The Social Path

What I learned from my social media hiatus. | Guest post by Javacia Harris Bowser

Today, we're excited to be joined by Javacia Harris Bowser, a blogger and founder of the Birmingham, Ala., women's writing group See Jane Write. Javacia shares the lessons she learned from taking a three-week break from social media.

Each January my pastor encourages all his parishioners to fast something for 21 days in an effort to grow closer to God. Many church leaders totally abstain from food for three weeks, while some members fast certain types of food (such as sugary treats) or give up something like television. I decided to give up social media.

I wrote and scheduled “See You Later” posts for my two blogs and alerted Facebook friends and Twitter followers that I was taking a social media sabbatical. I also gave up Foursquare (at the risk of losing all my hard-earned mayorships) and Pinterest. This fast also meant I wasn’t allowed to read any of my favorite blogs either, as that is honestly how I spend much of my free time.

When I started the fast a part of me wondered if I would reach the end of the 21 days and realize that I no longer wanted social media in my life. I admit that when I announced my hiatus I felt this strange sense of relief. For three weeks I wouldn’t have to worry about updating my blogs or feel compelled to check Twitter every hour to make sure I wasn’t missing a link to some life-changing article.

But that feeling quickly dissipated. Social media makes everyday life better. Seriously. Foursquare turns a dreaded visit to the grocery store into an exciting game as I battle local residents to be crowned as mayor of the places I frequent around town. I’m an English teacher and, therefore, spend hours grading very bad essays, but those moments aren’t as torturous when I can take occasional breaks to browse my favorite blogs. And while some people “veg out” after a long day at work by flipping through channels, I’m not much of a TV person and I would much rather relax by clicking through beautiful photographs on Pinterest.

Coincidentally, despite my hiatus I found myself talking about social media more than ever during my fast. While teaching Fahrenheit 451 to my students we spent most days discussing the pervasiveness of technology and the role social networking sites play in their lives. When the electricity went out in my apartment one evening my husband and I found ourselves having a conversation by candlelight about Twitter. (How romantic!) And speaking of Twitter, when storms hit the Birmingham area before dawn one Monday morning I felt lost without being able to track tornadoes through my favorite meteorologist’s tweets. The thought never crossed my mind to just turn on the television. (I told you I’m not a TV person.)

I did realize, however, that I need to make some changes regarding my social media behavior. First, I need to rekindle my love for blogging. That sense of relief I felt at the beginning of my fast was triggered because somewhere along the way blogging has stopped being fun. I need to fix that. I don’t want blogging to feel like a job, especially since I’m not getting paid to do it.

Second, I need to stop letting social media make me a bad friend. When I wrote about my return to social media on my blogs I decided to craft the post as a love letter because I realized that I’m just like the girl who ditches her friends for the new man in her life. I’m always so busy trying to update my blogs and read all the interesting articles being posted on Twitter that I don’t make time to have real conversations with my friends. And I use Facebook as a crutch. I figure, "I know that this friend is pregnant and that friend got a new job because I checked their status updates. No need to call them; I’m all caught up, right?" Wrong.

And finally, I have to make time for myself, to read books that have nothing to do with becoming a better blogger and, yes, perhaps even watch television. There has to be some reason so many people are into that thing.

Javacia Harris Bowser is founding editor of GeorgiaMae.com and she also blogs for The Writeous Babe Project. She can be reached via email or follow @writeousbabe on Twitter.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Facebook officially kills Deals after downgrading Places. Will geotargeted mobile ads fill the gap?

UPDATE: Since we posted this Friday, Reuters and other news outlets have clarified that it is Facebook's Daily Deals offering (a la Groupon) that is now being phased out, not the Check-in Deals (a la Foursquare). It remains a bit unclear how Check-in Deals will continue or evolve, but since much of the commentary below is still valid, I've decided to leave the original post up:

Well, Facebook's short-lived attempt to compete with Foursquare in the check-in space is officially over.

As you might have heard, Facebook dropped the "check-in" aspect of Facebook Places from the social network's mobile app this week. Now Reuters is reporting that Facebook will be shutting down its related Deals product "in the coming weeks."

It's easy for all this to sound like a public defeat for Facebook — and it is, in the sense that they tarnished their brand by launching a lackluster check-in tool to begin with. The site also lost some goodwill from socially savvy marketers who tried using Facebook's check-in Deals, which were riddled with glitches. (In a recent campaign run by my team featuring Deals at 300 locations, the check-in offer went unclaimed due to glitches a staggering 95% of the time.)

But Facebook isn't giving up on location-based marketing. In fact, the site's leadership deserves credit for admitting they had a flawed product, pulling it, and choosing to focus on the next iteration of how location can be folded into online activity.

Here's a nice summary of the change, via MediaPost:

"This is not a retreat in any way," said Michael Nicholas, chief strategy officer at Aegis Group's Isobar. Rather, the move is essentially an "embedded tag strategy that's about getting more people to put more location data into Facebook." Instead of a single mobile feature where users have to manually check-in, he added, "they're putting location into everything."

The real question, of course, is how Facebook will allow marketers to make the most of this location data. My hunch is that it will be tied directly to the one marketing tactic that has been noticeably missing: mobile versions of Facebook ads.

Given that more than 50% of smartphone owners are checking Facebook at least daily, you can bet that Facebook wants to make money off this massive audience. Using location data to serve up geotargeted ads could be the perfect solution.

David Griner is the Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Will Foursquare's partnership with Groupon make both services more useful?

Well, it's not the next Foursquare merger we suspected, but it's a big announcement, nonetheless.

Foursquare's handy "Explore" tab, which already helped you find nearby deals from five daily services such as Living Social, will now include offers from industry leader Groupon.   

With Groupon Now deals going live in Chicago and eventually phasing in nationally, this has the potential to be a thriving relationship.

Foursquare now has more than 10 million users, but with only 3 million check-ins daily, there is clearly room for improvement when it comes to user engagement.

By adding several other deal providers to its (well made, but obviously under-used) smartphone application,Foursquare might just become the Valpak of the daily deals market.

This is also a decision that makes sense for Groupon. While still the leader for daily deals, there are plenty of threats to their business. The decision to add short-term, location-based deals through Groupon Now created a new obstacle for Groupon's growth: How would people find these limited-time deals? Putting their offers into the mix on Foursquare saves Groupon the trouble of having to rely on its own smartphone apps at a time when many are looking to use fewer apps each day, not more.

What do you think? Will this encourage you to check back in with Foursquare? Or at least start using the "Explore" tab more often? Or do you feel all these partnerships risk cluttering up the Foursquare experience?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Image via Groupon Now.

Are Facebook and Foursquare toying with a merger?

We're not usually ones to speculate without the facts in hand, but something hinky was most definitely going on today with Facebook and Foursquare.

We currently have a 300-location Facebook Deal running with McAlister's Deli as part of the annual Tea Town USA promotion. Today, we were pulling numbers from the Facebook Place pages for a weekly update (Deals reporting leaves much to be desired), when we noticed that several of the Facebook Places weren't working.

Specifically, they were redirecting to Foursquare pages for the same locations.

It wasn't many of the Places — just two out of the 300 or so. But here's how it looked:

Nothing too strange about that....just a usual Foursquare page. Except that I got there by typing in this Facebook Place URL. Several of us tried it from multiple computers, always with the same result.

An hour or so later, the link took to you to an error screen — still on Foursquare:

So to recap, we've got two Facebook Places redirecting automatically to Foursquare pages (for the right locations, even). Then we have a mysterious Foursquare crash systemwide. Meanwhile, 298 other Facebook Places in my client pool worked just fine.

Are Facebook and Foursquare experimenting with a secret tryst? And if so, why would it be spilling out into the public eye?

Speculation aside, would YOU want Foursquare and Facebook to partner up? Let us know in the comments.

David Griner is the Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

By the numbers, Foursquare just doesn't stand a chance.

I get a lot of questions — from clients, from coworkers, from audiences at speaking engagements — about location-based apps. Namely, people want to know which one or ones I recommend using. And since November 2010, my answer has been consistent: Facebook Places.

Why November 2010? Because that's when Facebook announced Deals, a much-needed addition to Places that finally gave businesses a reason to claim their locations on Facebook. Deals made it simple to offer discounts or other promotional offers as rewards for fans "checking in" from their smart phones.

From that moment on, Foursquare has been dead to me. And as you can see in the chart above, I'm not alone.

Excerpted from a much larger graphic created by Beyond for the SocialLoco Conference (which you can see here), the chart illustrates the check-in preferences of both Early Adopters like myself and the Mass Consumers our clients are trying to reach.

For those already using location-based apps, Facebook Places is the clear dominator, with 90% saying they would use it. Meanwhile, a mere 22% would go for Foursquare.

Among mass consumers who aren't using location apps, Facebook still dominates with 55% preference, while Foursquare is just north of being a rounding error at 6%.

Deals give businesses a reason to try Facebook Places.

Over the summer, Facebook launched Places, a feature similar to Foursquare but with few advantages besides advertising your travels... until now. This week, Facebook finally let the other shoe drop by announcing that businesses can now offer "deals" through Places.

Brands already offering deals through Places, according to Facebook, include:

• American Eagle Outfitters: Offering 20 percent off

• Gap: Giving blue jeans to the first 10,000 customers to claim their deal

• H&M: Offering 20 percent off

• McDonald's: Giving $1 per customer to the Ronald McDonald House Charities

• REI: Donating $1 to a local conservation non-profit when you visit its stores

• Starbucks: Donating $1 per guest to Conservation International

• Texas Tech: Giving away 100 pairs of tickets

Using your smart phone, you can search for deals nearby or at specific businesses and then check-in to acquire the coupons. Very simple and very advantageous. As someone who only checked in out of curiosity a few times and lost interest, I'm certainly more interested now that Facebook has added actual benefits.

With more than 100 times as many users as Foursquare, Facebook is sure to see interest from businesses that might not have been won over by other location-based services.

Business owners must keep in mind that they first have to claim their business by contacting Facebook with proof of ownership before using the Deals feature. When we at Luckie tested the claiming process after the launch of Places, it took us more than a month to hear back on our request. So if you've put off claiming your location, you might want to get started now.

For more info, be sure to read our complete guide to using Facebook Places for business.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

How to get your business started with Facebook Places.

As you've probably heard, Facebook has finally launched its own location-based feature, which lets users check in from almost anywhere in America. By checking in, you let your friends know where you are, what you're doing and maybe even what you think of the place.

While there's a lot to talk about from the user point of view — namely what this means for privacy and security — today I wanted to focus on how business owners can get a jump start on this potentially game-changing (and free) resource.

Why should your business use Facebook places? Well, because your customers probably already are. And even if you've ignored other location-based apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, now's the time to get serious about it.

Facebook has 133 million users in the U.S. and 500 million worldwide. When you compare that to Foursquare's 2 million user base, I think it's safe to say that checking in just became a phenomenally bigger deal.

Ready to get started? Check out our step-by-step guide, after the jump.

How new tech is helping mobile gaming go mainstream.

We have a bit of an obsession with emerging technology here at Luckie & Co., so I have to say I had a blast writing the cover story for Adweek's recent special issue on Gaming. The topic was "real-world gaming," the idea of building competition and fun into daily life — and how marketers are just starting to get involved.

If you didn't get a chance to read it while it was on the newsstand, be sure to check out the article online. (If you're a client of Luckie and would like a free copy of the print edition, just let me know by e-mail.)

I wanted to share one sidebar that's included with the piece. It's a quick summary of "the tools behind the gaming trends." If you're feeling a little behind on some of the technology, hopefully this will help feel up to speed:

GPS

Developed for military use in the 1970s, satellite-based Global Positioning System technology didn't get much public attention until it was added to mobile devices and car navigation in the 1990s. Today, GPS is the backbone for location-based applications like Gowalla, Foursquare and Yelp.

What's next: Facebook is finally rolling out its own location-based features, which could be a game changer in a field currently led by small startups.

QR Codes

Quick Response codes have been tremendously popular in Asia for years, but are just now hitting the American mainstream. Easy to create (just search for "QR code generator" online), these codes can link to almost any site or embed information such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Any mobile device with a QR scanner app can pull up the information.

What's next: Look for QR codes to start popping up on product labels, magazine ads, posters and just about anything else that wants to drive consumers to a site with more information.

Augmented Reality
 
One of the most buzzworthy tools in marketing today, augmented reality blends digital imagery with the real world. Using cues such as logos or GPS coordinates, programmers can make images and information pop up on screens in real time. So far, marketers have mostly used Webcam applications, such as Esquire's popular AR issue and Doritos' Blink 182 "concert on a bag."

What's next: Thanks to the addition of a highly accurate gyroscope and video upgrades, the iPhone 4 could be the first device to bring mobile augmented reality to the masses, creating endless potential for real-world games and virtual entertainment.

To learn a whole lot more about mobile gaming and technology, remember to check out the full article in Adweek, "Beyond Breakout: The world is like a giant game board. Why don't all marketers want to play?"

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Should your business ban Foursquare?

For years, companies have been debating whether to ban their employees from using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, for reasons I've always found incredibly weak. (My take: If someone's slacking off on Facebook, you should fire them for slacking off, not for using Facebook.)

But now there's a social tool you really should consider restricting in-house, and yet almost no one's talking about it.

Foursquare, a location-based application that awards you points for checking in at different sites around town, is one of the hottest social media tools since Twitter began to trickle into the mainstream in 2008.

The service is fun, engaging and addictive — but that's not why you should keep your employees from using it.

The problem — if you work in retail, food service, or any business with walk-in customers — is that Foursquare is just emerging from the "early adopter" phase and becoming an increasingly popular activity. Which means more and more of your customers are going to start checking in at your business, hoping to become the Mayor (ie, the person who has checked in there the most).

But when your customers go to check in at your locations, guess who they're going to find entrenched as the Mayor? Your most tech-savvy employees, who have probably been checking in there daily for months.

Sure, it's pretty harmless for now, and your employees deserve credit for being ahead of the curve. But more and more businesses, including Starbucks, are offering rewards for their Foursquare Mayors.

What happens if you decide to offer your own loyalty incentive, only to realize that your employees have an unshakable lock on the Mayorship of each location?

The good news is that Foursquare is gradually working to fix this problem. The developers have created a "Staff" section for businesses, so that employees can check in daily without disrupting customers' chances at geeky glory.

But the Staff setting is just starting to roll out, and very few businesses beyond Starbucks have been given the access needed to get it set up. Even at Starbucks locations, you rarely see employees listed in the Staff area — yet. So for now, you can assume that most employees are still checking in with abandon and likely not even seeing the harm.

Again, I'm not saying your Foursquare-using employees have done anything wrong. In fact, they're the first ones you should turn to for advice on how you might be able to leverage Foursquare as an easy addition to your social media marketing.

But it's clear that Foursquare is here to stay, so even if you're not ready to make the most of it, you can at least draft a quick e-mail asking your employees to respect term limits and give the customers a crack at being Mayor.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Today's art is from PVPOnline.com's dead-on introduction to Foursquare....er, Hopscotch.

20 cool uses of Foursquare.

One of the smartest guys I know, Luckie VP of Brand Planning David Stutts, has started a new series called "20 Interesting Things." He'll be profiling 20 case studies of how new technologies or trends are being used in the real world.

David has kicked off the series with "20 Interesting Things: Foursquare," which walks through some examples that range from the well-known to the downright obscure. Check out the presentation below. You might want to view it full-screen (under the Menu button) for maximum readability.

20 Interesting Things: Foursquare

View more presentations from David Stutts.

For lots more great information from David Stutts, be sure to check out the Luckie ReThink Tank blog for his free monthly reports, Trend Trackers and Generational News & Views.

David Griner is a social media strategist for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.