In a previous blog post we told you about Twitter’s promoted tweets and how participant companies would need to truly engage their followers in order to get a positive ROI.  For some companies, the promoted tweets have been hugely successful.  Coca-Cola reported a 6 percent engagement rate and companies are now spending upwards of $100,000 to advertise via Promoted Tweets.

Twitter's Promoted Accounts

Now Twitter has launched its latest advertising product: Promoted Accounts.  Per Twitter, Promoted Accounts will be suggested to Twitter users based on the list of people and organizations they currently follow.  When an advertiser promotes an account, Twitter’s algorithm will look at that account’s followers and who they follow.  Twitter will then target Twitter users who follow similar accounts but who do not yet follow that advertiser’s Twitter account. Twitter explains, “… for example, a lot of people who follow several gaming-related accounts also follow @xbox.  If someone follows gaming-related accounts, but not @xbox, Twitter may recommend @xbox to that person.”

So will advertisers be excited about Promoted Accounts?  Most likely yes.  As of right now, Twitter is working with more than 40 advertisers and 80 percent of them have become repeat buyers. However, considering the cost of Promoted Tweets, using Promoted ad products might not be feasible for smaller businesses, especially since Twitter does not currently offer geographically focused ads.  Mashable.com pointed out that in order for these ad platforms to be useful to small businesses, the advertising platforms need to be targeted based on location.

So how could a company use Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts?  These Promoted advertising products would be perfect to use during a contest or sweepstakes to help encourage customer engagement and to get people excited about entering.  The ads could also be used around the announcement or debut of a new product or service – like Virgin Mobile did when they used Promoted Tweets to announce flights to a new city.  And finally, companies could use the Promoted products around large events – like Coca-Cola did with the World Cup, to get followers excited about and involved with the event.  While most companies might be wary of purchasing Promoted products, we should keep a close eye the success of these products as they allow not just for brand awareness, but for customer involvement and word-of-mouth buzz when Twitter users share the information with their followers.  And if that’s not exciting enough, The Wall Street Journal noted that “…on average 5% of Twitter users who saw a Promoted Tweet interacted with it, a rate that is ‘an order of magnitude greater’ than most online ad campaigns!”

What is Foursquare? Foursquare is a geo-location social networking and gaming site.  Businesses with a page on Foursquare can benefit by interacting with and offering promotions to customers who “check-in” to their venue.  (For more details about Foursquare’s premise, check out Mashable’s numerous Foursquare articles)

So why aren’t you on Foursquare?  Probably because, like many people, you are spread too thin across your other social media sites and don’t yet see the purpose or benefit of participating in Foursquare.  While some people love the gaming aspect of Foursquare, (read the case study of a Milwaukee-based restaurant that attracted 150 Foursquare users to their venue) other people need a better motivator to engage in yet another social site.

A few organizations, such as the South By Southwest music festival, have offered real benefits to Foursquare users.  SXSW logged more than 347,000 Foursquare check-ins in one day during their festival largely in part to their Foursquare scavenger hunt game, which awarded free concert tickets to the winners.  Other companies such as Starbucks and Tasti D-Lite have partnered with Foursquare to offer special deals and promotions.

At this time, not many organizations are active on Foursquare (see a full list on the Foursquare Web site).  To encourage more businesses to become involved, Foursquare just launched a business dashboard, which offers check-in analysis.  Per Mashable, it can “…track check-ins and data includes total check-ins, unique visitors, male-to-female ratio, social media sharing (showing how many users are sending their check-ins to Twitter), top visitors and check-in time breakdown.”  The New York Times’ Bits blog notes that now “…business owners can offer instant promotions to try and engage new customers and keep current ones.”

By meshing the qualities of yelp and competitive gaming, Foursquare is positioned to be a social networking site that could allow great interaction between companies and their customers.  But for people already overwhelmed by their current social networking sites, Foursquare may not yet have a strong enough draw.  More companies need to become involved (like Wynn Las Vegas and Lucky Magazine) with offerings of freebies for mayors, special event offers and other value-adds in order for the site to really take off.  If your company is interested in becoming involved with Foursquare, now is the time to make a name for yourself as the site grows.

Before jumping in, first review your social media plan to determine if Foursquare engagement is the right decision your company and its social media goals.  Your company will need to determine how it will engage with customers on Foursquare and whether your company has the time and resources to devote to this site to make engagement worthwhile.  If you create a page – how will you interact with your customers?  Will you offer specials for people checking into your venue?  Could you use the site to find new ways of providing excellent customer service?  Finally, do your research about Foursquare and learn about the different tools Foursquare provides, including the new business dashboard.  Social media is all about listening, exploring and connecting – and Foursquare offers these tools in spades.

And for those of you who roll your eyes at Foursquare – don’t be so quick to brush off the social networking site.  Foursquare now has almost 725,000 users and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing.