So here’s my thing with social media measurement – there are like 40 programs out there claiming they can help you measure social media, and not one that actually measures any of the things our teams are reporting on. Every single one of these tools aggregates tweets and blog posts about your brand and then graphs mentions of you and your competitors. But in my opinion, that is such a small, small piece of the puzzle and says nothing about how your social media strategy is directly increasing revenue. Here is my problem with this as a measurement of success for your social media strategy:

1. So there’s a lot of chatter about you in SM - How is that a reflection of your social media campaign? Was there a lot of chatter about your brand before you began social media? Could it be that the chatter is a result of a great PR hit, a new product, a new ad campaign? Is the chatter even really about you? How much of it is spam, or a misspelling, or an unrelated mention? Is it positive, neutral, or negative? Measuring overall volume of social mentions is interesting, sure, but it doesn’t actually tell you anything about how the dollars spent on your social media campaign is influencing your customers spending habits. Rather than a measurement of social media strategy, I see these tools that measure the volume of online chatter as a separate (albeit related) function of online reputation management (and one that should come with its own budget line item).

2. Comparing your share of voice to your competitors - Again, how is this a reflection of your success with social media strategy? So what if your competitor is getting 1,000 more tweets than you are. Are they doing anything about it? Are they engaging with these people? Perhaps they are receiving higher chatter because they are just downright more popular. Social media isn’t magic. If your company isn’t well liked then that will be reflected in a competitive analysis of the social space. Again, there are just too many variables at work here for it to be a true measure the success of your social media strategy.

Alternatively, for social media strategists, I’d  recommend creating a  social media audit (something we’ve done for several our social media clients) and updating this on a semi-regular basis. In this audit you identify top competitors and what these companies are doing in the social space. Then analyze the level of engagement they receive and the tactics they employ. This will give you direct insight into the changes you can make in your own programs and the success that these competitors are seeing as a result of their actions.

3. Finally, my biggest beef with these tools is that what they report are all things we have to gather anyway in the day-to-day execution. In order to run a successful social media campaign you have to be paying attention on a daily, real-time basis to info directed to you, about you and about your competitors. We have various team members set up searches for terms (everything from our client’s name to broader searches like “things to do in San Diego”) and these people are tasked with assessing the needed level of engagement with what they find. Having a tool that I have to log in, and then sort through tons of spam isn’t efficient. Furthermore, when I run these searches directly in Facebook or on Twitter or in Google blog search, I don’t need to switch screens to respond.

Oh yea, and all these manual searches are free.

I feel that I should re-iterate that I think all of these tools are useful, I just don’t think they fall under the umbrella of social media strategy or reporting. I think these tools help with a larger analysis on company success. Additionally, I think that capturing this data should be part of a larger online brand/reputation management (complete with influencer outreach programs, blog comment strategy and quarterly reports to R&D about the online perception of your products and services). Is there overlap, yes. Is this something you can squeeze into current social media campaigns/budgets? In my opinion – no.

So what is it that I do want? I want a tool that helps save me time measuring the success of my strategy. A tool that actually speaks to ROI. I want a tool that easily aggregates everything I am measuring to show the direct result of the actions we are making in the social space. Specifically, I want a tool that pulls everything in and then makes graphs for me.

I want something that pulls in my number of fans, followers and visits to our blog. I’d like to see the number of comments, wall posts, fan photos @ replies, DM’s, RT’s and lists without having to login to each account to capture. I want a tool that auto refreshes Klout score and includes Tweetreach functionality to show the possible Twitter impressions per month. I want a program to pull from Google Analytics to tell me how much traffic came directly from Facebook and Twitter and I want it to tell me how many bitly click-throughs I got per month. Essentially I want all of this to happen without me, or anyone on my team, having to log in and count over and over and I want it all to happen in ONE place. For those few measurements of success that I may never be able to have aggregated (eg. number of redemption from social media contests) I’d like a tool to give me the functionality to add in these few exceptions and then auto graph them. This tool, a dream tool, would simplify reporting the amount of direct engagement with your brand, the increase of traffic attributed from social media, and the money spent as a result of a comprehensive social media strategy. I believe this tool would be a true measure of the success of your strategy, specifically, and could help agencies prove why their social media strategy services are valuable.

So, what do you think. Any programmers up for the challenge? Any social media marketers think they could use a tool like this?

If you are involved in social media marketing, you are used to the deluge of new “must-try” tools on a daily basis. For me, Klout was just another one of these tools. Neat. You check your score and then move on. However, recently I decided to delve a little deeper, and I discovered that it’s actually an incredibly useful tool. And apparently, I’m not the only one.

So first off- What is Klout?

Simply put, Klout measures your level of influence on Twitter. The scores range from 0-100 and a higher Klout score represents a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout takes into account 25 variables (the details of which are kept a secret) in assessing a Twitter handle’s ability to drive people to action (e.g. reply, retweet or click-through). It aims to show how effective a person or company is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have.

But Klout does more than just give you a score. It also tells you who you are influenced by and who is influenced by you, the topics you are most influential on, and what percentile you are in compared to other Twitter users. For those using the tool to report Twitter success for clients, it charts your growth and shows your top RT’s and links.

Best of all, Klout is pretty darn reliable. To test the tool’s accuracy I ran our teams’ and clients’ handles through the program to see if my perception of people’s/companies’ influence would roughly align with Klout’s. For the most part, it did. I was impressed

And so, Klout became a part of my life. And as I’ve used it more and more, I’ve discovered there are three distinct ways to use Klout.

How to use Klout

1. Personal brand strategy – Sometimes we spend so much time working on our company’s Twitter handles or our clients’ handles that we let our own personal handles take a major backseat. However, we are missing a big opportunity here. How helpful is a RT of your company’s handle if no one is paying attention to you? Look at each section of the Klout report and make changes accordingly. Hint: If your score hasn’t changed in a while, scroll down to the bottom of the page to refresh your score every once in a while.

2. Social media metrics – Include Klout into your social media metrics reporting for your company or your clients. Personally, I’d feel comfortable allowing it to take the place of counting the numbers of RT’s, @ replies, bit.ly click-throughs, lists etc. All of those aim to show growth in Twitter influence and all of those are included in Klout’s calculations. Using this tool could save you bundles of reporting time. Note: even if you aren’t ready to use it as a replacement, it is an easy addition.

3. Identifying and rewarding influencers - a couple of early companies have already figured this out and created programs based off incentivizing influencers with high Klout scores. Virgin Air was one of the first to launch a program like this when they gave away free flights to select people with high Klout scores. I expect we’ll be seeing more of this as the tool continues to evolve.

So how about all of you? Anyone using Klout regularly or planning to launch a Klout rewards program sometime soon?

So you’ve written a really awesome blog post – now what? The truth is, it doesn’t matter how amazing your content is if no one is seeing it. Assuming you have already taken into account all our tips for search engine optimization, you are still going to want to drive traffic to your blog from all of your social networks. Below are a few basic tips to help you promote your blog posts.

7 Tips for Promoting Your Blog Post

1.  Start with quality content. If you aren’t proud of your blog post then chances are your post isn’t going to make it far, no matter how much you promote it.

2. Share it on Twitter. An obvious first step for those in the Twitter World, however there are a few things to keep in mind if you want to use Twitter to promote your blog. First off, make sure you are also tweeting other good content as well. If your followers have deemed you as irrelevant or overly-promotional, they probably aren’t paying attention anymore.

Second, make sure you are continuously refreshing your list of people you are following. No matter how great a tweeter you are, chances are your list will get some “list fatigue.”

Finally, make sure you write your tweet in a way that it is most likely to get re-shared. Draft a compelling tweet and make sure you state that the post came from you. If your followers like you, they’ll be more interested in your thoughts vs something you found.

3. Put the link on Facebook. Many people like to keep work and play separate and therefore don’t want to put their blog posts on Facebook. While I generally adhere to this rule, I actually think (and Google Analytics backs me up) that Facebook can be a valuable way to get traffic to your post. First off, you likely have SOME work connections on Facebook. It’s good to give them an opportunity to see your work and to keep you and your company top of mind.

Second, who knows how many of your friends might be potential customers, clients, or colleagues one day. By sharing these posts on Facebook you are able to inform your vast pool of Facebook friends more about what you do, while positioning both yourself, and your company, as a leader.

*Note – I do recommend promoting your blog post on Facebook in a manner that you are comfortable with. Usually my intro to the link is a lot more casual and fun, and possibly includes some sort of abbreviation (As many of my Facebook friends know, I have an affinity for abbreviations in status updates).

4. Share your blog post on Linkedin.  Assuming you don’t have your Tweets auto updating to Linkedin, be sure to share your blog post on Linkedin as well. This is a no-brainer in my book. You know your contacts on there are business contacts, and are therefore much more likely to care. Try using different wording than you did on Twitter, to attract new people who may have ignored your Tweet.

5. Use Digg, Stumble, Reddit. Whatever your bookmarking/aggregator site of choice is, be sure to utilize one of these sites to drive new, fresh eyes to your blog. The keys to each of these communities is to commit to one, building out a profile, and being an active participant in the community.

6.  Don’t forget email. If you don’t happen to have your own personal e-blast, feel free to send your post via good old-fashioned email to people you think might be interested. If you have a client, potential client, or someone else that may find the post relevant, email is the easiest and most direct way to get it to them.

7. Tweet it again. Don’t tweet your post out incessantly (that’s a social media don’t), but if you want to get a few more eyeballs, try tweeting it again later in the day. Change up the wording from your original to help you appeal to a new audience.

These 7 tips are what I consider my “have-to-do steps” for promoting every blog post I write, but I’d love to hear from you. Anything you’ve found particularly helpful in driving traffic to your posts?

If you are at all involved in Social Media Marketing, you probably know that April 19, 2010, was a big day for Facebook. Yesterday the social networking giant launched all kinds of changes and updates, many of which will have some pretty interesting implications for companies. Here’s a summary of the changes that Facebook made, and more importantly, what they mean for marketing.

Facebook Change #1 – Community pages are here

Remember when fan pages first started and everyone was becoming a fan of silly things and your stream would fill up with  “Callan Green became a fan of Brussels sprouts” or “Callan Green became a fan of sparkly unicorns.” Well, Facebook wanted to create a way for users to express their affinity for said sparkly unicorns without utilizing the pages that were intended for companies. Enter the Facebook Community Page. These pages free the Facebook police from having to shut down un-official fan pages and they allow for a clearer distinction between a brand’s official page and a page started by a random.

So what are these new community pages like? They look like company pages but wall updates are created from users’ status updates. Anytime someone uses a key word to update their status, (in this example, “hike”) Facebook automatically pulls that update into the community page. When you visit the page, it divides the updates into updates made by your friends, and updates made by the general community.

There are a couple of important distinctions between community and company pages. 1. the update on a community page won’t run through your news stream and 2. it is impossible to write directly on the community wall, or to upload pictures/videos to the page.

So why do these community pages matter to marketers? Well there’s been a lot of chatter that the real reason these pages were created is so that Facebook can get a better idea of its user demographic. Others are saying it’s Facebook’s attack against Twitter, which recently claimed to be the best indicator of real-time public interest.  Either way, the data compiled from “likers” of community pages allows Facebook to present a strong case to potential advertisers. For instance, lets say there are 100,000 million “likers” of Pizza on Facebook. Wouldn’t that be a nice stat to have when Facebook tries to approach Roundtable about advertising with them? And on the marketing side, wouldn’t it be nice to buy an ad and have it served to all the “likers” of our clients’ categories? It is no secret that us marketing people love data.  The truth is, the more data we have, the more tailored our marketing approaches can be, and the more sales we can then get.

Facebook Change #2- Profile “interests” are being updated

Within the next few days, Facebook will begin prompting you to link the interests you’ve listed in your profile to various company or community pages. Lets say, for example, that under interests I currently have “running, surfing, reading and Absolut Vodka.” Facebook will now ask me if I’d like to link those interests to the running, surfing and reading community pages AND to the Absolut company page.

This is great for marketers. To the average person not reading Tech Crunch, Mashable or All Facebook, they may not understand that by clicking yes, they are also now subscribing to all these company pages in their news feed. So for brands on Facebook this is a big, “yaay!” You have just been given an easy way to capture new fans (despite the fact that they may be unaware of their new-found relationship with you).

*Word to the wise, I’d make sure your content on Facebook was dead-on for the next few days, knowing that you are going to have an in-flux of brand spanking new fans. This is your one chance to capture them, and if your content sucks, they are probably going to “hide” you in their streams.

Facebook Change # 3 – Facebook changes its privacy settings (yet again)

Starting yesterday, Facebook made changes so that users can now select which of their “interests/likes” are visible to their friends. However, if you “like” or include a page as one of your interests, your like-age will always be visible from the community page and is considered public knowledge. So the moral here is, be careful what you “like.”

This is good for brands, as it continues to loosen privacy settings and makes more content public. Plus, these privacy changes had to take place in order for Facebook to gather quality “interest gauging” for the above Community Pages.

Facebook Change #4 – You are no longer a “fan” of a brand’s page

Now to connect with a brand on Facebook you “like” them. Originally people speculated that this would be helpful to brands because there is a lower barrier of entry to saying that you “like” a page vs being”fan” of the page. I think that’s poppycock. Semantics won’t have THAT much of an affect on Facebook users. Whether you are a “fan” or you “like” the page, the end result is that you are now following the pages updates in your news stream, and I’d like to think that users will catch onto that.

What does matter are the changes that came with this. For instance, the company page now shows you which friends of yours also like the page. A nice new function that might encourage someone who was on the fence to “like” a page. This along with the ability to link to said pages from your profile and the new privacy changes, means a lot of new visibility and growth opportunities for these company pages.

AND all this was just Monday

Facebook must be tired, but the annual F8 conference is tomorrow, and it is likely that these changes were just the beginning. Stay tuned as we learn more about the changes that Facebook plans to make in the near future and how these might affect your marketing plans.

I just read this great article about Nestle’s recent Facebook debacle and absolutely loved it. The short version of the Facebook disaster is this: Greenpeace is mad at Nestle over palm oil and a bunch of their members began taking to Facebook to express their outrage. They covered the Nestle Facebook Fan Page with wall posts and changed their profile pictures to altered versions of the Nestle logo to further make their point. The moderator of  Nestle’s Facebook page became flustered by the outpouring of hatred, and responded in a manner that was just a little too human. Comments such as: “Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it’s our page, we set the rules” certainly didn’t win him/her any fans. This whole mess draws attention to what I think is one of the least talked about, but maybe most important, aspects of social media – the social media crisis plan. Clearly, Nestle had no such plan ready.

But with no plan laid out, how could the moderator know how to handle such a delicate and heated situation? On one hand, I completely understand the moderator’s response (and even secretly applaud it a little, although I wouldn’t have gone there myself). Anyone who has ran a Facebook Fan Page for a client and had to deal with people’s inappropriate/rude/harsh comments, can tell you they are hard to cope with. Many times I’ve had to curb the desire to respond to an overly zealous persons complaint with a “Hey this is a FAN page. If you aren’t a fan, feel free to leave” or a “now why don’t you just simmer down a bit.” But as the Nestle moderator learned, angry people don’t appreciate sarcasm or rudeness, so I’ve refrained.

The challenge for many companies is that when crisis does break out in a social media space, it seems like there is no correct response.  Just regurgitating the public press statement probably won’t win you any engagement awards. However Nestle’s “human” approach, didn’t have a positive effect either. So what’s the right answer?

I’ve found it varies per client, but there are a couple of tactics we employ most often.

1. Ignore it. “What??!” you ask? I’ve learned that, sometimes, there is no good way to respond and any response is only going to anger your critics more. Things will die down, probably sooner than you thought, and definitely sooner than if you tried to jump in and defend yourself. Plus, sometimes, when you keep yourself out of the conversation, your fans will jump in and start defending you. What’s better than that?

2. Thank people for their comments and let them know you heard their concerns. If it is something like this Nestle situation, where clearly there were no new answers that would appease the members of Greenpeace, it is pointless to just try and re-state your position. Instead, just thank them for their thoughts and wait for next week when they’ve moved onto something else.

3. Respond with humor. This will only work for certain situations but often times humor can diffuse a situation. People don’t expect it and it can help put everything in perspective. This one is risky though because you have to ensure that your humor doesn’t border on rude or sarcastic. As we’ve seen, that probably won’t be effective.

So what do you think about Nestle’s response? How would you have handled it better?

It’s no secret that the hospitality industry has jumped face-first into the world of social media. These days almost every hotel has, at the very least, a Facebook Fan Page and Twitter handle. Many savvy hotels are hosting blogs, have their own YouTube channels and are even using Foursquare to help with their marketing needs. However, despite the massive numbers of properties who have a presence, there is a startlingly small amount who are actually using social media well.

Here are a few of the most common mistakes we see with hotels in social media

Mistake #1 – Only talking about your hotel. Sure, your property has a spa, restaurant, wedding venue, bar, club and a whole bunch of rooms, but that still doesn’t mean that your fans/followers only want to hear about that stuff. Feel free to sprinkle that in from time to time, but if you want to have people actively paying attention to your hotel in the social media world, you have to talk about something other than yourself.

Mistake #2 - Thinking Twitter and Facebook will suffice as your hotel’s full social media strategy. Yes, these two platforms are great, especially for the hospitality industry, but there are so many other places online that people are talking about your brand. It would be remiss to create a social media strategy that didn’t incorporate some of these other places. At the very least, any social media campaign should include the monitoring and responding to consumer generated content about your hotel on sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Orbitz etc. Taking it one step further, hotels have a natural opportunity to create a strategy with other popular social media sites. For instance, YouTube can be a great way to capitalize on the visual nature of the property and Foursquare allows hotels to reward their most loyal guests. In short, Facebook and Twitter alone just aren’t going to cut it.

Mistake #3 – Not creating separate strategies per social media platform. Yes, all of your social media campaigns should have one over-arching strategy (likely tying into your overall marketing goals), however, each platform that you are interacting on should serve a different purpose. If you are just planning on re-purposing your content from Facebook to Twitter, than why would a consumer have any incentive to connect with you on both? With so many aspects to each hotel, it is a lot easier to find a separate strategy per page than in so many other industries. This is why it is even more baffling that so many hotels’ only strategy seems to be to talk about promotions.

Mistake #4 – Thinking that number of fans or followers your hotel has is an apt way to measure the success of your social media campaign. When you are a fun/sexy/well-known brand (as many brands in the hospitality industry are), it won’t be challenging for you to pick up fans and followers because so many people have experienced your brand over time. What will be challenging is getting those people to engage with you in any real way. What good is 6,000 fans if they are all ignoring your tweets and not responding to your status updates? Numbers are useless if your content isn’t good. All of these platforms have made changes or apps to make it so that someone who fanned or followed you may never see a single message from your brand.

Mistake #5 – Not being human. Sure you are a property, a brand, an entity. Maybe you are uber luxury or super academic, but at the end of the day, you also have to be human. This means interacting with real people on Twitter, responding to people who comment to you on Facebook, and infusing personality into every tweet/status update/video etc. This, hands down, will help you stand out the most from every other member of the hospitality industry since virtually no one is doing it.

All this is not to say that there aren’t hotels using social media phenomenally. There are. I’d just like to see all hotels using these tools in creative and innovative ways. In fact, I’d like to challenge everyone in the hospitality industry to take a second look at their social media strategy and come up with a way to take their social media campaigns to the next level. If you are a hotel and you aren’t prepared to do so yourself – fear not – there are people who can help. In fact, I may just know of a company that specializes in social media for hotels and the hospitality industry…

The social media world has erupted with buzz (pardon the pun) about Google’s newest launch - Google Buzz. The new social network is integrated directly with Gmail and allows you to take all of your personal web feeds and create a single stream. Buzz also includes a Foursquare – esq function where you can make updates based on your location and receive tips and reviews based from other Google Buzzers. The overall effect is that every photo, blog post, video, status update etc can all be found in one place where other Google users can view it and comment on it.

So is Google Buzz a game changer? Some are saying this could be the next big social network, but I just don’t see it. I went in and played with mine, and I am not convinced as to why I need this when I am already perfectly comfortable using my existing networks. Furthermore, not everyone I want to connect with has Gmail, making it impossible for this to ever become my preferred social network.

However, within 56 hours of their launch, Google Buzz already had more than 9 million posts and comments. Plus, with 38 million Gmail users automatically hooked up, there is a tremendous potential for growth.

The real question is, will Google Buzz last? Google Wave made a huge splash when it came on the scene, but was dismissed as too complex within mere weeks. Mashable recently conducted a poll asking their readers which they preferred: Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz. With more than 6,500 votes, Facebook was the clear leader, receiving 47 % of the votes. 26% of the votes went to Twitter, and only 18% went to Google Buzz.

So what do you think? Is Google Buzz going to be the next it thing? Are you using Google Buzz? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

I’m hearing a lot of rumbling about Foursqaure being just another social media thing that no one has time for. Everyone wants to know why they should care where people are, or who just became the Mayor of Subway in Hillcrest… Well if you are running a business, or you are in charge of the marketing for a business, it’s my opinion that you should care, and here’s why.

First off, what is Foursquare?

Well, it’s a location-based, social networking game. In the most basic sense, it allows you to use your phone to alert your friends, in real-time, of your exact whereabouts. You can build a friend network on Foursquare and simply elect to alert those people, or you can connect your Foursquare account to your Facebook and Twitter, in order to update your already existing friends of your whereabouts.

When you check-in places you are given the opportunity to leave a little tip about the venue (eg Try the portobello mushroom sandwich, it’s fantastic). Those tips are then shown to anyone when they check-in to a nearby location. If they like your tip, they can then save it as a “to-do” for themselves. Foursquare also lets you tag a location with descriptive words to let other users know what to expect.

As you begin to use Foursquare you can earn yourself badges (remember this is a game) which tell fellow Foursquarers exactly what kind of Foursquare user you are. Then if you go to a venue enough times, you become the Mayor of that venue. This is a very prestigious honor (ok not so much) but it is super fun to say you are the Mayor of places. Just ask Jason, the current Mayor of Bailey Gardiner…

You’ll earn points every time you check-in somewhere, and you get more points for being adventuresome and checking into different parts of the city, or for going more than once place in a night. You also get points when someone else takes one of your tips or when you complete one of your To-Do’s. The best part of the game is that the stats get reset to zero every Sunday, which gives everyone a fair chance at playing the game – no matter how long you’ve been a Foursquare player.

So why should you care about Foursquare?

If you own a business, work at a marketing agency or are a marketing director for a company, there are five main reasons you should care about Foursquare.

1. Monitoring – As more and more people begin using Foursquare, it’s imperative that your business knows what is being said about you on the platform. Between tips and tags, people have a lot of opportunity to talk about you, and like any social media platform, we recommend you are monitoring what they are saying.

2. Rewards programs – Many companies have already started integrating Foursquare into their customer loyalty/rewards programs. Take Tasti D-lite in NY. They’ve created a comprehensive social media rewards program that utilizes Foursqaure (and therefore Facebook and Twitter) to reward their regular customers for their social media involvement. On a smaller scale, some companies simply put a sign out in front of their venue, offering a free drink, sandwich, whatever, to the Mayor of their place. This inspires people to check in regularly to compete for Mayorship, while rewarding the venue’s most loyal patron.

3. Events - Word on the street (and by street I mean Mashable) is that there is possibly an events layer coming soon that will reward Foursqaure users for attending events. As a public relations professional, I can only imagine how helpful this might be when trying to throw a big event for a client, to have yet another way to give people an incentive to attend.

4. This is just the beginning – Foursquare has some smart developers, who are on their A-game, to say the least. They’ve got some big plans and are in no way done creating Foursquare. Think how much Facebook has evolved since it began (anyone out there remember when it was just your profile picture and some information about your interests?) Foursquare is growing fast. Hop on now so you can be along for the ride.

5. And finally, Foursquare is the next big thing – not to sound trite, but this is getting a LOT of buzz from the higher ups in the social media world. These people know a good thing when they see it, and with so many companies already beginning to adopt Foursquare, I think they may be right. These are the same people that were telling you to pay attention to Twitter back in 2007, when most of us were going “Tweet what?” or “That sounds ridiculously lame.”

In addition to getting involved as a business or as a marketing/PR representative, there are some benefits to using Foursquare as a user:

1. Foursquare answers the question, “I’m here, so now what?” – Foursquare can do everything from help you choose what to order, to seeing what other great places are nearby, to learning about drink specials and deals. The developers told Mashable in an interview that they want to be more than any other location based service by focusing on the “So what”.

2. It will help you connect offline - You spend all this time making connections with people on Twitter that you have never met, which, to me, is kind of a bummer. In fact, it was one of the reasons I so enjoyed going to Blog World this year, because it was fascinating to sit next to some of the people I’ve been communicating with for the past two years. Foursquare helps make this process even easier because you are able to see where you Twitter friends are even if you aren’t all at a conference.

3. It’s fun - There’s a reason people like games. Everyone loves a good competition and what’s better than being rewarded for places you are already going and things you are already doing.

So, what do you think? Are you convinced? Want to be my friend on Foursquare?

Anyone who has logged into Google Analytics knows that it’s a beast. With so much information, how are you supposed to know what’s important? Below are the two things that I like to look at when I am trying to measure the blog’s success and look for things to improve.

The two most important areas to look at in Google Analytics:

1. Traffic sources - This section will tell you how people are coming to your blog, which gives you feedback on how well you are doing promoting your content. You can check what your top traffic sources are (likely your website, Google or Twitter) and the top keywords that people are using to find your blog in search.

• The referring traffic portion of the pie chart will show you all the traffic that comes from other websites (eg. your company’s site, Facebook, Twitter and any of your other social media endeavors). You can see exactly which referring source is driving the most traffic by clicking on “View Report” and then on “Referring Sites.” Spend the majority of your time promoting your blog content on the sites that are working the best already. You may also want to choose one of your social media platforms that is under-performing and work on increasing traffic from that site as well.

• The search traffic portion of the Google Analytics graph refers to all the visitors who found your blog organically on Google, Yahoo or Bing. If your blog is just starting out, it is likely that this will be a very small percentage of your traffic sources. As you implement SEO tactics and establish credibility with the search bots, you’ll watch that percentage grow.

2. Top content – This will tell you what blog posts are getting the most traffic and give you insight into what resonates with your readers. If you click on “Content Overview” you can see the top posts for any given time period. Make sure you set it to the time period that you want to measure. I usually check top content by month as well as for the overall in the history of the blog.

Once you have the list, I’d recommend taking a closer look at the ones that got the most traffic to figure out why. If you click on the title of the post, it will pull a report on just that post. Click on “Content Detail“ and then check “Entrance Sources.” This will tell you where people are coming from to find this particular post. If the number one source is Google you can then see which keywords people are using to find this post by going to “Entrance Keywords.”

You can then capitalize on your top posts by going back in and updating them.  For instance, I wrote a post in August about Facebook contests for companies that continues to get traffic daily. It’s likely that a lot of this traffic is coming from people looking for info about the new regulations to Facebook contests, rather than a case study on how to run a successful contest. So, in order to capitalize on the traffic AND ensure our readers are getting the info they need, Katy wrote a post about the new rules for Facebook contests which I then linked to in an “update” to the original post.

With Google Analytics there are a whole lot of other fun things you can look at, but I have found the above two areas to be the most telling in shaping the way I measure success. How about you? Anything you find more useful to look at?

* Update: Facebook made some NEW “new changes” on April 19, 2009. To get the full details visit this post on the new Facebook changes and what they mean for marketers.

Facebook is making new changes to its fan pages next month and all of us social media marketers are abuzz with anticipation. This is big stuff. Apparently the news that Facebook was changing its fan pages was actually released back in October, but somehow it’s only now catching on. (Strange considering the implications the new design has for companies on Facebook). Below is a summary of the changes, what these changes mean, and why they are happening.

Changes to your Facebook fan pages

• Your boxes tab is disappearing – and possibly any custom content currently housed under the boxes tab. Some are saying that the majority of your content will just be moved into tabs on your fan page, however there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on how this will happen.
• Your application tabs are changing – The tab width for all those custom tabs will shrink from 760 pixels to 520 pixels. This means, if you have built a fan page with application tabs right now, you are going to need to re-design them…pretty much immediately. No word yet as to whether un-shrunken content will be immediately deleted, or will just look strange and broken.
• Your ability to talk to your fans via their news feed is changing – your updates will only be inserted into your fans’ feed if your Facebook fan page is being visited often and if you have lots of likes and comments. Facebook has created an algorithm  which will measure engagement and, rumor has it, how much Facebook advertising you purchase.
• You can get your fans’ email (kinda) – There is a new email API that allows you to collect email addresses from your fans. However this is only if you are building your own app – for now at least.

What do these new changes to Facebook fan pages mean?

In short – it means you need to step up your game. You will be able to rely less on the custom content as Facebook continues to refine their policies. In fact, I’m guessing this won’t be the last time they make changes, so I wouldn’t put all your eggs into the “customization” basket. It all comes down to your status updates and wall posts, and they are going to have to be good. Update less often and make sure that when you do, it is something people will respond to. I’d go with making your fan page entertaining, as these days it seems people are on Facebook more and more for entertainment and less for info. (That’s what Twitter is for).

Why is Facebook changing its fan pages?

Yes, many will be upset, but Facebook is doing what it always does – looking out for its users (while trying to make a profit…hey, it’s a business after all!) Facebook was never originally about companies, and the fact that they’ve let us play at all in their sandbox is far from where they originally started. Facebook is making these changes, because they want to be different than Myspace. After Myspace was taken over by companies and intrusive advertising, it literally died. Facebook is protecting its users by making sure their feeds aren’t inundated with companies’ updates and their platform isn’t cluttered with custom content. And at the end of the day, they are also watching out for their bottom line – something I think any company can understand.

So what do you think? Are you up for the challenge that these new changes to facebook fan pages will bring?