I love events, don’t you? I love planning them, promoting them, speaking at them and attending them. There’s something wonderful about bringing people together to achieving a specific goal. And I love the increasing number of tools that help you make your event that much more special.

Like foursquare. It’s a mobile app that’s been around for a couple of years now, so you might have heard of it, even if you haven’t used it.

foursquare (they spell it all lower case) encourages users to “check in” and let their followers know where they are. About 4 million people a day check in on foursquare, so while it’s not totally a household name, it’s no slouch either. And it can be a great way to create a little buzz around an event or a location based business.

Some planners have found creative, game like ways to get event guests to check in on foursquare over the evening, making their event seem trendy. Let’s say you get 50 people to check in and each of those friends has 50 friends. With literally the click of a button, your event has just reached 2500 people who might be more inclined to support your cause or buy your products in the future because they know a friend of theirs cares enough about you to give you their time.

Even marketing-smart restaurants and galleries have trained their staff on foursquare and offer discounts, coupons and other incentives to those who check in while visiting their venues. What do they do when they have guests not currently on foursquare? No problem. Staff are actually trained to download the application and show them how to use it for anyone who’d like to try it. Talk about value added!

And some people really get into it. If you have more check-ins than anyone else, you become the “mayor” of a place. The battle to become mayor of high profile destinations, like airports and trendy
restaurants, is very hot.

Of course, before you start asking your guests to check in on foursquare, you’d better be familiar with it yourself. And like anything in our increasingly wired world, there are some downsides and some best
practices to observe.

Some of the biggies:

1. Don’t check anyone else in without their express permission. Your guest might not appreciate you advertising where he or she was a particular night. She may have bailed on one event to go to yours, and the simple act of checking her in could cause her embarrassment. Not good for relationship building.
2. Connect only with people you know and trust on foursquare. Enterprising thieves also have access to it, and the last thing you want to do is give them information on patterns of when you are in and out of your home or when you might be away for any extended period. Chances are good you wouldn’t walk down the street carrying a sign saying “I’m currently out of my home at 555 Main Street and won’t be back for two hours or so” or “we’re in Hawaii with no one watching the house” so don’t advertise that information on foursquare either.
3. Be careful of oversharing personal or sensitive information about your children, family or anyone else. Don’t check into your child’s school, gymnastic classes or any other child-centric event. Always err on the side of caution when it comes to others.

But don’t think of foursquare as something scary. Like anything in the online world, you just have to exercise a little caution and some common sense.

It’s a fun fast way to crowd source a little bit of your marketing and maybe give it a little oomph. And when all is said and done, it’s hip to be foursquare.

Susan McLennan is the President of Babble On Communications and an expert in Public Relations and
Social Media. To receive her weekly newsletter with helpful PR and Social Media advice, you can sign up
here or visit www.susanmclennan.com.

Bet you didn’t know that January is National Soup Month, did you?  Soup is the ultimate comfort food for those long, cold days of winter, and we still have more than a few of them to get through before the arrival of spring. Not only is soup tasty and healthy, it’s one of the original fast foods. As early as 600 B.C., soup was sold as street food by the Greeks. Enjoy a bowl for lunch or dinner – or as a nutritious snack.

This tasty, easy and delicious soup recipe is one you can whip up in no time. Leftovers and frozen veggies have never tasted more scrumptious! And guess what? February 4^th is Homemade Soup Day.

Easy Thai Chicken Soup

The addition of condensed milk in this recipe lends a lovely creamy and velvety texture to this flavourful soup.

Ingredients

1 ½ cups       cooked chicken (dark & white meat),skin and fat removed, shredded or chopped
1 – 500 g       bag of frozen mixed vegetables
2                  cans condensed milk
I tbsp            chili paste
8 cups           chicken stock*
170 g            whole wheat egg noodles
3-4 sprigs      fresh Coriander to garnish–coarsely chopped

Method

1- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook pasta for approximately 8 minutes.
2- Bring stock to a roiling boil and reduce heat.
3- In the meantime, prepare the chicken and coarsely chop the coriander.
4- Add vegetables, chicken and chili paste to the stock.
5- Stir in condensed milk.
6- Allow to simmer for 5–10 minutes, add the cooked noodles and heat for a few minutes more.
7- To serve, sprinkle with chopped fresh coriander as garnish.

*Note:  Use homemade chicken stock or buy stock from your local butcher or market.  Alternatively you can use packaged, low sodium chicken stock.