By Anne Carlantone

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the new Facebook Places location-based check-in service that was announced this week. Now, we get to discover what we can do with it!

Before this, sites like Foursquare and Gowalla were the sites you joined if you chose to get in on the location-based world, which meant getting to know a new network, building a new profile, etc. But now because practically everyone is on Facebook, essentially practically everyone could now also be in this location-based arena…right now!

For brands utilizing Facebook, this can provide some great new opportunities to promote your business, as outlined in today’s PC World article. These include new ways to promote special offers, share experiences with a brand and reward loyal customers. As administrators of several Facebook pages with great sets of brand-loyal friends, we’re excited about where this can go!

As individuals, you may still be deciding how you feel about this. If you’re a Facebook user who doesn’t like the location-based idea, there is a way to not participate. You can choose not to check in. If you’re still uncomfortable, you can do the following: Go into your privacy settings, click on “Custom” and “Customize Settings.” You can choose to make the “Places I Check In” option visible only to yourself. Then you can go down to the “Friends Can Check Me Into Places” option and disable that, as well.

Feel free to “check in” with us to discuss how RL&A can utilize Facebook Places for your brands!

By Nicole Egan

In my daily outreach for clients to bloggers who effectively spread product information to their constituents who they influence daily, I was recently pondering on the effectiveness of word of mouth when I realized how powerful a force it is on my own decisions, purchases, etc.…with the best recent example being my family vacation.

I come from a family that loves to travel and explore different places. I know that many states, companies, etc. spend a lot of money on advertising to attract tourists, and are quite successful with these efforts. However, my family has always relied on word of mouth from friends and family to help us decide – whether about which city to visit, hotel to stay in, or even airport parking lot to leave the car!

Whenever we decide on a place to go, we often first ask around to see if anyone else has ever been there before, what they did, where they stayed and ate at. We value their opinions more than any guidebooks, particularly if they’ve had a bad experience, which we ALWAYS take that into consideration before we book our trip.

Once we get there, my dad has also perfected his technique when it comes to on-the-spot word of mouth. Whenever we’re in an unfamiliar place, he always asks the people that live in the city where they eat….the locals always recommend the best places!

Then, we continue the word of mouth process…when we come back from a vacation, we either rave or rant about the places we visited to our friends and family – on the phone, on Facebook, etc.,, undoubtedly influencing these people for their future vacations..and so on.

Word of mouth is an extremely effective tool that allows everyone to be an influencer to others about anything and everything they’re in contact with. This is an invaluable tool that can be both positive and negative for companies, brands, services, etc., because people tend to trust and value the opinions of others within their own circles over what companies advertise to them.