#brandplus and #brandminus are very popular hash tags on Twitter and I have used both many times to highlight good or bad service from brands I interact with. Location-sharing platforms like Foursquare, and Facebook in the near future, makes it even easier for consumers to share information on the brands they love and loathe by allowing users to ‘tag’ the brand with positive and negative comments for anyone to see online.

At present Foursquare is one of the most popular location-sharing services in South Africa but that might change as soon as Facebook adds location-sharing to its features. This will be an opt-in service and Facebook users will choose whether or not they want to share their location with the rest of the world.

As part of an integrated marketing strategy location-sharing offer many possibilities for marketers. Interactive and engaging competitions like the Marc Jacobs competition for Fashion Week are possible and brands can step up their loyalty programs by allowing customers to ‘check-in’ via location-sharing tools. Location-sharing oriented competitions can not only increase the number of feet through the door but also enhance the consumers’ experience of a brand. Location-sharing also gives a whole new meaning to targeted marketing. If you participate in location-sharing and you will see ads of promotions in close proximity on the websites you visit.

It will be interesting to see if the number of people making use of location-sharing is going to increase when Facebook add it to their services and I’m curious to see which South African brands are going to integrate location-sharing with their current marketing. What are your thoughts?

Last week it was announced that Facebook surpassed Google as the number one most visited website in the US. A Facebook fan page is still a popular option for businesses to reach their consumers on Facebook and AllFacebook.com lists a number of ways to monitor your Facebook page’s traffic whilst Webdigi.co.uk provides step-by-step instructions on how to set-up Google Analytics on your fan page. According to the article Webdigi has managed to successfully install Google Analytics on their fan pages and can track visitor statistics, traffic sources, map overlays and so forth.

Even though creating a fan page is the easiest way to get your business started on Facebook another option to engage with users on Facebook is to build an app. The top Facebook apps can be seen on AllFacebook.com and it’s the apps that add value to users that are the most popular. A recent study has shown that people are 67% (on Twitter) and 51% (on Facebook) more likely to purchase products from brands they have interacted with on social media.

In the last few months Facebook has implemented a number of new changes. The latest update is to Facebook’s search function which reminds of Google’s predictive search. It has been rumoured that Facebook will add location sharing but no official announcement has been made yet by Facebook. With more than 400 million users, it doesn’t look like Facebook’s popularity is going to decline anytime soon! What do you think of their new search function and Facebook’s plans to add location sharing?

Firebug
As a Firefox extension Firebug is useful to view, edit and inspect HTML, CSS and JavaScript on any web page in real-time. The extension allows you to filter and search for specific errors, download it from GetFirebug.com.

HTML Validator
HTML Validator is a Firefox Mozilla extension that will highlight the number of errors on a HTML page when you are browsing websites.

BrowserShots
BrowserShots is a free, open-source service where you can submit your web URL and see how your website will be presented in a number of browsers.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth
This free extension scours websites for broken links and when these links are fixed it will make it easier for search engines to crawl your website. Among others Xenu’s Link Sleuth will indicate which images don’t have alternative text, show you the sizes of all the images on your website and identify duplicate titles.