Social Mediarology

I’ve written about Foursquare, the most popular location-based social media game, a couple of times before, but I wanted to write about how to actually get started with Foursquare. How to create your account, how to connect your mobile phone and how to get started checking in.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare's Newbie Badge

First of all, a brief explanation of Foursquare. Foursquare is a location-based social media game that allows you to check-in at different locations when they’re out and about. You earn points for each time you check in at a location and you can also unlock custom badges that tell your friends about some of the things you’ve done. If you check in at a particular location more often than anyone else, you’re considered the Mayor of that location.

Friends that follow you on Foursquare will see where you’ve checked in and, who knows, maybe they’ll join you at the coffee shop while you’re relaxing there in the evening. You can also leave tips at each location when you check in. Want to let your friends know about the appetizer they should order at the new restaurant in town or let them know where the best place to park for a Colts game is? Leave a tip and anyone on Foursquare can view it.

Still confused? Here’s a quick video from HowCast that explains Foursquare in a nutshell:

Why should I use Foursquare?

Part of the reason to use Foursquare is the same reason you use any other social media platform; to connect with people you know. The difference with Foursquare is that you’re broadcasting what you’re doing while you’re doing it and you can see what your friends are up to at the same time. Foursquare’s real benefit becomes apparent when you’re in a new city. Are you in Chicago for a conference and looking for a place to eat dinner? Fire up Foursquare to see what the locals recommend. By checking in and leaving tips at the places you frequent, you could provide just the help a visitor is looking for.

Create An Account:

Creating your Foursquare account is simple. Go to Foursquare.com and click on the big Join Now button. Fill out the standard account information; name, email, current location, etc. then head to the next step. You can easily add your Twitter or Facebook friends who already have Foursquare accounts and you can invite other friends who haven’t yet signed up for Foursquare.

Connect Your Phone:

Now that you’ve got a Foursquare account, you need to connect it to your mobile phone. Foursquare makes this very easy if you have a smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Palm or an Android-based phone). Simply visit Foursquare.com on your mobile device and download the app for your phone. The Foursquare apps available for each mobile device are simple and easy to use, just fire them up and enter your login information to get started.There are also a host of other applications that allow you to check in with Foursquare, but the easiest thing is to download the official Foursquare app for your phone.

If you don’t have a smartphone but you can access the internet on your phone, you can still check-in by visiting m.foursquare.com. If you don’t have a smartphone or a web-enabled phone, it’s time for you to upgrade . Seriously, though, you can check in by sending a text message if your phone can’t connect to the internet.

Start Checking In:

Now that you’ve downloaded your Foursquare app, you can start checking in at your favorite locations. Load your Foursquare app and start checking in and leaving tips. If you’re don’t have a web-enabled phone, you can still check in via text. Send a text message to 50500 (like this: @ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball)

If you’re read some of my previous posts, you’ll know that I really like HootSuite and use it for my social media management. Not only does it aggregate Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, WordPress and MySpace, (yeah, I said MySpace. Who even uses MySpace anymore?) but with each new release, they add better and better functionality. I’ve written about how to manage your social media initiatives with HootSuite as well as some of HootSuites Expanded Capabilities, but today’s post will focus on the new features in HootSuite5.

Of all the upgrades in HootSuite5, you’ll need an HTML5-capable browser to take advantage of some of the best ones. I won’t go into HTML5 too much, but it’s one of the next big things on the internet and will enable much easier web coding and interactivity. The following browsers are HTML5-capable, and you if you ant to take advantage of the best features of HootSuite5, you should download one of them:

• Firefox 3.6
• Chrome 5
• Safari 5
• Internet Explorer 8

Geolocation-based Search

With HootSuite5, you can easily narrow your Twitter searches to just people in your area. If you’ve used Twitter Search to look for trending topics, you’ll noticed that unless you’re very specific with what you’re searching for, you’ll get a lot of tweets that may have nothing to do with your search. Many times, you’ll even see tweets in foreign languages. By utilizing an HTML5-capable browser’s geolocation capabilities, you can search more effectively, using local Tweeters to help answer your queries.

Integrated Google Analytics

If you’re anything like me, you spend a bit of time each month tracking your analytics, especially as it relates to your social media initiatives. If you use Google Analytics to track data on your site, you no longer have to go back and forth between multiple browser windows or tabs to see your analytics data – HootSuite has baked it in with HootSuite5. Once you start tweeting, you can even see your standard webstats and how many visits you received through your HootSuite Tweets!

Another tip for more accurate analysis of traffic to your website through your HootSuite shortened links: When you hover over the Shrink URL field, you can click on Advanced and then you can add custom source information to the end of EVERY link you shorten through HootSuite’s Ow.ly/Ht.ly URL shortener. Since I use Google Analytics, I’ve included the `utm_source=` and `utm_medium=` fields so I can easily see that a referral link came through HootSuite. If you use another analytics package, you should be able to append other information to the end of your URLs so you can track them as well.

Use Either Classic Retweets or New Retweets

If you’re a bit fuzzy on the difference between a ‘classic retweet’ and a ‘new retweet’ check out my Sharing, Retweeting and Mentions on Facebook and Twitter post. Older versions of HootSuite only allowed you to use the ‘classic retweet’ option, which meant that you could add your own comments, but you may have had to shorten or modify the tweet so it would still fit within the 140-character limit. The ‘new retweet’ option is the default in HootSuite5, and allows for one-click retweeting of content. Since it is the default, if you want to go back to the ‘classic retweet’ simply click on the owl at the top left, then select, Settings -> Preferences and uncheck the box next to Use Twitter Web retweets.

Enhanced Facebook Features

With older versions of HootSuite, when you posted a link to Facebook, the URL would simply show up in your status, but it wouldn’t include any of the rich options that are included when you include a link directly from Facebook. For that reason, I didn’t use HootSuite to post links to Facebook very often. That’s all changed with HootSuite5 and when you include a link to post to Facebook, a new dialog box comes up that allows you choose in image from the linked-to page as well as include some further description beneath the link – just like it works if you post the link directly from Facebook. This is a huge improvement in my book.

Drag and Drop Images to Twitter

This is another one off the features that you’ll need an HTML5-capable browser to use. Rather than having to click on the upload an image button and search for the image on your computer, you can now just drag the image and drop it right into the HootSuite5 status box. HootSuite automatically uploads it to their servers and spits back out a shortened URL directly to your image. This is just another great feature of HTML5 and HootSuite5.

There are still a few more new features in HootSuite5, but I’ve covered some of the most important ones. You can find the full list of updates on HootSuite’s blog.