Check it out! Social Media Landscape | CMO.com

There are also perks from local businesses for dedicated Four Square users as Mashable reports:

Every popular venue has a mayor — the person who has visited the most in a given time period, and mayors are often entitled to perks like free coffee or sandwiches, depending on the place. At the very least, mayorship equals bragging rights, and many a Foursquare user has been unwittingly caught in an epic mayor battle.

I have to wonder if Four Square goes too far in terms of virtually eliminating your privacy.  On the flip side it bridges the gap between virtual relationships and the real, face-to-face ones that are fast becoming a thing of the past with the advent of Facebook and Twitter.

Foursquare is a social network that actually gets you out of your cave and into the real world with other living, breathing people. Once you nail a few basics down, it can add exponential value to your social life. Oh, and did I mention the free sandwiches?

Forsman & Bodenfors came up with another innovative digital campaign for Ikea by turning one of Facebook’s basic functions into a promotional tool, to promote the opening of the brand’s Malmo outpost, its most modern store to date. Armed with little media budget, the agency came up with an unconventional Facebook campaign that started with a profile of the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Gustavsson uploaded pictures of the store’s showrooms to his photo album and any “friends” who tagged the products with their names then won those items.

From Creativity Online

Due to the power of social media, messages are broadcast to the world quickly and easily.  Personal opinion can be positioned as truth, propaganda can turn into news, and freedom of speech is sometimes used as an excuse for tolerating hateful agendas.  Due to the nature of social networking, the wrong “speech” could turn into broad scale hate-mongering.

We live in a country that provides us with great freedoms and people should be able to say whatever they choose even if it’s hurtful to others. However, it’s unfortunate that technology provides those with a hurtful intent a forum on which to spread offensive messages.  Which raises the question…are social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook responsible for keeping offensive content at bay?   To what extent do you feel they are responsible?  Facebook bans pornography…by allowing the Holocaust denial group to remain on their site, is Facebook sending the message that pornography is worse than hate speech?

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Particularly by package-goods standards, that $1 million digital outlay with one site was large. But Dunnhumby has run similar studies with smaller digital campaigns.“Just about every one has seen some positive results,” Mr. LaRocca said. “And the ones that have had negative results … just had a poor message or poor targeting.”

Success stories related to social media and how it has a direct correlation to increased revenue are becoming more and more common .  And the return on investment is usually high, considering that social media has little to no hard costs associated with it, and is more of an investment in time and strategy.  Even for those companies who opt to have a third party manage their social media on their behalf, the ROI is still high as compared to traditional advertising methods.

That leads me to the point of this post.  What’s your social media success story?  Please respond with a comment if you’ve had any improvement to your business as a result of using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.   Whether it be a single new customer, an increase in revenue, improvement in your customer service, positive testimonial or all of the above, please share your story!

You can also share your story in the discussion section of the Kayne Interactive Facebook Page, so your friends can see and pass along the good news to their network!

People are changing the way they communicate, moving away from email and toward the real-time, publishing format of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.  With  175 million users on Facebook alone, it’s easy to see where the buzz is coming from.  And as I watch the tweets coming from my friends on Twitter, I’m amazed.  Had I gone to Austin this week, I could have simply looked at my Twitter app on my iPhone and found endless updates from fellow Tweeters about where they were eating, meeting and socializing.  It is truly a revolutionary way to communicate in real-time with an unlimited audience.

Social Networks are the “new way to communicate”.  Make sure your business or organization doesn’t lose out on opportunities and get left in the soon-to-be dark ages of email 1.0…Get Started Today!