Originally posted on Seldom Seen Kid.

There has been a rise in minimalist custom profile pages as a response to the larger social networks. The use of one page to collate, publicise and share your online presence as a business card is an interesting development as users look to get more consumption of their content, for less hard work.

Here’s three to have a look at:

Flavors.me

Flavors was one of the first custom profile startups to make waves within social media and draw popular attention.

It makes basic tool available to all users, such as image uploading and palette customisation, allowing you a fair amount of room to make the page your own.

The Flavors team have taken a premium model approach, with a greater variety of fonts and layouts available to users who sign up and pay a few dollars for the privilege.

About.me

About.me has recently gained popularity and fans for its wide ranging customisation options, intuitive UI and friendly feel.

The young company has been given a chunk of cash by AOL to develop and try to corner this particular market.

What remains to be seen is how that money will be spent and if users are willing to invest their time in About.me, to re-affirm AOL’s confidence in their offering.

Whyhello.im

The newest kid on the block is Whyhello.im. Apart from the awesome name, the user experience is seamless and the presentation of your profile is, in my opinion, second to none.

The profile building process is extremely similar to About.me, but the customisation options have a similar level of variation, if not larger volume.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on Superego.me and Profile Stamp, two even newer startups which could be promising. If you want an invite for Profile Stamp, go here!

Originally posted on Dave Fleet’s blog.

Facebook recently introduced a new version of its Facebook Comment Box Plugin, allowing website owners to integrate their commenting functionality with their Facebook presence.

We’ve already looked at the pros and cons of the Facebook commenting plugin for businesses considering implementing the plugin on their sites. Today, let’s take a look at what the implications are for companies running engagement programs.

The new plugin poses a conundrum to those working in engagement programs – specifically, around how they engage in the comment streams on sites using the plugin:

• Do they comment as a Facebook Page, assuming they have one (and deal with the lower personalization and effect on Page content)?
• Do they personalize responses more by using commenters’ own Facebook accounts (does that cross a work/life boundary)?
• Do they just avoid commenting on sites using this plugin?

Here’s my take on five clear options for people running social media response programs. What’s yours? Let us all know what you think in the comments below.

Option 1: Individual employees comment using their own profiles

Have company employees log in and comment using their own Facebook profiles.

Pros:

• Transparency of person’s identity
• Avoids potentially negative comment streams being pushed to the company’s Facebook page

Cons:

• Requires employee to use a personal account for business purposes. Could be considered to cross a work/life divide
• Company-related conversation aggregated on employee Facebook profile
• Possible that some company spokespeople may not have Facebook pages

Conclusion:

• As transparent as this option is, the cons and the risk of violating work/life boundaries outweigh the benefits
• Lost opportunity to aggregate relevant conversation and to activate advocates on page

Option 2: Comment as company-owned Facebook page

Company employees log in to their own accounts, but use the new person-like features of Facebook Pages to leave comments as the company’s Facebook page.

Pros:

• Clear that responses come from company’s official presence
• Avoids using personal accounts for business purposes
• Drive additional traffic to appropriate Facebook pages
• Aggregated conversations provide additional content for Facebook pages

Cons:

• Potential lower transparency, as company name shows as the comment author (although can be mitigated via comment content)
• Conversations aggregated on company page may not be positive in tone
• Dilutes official content on the company’s Facebook page
• Requires wider group of employees to have admin access to the company’s Facebook page, meaning less control over activity on the page
• Potential for accidental comments as Facebook Pages on non company-related conversations, if employees forget to change their commenting profile back to their personal accounts

Conclusion:

• Clear benefits over using personal profiles, but increases the level of risk on company pages via increased admin access and unpredictable content. Depending on the company, this approach may be viable.

Option 3: Create new, business-only Facebook profiles for commenters

Company employees engage in the comment streams under their own names, but via profiles created purely for company use.

Pros:

• Separation of personal and business profiles
• Avoid additional admins on Facebook pages
• Maintains engagement on sites with Facebook commenting plugin installed
• Avoids diluting content on Facebook pages

Cons:

• Violates Facebook terms and conditions – risk of accounts being deleted by Facebook.
• Lost opportunity to aggregate relevant conversation and to activate advocates on page

Conclusion:

• Risk incurred from violating Facebook terms and conditions is not advisable.

Option 4: Create Yahoo! accounts for commenters

Company employees comment on posts themselves, but do so through a new integration in the plugin – a Yahoo! login.

Pros:

Cons:

• Less credibility of commenter profiles – Facebook profiles perceived as more credible than Yahoo! accounts
• Lost opportunity to aggregate relevant conversation and to activate advocates on page
• Could be perceived as easy for anyone to claim to be a company employee

Conclusion:

• This option minimizes risk to the company and maintains the ability to engage. However, this option also loses the opportunity to curate conversations on the Facebook page, and the lack of identity verification that Facebook provides may reduce spokesperson credibility (although no more than via other commenting systems). All-in-all, this provides a viable option for companies looking to engage on these sites.

Option 5: Avoid commenting where Facebook Commenting Plugin is used

Avoid the pros and cons of all of the other options by refraining from engagement on sites using the new Facebook commenting plugin.

Pros:

• Avoids risk of accidental cross-posting
• Avoids diluting Facebook page content

Cons:

• Lose opportunity to participate in relevant conversations via comment streams
• If adoption of Facebook pages increases, lose broader opportunity to engage

Conclusion:

• This is the “do nothing” approach. Frankly, it’s a last-resort if a company is already engaging in conversations on third-party sites.

Conclusion: It depends on your culture

Facebook has thrown a bit of a wrench in the works for companies engaging in social media response programs. None of these options is ideal from a company perspective – each comes with draw-backs in terms of risk, transparency and credibility.

Many companies may want to use Facebook’s new ‘company as a page’ functionality (option #2) to benefit from the ability to aggregate conversations on their own Facebook pages, and to do so credibly while providing interesting conversations for fans of their pages to participate in – and a way to leverage the advocates on your page to weigh-in on relevant topics.

However, for those carefully tailoring the volume and type of content posted on their pages, this makes life difficult. Dan Zarrella, for example, has shown that if you post too often to your page, you may lose fans. By throwing comment replies into the mix, companies may run the risk of saturating their page with content, to the detriment of people on the page. What’s more, your comments are unlikely to always be positive, so you may end up aggregating negative conversations on your page.

Meanwhile, logging-in via a Yahoo ID (option #4) offers a good balance of maintaining work/life separation for employees, influence over Facebook Page content, and risk mitigation from avoiding additional page admins and reducing the risk of accidental comments “by the company”. The downside of this, though, is the lost opportunity to bring these conversations to your fans, and the lack of identity verification that Yahoo IDs provide.

Ultimately, this is likely to come down to company culture. Is your culture more risk averse? Then you may want to go with Yahoo IDs. Are you more accepting of slightly higher risk? Then commenting as your company’s Facebook page may provide the greatest benefits without usurping employees’ personal accounts.

What do you think? Would you come to the same conclusion? What would you add to the mix?

There’s no doubt that 2010 has been a huge year for location-based services. Although consumer adoption is still relatively low, the growing popularity of apps like Foursquare along with the launch of Facebook Places signals that location services are on track to hit mainstream awareness and usage.

I find these services fascinating because they bridge the digital world with the physical world and are about exploring cities and meeting up with friends. It’s also exciting to see the innovation that’s happening daily in this space and how brands are testing the potential of location marketing. But what’s next and how far can location technology go? Here are four trends to keep an eye on:

Evolution from Check-Ins to Challenges & Experiences

Services likes Foursquare and Gowalla are built around actively ‘checking-in’ to a physical location to notify friends, earn rewards and get tips. Checking-in is valuable as a baseline activity, but it’s a low involvement action as opposed to a more engaging, high-value experience. A new breed of services like SCVNGR are going beyond the check-in and focusing on ways to entertain users by connecting physical places with challenges and treks to earn rewards. Cities, museums, universities and conferences have used SCVNGR to entertain visitors and educate them about their surroundings. I see a huge opportunity for retailers to take advantage of location-based challenges to drive store traffic and sales. SCVNGR recently rolled out a retail rewards program and is the first app to offer integration with Facebook Places, making this a startup to watch out for.

Location-Based Services Converge with Mobile Payments

While still nascent, it’s only a matter of time before mobile devices become virtual wallets and start to replace credit cards as a popular method of payment at retail. Banks, retailers and manufacturers are scrambling to make this happen. The most exciting aspects of mobile payments, though, are the endless possibilities with connecting physical location, social shopping, and transactions into seamless experiences that benefit both the consumer and merchant. The Starbucks Mobile Card (client), Shopkick and AMEX Social Currency apps are excellent examples of where this is all headed.

Location Detection Gets Highly Accurate

Everyone who uses location services on mobile phones knows that the accuracy is mediocre at best. This is particularly apparent in dense locations like cities, malls and airports. Thankfully, GPS satellites are getting a major upgrade over the next few years that will pinpoint a person’s location within an arms length of where they are standing. This presents amazing opportunities for retailers looking to identify and reward customers for visiting specific departments within stores. Shopkick is already planning to make this happen, albeit through a different technology. Check out Robert Scoble’s recent interview with Shopkick’s CEO, Cyriac Roeding for the details:

Private Location Services for Families

Skeptics of location-based services typically cite the personal privacy and security concerns associated with broadcasting a person’s whereabouts. A new service called Neer is answering this concern by enabling families to keep track of one another privately through “geo-fencing” technology. With Neer, users can establish geo-fences (virtual perimeters) for physical locations like work, home, school and the subway station. Upon entering or exiting one of these perimeters, an alert will be sent to the user’s inner circle. Yes, I realize this sounds a bit creepy, but for parents and children this type of service can be useful for coordinating busy family schedules.

This is just the beginning of what’s possible for location-based services. Are you a user of Foursquare or similar apps? How do you envision brands using location marketing in the future?

Image credit: David Armano

Originally posted on Social Web Thing.

In my day to day role I am frequently involved in the identification of online influencers who we feel may be suitable to engage with on behalf of a client. Subsequently, I’ve been encouraged to write a series of three blog posts listing some of the free tools that I use to identify, select and engage with influencers.

This post looks solely at ways to identify (watch out for selection and engagement in coming weeks) influencers and we do this in the hope of establishing a long-term relationship; so we can let people know about events, products or pieces of content which interests influencers – in the hope they then share this within their communities.

There are several points of view when it comes to influencer identification and each approach will be different, depending on the campaign. However, I’m confident that these free tools will serve as a good introduction to this practice. I’d also like to reaffirm how important it is to only speak to people who are receptive to engagement, have an interest in the client, its products or industry. The web is littered with examples of agencies or in-house teams not adhering to these fundamental principles.

Google Blog Search

When we talk about influencers we often (although, not exclusively) mean bloggers. In addition, to maintaining blogs, these people are normally active across several platforms and are characterised as conversation starters, content creators – and importantly, are influential, thought leaders amongst their readership.

Subsequently, blogs often become hubs of conversation and communities in their own right. This means tools such as Google Blog Search are a great place to start in your journey of influencer identification. Google Blog Search, is great as its advanced search feature allows you to drill down and find out what people saying online.

BlogPulse

BlogPulse describes itself as an ‘automated trend discovery system for blogs’. Essentially, BlogPulse is pretty similar to Google Blog Search and it is best used as a blog search engine. However, what sets it apart is that it provides a decent level of data on blogs, which in turn helps shape the decision-making around when it comes to influencer selection. It’s a great tool for tracking trends and conversations online, whilst bloggers, researchers and journalists may find it useful too.

Ice Rocket

Ice Rocket used to be solely a blog search engine, but now incorporates several social networks into its searches. This is another great resource for seeing who is having conversations around a brand, issue or industry. Whilst, influencers can often mean bloggers, Ice Rocket enables you to search for other online creators, such as those who upload images or talk passionately on a social network about a brand.

Blogrolls

Once you have identified a good list of blogs, it is well worth scanning their Blogrolls and seeing where this takes you in the search for online influencers. Essentially, Blogrolls are lists of blogs and websites recommended by the blogger. This kind of peer-to-peer endorsement via linking is not only great for SEO, but enables you identify who the blogger finds influential with their peer group and networks.

Boardreader

Boardreader is a forum and message board search engine that enables you to get fast and quality search information. This is an excellent tool for issue monitoring and whilst, it won’t identify an influencer, it will lead you to where the conversations are taking place. Forums and message boards are arguably the oldest form of social media and it pays to invest time searching this particular tool. Boardreader, frequently lead me to well established and passionate communities full of influencers.

TouchGraph Google Browser

This is a truly wonderful free tool that enables you to see how topics, people or organisations are connected through networks and attempts to demonstrate sphere of influence. This resource enables you to accurately pinpoint relationships between chunks of information in an easily digestible and more importantly, actionable way. I use TouchGraph to explore website neighborhoods in order to identify influencers and I’m constantly surprised by some of the patterns that emerge.

HootSuite

For me, HootSuite is the best social network management tool out there. Not only that, it has an excellent search facility, allowing you to look in real-time for people by what they are saying. This information is not only exceptionally useful for influencer identification, but CRM too; allowing organisations to answer queries, rectify problems and close sales.

Although, I’m a big fan of HootSuite, I’d recommend checking out Tweasier. It’s got some useful features, analytics and search filter – it is well worth playing around with.

Facebook Search

Facebook with over 500 million users is the network of choice for most people and people frequently post their status updates, thoughts, comments and links on here. This too has implications for CRM, but I think Facebook Search has most value as a method to identify people at the grassroots level who are talking about a brand, product or industry.

When looking for influencers, do not forget to search community and fan pages for ready made communities that may well be suitable for your campaign.

Flickr Search

This post has mostly focused on influencers who create written content on blogs, forums and message boards, however Flickr hosts a thriving community of enthusiasts who congregate around a truly diverse range of topics. With over 4 billion images it would be foolish to overlook the often niche influencers who are active Flickr participants.

Google Wonder Wheel

This is more a supplementary tool that helps simplify and arrange search results. It’s basically a piece of mapping software that helps the user get all related search information in an easily digestible way. In terms of influencer identification, it can signpost you to venues and communities where conversations around a brand, product or industry are taking place.

If you are well acquainted with some of the tools listed, I’m confident that this knowledge will stand anyone in good stead who wants to identify online influencers. I hope this post will act as a solid introduction, although I must stress, the free tools are the tip of the iceberg.

I appreciate that there are many, many tools out there and I would be interested to hear what tools you use to identify identification and more importantly what you would recommend.