Syncing foursquare Activities with Your Outlook Calendar

Once I verified that the task was working, I then downloaded an application from Google called Sync with Microsoft Outlook. I installed the application and now in my task bar I have a popup menu that allows me to sync my Google calendar with Outlook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will note that you have 3 sync options,

2-Way: This option allows you to sync both the Google calendar with Outlook events with each other.

1-Way: Google calendar to Outlook. This option will sync only your Google calendar events with your Outlook calendar. This is the one that I use.

1-Way: Outlook calendar to Google. This option will sync only your Outlook calendar events with your Google calendar.

You have one additional option where you can specify how often you want to sync your calendars.

2. Once you have set options, you are now automatically synced with your Microsoft Outlook calendar.

Now when you use foursquare, all of your activities will be populated on your Outlook calendar.

People WANT to Spend Time on Pinterest 

It’s entertaining and doesn’t involve a lot of thought. Unlike Facebook and Twitter where people have to think about what they’re going to say or share, Pinterest is about what users like; and who doesn’t know what they like? Aside from this, Pinterest is a place for people to discover new and useful things for their life. Put quite shortly, Pinterest is a place where users find both entertainment, socialization, and ideas for ways to make their lives easier and more interesting. Most importantly for people employing SEO techniques, people want to spend time on Pinterest; according to a recent Mashable study that concluded that Pinterest is the number 3 social network in the U.S. based on its 104 million website visits in March alone. Pinterest is a place worth working to optimize because it will be around for a while.

Pinterest = Free Promotion
Businesses are finding an assortment of ways to promote themselves using Pinterest; and because it is a free network, it costs them very little. Everything from blogs to home improvement stores to restaurants are pinning pictures from their sites. For instance, Lowes started using Pinterest to share home improvement ideas. And it just so happens that users can purchase everything they need for their favorite home improvement ideas from Lowes.   Note to Rachel’s article, Pinterest recently announced that it is stripping your Amazon associate links.

Ever Heard of Referral Traffic?
Pinterest is a really big deal, and it’s not just because of its insane growth rate. Recent reports indicate that Pinterest’s drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, Youtube, and even, gasp, Twitter. Referral traffic is the amount of visitors websites get from another; so, those websites that participate in Pinterest will find their web traffic increase dramatically. And, according to Venture Beat, web traffic isn’t the only benefit of Pinterest’s insane referral rates; participating companies are seeing some serious dough as the result of Pinterest. According to Venture Beat, Pinterest is generating more revenue per click than both Facebook and Twitter. Whoa.

Facebook, Meet Pinterest
“Ben Silbermann, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” said Mark Zuckerberg. At least, that’s what we’d imagine went down when Pinterest and Facebook agreed to integrate Pinterest into Facebook pages. Facebook has nearly 800 million users worldwide. If someone didn’t know about Pinterest before, they probably do now. And businesses are reaping the benefits. According to one study, when Lowes integrated its Pinterest page with its Facebook, it saw a 32 percent increase in its Pinterest following.

What All This Means to SEO
So what does all of this mean in terms of SEO? Increased website traffic; Increased brand awareness; Free promotion; A SEO tool that’s here to stay; and most importantly, an increase in sales. After all, isn’t that the whole point of SEO?

Rachael Kennedy is a freelance writer and blogger. A University of Texas graduate, her career currently revolves around the problems of medical malpractice. As such, she writes about how patients can protect themselves, act in the event of injustice, and hire genuinely successful birth injury lawyers. In her spare time, Rachael enjoys reading, playing with her chocolate lab, and cycling.

One example is the use of foursquare which is a location-based social networking mobile app that allows me to check in at many places, such as restaurants, department stores, and many other places that I visit. Along this journey, in the last few months, I have discovered that checking in to locations is very easy and a great way to keep track of all of my outside activities.

Here are the benefits that I have found for me. When I check in to certain locations, I find deals and discounts available that a business hosts.  Many offers can be used in real-time.  For example, I checked into a department store the other day, scanned their qcode and got a 20% discount. What a deal! I was already there to purchase an item, so this was a sweet deal to get what I wanted and save 20%. In addition, some restaurants will offer a $5.00 discount on your meal, a free desert, cookies, just by mentioning foursquare and showing the text that you received when you checked in.

This is where the benefits of foursquare participation to businesses come into play.  First, foursquare is free publicity for a business’ services or products.  Users’ check-ins has the options of sharing their check-ins with their friends on twitter and Facebook, which means that if a business is listed there is the potential to reach a far larger audience for FREE.

So, basically check-ins can be a users’ public endorsement of a business; when people see that their friend has checked in somewhere, they might consider trying it themselves, as you can leave comments about the establishment and also provide a photo to be shared with your contacts.  And because foursquare users can take advantage of discounts and deals, they are more likely to be repeat customers.  This is especially true of those users who become the “Mayor” of a business.  There can only be one Mayor of a business and it is an award given to a user if they have more check-ins than any other user.

The bottom line, foursquare gives a business a great marketing advantage over those businesses that do not utilize the service.  It gives participating businesses the opportunity to better understand their customer demographics and what time of the day they are most likely to use their business’ services or products.  Having this research can allow businesses to change their promotions in a way to better accommodate their customers’ needs and wants.

One last thought. In an article that I recently published, “How to Increase Your Social Media Productivity by Using Automated Tasks,” I now use an application called iftt that I discussed in this article to automatically log all of my check-in to my Google calendar which is tied to my Outlook calendar. Now, I have a snapshot of where I have been and see the trends of my check-in activities.

I would suggest that you give it a try to see how it works for you.

I soon found out that I had a massive number of followers. Mission accomplished! But the problem is that I really did not target my chosen niche. I just got followers. I think that a lot of us are guilty of this manure.

This massive following becomes unmanageable and is hard to control once you have opened the "barn door."

And since the invention of email, there is a tendency to create email list for personal benefit. And to top it all off, someone would rather send an email, than to discuss a situation face-to-face. I remember several situations where someone, that I worked with would rather send an email then just sit down and talk. And in several cases, when I tried to discuss the email with this individual about their comments, they would get defensive. I guess the old saying applies here: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”

The point that I am trying to make here is that people tend to use social media as a sounding board for topics that they would not usually discuss with someone face-to-face. And in my opinion, there is no substitute for face-to-face contact.

Developing Your Brand

You have the opportunity to design and build your own brand the way that you choose, as discussed in my first video. But, if you are not careful and do not create good content, then your brand can get tarnished quickly. As I always say, "you can do 1,000 things right, but if you do one thing wrong, this is what people will remember."

Some individuals post too much personal information for the world to see and do not understand the consequences of exposure. And of course, potential employers are now searching for postings that are put up by potential employees and making a go no/go decision on hiring the person. The next thing is individuals posting information about their company, their products, management, etc. and then getting let go based on the comments.

One must be cautious about what they post and use good "Common Sense."

Automation

Although auto posting applications work well in many cases, some individuals tend to abuse the purpose of auto posting and use it for developing content solely from other sources. This is the easy way out and should be avoided if possible. Auto posting should only be used to share information among followers that may help with a solution.

Biggest Disadvantage

Some individuals are not using selected web-based tools properly and tend to use them as an opportunity to sell, just to take your money and not for the purpose of providing content and communicating. For example, if a name or product shows up a number of times in social media groups, some people tend to think that they may be creditable and this is the hook that most internet money makers are looking for, those few that will buy their listed product(s).

Before I conclude

I have only scratched the surface on Social Media. There are many topics that I plan on creating a video on to show how just a little piece of Social Media can help you.

And remember, these are my opinions and thoughts that I just wanted to share with everyone.

As I stated before, you need to learn who can you trust. And must be very cautious about who you are dealing with.

I think that all of us have taken the chance of buying a product that looks good and when you receive the product, you find that it does not work as intended. For example, products that you see in info commercials, either on TV or via the internet, do not always work as intended. This is based on my experience and experience of others that I know.

This is the same for Internet Money Making Courses. For example, The other day, I received an automated email, one of many, stating: "It is not your fault for not making money on the Internet, you are being told wrong, just buy my product and I will tell you the real story."

Everyone has a story to tell and trying to convince you that their story is the best so that you will buy their product is the game.

So the bottom-line: be cautious and wise when reviewing anything that you are not familiar with. The best advice is to follow someone which you think has a good story to tell and once you see that they are consistently offering value, then this may be a person that you want to do business with.

What is next?

I will continue to develop this Web Technology series to provide some tips on how to use social media effectively, from my view point. This series is intended to help others increase their productivity using social media technology. In addition, I am planning a series on how to develop a website in WordPress, if there is interest, so that you can say goodbye to your web master and take over the controls yourself.

Recruit Smart, Eager Individuals

The first thing you want to do is make sure that you select your intern from a pool of individuals that really want to gain some hands-on-experience and will put the time and effort simply for the experience (no compensation needed). While there are many people who would be interested in a non-paid internship, your best bet is going to be targeting students who attend the local college or university—particularly undergrads. Most undergrads are required to take an internship in their field of study to fulfill degree requirements; others just want the opportunity to boost their resumes and enhance employment opportunities. Contact the school’s career student services center and see how you can go about getting your business’ name in the public eye so interested students can contact you. You can contact professors directly and ask them to announce the internship opportunity to their classes as well.

Do a Thorough Interview

Once you have a few applicants, it’s important that you make sure that you select the "right" person for the job— hiring someone not right will only waste your time and slow productivity. So interview the intern the same way you would if you were hiring a paid, fulltime employee—after all, your intern may very well be a full time hire one day if he or she impresses you that much. Not to mention it’s a lot cheaper to hire someone who knows the ropes than hiring someone from scratch. So in addition to nailing your questions and checking with references and credentials (is the applicant majoring in marketing?), you also want to make sure that your intern is going to fit with the culture of your business—it’s important that people get along and know how to work together. You also want to test their knowledge about current social media sites and do some digging to confirm the applicant’s already established "online presence"—how many Twitter followers does he or she have? How many times does he or she Facebook? Does the applicant know about the latest social media sites, including Pinterest?

Be an Instructor/Leader

After finding the right intern, it’s important that you be a proper instructor before throwing him or her in the wild. They’re working for you to actually learn something—so it’s your job to "teach." You don’t want to give your intern too much responsibility however, like building your online presence from the ground up. They could actually taint your business’ online reputation by accident (like tweeting something he or she wasn’t supposed to). So give your intern tasks, but pay close attention to what he or she is doing just to ensure things are running smoothly.

This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes on the topics of online universities advice.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

Retweeting Retweets of Your Own Tweets

There are very rare occasions when you should do this, i.e. if it is relevant to a conversation you are having; to do so repetitively, however, will annoy your followers.

Tweeting Irrelevant Personal Information

Be very careful what personal information you tweet. Negatively discussing personal, romantic, and business relationships is tacky, annoying, and makes you look bad. Also, people don’t need to know every mundane detail of your life; tweet only details that will engage and interest others.

Additionally, asking people to repeatedly help you through tweets, like find a job, raise money for something, check out your latest blog post 50 times a day, etc., is also something that will irritate your followers. Keep your requests for such things to a minimum.

Engaging in Spam and Auto-Actions

Spam is a nuisance to anyone who comes in its path. There’s nothing worse than some auto-bot posting irrelevant information around Twitter. However, that isn’t all that spam is. The following are really annoying ways people engage in spam on Twitter that you should avoid:

Third Party Auto-Actions

Everyone knows that tweets are time-sensitive in the sense that if someone doesn’t see your tweet within a certain period of time, they probably won’t see it. However, this is not an excuse to set up 3^rd party sites, i.e. autotweeting.com and tweetadder.com, to auto-tweet, respond, or follow for you when you cannot be on Twitter. People typically use these 3^rd party auto-services if they’re trying to market themselves. The downside is that said services typically use one or more templates for all of their members; this means that people will see right through the automation and be put-off by your lack of involvement and personalization.

The “Tweet This” Button

Constantly tweeting others’ websites, blogs, news articles, and so on with the auto “Tweet This” button is something else that can annoy your followers. Unless it is something relevant and that would truly be interesting to your followers, don’t do it just to stay “relevant” on Twitter. And never post a link to something without explanation. It will make your tweets seem impersonal and make you seem lazy.

Obvious Spam

Spam is defined as, “disruptive messages, especially commercial…” Though perhaps not the traditional form, tweeting repetitively, i.e. tweeting “Check out my new blog post! Check out my new blog post!” as many times as will fit in 140 characters, as well as utilizing irrelevant hash tags to gain exposure, are without-a-doubt forms of spam.

Using Profanity

People believe that using profanity is a way to get their point across. In actuality, however, it detracts from your message, may offend others, and reflects poorly on you. Whether or not you believe using profanity will offend others, you should stay on the safe side and avoid it altogether.

Disregarding Others’ Communications to You

Twitter is all about social interaction. In face-to-face discussions, multiple people interact and it would be rude for one person to ignore another if a question or comment was directed at him/her. The same goes for Twitter; ignoring someone when they’ve mentioned you or messaged you is rude, aggravating, and will reflect poorly on you.

Twitter and Social Interactions

Again, the purpose of Twitter is social interaction. As a Twitter user, you need to understand that you must interact with others and participate in others’ conversations. If you don’t, it’s like having a one-way conversation and it will ultimately be detrimental to you.

Not sure how to determine a good tweet from a bad one? There are three questions all Twitter users should ask themselves before posting a tweet:

1. Would I want my mother to see this?

2. Is this something relevant to both myself and my followers?

3. Will this engage my followers?

Amber Paley is a guest post and article writer bringing to us information on bad twitter habits that we should shed this year. Outraged by the prevalence of elder abuse in the U.S., Amber spends much of her professional life writing education articles to help those affected by elder abuse find a good nursing home abuse lawyer.