Have you seen the new Chrome Experiment? One word - amazing!
To showcase the versatility of HTML5 (and their browser in the process), Google enlisted the services of Arcade Fire and director Chris Milk to produce “The Wilderness Downtown” — an interactive music video for “We Used To Wait,” which uses Google Maps and Google Street View to incorporate scenes from the viewer’s “old stomping ground.”
You technically need to be running Chrome to view the “experiment,” but it worked just fine for a friend on Firefox, although your experience may vary.
(what follows is a short interview with the folks from The Corcoran Group via @Postling)…..
Real estate is an industry in which social media has really taken off as of late. Agents are using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and YouTube to not only promote their listings but to build relationships and connections to the neighborhoods in which they specialize. We had the chance to chat with…
The Geo-Social Universe by JESS3: Visualizing the percentage of social media users accessing sites via mobile devices
Nice! Check out our feature on KillerStartups - and please vote us up!
Caterina Fake (the founder of Flickr) (via sara-white)
Agree or disagree?
I had a good discussion with the folks from Postling last night at their Sidewalk Collective Event, and we hit on something while discussing the differences between Foursquare and Yelp, and their respective usefulness to small businesses. While Yelp reviews have been (and will continue to be) a lightning rod for controversy, “Tips” on Foursquare have been quite overlooked, IMHO.
People seek out Yelp to write reviews about their recent experience inside venues; for better or worse, they’ve decided to share their opinion with the world after they’ve already left the restaurant. Foursquare “tips” on the other hand, are generally made on-premise during (or before) the dining experience, and in concert with a “check-in” (which for all intents and purposes is an implied endorsement of the business to your friends). It’s my experience that Foursquare tips generally trend towards being more positive in nature - if I’m checking in to a local bar, it’s probably because I already like the place and want my friends to know I’m there, in which case I’m not about to write a bad tip about the bartender who’s yet to serve me. Keep in mind, this is all anecdotal at this point, but it would be interesting to see a sentiment analysis of Foursquare tips over time. In my opinion, they’re a mostly untapped resource for small business owners looking to help their best customers evangelize to the world.
So here’s a few simple suggestions for making the most of your customers’ Foursquare tips:
1) Claim your biz page on Foursquare. (do this anyways!)
2) Find the customers who have given positive tips about your venue, and use their Foursquare profiles to find and follow them on Twitter or Facebook.
3) Promote deals and discounts directly to (and only for) them via @replies and DM’s. It doesn’t matter if there’s only 5-10 of them; we all have to start somewhere.
4) Add your customers’ tips directly to your website with the TurnSocial bar. They’re worth showing off, and you may convince some of your website’s “drive-by” traffic to stop by.
The 15 minutes it takes to complete the above tasks, and the few drinks or appetizers you may have to give away to get them back through the door will be far worth it when it comes to your good customer karma. Trust me, they’ll notice, and they’ll tell their friends.
So what do you think? Do you have any advice for how small business owners can take advantage of the lesser known features of Foursquare? Let’s continue the conversation on Twitter!
-Matt
