Do you own a retail establishment or sell products to customers? Have you heard about Foursquare?

Foursquare is a cool social media tool that allows users to check-in at places they frequent and compete with other community members for badges and points. It’s a virtual game based on real world places people frequent.

There are so many cool business applications for Foursquare:

• Foursquare Mayor eats free
• Check-in here on Foursquare and take 20% off your purchase
• Check-in here 10 times and get a free t-shirt
• Bring a friend, show us their newbie badge, and get a free dessert

The possibilities are endless.

Check out Foursquare for business and let me know your experience using Foursquare, either as a business or an individual.

Last year I created a course for University of California, Irvine Extension: Using Social Media as a Tool for Public Relations.

As I developed the course, I launched a book expedition to see if I could find one public relations and social media book that most effectively encapsulated my philosophy for using new technology to further communication goals and objectives.

I had already read The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott and thought it was close to what I was looking for. I just didn’t know how close. After reviewing nearly a dozen other options, I came back to New Rules to reconsider it for the course.

Then I consulted with the program directors at UCI Extension and we all agreed that The New Rules of Marketing & PR would be the best textbook for what we wanted to accomplish with the online class.

I was pleased to receive student feedback that unanimously thanked me for introducing them to The New Rules of Marketing & PR and its author, David Meerman Scott.

Then, last fall, I was even more pleased to hear from the author that the 2007 book was undergoing a rewrite to include new social media trends like Twitter and Facebook and examples from more recent years.

Since I use The New Rules of Marketing & PR for my UCI Extension course, I was provided with a copy of the second edition earlier this year. I have now completed the second edition and am even more excited to share it with my students in May.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR, second edition, is a must-read if you care at all about promoting or marketing yourself, your business, a product or service online. The book provides straightforward, actionable advice on how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.

I couldn’t agree more with the concepts espoused by David Meerman Scott and the recommendations shared in The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

If you’d like to learn more about the book, visit David Meerman Scott’s website.

You can learn more about my course, Using Social Media as a Tool for Public Relations, in my newsroom or on UCI’s website.

I’m all about streamlining the work you do in social media. So when I’m introduced to tools that help you be more efficient, I’m happy to share them with blog readers.

Yesterday I attended PodCampSLC, a great annual event in Salt Lake City where podcasters gather to share tips and best practices. You can check out my notes on my Twitter feed from the conference, and you can listen to my podcast at OnlinePRPodcast.com or on iTunes.

Branding

During the conference Delta airlines pilot and podcaster Robin Maiden spoke about social media for personal branding. He talked about the importance of securing your name, whether it’s your company name, product brand or personal name, on the various social media sites.

The tool KnowEm was recommended. For a fee it automates the registration of your name on more than 350 social sites. I wonder how much time it would take for an individual to register on that many sites? I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to find out.

Services like KnowEm are great to help us professional communicators accomplish more without spending even more time online.

Others?

Do you have other recommendations for registering your brand on social media sites?

Attention public relations, marketing and corporate communication professionals: Did you know you can now register a .tv domain name for about $40 a year?

Think of what you could do using video to tell your story:

• Give your CEO a more human voice
• Profile team members
• Educate about your products and/or services
• Sponsor events or contests
• Promote philanthropic causes
• Show your unique selling proposition like only video can show it

And the list goes on.

Just consider, the next time you want to place a television advertisement, what could you do with your own online television channel? And what’s the cost comparison? Not to mention the fact that you have complete control over your own channel and you can measure it with complete confidence.

Just think about it. The sky’s the limit folks!

Many people ask what the difference is between a Facebook group and fan page. To compare features and potential uses of each I recommend this article on Mashable: Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?

I use fan pages because it’s like a website with its own vanity URL that allows your friends to collaborate with you by sharing their own content and commenting on your content.

Facebook Fan Page Suggestions

Set a vanity URL for your fan page once you’ve got at least 25 fans by visiting Facebook.com/username.

Also, you can automate sharing content from an RSS feed in a fan page. I like to use either a blog or online newsroom’s RSS feed and import it into the fan page notes application. Just edit the page, edit the Notes application and import an RSS feed.

You can also create applications on your fan page. Check out the Bags Fly Free application on the Southwest Airlines Facebook fan page.

You can message fans by posting an update that appears in the “Updates” section of fans’ inboxes.

Facebook also provides analytics for pages with more than 10,000 fans (see: Introducing per post analytics for Pages).

Here’s my advice on managing your Facebook fan page:

• Set your vanity URL
• Install applications
• Import RSS in the Notes application
• Frequently share useful articles and videos
• Post upcoming events
• Provide info to Facebook fans first
• Post discounts, deals and coupons — skip the line pass, secret sales, bring a friend coupon
• Ask fans for their feedback and insight to improve your products/services and do a drawing for one lucky participant
• Set appropriate privacy settings on your personal page

The Bottom Line

Create a place where your fans are comfortable communicating with you.

Fan Comment Notifications

As of this writing Facebook, unfortunately, hasn’t incorporated a way for fan page administrators to be notified when someone shares something on your fan page.

But there is a way to find out when people comment on something that has been shared — you have to “Like” it then you’ll receive notifications when someone else follows you with a “Like” or “Comment.” I blogged about that earlier (see: How to receive notifications when someone posts to your Facebook fan page).

Suggestions?

Do any of you have suggestions for ways businesses can and are using Facebook fan pages?

I’d love to hear them.

Perhaps the title of this article should be:

Do you agree that using Google services helps your website’s search placement?

Although I haven’t seen substantiated, written evidence of my theory, many web developers and professional communicators share my perspective — that when you use Google webmaster tools on your site, you’re adding Google juice that benefits your site’s page rank and search placement.

Here are a few Google tools I recommend all websites utilize:

Google Search

Even if you have a relatively small site with only a few dozen pages, incorporating Google Search on your website is a good idea.

If for no other reason than having Google index your site, it’s a good idea.

But it’s also a good idea from the perspective of usability. Is it easy for people to navigate your site and locate information? Even if you think it is, have you done usability focus group studies to determine if that’s really the case?

Why not add Google Search, a free tool, to help your site visitors fine what they’re looking for faster?

And if you don’t like the paid ads that show up in search results, pay the $100 a month for the Google Custom Search Business Edition to remove them.

Google Analytics

As communicators you’ve got to measure your efforts to show which direction the needle’s moving.

Google Analytics provides a pretty good, basic understanding of website traffic and referring sources.

You can use Analytics to compare your online activity with offline campaigns like sales, an advertising push or articles that may appear in the media or blogosphere about your product or service.

Are there correlating peaks and valleys? Is there no correlation?

These are important considerations in our day of integrated marketing communication.

Google FeedBurner

This is one of my favorite tools, especially now that they’ve added Socialize to the FeedBurner add-ons. You can read what I wrote about the Socialize plugin last month.

FeedBurner takes your native feed and puts it on steroids. It allows people to easily and quickly add your feed to their RSS reader, regardless of which reader they’re using. It also allows the reader to choose to receive your feed in their email inbox (its most valuable feature in my opinion).

FeedBurner has a host of additional plugins that allow you to add a logo to the feed and control how the feed subscriber can interact with and share your feed.

Since a key Web strategy is making your content portable and sharable among social networks, it’s almost a no-brainer for you to use FeedBurner.

Google XML Sitemap for WordPress

And for those of you who use WordPress to drive your site or blog, be sure you’re using the Google XML Sitemaps Generator plugin.

Others?

Those are my favorite Google tools. Do you have others you think should be a priority?

Resources

And if you care to learn more, I highly recommend you spend some time on the Google Webmaster Central Channel on YouTube.

You’ll probably learn more than you ever wanted to know.

I have a client with a financial services Web site that helps people track and control their spending and plan for the future.

They have asked me to provide some recommendations for turning their password protected site into a full-fledged online community, something similar to Facebook.

As I considered the opportunity to provide this feedback, I decided there are others out there who could benefit from similar counsel, so I’m publishing some of my thoughts on PeteCodella.com.

6 things I’d do to turn my static Web site into a vibrant online community

1. User Profiles

I’d add to the username and password criteria for each user.

I’d make it a lot more like Facebook where the user can input various pieces of information about his or her lifestyle, profession, family, likes/dislikes, etc.

I’d include multimedia capabilities so the users could upload a profile picture, as well as pictures or video about their quest for financial freedom.

2. Share-Ability

I’d use a tool like ShareThis.com to make every page on the site and in the community sharable.

The easier it is for people to share information with their social networks, both inside and outside of any specific community (whether it be Facebook or this financial services site), the better.

The whole shift in online communication is one of sharing tidbits of information with your online friends.

People expect interactivity.

3. Forums and Discussion Boards

I’d incorporate the ability for users to create discussions focused on specific topics and solicit feedback from other community members, similar to how people use groups in LinkedIn to solicit information.

It would also be important for company representatives — the financial coaches, etc. — to participate in these online forums to guide the conversation and respond to inquiries.

4. Instant Messaging

I’d add as many ways as possible for the members of the community to interact both with each other and with representatives from the financial services company.

Provide for online chatting, phone numbers, email addresses, online contact forms, text messaging, mailing addresses, etc.

Utilize all the communication technologies to connect and stay connected, both online and offline.

5. Support through Social Media Platforms

Publicize the financial services community, its features and benefits, on multiple social media channels:

• Establish a Facebook page
• Create a LinkedIn group
• Publish videos on a YouTube channel
• Maintain a Twitter account
• Publish photos in a Flickr photostream

This off-site activity should be used to drive people to the financial services Web site. This is what I call inbound marketing.

6. Content

The company should utilize Web pages (home and landing pages) rich with content geared specifically for its buyer personas.

Through in-bound marketing tactics, the company should see increased site traffic and interest in its community. If not, do some testing to solicit feedback on different home or landing pages to see why people aren’t signing up to become a member of the community.

Other Recommendations?

Do any of you have additional recommendations on how to take a static Web site and turn it into a vibrant online social network?

Do you have experience with Ning or BuddyPress? These are both pretty easy tools you could use to build your own social network.

Please share.

Cision recently published a white paper on Web 3.0 in which it reports:

Establishing a strong, authentic presence of your own on social media sites, blogs, micro-blogging services and traditional web sites will make it easy for the media to get to know you and make that critical initial decision to engage.

This is a philosophy I have believed in and practiced for a couple of years.

It never ceases to amaze me how many so-called social media consultants there are who don’t blog, use Twitter or manage Facebook pages.

How can you claim to be an effective consultant if you don’t have a foundation of personal experience from which to draw?

Also, one additional thought . . .

Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0

When will it stop?

I suspect there will always be some fun new name or classification for technological advancement. Today it’s Web 2.0. Tomorrow it’s Web 3.0.

The real question is how will public relations professionals utilize new digital tools of communication to further their work? Will public relations professionals lead the charge or be behind the curve when it comes to embracing digital channels of communication? And what are the pros and cons of embracing digital media?

In my estimation, no other profession is poised to lead and benefit as much as that of public relations practitioners.

Many of this blog’s readers may be familiar with the rivalry between MySpace and Facebook.

You may or may not know that MySpace has historically led in U.S. site visitors and page views.

But there’s an upset in the works.

In May Facebook exceeded MySpace’s numbers for unique visitor count. Last month Facebook reached 77 million unique visitors compared with MySpace’s 68.4 million. I see a trend here.

For corporate communications, Facebook is the hands-down favorite over MySpace. It has many more capabilities and the platform just lends itself better to branding and messaging.

You can read Marketing VOX’s article, Facebook User Figures Power Past MySpace in June to get all the details.

Facebook Power Tip

And while we’re talking about Facebook, be sure if you have a Facebook page that you import an RSS feed into your Notes application.

Edit your page. Click on the Notes application editor, and on the right you’ll see a link to import an RSS feed.

Adding the feed to your Facebook page brings the content you’re creating and publishing on a blog or in an online newsroom (or any other site with an RSS feed) and imports it automatically into your Facebook fan page.

It’s a slick tool for automating the distribution of your content across multiple social media platforms.

If you follow me on social networks, you’ve most likely seen the YouTube video I posted last week. It’s a fun social media song and music video I put together with the help of some talented friends.

The project is the result of an idea I received after presenting at the Social Media for Communicators conference in Las Vegas in March.

I wanted to do something with music that was different and would help set a fun mood for future presentations. After a bit of searching I found a tune I liked and began writing lyrics with my wife for the new social media song, Crazy Little Thing the Web.

I called on my talented music composer and arranger friend, Tyler Castleton, and was able to get a minus track put together thanks to Mark Scholl at Screaming Tigers. Then, after a couple hours at M.J. Greene Audio, a Salt Lake City recording studio, we finished the vocal track.

The biggest piece of the puzzle was the music video. In April this year I gave the closing keynote presentation at the Utah Public Relations Conference at Utah State University. There I met a public relations professor, Preston Parker, who just so happens to own a video production studio in Logan. Preston’s company, MultiMediaWise, was the greatest single contributor (besides me, of course) to making all of this work.

MultiMediaWise handled the video production from scripting to the final product — a YouTube video and DVD. They do it all, folks. And they do a great job, which you can certainly see for yourself in the Crazy Little Thing the Web music video.

Here’s What I Learned

Besides learning the procedure YouTube follows for verifying legitimate video views, I’ve been reminded that creating a different kind of product for your industry helps set you apart.

Combining knowledge and experience in a new, creative endeavor can not only demonstrate expertise but also provide a light-hearted look at business, which some have a tendency to take too seriously.

Are there creative ways you can demonstrate your expertise? Are there new digital channels you can use to educate or entertain in different ways than you’ve done before? Think about it, and let me know.

And feel free to share any comments about Crazy Little Thing the Web.