One of social media’s greatest benefits to brands is the ability to scale up customer engagement for value creation. The most intimate and valuable type of interaction was until recently facilitated mostly by one on one engagements that demanded extensive human resources and expenditures. Now, powered by digital platforms, engagement reaches scale. Engagement via social media has more to offer than recruiting customers and driving sales.

It can help extend the customer life-time by creating loyalty, as well as optimise it by turning customers into advocates and enjoy additional leads and sales. And –finally, but potentially most importantly, engagement through social media can generate insights from customers, which can lead to better products and services. Read More »

We’ve already heard lots about Barack Obama’s use of social media: how the Obama team shook up its social media strategy in run up to 2012, launched the presidential re-election bid on YouTube and how Obama gave a crowdsourced YouTube interview.

The Obama team is continuing to push its social media wider and The White House is now on Foursquare. I’m guessing he’ll be the mayor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in no time. Read More »

Foursquare: more developments

Foursquare is the latest social network to look towards businesses to monetize its website, with a report in the New York Post saying it is planning to start charging registered merchants.

The newspaper interviewed Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, who said: “[The check-in] comes back to me in forms of recommendations. It goes back to [users] in interesting ways.”

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Foursquare: 500,000-plus businesses on board

As we know, geo-location social network Foursquare is operating in an increasingly tough market, with competition on two fronts: rival check-in sites like Facebook Places, and the increasingly popular coupon companies like Groupon.

Nonetheless, a fortnight after it revealed it had 10 million members, it has said that it has more than 500,000 merchants signed up – the companies that do special offers for people checking in or for people with ‘Mayor’ status (meaning they’ve checked in the most) and so on.

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Location-based check-in service Foursquare has put together this infographic to celebrate the fact that it now has more than 10 million members world wide.

The interactive infographic and map shows a series of dots that slowly spread around the globe with each one representing a user and the growth of the two year old company. It also shows the top brands in terms of check-ins. Read More »

It is no big secret that consumers equate the quality of online experiences with their offline experiences. Mobile technology has enabled us to interact with brands when and where we want.

We are now seeing the water cooler moments of the past taking place immediately and online. This has been clearly demonstrated by Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook. So as marketers – we need to ensure that our big ideas allow our consumers to seamlessly interact with the brand, when and where they want. Read More »

I signed up to Scoville today, having picked up on a hashtag doing the rounds this morning.

It’s a mash up of foursquare and Twitter, allowing users to share favourite check-ins with followers each week using #TopTuesday.  It’s still in beta, but has been open to foursquare ’super users’ for a couple of months already. Read More »

I’ll be watching with interest to see how successful Sarah Barnard is with the #twitterjobchallenge as Twitter is jam packed with people trying to get noticed by brands, organisations and people they admire.

It really should only be a matter of time before companies start tapping wholesale into this and advertising jobs via social media in a well thought out and strategic way, or at least start seeing their followers and their networks as a poll of potential employees. Read More »

Facebook is already one of the most popular ways for people to promote an upcoming event online, and now Facebook has made a major improvement to this service by giving users the ability to check-in at events.

The launch of the latest update to their iPhone app, includes functionality similar to the dedicated geosocial networking apps already on the market like Foursquare, Gowalla or Loopt. Read More »

Consumers are starting to get their first experience of real-time or social commerce, as increasingly widespread usage of check-in/location based services allows them to receive and act on offers based either on their location or their friends purchase habits. Here are my five points insights on real-time social offer. Read More »