Lowcountry Geek

The Interwebs are abuzz this week about Facebook rolling out its location-based tagging feature.

I’m not going to really get into the workings of that, there are enough resources out there that can explain it better than I.

Here are some links:

http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/facebook-places-guide/

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-places-privacy-2010-08

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6450/Facebook-Places-Launches-Allows-Businesses-To-Check-In.aspx 

Instead, I want to discuss how those in social media are being asked, and forced, to plan for what they can’t see.

Our clients are having to deal with a very new matrix for grading success. Impressions, click-throughs? What do they mean as far as the ultimate goal of making a sale or, in most cases, developing a brand?

We social media professionals making our pitches for new contracts with new clients have our own issue: We have to guess on what’s coming next.

We can research and research all we want, but there’s always going to be something out there that surprises us.

For instance, a recent project I’m working on includes maintenance of a business’s Foursquare venue and specials, but the contract makes no mention of Facebook Places.

Firms that deal with larger brands now have to track sites and apps like Get Glue to see how their clients are being rated and ranked.

It’s all emerging at a breakneck pace.

So how do we keep up?

Well, as I see it, it’s sort of a Catch-22. We keep up by continuing to feed the machine that is forcing us to read dozens of articles and blogs a day. We’ll post to Twitter and blogs offering our tips and workarounds. We’ll continue to help each other out because the community of social media professionals truly is a community.

As the same time, all of this communication within the social media community leads to new ideas, new programs and new apps. It leads to new initiatives and technologies that send us scrambling back to the Interwebs asking: “How do I…”

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he (Yossarian) observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.