It's time for me to embrace the hype and join Foursquare, so if you any of you are foursquare users in the NYC area get in touch and help me get started by finding clool places to check in. If you not familiar with Foursquare check out this great article on Mashable.

 Foursquare is a Location Based Microblog network like Brightkite except witha large game built around check-in at different locations, and checking in regularly which makes the experience for engaging which solves the problem of "why should I check in?"

 In the mashable articles they introduce the idea of creating customer incentives to check-in at your location, which introduced the alrger idea of creating a reason for customers to embrace your social media tools, which in turn increase customer engagement with your brand.

 Whether it be rewards customers for retweets, or rewarding them for creating photos and videos around their brand, there's a way to use any social media platform to engage your audience, and you missing the boat if your not doing so.

- Alex Merced

 I finally disabled all the automation on my main twitter account, http://www.twitter.com/alexmerced , orignally when I set it up I wasn't much of a twitter user so it seemed a good idea to keep up with it using auto follow and auto reply. although what soon happened was more of a hastle than it was worth.

 Cause of the autofollow feature, bots of many other marketing "experts" would add me knowing they'd get auto followed sending me and automated message which wasn't so much a big deal, but my twitter stream got quickly congested with people I could care less about, which made it not so much fun to read and hard to participate in the conversation.

 So the bottomline, auto follow is a bad idea unless the twitter account in question is soley a broadcast tool, but more and more I'm using my account to communicate with friends so It became a hinderance.

 So I still think the auto respond is not a bad feature, long as you make sure to still converse using your account, but auto follow opens a can of worms.

- Alex Merced

 I just wanted to continue my series on different microblogging platforms, and today I want to talk about Brightkite.com. You can view my Brightkite Profile Here. So let's talk about what makes brightkite very interesting.

With Brightkite I can still make my typical microblog posts like I can on twitter and the other platforms I've talked about but I can use GPS and pinpoint the location of what's occuring in my posts. A really killer feature is being able to click on a location and see all the brightkite posts that were posted from that location.

This is useful in many ways:

- It creates ways to connect with people in your local market and see what they are talking about to the very location

- You can use the features to create contests and event that can motivate people to create messages from a central place and in result create brand community on top of the in general conversations online

- If you get kidnapped but still have your phone you can post your location...

- This could also be useful in conjunction with forming meetup groups as a way for people to check in with  each other at a central location

So brightkite has some killer features that will definetly probably give it some bigger wings as more people adopt smartphone technology and post from activity to activity.

 Here we go with some more discussion of Microblog platforms, marketing, and reconiling the two. So far we've discussed the mother of microblogging platforms, twitter, and the different ways you can use it to reinforce or define brands, and we've discussed how to use Ping.fm to distribute information and meda to several microblog platforms. Today, I want to discuss creating your own microblog community using the white label solution, ShoutEm.com.

 Think of shout'em as a Ning for Twitter, like Ning is great for creating niche communities, so is shout'em so don't think your going to take out twitter but if you have a topic with an active comunity this might be a choice community platform (vs. a Ning Network, or a forum)

Like I've created CreativeNYC, which is a microblogging community for people in the NYC area to post events and discuss the arts. What are some of the benefits going this route for your website or brands community home?:

- The ease of Microblogging is a lot less intimidating than a full fledged network or forum

- Integration of facebook connect and other universal ID standards makes it easier for your target community to participate

- since twitter doesn't have a groups feature, this has the same effect and as well has built in photo a geolocation features to enrich the microblogging experience.

Now you do you need to create your own small community outside of an already established platform all depends on the dynamics of your target market, but if your dealing with a market sophistcated enough to move beyond the usual spots and go to a more private space for a deeper conversation of the brand or topic, then this is one way to create that private space.

An active passionate community that you hold the key too, in the end is every marketers dream :).

- Alex Merced

 In the next volume on my series on marketing using microbloging in your marketing communication is ping.fm. Now now only is the crafting the message important in marketing but also it's distribution ("place" in yur marketing mix) and this is where ping.fm excels.

 What makes ping.fm sucha  great service it let's post to many microblogs, bloging services, and social networks with extreme ease and creates a great way to distribute your marketing message, the pitfall is since your broadcasting the message to so many places at the same time you miss out on any conversations that may occur in some of the locations you broadcast too.

 This is why I always make sure you have your target spots where you really develop a community of (Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, BrightKite are my favs) in which you use site specific clients to manage, but still use ping.fm to get you message everywhere else you can't be all the time.

 Ping.fm has now also added support for photos, support for social bookmarking services like Delicious and Diigo and is constantly adding new aspects to it's service, making probably one of the most powerful distribution tools online.

 In my next post I'm going to talk about particular service that has ping.fm funtionality, Shoutem.com, which let's you create your own microblog communities. Enjoy!

- Alex Merced

 For the next few posts I'll be doing a series on Microblog marketing, talking about several microbloging platforms, apps, and tools useful for making the best use in marketing communications. But of course we'll begin the story in the platform everyone is aware of, Twitter.

 Now while everyone see's that twitter is important piece to thier social media marketing mix, how to make use of it is sometimes hard to think of. So here's a list of different ways you can use twitter to accomplish marketing goals.

1) As Broadcasting Medium - This is a great for larger well established brands cause it allows an easy route to get brief messages out, many celebrities do this, instead of participating in the twitter conversation they just broadcasts the message. If this is what your doing you can broadcast across the many microblog platforms using ping.fm which I'll talk more about them in future volumes in this series.

2) Join the Brand conversation - Probably the most effective thing generally is to join the conversation being made about your Brand, search for your brand see what their saying and give a response. Who doesn't enjoy making a comment about someone and getting a response from them in the process. Again, better for more established brands.

3) Join other conversations - are you an upcoming personal brand, well use twitter or any community platform and be part of whatever the community is talking about, become an opinion that with well thought statements becomes an opinion of value and thus strengthen the brand.

4) Create a brand mascot - You can create imaginary charachters who participate in all the previous ways via twitter, give them a unique personality like Morky the Hater and create someone who compliments your brand.

Again, Twitter being the largest platform is usally the most streamlined and usally adopts waterdowned versions of features other platforms are built around (ala facebook or myspace). We'll talk about other platforms built around unique ways to follow a conversation as well, but in the microblog wars twitter is the winner and is target number one as you build your online social media brand.

- Alex Merced

 A part of creating a successful brand is being authentic of course, if you arn't yourself then people won't be able to connect, but you need to express yourself though content. So while, twitter and facebook and all the usual targets are important in getting the message across how about broadcasting audio.

I have an iphone, so finding a way to record audio to my iphone and post it to the web convienently has create a great outlet for content production. Here are two of my favorite ways to accomplish this.

1) AudioBoo.fm - Alex's AudioBoo

A fairly new webapp, it's basically audio blogging from the iphone, with all the following and reply features your familiar via twitter. What's really neat is when you check out someone profile you can subscribe to their "Boos" with the click of a button in itunes.

2) Tumblr.com - Alex's Tumblr

Like a much more feature rich Twitter, with the ability to post videos, audio, etc. The Iphone tumblr app makes it easy to put together rich media and post it tumblr whereever you are.

Although not everyone has an iphone, there are some great tools for putting out audio media.

FOr Podcasting: MyPodCast.com comes with great software and tools to make anyone new to podcasting a podcaster with ease.

For Audio: While mainly a music hosting site, Reverbnation.com features, tools, and audio hosting features makes it a great way to create an archive of audio bits, especially if you doing educational soundbites. Like I did with my political site, MercedForFreedom.com, I created this audio archive.

OR if you have a ning.com community there is already the ability to upload and host audio on your community which you can post on the front page like I have at the Alex Merced Community

Although I think the idea of taking your marketing dollars and puting them in the hands of your loyal fans to promote your product which they probably would do anyways, but it makes for good karma and loyalty. If I were a more wealthy man a program where you pay people to maintain a local fangroup, and pay out based on new members of the group and quality media created would be a marketing program I'd get behind.

Just a thought to all the record labels trying to find newer maybe more affordable ways to market and create viral media.

- Who are you trying to communicate with (target market)

- What do you want to take away (the message)

- do they like what you offer (customer feedback)

etc. etc. etc.

Social Media isn't the answer to your marketing challenges, but it's strong tool in finding answers to those challenges and addressing them in some cases. My only point is to not think a social media strategy is a quick way to massive exposure, it's the new standard way of marketing communications, cause it's the new standard of communication.

So it's important, why, cause it's where the people are, and it's where they are talking.

- Alex

Yes! What you shouldn't do is let what people think effect how you define yourself, yet you should care if people see you the way you see yourself. If people can't see you the way you see yourself, it's not there fault most of the time, it's usally due from bad communication or lack of communication.

This is why personal branding is important, it gives you the tool to create clear communications so the power of what people think about you is once again, in your hands. Many people will argue that Personal Branding is disgenuine and not organic, but that's usally excuse to continue poor communication. Good communication, if it's good communication is always honest, transparent, and organic.

Now while I can write a book on personal branding, and many have, here's a checklist of the basics of what you should do to brand yourself using social media:

- Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts are a MUST, with completely filled out profiles. You don't need to give your life story but an essence of who you are whether it be favorite poems instead of a bio, or a picture of a favorite place instead of a picture of you. Expressing yourself is key.

- Establish your Google Profile this is a fairly new development in the world, but knowing google this will play a key role in the landscape to come, plus it only takes a second so do it.

- A linkedIN profile if your looking to job hunt or network professionally linkedin is a must, even if you meet people on other networks some contact will want to see a fleshed out linkedin profile with recomendations from colleagues.

- Participate in the Conversation the best way to communicate who you are is to involve yourself in as many communication streams as you can comfortably handle, join a forum or a ning community of an interest and socialize with those with the same interest or profession to better known in those circles.

OTHER NICE EXTRAS:

- Start a blog on Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, or Squarespace.com

- Start a Podcast, mypodcast.com is an excellent tool for those new to the game

Remember, if you genuine and honest, no one can fault you for being you. It's when communications are muddled cause of soem identity crisis or lack of identity is when people can fall prey to misunderstanding you.