Yet despite this no-brainer, it’s surprising how many companies and businesses pursue social media simply for the sake of saying that they do it, rather than truly committing to the complex and resource-intensive task of starting–and finishing–relationships that happen at the speed of the web.

The Importance of Listening

Don’t get me wrong.  It is important to have a well developed (and executed!) strategy for your social media efforts.  Everything from frequency, to platforms, to messaging should be CAREFULLY considered and implemented even more intentionally.  Yet for all of this, remember that social media for a business is ultimately about giving.  Sure, you want to increase visibility, drive sales, and develop better awareness of your brand (and if you’re doing things right, these will naturally follow).  However, the bottom line of social media is ultimately about what your customers, fans, and followers get from you.  Yes, it sucks on a certain level, for you have the uncertainty of throwing time, energy, and resources at amorphous returns…yet this is the way it is.

So if the principle of giving is one of the bedrock ideas of social media, then we must ultimately conclude that the place to begin is by listening.  So how is listening “giving?” Let me give you an example.

A new business to Groupon launched their very first offer…ever.  It was a great deal on the surface, offering more than 60% off their normal fees for their services.  Unfortunately, the rules were somewhat obfuscated, and, in fact, actually discriminated against particular audiences when explanations of the rules and terms started to surface.  Grouponers immediately noticed and reacted with a flurry of protests and less-than-positive comments.

If the business was only in the “deal” to grab a few new customers and to get their name “out there”, they might well have ignored the comments and stuck to their original rules.  But rather than following some stubborn, unbending interpretation of their own rules, this business took the feedback received and actually changed the rules so that the unintended discrimination was wiped away. But they didn’t stop there.  They actually took responsibility for the oversight and went so far as to offer a sincere apology to the community for the unintentional offense.

Making it a Practice

Now of course, it’s unlikely that this isolated example of good social media dramatically impacted the business’ bottom line–individual circumstances rarely do.  However, over the course of the long-term, the inculcation of the practice of listening in a business’ approach to social media can garner positive, lasting outcomes that reinforce all the underlying goals that far too many businesses put above the fundamentals of online relationships.

So how is this done?  Here are some suggestions, based on my own reflections and experiences in social media over the last five years, that I think go a long way toward advancing the conversation.

Have Something to Say…and Say it Well

Far too many businesses wade into social media without anything of substance to add.  Drowning in a sea of noise, these businesses unwittingly contribute to the billion Fan Pages, and untold millions of Twitter accounts that nobody cares about (probably including the business itself).  Why is this?  It happens because far too many have been deceived into thinking that the mere possession of these social media tools will somehow advance their bottom line.  This, however, is patently false.  Without exception, if you look at the most successful Fan Pages, and the most followed Twitter feeds, you’ll notice something very common: something of value is being said.  If listening is key effective social media, saying something worthwhile is what creates the opportunity for the conversation.  If you “do” social media, you will only be successful if you have something valuable to say and give to those whom you interact with.  And, of course, you can only really know whether what you’re saying is of value if you listen to what people have to say in return…if they say anything at all.

Listen by Engaging

It is definitely important to listen and put into practice the feedback that you get from your fans and followers.  However, it’s even better to go a step further.  Does someone in the community have a great idea that you’re going to implement?  Let everyone know who said what, and why you think it fits in with what you’re trying to do.  And if you’re feeling particularly generous, why not find a way to reward your inspiration?  Little acknowledgements go a long way toward building a dynamic and vibrant community that fosters the kinds of conversations that accomplish all the goals that fly-by-night Twitter-book masters promise, but never deliver.

Don’t Be Afraid to Defend Yourself

While a lot of social interactions will be positive, you might get negative or even hostile feedback from the community.  Your initial reaction might be to ignore it, but instead of being a chicken, feel free to defend yourself.  Obviously, you need to be civil and diffuse any anger or hostility that might be coming from your antagonist.  But there is nothing wrong with engaging even those who have ulterior motives.  Not only does it show that you are actually listening, but your engagement will probably stir others within your community to speak up in your defense.  There is absolutely no better sign that you are doing social media “right” when you no longer need to lead the charge because those who value you and your services have taken the initiative.

Be Consistent

You can’t be a good listener if you don’t practice, and you’ll certainly not get any meaningful practice if your social media efforts are inconsistent.  If you want to do social media right, if you want to foster the kinds of conversations that will really communicate your message and build brand recognition, you’ll have to be a consistency Nazi.  This means you can’t be content to update your Twitter account once a month with a silly, irrelevant status update.  And merely adding random events to your Fan page doesn’t count, either.  No, stop everything right now and plan out your social media messages.  Craft a plan so that you have consistent, timely, and meaningful messages to communicate regularly, so that you can build a rhythm of dialog in your online social community.  But most importantly, in the midst of everything else that you are doing, you will need to build in time and resources to carry on the conversations.  For while you can blast messages to your audiences all day long to your heart’s content, the real value of what you’re saying will only be fully realized when someone hears the message, responds, and you are able to put into practice the art of listening that is so crucial to social media success.

Wrapping Up

Social media is a huge, wild, and constantly changing medium.  It presents new challenges for sure, but also forces us to continually refine skills–like the deceptively simple act of listening–that we might otherwise take for granted.  But if we truly work at it, and make listening not just an art, but an integral part of the culture of how we do business in the social web, we’ll find that all the successes that we dream of are really as easy as a simple conversation.

In the midst of the conversation and debate, however, the predominant view has been to see the discussion as one of Facebook vs. Foursquare (or Gowalla, or Britekite, or whoever else).  While there are certainly valid points in this line of thinking, let me offer some ideas on Facebook and Foursquare living in harmony, or at least occupying relevant spaces in individual users’ smart back pockets.

How Do We Get to the “And”

The key to finding the “and” is to keep in mind the value and purpose of each service.  Here are a few strategies that I have found helpful in navigating this issue.

It’s a Game: With Foursquare, keep it a game, and keep your checkins within the game.  Don’t publish each and every checkin to work or home to Facebook and Twitter.  No one cares, and they will only block you from their feeds because you have made yourself irrelevant.  If you are traveling to an interesting location, checkin with Foursquare and share it to FB and Twitter–an interesting checkin will prompt your friends’ interest and comments and keep their news-feed-blocking-scorn at bay.

Keep it Meaningful: With Facebook Places, save your check-ins for meaningful family gatherings or memorable meetups with your friends.  Or, if you’re heading out to get coffee, do a quick check-in with an invitation for friends to join.  The purpose of Places, after all, is not to score points or track your every move…it’s to facilitate memories and meaningful social history with people you know and care about.

Find the Balance: For me, this “and” looks something like this. Wherever I go, I’m going to checkin to Foursquare.  I want points, badges and mayorships–as many as I can get.  For the vast majority of these checkins, I WON’T publish to Facebook or Twitter; I’ll keep it in Foursquare.  With Places, however, I’m going to save my check-ins for meaningful occasions.  If I’m at King’s Island with my family, I’ll check-in.  If I’m at a concert with friends, I’ll check-in and tag them.  Pretty simple.  It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a decent guideline to keep me from becoming an annoying double-check-in-er.

Wrapping Up

To me, the key to finding the “and” with Foursquare and Facebook Places is all about using the services as they’re meant to be used.  I don’t think that either is trying to be “better” than the other; rather, properly seen, they are simply unique services that just-so-happen to occupy space within the realm of a particular technology.  If we take this perspective, I think there’s plenty of room for both in our social-media lives.

So…

• What is your favorite thing about Places?
• What do you not like about Places?
• Do you use it to check-in everywhere you go, or only certain places?
• Have you tagged others in your check-ins, and if so, what’s the greatest number of check-ins at one location so far?
• Has Places been responsible for an impromptu meetup with a friend?
• How much do you think you’ll use Places in relation to your general Facebook activity?

If you want to weigh in on these questions (or any that I didn’t ask), leave a comment!!!

On Wednesday (August 18th, 2010), Facebook rolled out its much anticipated “Places” for mobile.  Like other location-based services, Places allows users to “check in” to locations and venues that are already in the system, or even add their own.  Additionally, Facebook users can tag their friends at the same location and add a brief description of the outing, providing something of a mini-history of the individual’s or group’s night out on the town.

With Facebook wading into the fray of location-based services, what do already-established contenders like Foursquare have to fear?

If we examine the idea on the basis of the kinds of services that Facebook Places and Foursquare offer, I don’t think Foursquare has much to fear.  Places is very stripped down in its current iteration–there are no badges, no points, no mayorships for the checkin-er to win and display proudly.  You can’t add tips to Places, and there’s no idea of a “to-do” list.  Finally, if you like the advantages offered by local businesses for mayors, frequent checkins, and the like, you’ll not find any such thing in Places.

Now for a Foursquare user who happens to like the “game” aspect, Places feels downright dull.  And based on Facebook’s approach with other modules, I don’t see a transition to a game for Places anytime soon.  Facebook will let its users do what they will with the service, and will open it up to developers to create their own Foursquare iterations.  Few of them will gain traction, and from this perspective I see Foursquare remaining quite secure.

So What’s the Problem?

The problem for Foursquare is precisely its strength.  While geeks like me love the game aspect of Foursquare, and get giddy when securing yet another mayorship (I have 9 right now), the vast majority of users don’t have time or interest in such diversions.  And when we consider Facebook’s half-a-billion users, a stripped down location-recording service that is accessible to everyone is a stroke of brilliance.

Moreover, when we consider that the 3 million Foursquare users are undoubtedly Facebook users as well, there are diminishing opportunities for Foursquare to make a major impact in Facebook’s numbers….if Places simply explodes (which it probably will).

How Does Foursquare Survive?

Just because Facebook Places is sure to rapidly eclipse the Foursquare user-base by the end of the weekend does not mean the end for Foursquare, however.  In essence, its weaknesses are also its greatest strengths.  For those of us who love Foursquare, we love it because it’s fun.  If Foursquare is to survive Places, it needs to focus on what it does best (the game), and do it better.  Here are a few suggestions I have for how Foursquare can solidify its position, and even expand.

1. Make the game more gamey: While the game is fun, sometimes the purpose of it gets lost in the frequency of checkins.  Foursquare needs to figure out a way to make the game more meaningful, both in terms of enjoyment and reward.  Badges, mayorships, and better stats than your friends is great, but the payoff needs to be bigger.  Maybe special rights for a weekend with Foursquare functionality?  Being able to create custom badges?  Something.
2. Improve “Specials”: One of things I think holds great promise for Foursquare is the integration of “Specials” which businesses can offer for Foursquare users.  While Foursquare can’t obviously compel businesses to do this, it could make the service better by allowing for Specials to be more visible and searchable.  Instead of simply alerting users that there are specials nearby to their most recent checkins, how about letting them search for specials more generally?
3. Better Venue Management: A big problem for Foursquare has been the issue of duplicate venues, bad venue info, and other location-based errors.  To solve this, Foursquare has implemented a clunky system of varying levels of “Superusers” who can edit venue information, merge duplicates, and delete cheats.  For the rest of us, however, we are forced to use the stupid and clunky forum to post change requests.  In all fairness, most of my requests have been managed very rapidly, but it’s still annoying.  Foursquare says that they do this to avoid cheating, and I understand this. However, surely there are better ways to enable to vast majority of honest users to make the service better when they notice mistakes, than to penalize everyone with obnoxious protocols for the sake of a few bad apples.

Wrapping Up

Obviously, whenever Facebook and its massive user-base wade into any new service, the contenders already in that space have much to fear.  However, this can be a good thing for the likes of Foursquare.  Beyond challenging them to continually improve and refine the service, Places’ appearance will very quickly reveal what is worth keeping in Foursquare, what needs to be overhauled, and what simply needs to be abandoned.  In the end, this will inevitably lead to a much better Foursquare, or the end of a service that simply wasn’t focused enough.  Time will tell what the fate of Foursquare will be.

What do you think?  Leave a comment!  And if you’re a Foursquare user, be sure to follow me and I’ll return the favor

Because my location was a bit remote (Watertown, SD), the restaurant at which I ate was not in the database.  No matter, I thought, I’ll simply add it.

Now if you know me, you’ll know that things like adding address and phone number information is something of a religious practice for me.  I’ve spent dozens of minutes in FourSquare and Foodspotting making sure that my locations are properly tagged, categorized, and addressed.  So when adding Dempsey’s (the joint in Watertown) to Foodspotting, I had to open Safari.  The problem?  The Foodspotting app was still “old school,” meaning it had not yet been optimized for iOS4, so I spent several frustrating minutes switching to Safari, copying this bit of address or menu item, and then reloading Foodspotting to enter and save the information.  Ugh.

Once finished with this ordeal, I launched a new email, intent on expressing my desire to Foodspotting’s developers that they please drop whatever they’ve been doing to at least upgrade the app for multitasking support.

Before I could send the email, however, I noticed that an update was available in my App Store.  Can you believe it?  It was a brand-spanking new version of Foodspotting, all shiny and ready for me to waste away the day to my heart’s content!

The New App

First impression?  The new app is WAY faster.  Perhaps it was a fluke, but the “nearby” foods that load with the app loaded infinitely faster than they did before, and new foods requested on refresh appeared much faster as well.

Another nice feature is the expanded profile section.  Here, you can see all your “stats,” such as your recent activity, which foods you’ve spotted, who you’re following, etc.  Pretty nice.

Also, you can start and complete “guides” in the app.  I’ve not embarked on one of these yet, but I’ll update once I complete my first.  To create a guide, you’ll still have to do that from the website, though.  At first, it appears to be a bit of an oversight–however, guides can be complex, so I can see why it didn’t make this iteration.

Finally, multitasking.  Awesome.  ’Nuff said.

Wrapping Up

If you’re not a food spotter, this is probably boring, but then you’re probably also a loser.  For those who are in, this evolution to the app is a welcome change, and holds great promise for the continuing evolution of Foodspotting as a service and community.

For more about the new Foodspotting, check out the Foodspotting blog.