I am at SXSW in Austin, Texas. It is a huge conference, festival, and party for music, film and internet dorks (ie. awesome).

This is my first time in Texas but I was drawn here like returning to the mothership because in previous years it has been a huge driver in adoption of social media tools. Twitter was famously given a massive boost by SXSW and it is anyone’s guess which service will get the treatment this year.

One thing is for sure, though. Location based social media apps are already in full flow. Although I initally resisted giving away where I am, and hated seeing the messages appear in Twitter, I have finally given in and installed Foursquare.

On the face of it, Foursquare is not very useful. It turns “checking in” your location via GPS coordinates into a game. You win points for doing this. Yeah, I am not very interesed in that side of things either.

Uncheck the “spam your friends in Twitter” settings and start really using it though and all of a sudden it does become useful.

For a start, a huge conference like this one is the ideal setting for location-based social media because it tells you where your friends are, and where the hot parties are taking place.

Secondly, I got a very good tip when at the airport for which security line was shortest! Yes, as well as checking in your location you can also share tips.

Third, I am just about to use it to find where I should have breakfast.

That third one ought to get you thinking about how you might use it in local-based business …

Now, I am not one to suggest that everyone wants or should want this. There are real privacy and personal safety concerns (it is a stalkers dream), but for these uses alone it is also worth thinking about and checking out.

Do you use a location based social media app? Or maybe you are avoiding them like the plague? Please share in the comments ..

Is Social Media working for you, or are you working for your tools?

This is a question I asked my coaching clients the other day. Your answer is important because even if you are doing all the right things within a service, you might be setting yourself up for a fall over the longer term.

Two of my friends are very closely attached to their social media services. Their fame and notoriety were mainly built from their following generated using early dominance of one tool. Each grew up with a different service but the similarities in how they developed are greater than the differences.

Luckily for them they were smart enough to leverage this new fame and develop their communities outside of the services where they were started. Most people however do not.

Why is this an issue?

• Services go in and out of fashion – How many people talk about MySpace any longer? Who talks about FriendFeed now?
• Services close – Pownce was closed down in December, 2008. Many people had invested a lot of time and effort into growing their following only to see it nuked.
• Services change – Many people were caught off guard when Facebook essentially made your privacy a low priority.
• Services make mistakes – I can’t count the number of people who have woke up to discover their accounts locked out through no fault of their own.
• Services take over – We are watching Google Buzz carefully to see what impact it will have on the social media world … it is Google after all.

Rather than build up some social service with your content, you should instead be building your community using those services. Yes, contribute, add value, but do not make them home. Attract people back to your own website, blog, email newsletter.

Then no matter how social media tools shift and change, you always are building an asset that you own and control!

There is a lot of social media advice out there right now. Like any hot or new topic, especially a topic where there is a lot of leeway between “right” and “wrong”, everyone has an opinion. Some of it conflicting. Some of it works better for individuals rather than business. Some of it does not work.

Of course it does not matter about personal preference or taste – when you disagree that means you are doing it wrong, heh. Seriously, sometimes we just have to see what works for us.

One area that is very much like that is who you should friend or follow. There are various schools of thought and I would be interested in hearing yours.

• People I have met in real life – This is a rule that people often follow in Facebook and, to a lesser extent, LinkedIn. There are good reasons for this, from preventing being spammed, through to privacy concerns. Also for many people that is the whole point of getting into the service in the first place. Unfortunately this does not work for me. Some of the people I have never met I prefer to the ones I have for a start. All of the books I have written I co-authored with people I had never met in person. Face to face is important, but not so important that it is the only way to meet people, at least in my opinion.
• People I have had a conversation with – Here is my approach. If someone else initiates the connection I judge it based on how much conversation I have had with the person. This serves to reduce the number of spammers I connect with, but does not unfortunately illiminate the problem (some people are good at seeming genuine, or only turn into jerks later). When someone contacts me I look to see if I recognise them, from anywhere, and then will allow or ignore. On Twitter I only follow people back now who I have had a real conversation with rather than just one or two @replies.
• People I want to know – If I initiate a contact and it does not match the criteria above, then it will be because I want to know the person. I don’t know Stephen Fry personally, but I enjoy his work and ideas so I follow him without expecting him to follow me back (he does, but I don’t take that to mean an invitation to come round his house for afternoon tea and buscuits). Unlike many businesses I will not befriend prospects just because I think they might be interested in what I have to sell, not that I think that is bad as such, just that is not how I like to operate.

What about auto-follow? Isn’t it rude not to follow everyone back?

My own answer is … No, I disagree with autofollow or following everyone who follows you. I also disagree with unfollowing because someone else does not follow you alone (unfollow if they are not interesting, not just to spite someone). There are no rules about who you follow or not, but I do not think it is a good idea to follow everyone, and I do not think it is rude to not follow someone just because they follow you. If they really really need to DM you then they can @message you to follow them back because they need to send a private message. Nobody has the right to your DM inbox.

What about lists, groups and filters?

If you are a business and you want to track what competitors, prospects, or peers are up to then you do not need to follow or friend them in most cases. Using Twitter lists and RSS feeds you can observe without actually being their friend. OK, this could go into the “stalker” territory so best not to take too far, but you do not have to connect with everyone you are interested in.

What do you think? What is your follow/friend approach? Please let me know in the comments …

A lot of people are sharing tips and advice about social media. I am one of them.

This is all good, apart from in one aspect.

We always focus on how to take from social media. What we can get.

Yes, we will say that you should focus on your audience, share good stuff, engage, interact. But it comes down to getting out of social media whatever benefits you are looking for.

When you realize that followers and friends are people, it makes me think that perhaps we are potentially creating pretty bad relationships.

Once in a while, just share something just because.

Every now and then, just give stuff away without thinking about getting anything back, reciprocity, or future responsiveness.

See followers as friends, not a contact list to throw links at.

When someone asks you a question, or asks for a favor, do not look up their profile or history, just do it.

Rather than accept that freebie, ask if you can offer it to your contacts instead.

You might be riding high right now but you know the saying …

“Be nice to folks on the way up, you might just need them on the way back down”

Social media is a lot of things to a lot of people.

Entrepreneurs look to social media for visibility, traffic and audience. Small business might see it as a source of customers and long term relationship building. Other businesses can use it for increasing sales through offers and coupons. For individuals who are taking a break it might be chatting with friends, procrastinating, finding a date or catching up on the news.

An area big brands are increasingly turning to social media for, is the “listening station”. Their scale means they are not as close to the customer sentiment as smaller businesses. Social media provides an opportunity to “listen out” for problems and plaudits, and react as necessary before issues fester.

Seth Godin’s recent article though reminds me how some social media users have twigged that this is happening and are using it to their advantage.

We have all at one time or another complained about a product or service. Normally the only people unfortunate enough to have to listen are those who are close by, family, co-workers or friends. Now we have an audience of thousands for our complaints who get instant, bl0w-by-blow accounts of your misery.

Sometimes a Twitter rant can get you noticed by the appropriate people and have a satisfactory or amazing outcome. I complained about my broadband continuously cutting out at the worst times, causing me productivity problems, and British Telecom got a technical guru on the phone with me and sent out a replacement router. Again with the same company, I complained about my 3g dongle and again a replacement was sent out to me. So complaining can work.

What we are seeing now though is that expectations have been raised. People hear about results like the above and decide they want some of that too.

This is fine if the company representative is

1. Listening out for problems
2. Sees the complaint as valid
3. Can do something about it

These criteria are obviously not met as often as people would hope. What problems are these cases going to cause? When peole do not feel their grievances are being listened to or are not getting the results they were after they are going amplify their complaint, repeat it, and get others to share it. Then you go from customer service task to reputation management issue.

Going back to Seth’s article linked above, the customer and those listening go from remembering the good stuff about the company and product, to focusing on the problem, percieved or real, and that is what gets the publicity.

If you are not using social media to listen out for brand problems and customer service issues, you had better start. Go get yourself some listening.