Ok, it’s true confession time. When I first heard of the check-in applications, such as GoWalla or Foursquare, my initial thought was, “Who Cares?”. Now, having used Foursquare for a few months, I’m actually enjoying it! And I believe there are some great reasons to use check-in apps as part of your online marketing strategy.

So, for those who may not know, (or maybe resistant, like I was), these check-in applications allow you to update your status with an indication of your current place and location. So, let’s say for instance that I’ve gone to dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant, I can “check in” here, and all my Foursquare friends will know I’m there. You can, optionally, also choose to update your Twitter or Facebook status as well. And you can add a comment or message, like “Fantastic garlic knots.”

On Foursquare, you are awarded points for your checkins, and they increase in value the more frequently you check in. You get +1 point for checking in, and +5 points for checking in from a new location. If you check in to multiple places in a day, you are awarded additional points. You are then awarded badges based on your activity.

I have found the badges to be, generally, both clever and fun. On a recent to trip to Denver, I checked in at Denver International Airport, and unlocked the Swarm badge- which you get when 30 or more people check in from the same location. Additionally, if you check in from a place more than anyone else, you can become the Mayor of that location.

So the playful nature of this process is very appealing. It’s also fun to see what badges your friends have unlocked, and to use the application to gain a location and place based sense of what your friends are doing that day.

Great, you say- sounds like fun. But how can this help me in my marketing?

(Glad you asked!)

Here are some ways check in apps can help your marketing:

1) They can drive branding. We all need ways to stand out within our market space. If you have interesting hobbies and activities, people will naturally want to follow you and learn more. You will have succeeded in gaining their attention and notice.

2) They can drive relationship building. The apps let you in on the daily routine of a person’s life (the parts they choose to share)- and this can help you get to know them better and seek common ground.

3) People are attracted to movement and action. If they see you moving about the world, taking part in different events, different activities, you are (no pun intended) automatically seen as a “mover and shaker”– this can position you for opportunities and contacts.

4) You can build greater influence. You can use your “check-in” status to make recommendations and suggestions for those in your friends list. These can help you be seen as conscientious and helpful.

5) Finally, they’re fun. I love to see what other people are doing and to make note of places I’d like to try too.  Again, the first part of all marketing is to get attention- and the check-in apps can help you do this well.

So if you’ve been reluctant to start checking-in, you might want to reconsider. And yes, I’d love to be Foursquare friends.

In case you hadn’t heard (or read), Twitter.com is changing its interface.

Preliminary reports suggest that there will be a wider right sidebar, giving you more room to display your followers and following count, as well as your list count.

In addition, you’ll have access to more robust recommendations.

But, perhaps, the most significant change will be the inclusion of pictures, videos, and [possibly] audio, right in your tweetstream. No longer will you have to use a 3rd party service to provide this type of content in Twitter.

You’ll have the option to turn this feature on and off, determining whose non-text content actually shows up on your page and in your tweetstream.

Twitter is also adding a map and geolocation feature, which will also show up in your right sidebar. In addition, if you link to a product, that will also show up in the detail pane, right in Twitter.

Basically, what it seems like Twitter is trying to do is make the site easier to use, with more relevant information. All this while decreasing the reliance on third party services.

What it seems like, to me, is that Twitter is going to become kind of a hybrid between Facebook, Amazon.com, and Foursquare. Certainly, it will be including a certain level of functionality present in all those other sites.

So what does this mean for you, the user?

1) If you have a custom background or custom Twitter page, you might need to redesign it. This is to accommodate the increased width of the new sidebars.

2) You’ll have an easier time finding people to follow, and in understanding why you should follow them. This means you may find it easier to grow your network on Twitter.

3) You’ll have the opportunity to experience rich media directly on the site, saving you some clicks and (possibly) some time.

Now, since most people respond negatively to change, at least at first, it will be interesting to see whether people love or hate the redesign.

As it rolls out, let me know what you think.

So I’ve just set up my new road trip blog at http://www.thevagabondmarketer.com. I chose to set it up on Posterous rather than on my own server because I wanted to use some of Posterous’ functionality more easily. I know I can set  up all these functions on my site, but I felt like Posterous was a good option for getting set up and blogging quickly.

Since I tend to be a blog perfectionistic, it takes me way longer than it needs to get my own self-hosted blogs set up just right.

Anyway, as part of this process, I was looking at other ways to syndicate my content to both Twitter & Facebook. I came across the Tweetpo.st application, and really like it so far. I had been using the Twitter application for Facebook, but Tweetpo.st has additional functionality. Not only does it post your content into Facebook from Twitter, it also adds a link to each update that says, “Follow me on Twitter.”

Now, this is a smart strategy to adopt, we always want to be seeking easy ways to overlap our social networks. I talk about this in more detail in my 21 lesson Build Influence in Social Media ecourse , but the idea is that you want to have as many of the same contacts on all the social networks as you can.

So anyway, I wanted to let you know that Tweetpo.st looks like a great application so far- it is working well for me, and I’ve already gained some new Twitter followers from using it for just a few hours.

If you are looking to grow your Twitter network while sending Twitter updates to Facebook, check out Tweetpo.st. You can find it in the applications section of your Facebook profile.

And stay tuned for a special announcement tomorrow which will help you streamline your social media efforts and get more value from your social media investment.

We just helped a client install a new WordPress blog, using version 2.9, and found that scheduled posting isn’t working like it should. This means that when you pre-write a post, and set it to publish on a certain day and time, the day and time passes, and no post appears.

In digging into this issue, it seems to be a problem with WordPress 2.9, specifically the cron function.

There are several fixes you can try:

Option #1: If you’re technically minded, you can update your wp-includes/cron.php file, using the instructions found here: Fix missing posts in WordPress

The problem with this is that you may have to update this same setting each time you upgrade WordPress. May work if you have just 1 blog, harder to maintain if you have many. I, personally, don’t want to have to remember to do this, so I’d choose another option.

Option #2: If you don’t want to mess with php code (and I don’t blame you) the other option you have is to reupload a few key files into your wp-includes. You would do this via FTP.

You can get those files courtesy of Denis De Bernardy (maker of my favorite blog theme, Semiologic) here

This is the option we chose for our client, and it’s working well so far.

Option #3: You can downgrade to the previous version of WordPress. Before trying this, be sure you backup your blog and files!! It should be as simple as reuploading the previous version of WordPress and rolling back that way. But again, make a backup copy of your blog just in case this doesn’t work.

If you haven’t upgraded to 2.9 yet, I’d suggest holding off to see if the 2.9.1 version addresses these issues.

Google search is going to start looking different in the next few months, as Google has signed a deal with Twitter.com to start indexing tweets.

Similarly, Microsoft has signed deals with Facebook and Twitter to start indexing updates in the search engine Bing.com.

These changes mean your wisdom won’t be shared just with those in your immediate tweetstream or newsfeed, but could, perhaps, be listed in the search engines and archived for the world at large.

These moves are good for those of you focused on providing unique content and topic relevant tweets- you will have more ways to be found and noticed.

The downside of this process may be two-fold, though. First, your tweets may not remain indexed as long, so your ranking won’t stay constant. The reason I think this is because the rate of tweeting is so high, and newer tweets will always be considered fresher (and therefore potentially more relevant) than older ones. So any ranking you get may not last that long.

The second downside would be for content that is repeated or duplicate- likely only 1 tweeter will get credit, so this may drive down the number of retweets. Some would say this is a good thing, especially for content like quotes, or #follow friday, but we’ll have to see how this shakes out.

In order to benefit from this new search engine capability, focus on providing good strong content (I know I said this already, but it bears repeating), and try to phrase your tweets uniquely. In the beginning, at least while the algorithm is being worked out, I imagine that unique languaging will be initially counted as unique content. Later on, we may see a shift in this as content and context is also considered. (Kind of like latent semantic indexing for tweets.)

It will be interesting to see if adding tweets to the search engines will improve user experience, or will be seen as just that much more noise.