Chef Daniel Boulud at Los Angeles Food & Wine:

Adam Karwoski posted a good article, How To Take Your Next Trade Show Social, that highlights some key components:

• Video: livestream Q&A, how-to videos, testimonials, behind the scenes
• Twitter: live Twitter feed, tweet-ups
• Facebook: polls, contests
• Website: landing page
• Photos: share via social profiles and web
• Blog: guest blog, live blog, recap

One of the many amazing items at LA Food & Wine:

I take a slightly different approach, breaking it out into before, during and after the event. Video and contests are great, but take quite a bit of advance planning, approvals and coordination, so I listed a few simple things that most companies can do. If you sponsor an event, be sure to ask about having the event share your content and links to your properties (web & social) through their channels: press releases, email, web, social.

Before the event:

• Announce attendance / sponsorship via press release, email list and social media channels.
• For speaking events, be sure to communicate when, where and the topic.
• Reach out to prospects, key media contacts and partners to check if they are attending and schedule meetings if available.

During the event:

• Monitor hashtags, check-ins and keywords for opportunities to connect and engage. Utilize tools, such as Klout for Twitter to identify influential contacts
• Post a few key pieces of content from the event – could be photos taken by your company, retweets of key blog posts, etc.

After the event:

• Post recap of event – ideally in a blog post and share blog post via social channels and email list. Including links to other recaps is helpful as well, as everyone will have a different take on the event.
• Go through the list of new companies and contacts, add them to your CRM system for tracking and connect with key contacts. Doesn’t hurt to share the link to the recap blog post as well.
• Continue monitoring hashtags and keywords for opportunities to connect and engage

Event attendance and sponsorship is a great investment – just make sure you have a plan in place to capitalize on it and leverage the investment to grow your business.

I highly recommend following eMarketer on SlideShare, Twitter and checking out their email newsletters.

One presentation I seem to be referencing quite a bit lately is the eMarketer 2012 trends report.

eMarketer Webinar: Key Digital Trends for 2012

Summary:

• Individuals are consuming content and interacting with brands through a variety of devices, including smartphones, ereaders, tablets.
• Brands are looking for new ways to share their content and connect with consumers through social media, online music & online video – all areas that are hot and growing.
• Social, search, mobile and local/location-based components all influence the shopping experience and ultimately the buying decision at the point of purchase.
• Privacy is important to consumers, but it’s a complicated balance as consumers are sharing more data and want more relevant targeted ads but don’t want big brother snooping around to use the data against them or in an unexpected manner.

What is your favorite source for marketing research?

It’s a great and valid question without an easy answer.

Social media sites, from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube – don’t live independent of other advertising and marketing initiatives.

You get more traffic to your social media sites by incorporating links to social profiles throughout your existing assets – websites, business cards, email signatures, etc.

In order to really grow your social following you have to invest in paid media such as Facebook ads. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that social doesn’t stand alone.

A good article on paid, earned & owned is The new PEO media model. You can also refer to my article, Paid, Earned & Owned: Social Media Opportunities for more details on the topic.

(image from The new PEO media model)

If you have an email database, you can give your Facebook page a Like boost when you send out an email with a special offer for Facebook fans (especially if the offer is fan-gated, requiring visitors to Like the page in order to receive the offer).

A recent study showed that blogging has a positive ROI:
Blogging Trumps Traditional Advertising in ROI Head-to-Head (Case Study).

So, where do I recommend spending your ad dollars?

Well, I don’t recommend putting all your dollars into one bucket, but finding the right balance. There’s a minimum spend to make each platform worthwhile. The ROI of each tactic will plateau at some level with diminishing returns. Each tactic plays a different role from awareness to loyalty – all things that must be considered.

You can read studies that show ROI on every marketing and advertising tactic. But, in order to get the best return, you have to consider the role of each tactic as they relate back to your business objectives: selling more stuff at a profit.

Just because Pinterest is growing at 4,000% doesn’t mean that it is right for your brand. But, if you have a female target market – it’s definitely something to investigate since the current audience is 95% female. I’ve recommended Pinterest to several brands.

While I don’t have an easy, succinct answer to the ROI question – I can tell you that social media isn’t free, but it can be measured against objectives. Social requires an investment in paid media to drive traffic, which in turn gets the volume of conversations and engagement to a level that can justify the investment.

I recently had the opportunity to keynote a Kansas City Media Mix and Social Media Club Kansas City event. My presentation focused on the paid, earned and owned media types made popular by Forrester:

Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media

I included the presentation below.

You could argue the way consumers are engaged and products are sold is continually evolving, but I don’t think we’ve seen such a dramatic shift as the last ten years. The internet, mobile, online video and most recently, social media are just a few of the many things that have contributed to the change in the advertising model.

Some people are saying that the future of advertising isn’t advertising at all. I would argue that advertising will always exist. The model is shifting to be more participatory with consumers, but someone still has to create the platforms and tools to engage consumers. The growth of search marketing has grown to address the demand for consumers initiating the dialog, such as “I have a need for a product to do X.”

Fast Company had a good article that circulated around agency circles recently called The Future of Advertising. The question that everyone is asking, is how do we get there and still make money for the big ideas we bring to the table?

There is one line in particular that struck me as interesting:
They’re all well aware that coding is now prized over copywriting and that a résumé that includes Xbox and Google is more desirable than one featuring stints at BBDO or Grey.

For those outside the ad agency world, BBDO & Grey are a few of the many well respected and award winning advertising agencies. Xbox, or Microsoft for that matter, didn’t create all the ads themselves (McCann Erickson created some really great ads for Xbox).

I agree that “At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work” (The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media) but traditional media skills still have a place. And really, in the near future, there won’t be “traditional” or “digital” – as digital is really becoming a key component of all campaigns.

The key is having award-winning brands in your portfolio and successful campaigns, from the client or agency side. Working at an innovative organization doesn’t mean all the individuals that work there are necessarily innovative. Most innovative campaigns aren’t successful, for a variety of reasons. Not every brand wants, or can afford, a cutting edge campaign and many times emerging media campaigns aren’t a good fit for a brand.

Speaking of the Xbox, there was an interesting article around how everyone, including Microsoft, is looking for ways to monetize their products in a different way: Kinect could be Microsoft’s ticket to addressable advertising on your TV. This approach raises all kinds of questions around privacy, but that’s for a different post.

I’m a big advocate of investing in emerging technology. Advertising agencies need to be on the cutting edge to continue to draw attention – “the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve” (The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media), but emerging media campaigns don’t have the reach and scale needed all by themselves. Sure, TV and how video content is consumed is changing as products like the iPad and Apple TV go mainstream, but TV isn’t dead (yet).

In summary, advertising (and agencies) will continue to evolve, but will always have a place, with opportunities for new leaders to emerge as platforms, channels and technologies continue to change.

Technorati Tags: advertising, agency, model, trends

So here’s the summary: In my opinion, Facebook Places is the AOL of location-based services. I’m a big fan of Foursquare and they aren’t going anywhere, for now at least. They don’t have the scale (yet), but they have the cool factor and brands on board.

Let me explain a bit more.

Facebook has a huge number of users. Over 500 million, currently. But, Facebook Places is limited to an iPhone app and a mobile website that somewhat works on newer smartphones like the Andorid platform (although it’s pretty clunky, from what my Android friends have said). While everyone is touting the 500 million user level, it’s actually quite smaller than that when it comes to Facebook Places users. So, when it comes to location, they have some of the same challenges as other services until smarthphones take the majority.

Everyone keeps telling me that because Facebook has so many users, they will for sure dominate location-based services (see visual below from jess3), but I disagree. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Facebook launched a location-based check-in program. I’m sure Twitter will do the same in the near future.

Brands will inevitably get on board and claim their locations in mass and Facebook will start to monetize all the data they are collecting. I’m just surprised they didn’t launch with more strategic partners like they did with the Facebook social plugins.

But for now, there just aren’t many reasons to use Facebook Places.

Meanwhile, companies like Whrrl are announcing significant rewards for sharing check-ins. Click here to read about their latest Vegas campaign.

Foursquare was part of the Facebook Places launch, along with several other location-based companies, which was a bit awkward for everyone.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Crowley says: “I have now had a chance to play around with Facebook Places and it’s not that great or interesting. It’s a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are.” To boot, “The only interesting thing about Places is that it has a potential audience of over 500 million people around the world… but that can only be a good thing for location-based services, like Foursquare, as Facebook will educate the masses about check-ins,” Crowley adds. Crowley believes that Foursquare’s gaming mechanics will keep people far more enticed into using his service over the likes of Places. “I always knew Facebook would launch a check-in tool,” he tells The Telegraph. “I knew that on the day we started creating Foursquare. But I also knew that people needed incentives to keep checking-in and sharing their location. Facebook could copy our games ideas, but we are working on a raft of new mechanics which we hope will keep Foursquare fresh and ‘check-in fatigue’ away.” source

Compared to other location-based services like Yelp, claiming a location on Facebook is downright painful (see below). Who’s going to upload their articles of incorporation? And how will Facebook store this data? I understand that Facebook wants to verify that someone has the ability to claim the location. But they don’t do that with Facebook pages or URL’s, which I can pretty much say that I’m anyone and wait for a major brand to complain, in the meanwhile, creating consumer confusion.

The poll below was from Mashable: Location Faceoff: Facebook Places vs. Foursquare. The results would lead me to believe that the influencers on the cutting edge are sticking with Foursquare. At some point, when a technology or service reaches mainstream, it loses the cool factor for emerging technologist. If everyone is using it, it isn’t emerging anymore. That doesn’t mean that consumers and businesses are using it correctly, just that the usage has grown.

The feature to allow other users to check you in on your behalf, in my mind, is just a bad idea all around and has huge privacy implications. Sure, you can create customized lists of individuals you would like to share your location with (see video) but most people won’t go to the trouble and just share check-ins with everyone.

Facebook newsfeeds are being clogged up with meaningless Facebook Places check-ins. I’ve heard a variety of different stats in regards to percentages of Foursquare checkins that are also posted to Facebook & Twitter. Some people have their Twitter accounts automatically post to Facebook, so that number may be larger. I’ve heard that around 20% of people share their Foursquare check-ins to Facebook. The results tend to be higher at locations that have a positive cool factor like Starbucks vs. a random gas station.

I’ll occasionally share check-ins, but usually only when I have a comment to add in addition to the check-in – more than just “I’m here.” Foursquare suffered from this same problem when it started, but most users have figured out the balance so that they don’t drop a bunch of friends in the process of over-sharing every time they took a step.

Greg Sterling takes an interesting perspective in a post about the real target of Facebook Places

…if you want to argue that Facebook is going after anyone in particular, the same thing must equally be said about a range of companies that includes yellow pages publishers, newspapers, cityguides, local verticals and many others that offer local information online and/or sell ads to small businesses.

So, what do you think of Facebook Places? Little by little, several of my 2010 predictions are taking shape. While I’m not on board with Facebook Places at the moment, I’m sure they’ll make improvements over the next 6 months to make it a very solid product, including brand partnerships, multimedia integration and rewards programs. The launch is definitely good for the location-based services market as a whole and will help educate the masses. I think Facebook will start to compete more directly with Yelp & yellow page/directory services and turn their web search into a map based local search service, including recommendations from friends. In essence – competing directly with Google and others for world domination of the technology world.

Technorati Tags: Foursquare, Facebook

Last week I was fortunate to be invited to speak on a panel about the future of advertising and location-based services at MobileBeat 2010.

Location is a hot topic in the industry, with venture capital flowing into this area (Andreessen Horowitz Leads $20 Million Investment in Foursquare)

VentureBeat put together a good recap of each session: Here’s what happened at MobileBeat 2010 including my panel, Location and advertising: A new recipe for monetizing content?

Technorati Tags: mobile, Shopkick, Placecast, Twitter, location-based, mobile social networks

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be presenting along with some of the best minds in the industry about geolocation and the future of mobile advertising at MobileBeat 2010.

Overview:
The third annual MobileBeat conference is proud to introduce a new two-day format that offers expanded content and networking. Come join mobile industry leaders on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, as we explore the year of the superphone, who will profit from it, and how.

MobileBeat 2010 is all about who among these players will make money, how and why.

Monday, July 12
11:00am – 11:50am [Breakout Session] Where’s the Moolah in Mobile Content? As mobile ad networks mature, new geolocation technologies and mobile content offerings from big publishers present fresh monetization opportunities. What is the future of mobile advertising?

Panelists:

• Elad Gil, Twitter, Director of Geo
• Alistair Goodman, Placecast, CEO
• Dustin Jacobsen, Barkley, VP of Social Media & Technology
• Dinesh Moorjani, IAC, SVP of Mobile
• Cyriac Roedinger, Shopkick, Co-Founder & CEO

Moderator: JP Manninen, VentureBeat

Technorati Tags: mobile, Shopkick, Placecast, Twitter, location-based, mobile social networks

There’s been several great articles recently on location-based marketing that I’d like to share.

The first is a blog post from Soical Fresh: 21 Unique Location Examples from Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl and MyTown

In the article above are some great examples of how brands, large and small, are utilizing the various location-based services out there. While not fully exhaustive, as new campaigns are launching all the time, I think it provides the best compilation of projects to date.

There are a few other projects I’d add to the list, including the Tasti D-Lite loyalty program, Red Bull (Whrrl) and Intercontinental Hotel Group that integrated Gowalla into their loyalty program.

There are some companies that didn’t make the list either that I’d add, like Loopt Star and Brightkite.

There are plenty of active projects by all location-based companies, and in some cases, you’d be better off working with a smaller player to have more influence over the end product. Keep in mind that several of the companies are growing so fast that they’ve had some growing pains along the way, including downtime, but don’t let that turn you away.

Yelp is another organization that I think needs more attention. They’ve got the scale, both on mobile devices and the web that puts them towards the top of the list for restaurants and retail, at least.

• 32 million unique website visitors in May 2010 (top 100 website)
• 1.4 million unique iPhone users
• 27% of all Yelp searches come from the iPhone app
• 500,000 phone calls
• 1 million point-to-point directions

Pepsi, which ran one of the first branded campaigns on Foursquare and the exclusive non-alcoholic beverage partner, has launched their own location-based checkin service called Pepsi Loot, which allows users to find locations where Pepsi can be purchased and rewarding users for checking in.

Launching a private location-based network is not a small undertaking, but for Pepsi, I can see it as a viable project, especially considering the value of the consumer data they will collect.

One thing I’ll point out is that there has been low recall (but high response) for location-based services (eMarketer), but it’s still an emerging area, so I think that will evolve with time.

There was also an article from eMarketer (Privacy Concerns Fail to Slow Social Activity) that shows while privacy is still a concern, it hasn’t slowed down users from being active in social media.

There are rumors of a significant venture capital investment in Foursquare (with a $100 million valuation by some), but there have also been rumors about buyouts as well.

Mashable had another great article with tips on location-based marketing:

• learn the platforms
• determine goals
• establish your presence
• customize & implement compelling promotions
• engage, track & adapt

Lastly, there was a great article from ReadWriteWeb Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks – another must read for those trying to understand location-based marketing.

They grouped the venues into food, travel, parks, education & nightlife.

The reasons for checkins were serendipity & connection, to win some kind of prize or reward (mayorship, sweepstakes, etc) and for maintaining a personal history (a “lazy diary”).

I’m excited about where this space is headed – so claim your venue, check in and start learning and sharing with your peers.

Technorati Tags: mobile, Foursquare, Gowalla, location-based, mobile social networks

An introduction to mobile development and the landscape was presented by Mike Craig from Ruxter Mobile.

Barbara Ballard, from Little Springs Design, spoke about discoverablily of mobile apps & web sites as well as designing for a mobile devices.

The last presentation was by me (Dustin Jacobsen, the Director of Social Media & Technology at Barkley) and focused on mobile social networking and sites such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp & others.

All three presentations have been uploaded by the speakers and are available below.

Updated 7/23: Videos now available.

The first two presentations were given by Mike Craig from Ruxter Mobile and Barbara Ballard, from Little Springs Design: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7832804

The third presentation was given by Dustin Jacobsen, the Director of Social Media & Technology at Barkley: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7834234

Thanks to @duckmanvideo for streaming and making the videos available.

Technorati Tags: mobile, Social Media Club, Kansas City, Foursquare, Yelp, social