain privacy restrictions on your personal profile).

For individuals, this means you can find former classmates, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. For businesses, this means you can locate a specific kind of business and narrow your search by specialties, locations or even size. You can also search for possible new hires.

Below is an example of what a personal LinkedIn page looks like:

Below here, you’ll see an example of a company page on LinkedIn. To no one’s surprise, I have selected Blue Fountain Media’s company page.

Once you’ve created your personal and company LinkedIn pages, you can begin the process of using LinkedIn to enhance your business.

Contacts

The key to broadcasting your personal and business messaging is to have a substantial audience. To create your audience on LinkedIn, you should reach out to all of your current contacts and invite them to connect with you. LinkedIn provides the tools to automatically import contacts from Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail and other sources.

To further expand your network, LinkedIn also provides tools that give you access to the contacts of your contacts. Just as in face-to-face networking, LinkedIn provides the mechanisms that allow your contacts to make online introductions to their contacts.

This function is great to get your foot in the door with prospective clients, colleagues and service providers.

Broadcast Your News and Updates

With LinkedIn, you can provide your connections with the latest news and offerings from your company. Every time you post, your connections are alerted. Whether it is a new product or service offering, positive press, a recent award, LinkedIn helps you stay on the radar of a wide circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

Enhance Your Web Presence

When people perform a Google search on your name, your LinkedIn profile is likely to be one of the first results shown. Because of this, it is important that your profile is complete, truthful and does not contain embarrassing content or photographs.

If you or your company is being researched, a positive LinkedIn profile can go a long way towards nailing down new business.

Establishing You and Your Business as Experts

One of the great tools on LinkedIn is the “Answers” tool. Anyone on LinkedIn has the ability to post a question, on any topic. As an expert in your field, you can demonstrate your expertise by answering the appropriate questions.

For example, a company that offers website design services can make a point of answering web design questions. At the very least, it gives your company the opportunity to provide free expert advice and create goodwill. At best, it is a tool for attracting new clients.

Hiring

LinkedIn has become the primary hiring tool for many companies. Searching the member database gives businesses the opportunity to make highly targeted searches. It even allows businesses to recruit people currently employed by competitors.

LinkedIn members provide detailed information about themselves and their experience. Profiles are often as detailed as resumes. If your company is looking for someone with specific education, work history and experience, you can find them quickly and effectively on LinkedIn.

For example, a search for “Duke, MBA, New York City and Marketing” produces a significant list of potential employees.

When looking at a company profile, you not only get the full list of all employees who have LinkedIn accounts, you also get access to their biographical information.

Similarly, when you receive a resume from a prospective employee it is a good idea to check the credentials listed on the resume versus the credentials included in the LinkedIn profile. I can tell you from experience that the two don’t always match up.

Client Acquisition

When meeting with potential clients, it gives you a huge advantage if you’ve done your homework. If the potential client has a company page on LinkedIn, not only can you get detailed information about the client’s business, you can get specific information on the individual executives you’ll be meeting with.

• Education: Did you attend the same university?
• Work history: Do you know any of their current or former colleagues? Have you worked together previously?
• Club Memberships/Associations: Common interests, memberships?
• Contacts: Mutual friends or acquaintances?

This information can be used in cold calls (to personalize) or can be used in preparation for an initial client meeting. Either way, the more intelligence you have, the better chance you have of converting a prospect into a client.

In Conclusion

These are just a few of the business uses of LinkedIn. As you become more experienced in using LinkedIn for your business, you are likely to find a dozen other ways you can use LinkedIn to enhance your brand, your prospects and your revenues. At Blue Fountain Media, we counsel our clients on the use of LinkedIn and other social media sites as business tools. If you are interested in discussing social media or any other branding, marketing or online sales issues, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

Blue Fountain Media grew to become one of the leading website design and online marketing companies in the country by striving to learn exactly what kinds of websites succeed and which sites are doomed to fail.

Because the web is constantly evolving, Blue Fountain Media makes a point of staying on top of industry trends. We are constantly surfing the web to find sites with interesting content that are well designed and are structured in a way to optimize business.

As you may guess, most sites fail when it comes to delivering the company’s key messages. In this installment of the Business Learning Center, I will present several sites that do a terrific job of serving the core business needs of the site owner.

I know I’ve discussed this in earlier editions of the Business Learning Center, but I can’t emphasize enough the four key elements of a great business website:

• Proper messaging.
• Effective calls to action.
• Stickiness (features that keep bringing people back to your site).
• Viral marketing (features that encourage visitors to refer your site or specific elements of your site to others).

I will review these elements briefly. We can then look at a few specific sites that employ these elements effectively.

Messaging

People come to your site because they have a specific need and are looking for ways to satisfy that need. If you are fortunate enough to have driven a visitor to your site for the first time, you have only three seconds to convince them to stay.

Because you only have a few seconds to hook your visitors, it is critical that you have clear messaging. You must convey your message in as few words as possible. Follow your core message with specific supporting information (best presented in bullet points). If you bombard your visitor with dense paragraphs of content- right off the bat- you will lose them forever.

Always keep in mind that your website faces constant competition from other sites. When I say “Three seconds,” I mean it! When a person comes to your site, the likelihood is that they will have several other browsers open at the same time.

How do you set your website apart from the competition?

The site that stands out will be the one with the messaging that jumps out at you. It is the one that says, “Here it is! Here is the product/service you’ve been looking for!”

As you will see in the examples below, bold, clear messaging grabs their attention and follow-up information (detailed) is best presented with brief, bullet-points.

Calls to Action

Calls to action give visitors the opportunity to quickly find the specific products or services you are offering. It makes no sense to have a great business with great products or services only to have your website fail to channel your visitors quickly to your offerings. Calls to action on sites take many forms:

• Request a quote
• Buy now!
• Subscribe here
• Free trial
• Start now!

Stickiness

How do you turn a first-time visitor into a loyal repeat visitor? Stickiness.

“Stickiness” refers to the features that make visitors want to keep coming back to your site. This is critical to establishing, maintaining and growing brand loyalty. Such features include:

• Fresh content: updated on a regular basis.
• A resource center: one that provides the kind of information your visitors are looking for.
• Tips: short, sweet bites of information that are readily usable by the visitor.
• Ask the expert: provide the means for visitors to get access to the experts in your company
• User-generated content: This was the mother of Web 2.0, giving people the ability to interact with you and each other on your site.
  • Forums
  • Guest blogs
  • Photo posting
• Multi-media offerings: video, music and photo gallery

I’m not saying that every site has to have all of these “stickiness” elements. I’m just saying that you need sufficient stickiness to ensure customer loyalty.

Viral Marketing

If you have a great product or service or if you have great content on your site, you want to give people the opportunity to share information from your site with others. This is a great way to get new and targeted traffic to your site.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this:

• Forward and article to a friend
• RSS Feeds
• Twitter blasts (Tweets)
• Blog subscriptions
• Newsletter subscriptions

Just a few quick points about newsletters. Don’t just toot your own horn. Make sure that the newsletter provides some advantageous information. Also make sure a third-party sends out your newsletter, one with clearances for bulk mailings. We work closely with Constant Contact, a firm that has a real understanding of e-mail marketing and the laws that govern it.

CASE STUDY: BANTAMLIVE.COM

This site really caught my eye because it does so many things well.
Take a good look at the home page and see how they’ve incorporated virtually all of the key elements discussed above:

• Big Fonts: makes the content accessible and easy to read
• Excellent layout and spacing: it doesn’t bombard you with too much information at once. No dense paragraphs.
• Clear messaging: You know what the site is all about in a second: SOCIAL CRM WORKSPACE For Sales and Biz Dev Teams. This tells the whole story.
• Bullet-points: Excellent use of checks and bullet-points to clearly present key elements of their products
• Calls to action: There are clear calls of action from the top of the home page down to the bottom: 30-DAY FREE TRIAL, SIGN UP FOR FREE (twice)
• Stickiness elements:
  • New York Tech Meetup
  • Watch our Commercial
  • Twitter Feed
  • “Buzz”

Never underestimate the power of creative and clever copywriting. Notice how they use the headline “Buzz” for their recent press. This is far more creative than the typical “In the News” header.  Same can be said for site with “About Us” sections. I like it when sites get creative here with offerings like “Meet the Team,” “A Peek Behind the Curtain.”

Overall, this is the kind of site geared to enhance the company’s bottom line.

CASE STUDY: QWANZ.COM

We really enjoy working with this client. They came up with an idea for an interactive site based on creating and answering polls and we built it. As you can see, it is filled with classic web 2.0 features.

Looking at this website, you instantly know what it’s all about: “Create a Poll, Get the world to vote on it, Send the Results to decision makers.

A polling site invites repeat visitors by involving them in the creation of content and by having each visitor get involved with polls created by other Qwanz subscribers.

This keeps the content fresh and constantly updated.

As you can see, the calls to action are clear and compelling: Create a Poll, Sign up, Log In, View Demo.

The site also features the most popular polls, featured polls and most commented polls. This creates a competitive atmosphere, encouraging visitors to keep coming back to see where their polls stand in the eyes of the other visitors.

Furthermore, the homepage contains a compelling “How to” video, which serves to get first-time visitors immediately involved with the Qwanz community.

CASE STUDY: FOURSQUARE.COM

Foursquare.com is one of the fasting growing websites in the world and there’s good reason for it. They have created a site that not only encourages repeat visits, they demand it!

Foursquare.com encourages visitors to “check in” from whatever location they may be. So, if you are at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Park Avenue and 16^th Street, you go on to foursquare.com, log your location and it is forever recorded.

Foursquare gives you the opportunity to be the mayor of a given location simply by checking in from that spot more often than any other foursquare visitor. This creates enormous competition, which turns into enormous traffic for the site.

The messaging on the site is simple and clear: Check in, Find Your Friends, Unlock Your City, Join Now!

CASE STUDY: DEPECHE MODE

Depeche Mode is a rock band out of England that has been around forever and their site does a nice job of providing up to the minute information for their fans.

The home page is a great example of simplicity. It features a regularly updated photograph of the band on stage. The navigation is simple and clear. The “News Flash,” “Today in DM History,” and “DM Twitter Fan Feed” are well-presented and provide easy and quick access to the pertinent information.

The Tour Tracker feature provides great stickiness. It provides visitors with the opportunity to post pictures from Depeche Mode concerts and to share their experiences with other fans. Click on the city where you attended and you can easily upload your photos.

With the thousands of pictures shown in the “Fan Gallery” you can see that this stickiness feature has been a great success.

Other stickiness features include a forum (message board) and a sign-up for e-mail blasts. The Forum has well over 600,000 postings.

It is clear that Depeche Mode not only understands music, but it gets the business of music as well.

In Conclusion

It is a pleasure to share these sites with you. With so many terrible websites out there, it is nice to see that there are some businesses that truly understand how to use the web to enhance their brands and their sales.

At Blue Fountain Media, we never forget the four keys to online success:

• Proper messaging.
• Effective calls to action.
• Stickiness
• Viral marketing

If you are not happy with your current online presence, please give us a call at 212.260.1978 and see what we can do for you and your business.

While many clients want their web developers to handle all updates of images, text designs and videos on their websites, others want the ability to handle those chores in-house. That’s what a CMS allows them to do.

So, what exactly is a CMS?

In simplest terms, a CMS is a software package that facilitates the creation, publishing, distribution, organization and management of online content. As you will see below, most CMS look very similar to word processing software, like Microsoft’s Word.

A CMS not only creates the structure of how information- articles, video, design elements and images- will be presented, it gives all of the tools for populating a website. A CMS assists the web editor by providing tools for the creation of content, the publishing of the content, and, ultimately to archiving and storing the content.

Depending on the client’s needs and staffing, the CMS can be designed for use by a highly technical webmaster or can be so simple and intuitive that even the most technologically challenged editors can use it effectively.

PUBLISHING TOOLS: CREATING CONTENT

In the early days of the Internet, it was essential to have strong HTML and other coding skills. Most CMS give web editors and writers tools that allow them to compose content as if they were creating a Word document.

Most quality CMS also give you the opportunity to preview content before it is published. The preview page looks exactly like what the page would look like if it was “live” on your website. Any errors in spacing, alignment, look and feel can be detected and fixed before the page is published.

Below you can see an example of the publishing tools on a CMS and a comparison to the editing tools on Microsoft Word.

(Above) writing and editing tools in a CMS

(Above) Writing and editing tools in Microsoft Word

As you can see both Word and this CMS provides the writer/editor has a full range of editing tools. The tools are similar to what you would find in most any word processing software:

• Fonts and font sizes
• Text colors
• Bold, italics and underlining
• Alignments
• Bulleting
• Hyperlinking
• Page breaks
• Importing photographs and video
• Importing from a word document

Many CMS also provide built-in page templates. These templates provide for a uniform look and feel for content in each section of the website.

CMS: MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Of course, a CMS can provide many more tools than just editing tools. The CMS can be designed to handle a variety of sophisticated management tools as well.

A CMS can provide a wide range of work flow tools. These tools allow a company to provide a series of permissions for all users.

For example, you can have multiple “authors” in your company, individuals who are assigned to write content that will appear on the company website. A CMS can limit the powers of these authors, giving them the power to submit an article, but not to edit or publish.

Once the story has been written, a CMS can automatically send out an alert to an editor, who then has authorization to change and update content. Your CMS may give your editors the power to edit copy in the system, but not give the editors the power to publish the story online.

In this case, the power to publish (final approval and review of a story), will just be in the editor-in-chief’s hands. Some companies will only provide authorization to publish in the hands of the legal department.

The CMS can also set rules for who can author different sections of the website. If you have an e-commerce site, you might limit updates to inventory to your product managers. Similarly, if you have an “In the News” section, access may be limited to members of your communications team.

Also, a CMS can used for image, video and banner management.  If programmed correctly, most CMS have the capability to allow for the addition and removal of images and videos from galleries.  The can also be used to change specific banners on pages where an ad might be placed.  Keeping content fresh is essential in the Web 2.0 environment, and having a CMS is a great tool to give your company the ability to do this.

CMS: DISTRIBUTION TOOLS

Your CMS can also be designed to automatically broadcast new content to the world. This would include automatic RSS feeds, search engine notification and e-mail alerts.

Choosing a CMS

Some examples of CMS platforms: WordPress, Joomla!, & Drupal are the most popular.  According to this report (http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/report-in-depth-most-popular-open-source-cms-2009-005800.php), Joomla! is the most popular and WordPress has the best brand strength.  I think the only reason Joomla! is ahead of WordPress in the CMS department is that WordPress is geared more towards blogs

• Websites Using Joomla:
  • MTV Networks Quizilla (Social networking) – http://www.quizilla.com
  • IHOP (Restaurant chain) – http://www.ihop.com
  • Harvard University (Educational) – http://gsas.harvard.edu
  • Citibank (Financial institution intranet) – Not publicly accessible
  • The Green Maven (Eco-resources) – http://www.greenmaven.com
  • Outdoor Photographer (Magazine) – http://www.outdoorphotographer.com
  • PlayShakespeare.com (Cultural) – http://www.playshakespeare.com
  • Senso Interiors (Furniture design) – http://www.sensointeriors.co.za
• Websites Using WordPress
  • Wall Street Journal Magazine – http://magazine.wsj.com/
  • UPS Racing – http://www.racing.ups.com/
  • Fisher Price Expert Series – http://www.fisherpriceexperts.com.au/
  • Best Buy Stores – http://stores.bestbuy.com/577/
  • GE Reports – http://www.gereports.com/
  • I Love Typography – http://ilovetypography.com/
  • Entertainment Weekly PopWatch – http://popwatch.ew.com/

IN CONCLUSION

For those companies that choose to take control of all content updates on their sites, a robust CMS can make life remarkably easy. Where online content creation and editing was once the province of the technically sophisticated, now anyone with basic word processing and editing skills can publish attractive, professional looking content on a website. At Blue Fountain Media, we’d be happy to discuss your web development needs and answer any questions you may have about content management systems. Give us a call at 212.260.1978.