Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Mar 11, 2010

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Foursquare, a location-based social network, plans to distribute a free analytics tool and dashboard in the coming weeks that will give business owners access to a range of information and statistics about visitors to their establishments. – Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses (NYTimes)

Foursquare’s revenue model is still up in the air. I imagine that these “free” tools for business owners may eventually be part of a paid upgrade – or you’ll be able to get access to more information by paying. Information about who is coming into your establishment regularly would be pretty valuable – and for the consumer this may serve as a replacement for those stupid reward cards.

One approach that can help us to identify information that we’d be better not to publish to our peers — and information we really should — is to use creative storytelling techniques to assess and improve our personal branding efforts.

Think about it: the way you communicate your personal brand isn’t static. You grow every day, and every day is a new adventure in your life. It follows that getting a grip on the storytelling techniques of characterization, plot and narrative can help you to assess, improve, and communicate your evolving personal brand. – Use Storytelling Techniques in Personal Branding: Characterization (WebWorkerDaily)

Developing and nurturing a personal brand online is vital to a successful career. While paper resumes still get passed around, I doubt they’ll be valuable in the near future. Because what the social web knows about you will be a much better picture of your expertise and experience than anything you can put on paper. A good personal brand grows with you and follows you throughout your career, regardless of who you work for. Thinking of your personal brand as a character in a movie or book may help you decide how to nurture it – this article has more specifics on characterization.

I’m sure you have secured the relevant domain name for your company. In fact, considering the competitive state of the domain market, you probably named your company based on domain availability.

Now the gut wrenching question: Are you thinking about other critical namespaces?

The popularity and search indexing of social media namespaces could once again put your brands, products, and executives’ reputations at risk. – Have You Protected Your Social Media Namespace? (Kaledico)

Companies work to protect their brand offline but they often forget about online. With real time search results including content from Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, it’s more important than ever to protect your name online as well. While this means securing your brand names on various networks, it also includes monitoring the social web for mentions of your brand so that you can respond to any comments or criticism.

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