Connections 2010: Fuel The Conversation

I was fortunate enough to attend and speak at ExactTarget‘s Connections 2010 conference this past week in Indianapolis. In addition to meeting some great people, the lineup of speakers was fantastic. From Sir Richard Branson (@RichardBranson) to Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo (@dickc), the conference was packed full of great information and ExactTarget did a great job of highlighting some of Indianapolis’ best venues: the Indiana State Museum was the host to a Taste of Indiana event and Conseco Fieldhouse hosted another dinner and a private Train concert.

My Session:

I spoke on a panel with Troy Burk (@TroyBurk) of Right On Interactive (@ROI_Marketing), Dave Morse (@DaveMorse) of Delta Faucets and Bo Lowery (@LoweryB) of Wild Birds Unlimited. Our session focused on how our respective companies are nurturing and scoring leads using Right On Interactive’s Customer Lifecycle Management dashboard. My portion of the session focused on Indiana Tourism’s Fall Leaf Cam/Foursquare promotion.

Conference Highlights:

Some of the most interesting sessions were some of the panel discussions I attended. From a panel featuring some of the founders and key players at CoTweet (recently acquired by ExactTarget) to a panel featuring an employee from Twitter, McDonald’s CMO and others; there was a wealth of information at the conference.

My favorite day, by far, was the third day – really just half-day – which featured further discussion about ExactTarget’s seminal Subscribers, Fans and Followers research (see my previous posts about the research here and here), a great panel discussion about the future of digital and social media and a keynote session from Twitter’s COO – Dick Costolo.

I took some video of a couple of sessions throughout the conference, and I’ll be posting them throughout the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for more information about Connections 2010.

This is the first in a new series of interviews with local leaders in the Social Media and Technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with James Burnes of Mobiltopia, a mobile website and app company in Indianapolis.

James Burnes – Mobiltopia

James Burnes has been working in the digital space for more than 13 years at various companies, including publicly-traded newspaper and television companies as well as private firms specializing in digital communications and development.

James recently launched Project Brilliant – a strategy and business incubator focused in digital space. Project Brilliant assists organizations in developing and planning strategies for utilizing internet technology to grow their business. The goal is to work with companies who need help and assistance putting digital plans in place and, in some cases, help launch those initiatives.

Mobiltopia is a venture launched by Project Brilliant that focuses on Mobile technology, websites, and apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and other smartphones.

Why Mobile?

For the last two years I’ve been watching very carefully as the digital space has evolved. We’ve seen a major shift to social media and a focus of businesses of all types to[ward] look[ing] at social media as a core marketing strategy. I identified fairly early on in my career that things change too quickly to just be focused on what everybody’s talking about right now, and to always spend a lot of time looking to what’s next; and mobile has been on my radar for the past two years.

About a year and a half ago, the focus on mobile really started coming to my attention, because I realized it was where social media had to go to be effective. Within the past six months I’ve watched the sale of smartphones grow at a rate that show that we will soon live in a world of screens. There was a definite need within the marketplace for there to be a company focused on specializing in mobile devices.

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One of the most frequently asked questions about Twitter since it became popular in 2008 has been “How will Twitter make money?” People have made across-the-board speculations, including selling out to Google or Microsoft, charging for business accounts and selling ads. It seems that Twitter’s first step toward fiscal solvency is to begin selling “promoted tweets”.

Mashable is now reporting that the first of Twitter’s Featured Tweets are live as see in the screenshot below courtesy of Richard Nevins and TwitPic:

For now, it appears that all Promoted Tweets will be located within Twitter’s search function. In effect, the promoted tweets work a lot like the sponsored ads you’d see in a search engine. Some big names are among the first to get involved with Twitter’s Promoted Tweets: Starbucks, Bravo Network and Virgin America.

I think this is actually a great way for Twitter to introduce ads, and try and generate some revenue, without seriously detracting from the platform. The fact that many of Twitter’s power users update and view their Twitter account from third-party applications like Hootsuite, TweetDeck and various mobile applications makes traditional banner advertising next to useless for Twitter.

Not only do search-related text ads make sense for Twitter, but they can be useful for users as well. If you’re searching Twitter for “coffee” and Starbucks’ Promoted Tweet is the first thing that pops up, it could remind you that a Starbucks Venti Americano is sounding really good right about now.

I have no idea exactly how Twitter plans to integrate Promoted Tweets throughout their site, but the real usefulness for this functionality is how it could align with mobile users. Say you’re visiting Indianapolis and you’re looking for a place to have some locally brewed beer. You type in “local beer” in Twitter’s search on your iPhone and Scotty’s Brewhouse has a sponsored tweet letting you know about their assortment of locally brewed beers. Wouldn’t that be great if Scotty’s Brewhouse purchased a Sponsored Tweet for the phrase “local beer” in Indianapolis? Geotargeting Sponsored Tweets would fit right with my recent posts on Foursquare. Only time will tell if Twitter heads in that direction.

Here are a couple of other great articles about the new Promoted Tweets program:

• Mashable
• New York Times
• Ad Age

It’s common knowledge that the three basic rules of real estate are location, location, location. You can have the most beautiful house in the world, but if  it’s located in a bad area of town, it won’t be worth nearly as much as it would if it were beachfront property.

Social media, and the web in general, has been slowly moving toward being more location focused for the past few years. Hop over to Google for a second and type in food and you’ll be presented with a map of restaurants in your area. Google is able to tell your general location based on the IP address of your computer. With the recent proliferation of iPhones, Blackberrys and other internet-connected mobile devices, location will only become more and more important in social media.

In addition to Google, big social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are adding location-aware code to their sites that allow you to let your followers know where you’re sending your updates from. To be honest, I think they’re trying to catch up with newcomers Gowalla and Foursquare. Gowalla is similar to Foursquare, but I’ll stick with the latter in this post.

Foursquare started out in March of ’09 as a game of sorts in several US cities. Users would create accounts and “check in” at different locations around town. Users would earn points and badges with each check in and if they had more check ins than anyone else at a particular location, they would become the “Mayor” of that place.

Foursquare offers users a great way to let their friends know where they are right now. One great example of how this information can be used is to take a look at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) music, film and technology festival that just wrapped up in Austin, TX. The festival has been going on for decades and in the past, several big-name bands would play secret shows, using an alias. In the past, the only way to even attempt to catch the big-name band was to check out some of the lesser known bands, but you’d never know for sure if you’d find that secret show or not. With the advent of Foursquare, people started posting immediately where they were when a secret show broke out. They were also able to let their friends know if a particular show, film or session was worth dropping in on. This immediate feedback provides users with so many more choices now.

While it began as a game, Foursquare has some amazing business uses, especially for the tourism industry. Foursquare encourages you to leave a tip when you check in at a location. For example, Julie checked in at the Hilbert Circle Theatre in Indianapolis and left a tip for where to park: “Park in Express Park on Market & Penn and follow signs through the garage to go in the back entrance of the theatre.” If you were visiting Indianapolis, isn’t that the kind of inside information you’d love to know about the theater? You’d never find that information on the theater’s website.

One of the best uses I’ve seen for Foursquare in tourism is FourWhere.com. Click the image below for a larger version or visit the site and search around for tips about attractions, restaurants, lodging facilities and more in your area. Most of the Foursquare data is larger cities, but more information is coming to smaller cities and towns as more people start using Foursquare. Just think if you integrated an app like this into your website’s map. Not only will you allow users to find driving directions to your attraction or city, but you’ll be able to give them real, unvarnished tips from people who actually visit those locations. Think of it as a mix of TripAdvisor and Twitter.

FourWhere, a mashup of Google Maps and Foursquare

You can create a Foursquare business account that allows you to offer users deals and special discounts for checking in at your location. Foursquare has a business page that shows all companies that are running “Mayor discounts”. Simply put, if you’re the “mayor” of one of these business, they’ll give you something special. For example, Pizzology – a gourmet pizza restaurant in Carmel, IN has a deal where the mayor gets a free pizza and the Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Mishawaka, IN  gives their mayor a complimentary dessert with the purchase of an entree. These deals don’t cost a lot of money, but they give incentives to customers to keep coming back! These types of incentives will only become more popular as more people start using Foursquare and other location-based applications.

The potential business uses for Foursquare and other location-based applications is nearly limitless and while they haven’t hit he mainstream yet, I wouldn’t recommend waiting too long before embracing these technologies. Even if Foursquare and Gowalla aren’t around in 5 years, the geolocation principals that they are built upon will be an important part of web marketing in the months and years too come.

Have you started using Foursquare for your business? Do you think this location-based trend has legs?