The time has come for those of you business owners who aren’t utilizing location-based social networks to jump on board. Google Local, Twitter Places, and now Facebook allow users to “check in” to a location and reveal their thoughts/opinions. Equally impressive is the influential ability of one customer; one good review can lead to another, and so on and so forth. Before you know it, you’ve generated a large amount of business from your customers’ opinions.

Here are some steps to follow to ensure that you don’t miss out:

1. Observe. No matter the size of your company, it’s fairly easy to get involved. Before you do, however, pay attention to what bigger brands are doing and make an effort to follow their lead (after all, they’re doing the major research and are investing in this space). Location-based social networks are expected to generate $3.3 billion in revenue by 2013; Foursquare—a prime example—announced on June 30 that they have raised $20 million in venture capital, raising the company’s valuation to nearly $95 million.

2. Get involved. Explore the space yourself by downloading some of the many existing applications on your smart phone (examples are Layar, Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook and Brightkite). Starts using the tools as an individual, monitoring what customers are saying about your business; this will provide an understanding of what you need.

3. Create your content. Give your business a digital footprint by writing a review, defining your location on Foursquare and Brightkite, tweeting about your spot, and/or creating a Facebook fan page. Sync your website and promote your social media savvy on your business website, and then talk back.

4. Keep a close eye out and react. Listening is a major aspect of marketing that many do not utilize correctly. Monitor what is being said about your business and take the time to respond to questions, complaints and compliments. The more proactive you are, the more digitally savvy your business will appear.

5. Location-aware engagement and contests. This concept is all about incentives and driving participation: offering such things as coupons for checking in nearby gives people a reason to come by. Once they stop by, utilize your physical location with signage or targeted marketing over the networks (which will in turn drive participation).

Taking all of these steps might not show immediate returns monetarily, but the customer engagement and loyalty will ultimately help you in the long run.

Talk about your significant expansion: online advertising—targeting anything and everything involving social media—is expected to grow 14% next year to $51.9 billion. Email advertising will increase by 9% to $16 billion, advertising in video streams will increase by 60% to $5.6 billion, and online promotions will increase by 10% to $24 billion.

“Going green”: a concept that is spreading like wildfire (in the best sense of the phrase, of course). As people are becoming increasingly aware of the state of our environment, many are eager to pitch in and do what they can.

Thanks to our project manager and our creative director, that now includes our office here at Interactivity Marketing. No, we’re not all driving hybrid cars or using solar power, but we are making one tiny—yet important—change: recycling. Water and soda bottles, plastic cups (including fast food products), plastic silverware, paper, and boxes/cardboard are all placed into a separate container and sent over to a local recycling center. It might not seem like much to some, but hey—it all contributes to the big picture.

Here are some other ways that you can “go green”:

• Cut down your energy costs: set that thermostat a few degrees lower in the winter and a few degrees higher in the summer. Save yourself a few bucks by bundling up with a blanket in January and using those ceiling fans in August.
• The same concept applies to your clothes: use cold water whenever possible (as 85 percent of the energy used to machine-wash clothes goes to heating the water) and use a drying rack instead of your dryer.
• There are three major reasons to walk or bike instead of drive: exercise (which everyone could use more of!), gas costs (use that $30 per week toward groceries or bills), and less air pollution. If you have to drive, carpool. If you have the time to walk, do.
• Buy locally raised, humane, and organic meat, eggs and dairy whenever you get the chance. In addition to the health benefits, purchasing from local farmers keeps money in the local economy. Your body and your wallet will thank you.
• Avoid bottled water. I repeat: avoid bottled water! Purchase a re-usable water bottle (preferably aluminum rather than plastic) and fill it up with tap water whenever you need it. Your teeth will get the fluoride they need and you’ll avoid contributing to the large amounts of container waste from bottle water.
• Instead of tossing your old cell phone or computer, recycle it. E-waste contains mercury and other toxics, and is a growing environmental problem.
• Make your own non-toxic cleaning products; it’s simple to do! Baking soda, vinegar, lemon and soap will do the trick and you will save yourself money.

It should come as no surprise that companies are using blogs. A lot. In fact, blogs fill a specific niche that other forms of social media do not. It is estimated that this year just over one in three companies have a public-facing blog used for marketing (which is expected to rise to 43% by 2012). Studies have come to show that marketers perceive blogs to have the highest value in driving site traffic, brand awareness, lead generation and sales.

Statuses, updates, posts: while they may let you know what a friend is doing, they don’t have the ability to inform exactly where they are. Just when you thought Facebook couldn’t put you in even closer contact with your friends, they went ahead and introduced the Places feature: mobile GPS technology that announces an exact location upon clicking “check in”.

Similar to services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, Places is available immediately through Facebook’s iPhone app and other advanced mobile devices. Users looking to announce their location simply tap “check in” and are able to view a list of nearby places; they then choose the place that matches where they are. They have the ability to write down what they are doing at that location (as well as what they think about it) and a story appears on friends’ new feeds as well as Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

Facebook’s overall goal with this feature is to not only inform friends of where they are, but to also learn if their friends are nearby at the same time. By writing down details of the place, others are able to view where the writer was days or even years ago. In addition to a single user checking in, the “tag” feature is available for linking others to that location as well (people can tag friends only if the taggers themselves check in to the location too).

The con side to this exciting new feature, however, is safety concerns; how is it safe to inform everyone on your friends list of your location? Facebook’s solution: check-ins will appear only to users’ Facebook friends as a default, and users have the ability to trim the recipients list to specific friends only.

And so there you have it: the innovative world of Facebook expanding yet again.

Let’s face it: we all like to succeed. And our social media is no exception; while it can be easily measured with various indicators such as voice, reach, retweets and comments, measuring without an overall objective won’t bring you any closer to success. You need to be able to gauge its success, measure it, and see that it remains healthy.

To get the most out of your social media measurements, follow these seven steps:

1) You need a goal. Know why you are engaging in social media in the first place to help you dictate not only what you do, but how you measure what you do.
• If your goal is to drive awareness, you will be looking at metrics like share of voice, reach, readership and engagement with content (measured in action vs. views)
• If your goal is to create better products and conduct market research, you will need to focus on top market trends and satisfaction with various competitive products

2) Your departments need to be on the same page. Necessary departments need to work as units toward a common goal to ensure success; this means communicating and sharing the right metrics with the right people on demand (for example, creating a dashboard that’s easily visible by every department).

3) Context must be considered. Always make sure to look at metrics over time and inside of a competitive landscape (if you know your share of social media conversation is 35, what does that mean compared to your competitors’ shares or their change over time?).

4) Choose the correct platform. Consider aspects such as data (determine which channels you are going to measure?), reports (identify how you want to share and present information), budget (figure out whether you have a budget or can only afford free tools), and ease of use (consider productivity-boosting alerts and workflow modules, automation and advanced analytics).

5) Audit social media. Note where you and your competitors are today and use this as a baseline against which you will measure at least once per month.

6) Research your channels. To get the most out of your social media analysis, you must dig deeper: evaluate performance by channel, for yourself and for your competitors, to find which selections are performing well and to help give your numbers specific context.

7) A/B testing. If you have several campaigns out there and are curious about what content is getting the best response, social media measurement can help you to conduct the right analysis to figure out what’s working and what isn’t. You can measure the public’s opinion of things you try.

Social network usage, which has rapidly increased in popularity, will rise sharply in 2010. 127 million people (roughly 57% of all domestic internet users) will visit social network sites on a monthly basis in the United States by the end of the year. A 16% increase since 2009, it is projected that by 2014, 65.8% of Americans will regularly visit these sites.

Move over, Google: Ask.com is reverting back to their old methods. The site, which is beta-testing a new version, is going to have users type in a question to ensure an answer (which was their initial method when the site first started). While Google may point you in a general direction, Ask.com is determined to provide you with a direct answer.

Let’s face it: we all love seeing the fan numbers increase on our Facebook pages. And while there are many tactics for attracting more, it’s important to bear in mind that those numbers don’t reflect an ensured return on investment. You may have an abrupt increase of a thousand or so fans (and it’ll end up looking good to your superiors or clients), but when those fans begin to decrease at a rate of 100 or 200 per week, you’ll find yourself out of luck.

There are, however, several key strategies in obtaining and maintaining fans.

First and foremost is reaching out to your target; and what better way to do that than to throw promotions their way? Limited time offers and giveaways have the ability to pull in fans of all sorts: not only do they see your page, but they patronize your store/company and become familiar with everything. Einstein Bros. Bagels, for example, did a free bagel giveaway on their Facebook page that upped their fans from 5,000 to 400,000 in under a week.

While promotions serve as a method for attracting fans quickly, it is even more important to filter your brand message and your ideal audience. Without doing so, your promotion could reach the unfiltered masses of the web and attract those who are simply looking for something that’s free. By using very few resources, more fans, longer stay times, and a high level of worthwhile participation is what you can expect.

Make sure to pay close attention to influencers—bloggers, popular Twitter users, group moderators, etc.—and use them as a constructive outlet for influencing your brand. The more fans they have, the higher chance you have of them sharing your message with their social network. And in order to reach the largest percentage of relevant consumers through your promotional efforts, a mechanism for which an offer can be seeded to relevant influencer has to be created. A prime example would be a digital gift card that contains an exclusive code (this code would be redeemable on your Facebook page until its expiration).

Yum Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has reported a 33% surge in profits from its operations in China in the second quarter. Demand for fried chicken sandwiches and pepperoni pizza is increasing every day. There are nearly 3,000 fried chicken restaurants and 560 Pizza Hut locations operating in over 500 cities, and the company aims to open at least 20,000 fast food outlets in the future.