What’s with the metaphor in the title? Well, besides the fact that I hail from the Pacific Northwest — home of raindrops and rivers — there’s been a surge (pun intended) recently in new services for the techie-socials among us, with related apps — the raindrops. Then, there’s the great mash-up of services, where drops and streams combine to make… rivers of conscious social connections.  And guess what?  At least one new river looks to carry a raft of customers to small businesses in your hometown.

Streams Collide: Google Buzz  has millions of instant users — plus its own app store online — BuzzAware, already, in just about a month. One new service combines Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — allowing easy sending of videos and photos — see HomePuzz.

Hootsuite, my social aggregator of choice, allows me to simultaneously monitor tweets about my company, linkedin network activity, and Facebook updates — on one screen. Oh, and Hootsuite just added FourSquare as a new network it monitors. Now what’s FourSquare? It’s yet another new way to connect socially, but it specializes in pulling online people into real world places. And, Mashable reports that Foursquare has momentum — 100,000 new users in the last… 10 days. Wow. Of course all of these social flows are streaming (another water analogy?) on the latest “phones” with apps galore for iPhones, Google’s Android platform, and Blackberries. Whew.

Above, my customized Hootsuite view monitors personalized streams from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  I’ve also added Plaxo, and FourSquare.

Local Business Enters the Social Media Flow…

So, what does all this mean for business? Well, quite a bit if you’re 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea in Seattle, Coopersmiths’s Pub in Ft. Collins, or one of 15 ice-cream parlors listed in the Portland area, including Granny Gedunk in Stevenson, WA. A popular promotion is to award a freebie to a patron with the most recorded visits to your establishment as reported by Foursquare. “Just show me your phone” –  you can ask to see the official Foursquare tally for someone with most visits to your venue.  In Foursquare parlance, that person is known as the “Mayor” and people compete to become Mayor so they can get the award — a free coffee, complimentary cone, etc. Heck, there’s even a “Mayor” of a Plaid Pantry on Interstate in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Not a lot of imagination on the part of that Mayor, but it must be paying off for that chain convenience store.  You can see a list of some popular Foursquare haunts here.

Above is a promotion advertising perks for the “Mayor” from Foursquare

Not long ago, I resisted the torrent of social media washing my way. Back about 18 months ago, I had not even joined Twitter. Now I have over 8000 followers there for WebFadds. Any business? Yes. One confirmed client by Twitter contact alone, plus Analytics shows a good flow of traffic to my business site from there.

Use Analytics to make Social Media prove itself for your business. Above, I can see direct traffic from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN to WebFadds.com.  TIP:  The next step is to review dollar value goals in Analytics so you can gauge the ROI from Social Media activities. LinkedIN shows a 7.7% conversion rate, with Twitter landing 2.3% in conversions for the past month.  Make it pay — contact me for more details.

So now it’s time to dive into FourSquare, and widen my Hootsuite monitoring window to add another Social Media flow to watch. Tweets, Facebook Friends, LinkedIN business, Foursquare hometown — scrolling on screen direct to stream of conscious connection.

Where does it all end? It doesn’t — the ocean is too big. The better question might be — where will it take you? My advice is to connect anew on Foursquare now — the tool automatically finds friends from Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s good to see social become local, once again.

We’ll be pleased to give you a quote on launching, and monitoring your Social Media Marketing campaign.