Recently I’ve been using the “share” feature a lot on Pandora. I listen to music while I write and I love Pandora for the same reason every other user does – because it takes what I like and mixes it up. I’ve been exposed to some great music that I otherwise would either never have found or wouldn’t have paid as much attention to as I do when I’m working. In the past I’ve been very cautious about “auto-posting” to Twitter or Facebook.

Gradually though I am changing my approach. Certain types of sharing actually start conversations. I have had conversations with people who auto-post their Foursquare checkins to their Facebook stream. I’m personally not a fan of doing this unless its somewhere really cool. However, these people have said that they actually get a lot of interaction and feedback on these posts, even when they are the most mundane of locations.

In posting the music I am listening to it has started some great conversations, about my music taste, about the period of music that I’m listening too. It has also led to me receiving some great recommendations for other music that I might like. I’ve even had requests to share the entire Pandora station that I am listening to (if you are interested in my current favorite its here). However, not everyone is a fan of all this sharing. Seeing it more as Spam than anything else. Tweetdeck has a “Location” column that allows users to remove checkins from their main stream so that it doesn’t get cluttered with this type of tweet, perhaps they should consider “music” & “Video” columns so that people like me who share those things from other sites don’t clog up the stream of those that could care less what music I’m listening to.

The point of all this is, that trying things that you have previously thought might be annoying can actually lead to positive results. I’m not advocating spamming people. But I am advocating stepping outside your social media comfort zone and seeing what the effect is. You might be pleasantly surprised.

What could you share that you don’t yet?

image used under creative commons by Miguel Ramirez

Like so many good ideas WAZE was born out of a frustration. Originally an idea that would allow crowdsourcing to improve the GPS maps of Israel (where it still has one of the most complete maps of the country). The producers of the GPS device that was attempting to be improved issued a cease & desist order rather than embrace the idea.

Fast forward to 2009 and WAZE arrives in the US. It is now available on all cell phone platforms and is the only free turn by turn GPS navigation software currently available. What makes it really interesting is that it is also a social network. By connecting your WAZE account to your Facebook account you can not only see other WAZE users on the map but you can see your Facebook friends on the map too. What is the significance of this? For WAZE it moves them closer to their goal of becoming “the best social network for drivers”. For users of the system it means that getting advice on local traffic conditions becomes easier because you already have a connection with the people that you are going to ask.

In an attempt to make sure that the maps stay current and accurate, WAZE users are encouraged to “munch cupcakes” on sections of road that have not been driven by WAZE users yet. This earns the user points and moves them up the leaderboard. As yet there are no real incentives built into the platform, and maybe just the ability to avoid traffic and get to your destination is incentive enough.

Here is the clever part. WAZE uses the GPS in your phone to monitor how fast you are moving. Then displays traffic conditions along your route. If you see a “red” section of road you can see if any of your friends or other WAZE users are in that section and “Ping” them for more information, is it an accident, roadworks or just heavy traffic. The ping feature is a form of “text messaging” between WAZE users. Now obviously in some cities (like Austin, Texas) texting while driving is illegal. In any situation texting while driving is never advisable. However, the idea behind the ping system is that it is used when stopped or by passengers. Whether that is how it will be used is open for debate but as a concept it certainly has appeal.

Some upcoming features include Route Sharing. Though not on the development roadmap (pun intended), the concept is that once you have decided what route you are taking between two points you can share it with other WAZE users so that you can caravan together. They are also developing a web widget that will display the movements of groups of WAZE users. One of the first uses of this is being deployed by the Austin American Statesman who have a twitter account dedicated to tweeting the WAZE updates of Austin WAZE users who are members of the group.

What will be interesting as this platform develops will be to see the marketing uses that the platform offers. Given that the tool is used in an environment where the user is already very occupied mentally (or at least should be) messaging or other interruptions will have to be in a format that doesn’t provide a distraction.

Are you a WAZE user? What is your story of using the platform?

Dunkin Donuts is currently running a competition on their Facebook business page wall. Upload your picture, add some comments and maybe they will select you to be featured as the Fan of the week. Seems simple enough, perhaps a little too simple, certainly not over imaginative. Unfortunately for them it has backfired quite badly as their wall posts are now being dominated by porn bots offering all kinds of services, most of which probably don’t come with coffee and donuts.

The screenshot below shows some of these:

As you can see, a few of the posts did actually take into account the spirit of the competition and post a regular picture with a genuine reason why they should be selected as Fan of the week. But the rest were simply ads for pornsites vaguely disguised as “personal services” ads. This unfortunately is a result of two things that plague Social Media marketing campaigns:

1. Campaigns being hijacked
2. Not thinking through the campaign with a “what if..” mindset

Had Dunkin Donuts stopped for a minute and thought this campaign through they would have realized that letting anyone post anything to their wall was a recipe for disaster. Admittedly Facebook lacks a moderation feature for business pages, however, it really doesn’t take much for a brand to assign someone to monitor the page every few hours and remove offensive posts. This time this seems to have either been overlooked or simply missed as a feature of the campaign.

Yes Facebook provides free micro-sites in the form of business pages, which means you can focus more as a business on the message and less on the development  costs of having a custom site built. However, this is a great example of the downside of believing that Social Media is free or is in fact Internet-Lite. It isn’t, just because your eleven year old can create a Facebook page for you doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for you to do.  Resource your projects properly.

This undoubtedly will become another “what not to do” case study for Social Media presenters and one that could very easily have been avoided.

Got a Social Media horror story to share? Leave it in the comments.

Last week Facebook revealed its new location play, Places. My friend Aaron Strout wrote a good analysis of the service and I joined the discussion in the comments. My initial thoughts were fairly disparaging about Places. It seemed to me that Facebook had jumped in with both feet and missed the mark badly. There is no incentive for users to check-in with Places, other than geo-advertising, which has yet to be confirmed, there is no business play. Over all it seemed to be a disappointing attempt, which had been my original thoughts a few months ago when rumors started to circulate that Facebook was interested in building a location app.

After I had left the comments on Aaron’s post I came across the news that Facebook had acquired a location service called Hot Potato. You may not have heard of Hot Potato if you aren’t a complete location geek like me. Basically Hot Potato is Foursquare meets GetGlue. Ok that analogy probably didn’t help you if you aren’t familiar with GetGlue (I’m assuming here that you know of Foursquare). GetGlue is a rating/check-in/sharing site that is focused on your online travels. As you peruse sites like Amazon you can “like”, “dislike” or mark something as “not for me”.

Start a discussion about a book, movie, celebrity or any other topic and you can eventually become the “Guru” of that topic. I was amused to find myself the Guru of Chris Brogan/Julien Smith’s “Trust Agents” but very pleased when as a reward for being that Guru I was sent a free copy of Brian Solis book Engage! That is the rewards program through GetGlue.

So back to Places what does this all mean for the Social Location Sharing space? Instead of just checking in at a location, with one app you will be able to check in with your activities, if you are sitting at home reading a book – you can check in. If you are sitting watching a TV show, check-in (imagine what Neilsen ratings is going to do with this data!). The ability to tie all this into the Facebook Social Graph, and provide targeted ads, and more importantly targeted rewards makes for a much more compelling offering for both the user and the businesses looking to leverage this as part of their marketing communications channel.

Of course there are the usual privacy issues that come with every iteration of Facebook, and there are some genuine concerns, however, Facebook did make an immediate post about how to set these so that you only reveal your location to the people you want to know it or not at all for that matter. The ability to check-in a friend at a location without their consent or approval seems an odd feature and I am still thinking this one through in terms of its use. Perhaps it is going to be revised with the rollout of the Hot Potato features as that team ramps up.

All in all, I would say that Facebook has definitely made a serious play in this space now and are going to be one to watch over the coming months as they integrate existing Hot Potato features and roll out new ones.

Are you using Places? What are your thoughts?

Smart Marketing, at least the way I like to describe it is something that makes you look or listen or watch twice (at least). Something that you want to share. Something that juxtaposes the expected messaging about a product or service with a visual or a message that is completely unexpected.

Recently a friend forwarded me an email that they received after they had signed up for Hollrr, a web rating service that I had recommended to them.  Like so many other users of all these services, they signed up, played around for a little while then moved on to the next thing. We all do it. Twitter received a lot of criticism over the number of accounts that were abandoned within three months of being opened. But that is fairly normal behavior for a lot of users.

Hollrr recognizes this but is taking a proactive approach to try and stem the flow of users who sign up and then forget them.  The email is below, now as Groucho Marx said, Comedy is like a frog, if you dissect it, it dies. So while I’m going to point out the things that I think are relevant I’m not going to pull the message apart too much, enjoy it.

XXXX, are you playing hard to get?

It’s been nearly two weeks since we first met and I’m starting to get
the feeling that you’re ignoring me. I mean, all signs were pointing
to yes when you gave me your name and email and didn’t tell me to NOT
contact you.

Not only is this opening funny but it reminds the recipient that they opted-in to receive emails. Basically saying hey we aren’t spamming you. Sometimes it’s important to remind the reader that they did ask for emails to be sent.

When you ticked my terms of service box, I thought you told me you
loved me. How could you not?!? Look at all the great things other
people are saying about me. Am I just another notch on your belt like
the Foursquare and Aardvark floozies you play around with?

Keep yourself relevant and current. By comparing themselves to Foursquare Hollrr reminds the reader of what type of service they are, and perhaps why the user signed up in the first place. They also make the assumption that the user is an early adopter and they play on that.
My friends tell me that you’re ‘just not that into me’, but I really
thought we had something together. Don’t you know what you mean to me?
Don’t ever leave me….because if you do….I’d find you.

Ok so the last paragraph might come across as a little creepy, but of course that’s the humor, after all it’s meant to be from that rather strange person that you met at a mixer/happy hour/tweetup that is just a little socially inept.

Yours for eternity,

Hollrr

Overall I’d say a great job by Hollrr of sending out a reminder about their service without making it boring, using some Smart Marketing to re-engage a user and generally spread the word about their site.

How would you respond to this email?

Early adopters are the people who can make or break an idea. They take the risks on ideas, technology, trends etc. Sometimes they are rewarded by being the first to see results from their adoption, sometimes they are left disappointed because their adoption leads to a deadend.

Google Wave was one such platform. Touted as the next best thing, I was never convinced of it’s usefulness. I re-read an article today by AdAge, posted in April 2010 that listed it as one of the Social Media essentials of 2012. Given that Google abandoned it last month that is unlikely to come true. There are a lot of reasons for Wave’s failure and those have been hashed over plenty that I don’t need to rehash them here. What it did get me thinking about is the way companies that obviously rely on early adopters then miss an opportunity to expand beyond that original marketing place.

My current focus is Social Location Sharing, writing the first book on how marketers can leverage them has given me the opportunity to really delve into them and look at what works and what doesn’t. I am amazed at the variance between platforms. For example Booyah’s MyTown, which has been out on the iPhone for over a year, claims the highest number of active accounts, is still only available on the iPhone. Whrrl is in the same position, they have been promising an Android & Blackberry app for at least a year.

Given that newer platforms like SCVNGR have come to market with a full offering of cross phone operating system ready apps I have to wonder what is holding back the others. It is surely not the lack of ability to produce these apps. While I completely acknowledge the complexities faced by someone trying to take an iPhone app and make it work on the Blackberry platform, it is not impossible and it is even more straightforward to port over to the Android platform.

So what is holding these companies back? Are they simply trying to build a user base on one OS or are they not spending their investment dollars in the right place? Obviously the answer differs from company to company.

What do you think, do you have more confidence in an app that is available on the majority of operating systems or are you looking for just the ones that work on yours?

image used under creative commons by orangejack

Some of you will know that I am in the process of challenging myself to make some serious lifestyle changes right now. I am doing a twelve week fitness challenge. You can read about that on my posterous blog. During this process I am rediscovering some long held but long suppressed beliefs. Mainly that the only excuses that exist are the ones you give yourself. If you hold yourself accountable and seek others to hold you accountable then there are no excuses at all.

What do I mean by that? About 20 years ago I was a direct sales person. I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners in the valleys of South Wales, door to door. Not an easy job by any measure. Long hours, lots of rejection, commission only. The guy who ran the area office had a sign on his desk, long wooden sign with a brass plaque. On that sign were the words “Now Tell Me Why You Can”. His point was that he didn’t care for your excuses. If you wanted to take the day off he didn’t care what your excuse was or what reason you were using to give yourself permission. He only wanted to know why you could do things.

When we set goals if we don’t share them we are avoiding making ourselves accountable. When someone like Chris Brogan (who I feel is a very positive inspiration for me) share that he has a vision of having the Brogan ranch, along the lines of Skywalker ranch in a few years, I don’t see that as bragging, or boasting. I see that as goal setting. He is making himself accountable to us. He is removing the opportunity for excuses. As entrepreneurs it is all too easy to make excuses for not realizing our visions,  a downturn economy, a client that doesn’t “get it”, a conference that didn’t turn out to be the opportunity you thought.

These excuses are what hold us back, they maybe perfectly valid “reasons” in our head, they may even make sense when we say them out loud to others but they are excuses nonetheless. Instead we should re-evaluate what we were aiming for originally and try and understand what diverted us.  Look for new paths to our goals and execute on them. The additional benefit of announcing your goals to your network is that when things hit a bump they are their to help you figure out how you get over or around it. So instead of giving your network an excuse you ask them for help, not an easy thing to do but often necessary.

So what excuses are you giving yourself that are holding you back?

image used under creative commons by vandys