Social media tools have become like Starbucks runs. If you don’t visit one at least once a day, something is seriously amiss.

Social media tools: we all use them. So why not celebrate them?

Mashable.com created Social Media Day to do just that.

Today, June 30, Mashable.com invited fans of social media websites and networks to join together and praise the technology that links us to each other.

Mashable.com, a website devoted to social and digital media, technology and internet cultural news, created Social Media Day in 2010. Although it is a relatively new (and unofficial) holiday in the US, Social Media Day has garnered attention and support around the world. The state of Arizona, New York City and eight other cities (Victoria and Vancouver, B.C.; Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; San Carlos and San Jose, California; Dublin, Ireland; and Toronto, Canada), have officially proclaimed June 30 as Social Media Day. Pretty wild, eh?

Social Media Day happened everywhere. Mashable.com’s Meetup page boasted a vast array of participating cities. From San Francisco to New York and from Antwerp to Buenos Aires, people from all over the globe showed interested in meeting (and Tweeting) in celebration of social media.

Although some city Meetups were more organized than others- San Francisco’s celebration took place at the indoor trampoline park House of Air—all social savvy tech users were encouraged to meet up in some way and say “Hooray!” to updates, virtual walls, news feeds and alerts.

The hosts of these updates go by recognizable names: Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Foursquare, Yelp and of course, the irrepressible Facebook. These websites have become as integral to our daily communication as actual face-time conversations.

Social media not only connects us to each other in real time but also to information, events, trends and possibilities. In spite of distance, weather and time (elements that would naturally divide us), social media users remain closely knit in the bonds of community, friendship, business and common interests.

With this in mind, why wouldn’t we celebrate such a wonderful, revolutionizing tool?

Did you celebrate Social Media Day? We want to hear how social media has impacted your life and communication, so tell us about it!

To stay up to date on all the new and innovative happenings at Gunn|Jerkens, check back often, follow us on Twitter (@GunnJerkens) and “Like” us on Facebook.

So if you’re not using it already, you better hurry up and jump on the bandwagon now–because, honestly, who likes to be the last one to join the party?

If you’re not convinced, here are a few facts you should wrap your head around:

1. There are currently 10 million Foursquare users

2. 3 million check-ins occur each day

3. 400,000 businesses currently use Foursquare for marketing

4. 78,387 mayors get ousted each day (and you thought congress was bad)

5.  There are more than 358 million check-ins outside the United States

Not convinced yet? Check out this awesome infographic:

To learn more, click here.

To stay up to date on all the new and innovative happenings at Gunn|Jerkens, check back often, follow us on Twitter (@GunnJerkens) and “Like” us on Facebook.

Boasting more than 6.5 million users worldwide, Foursquare is a geo-social mobile application that is based on the location of the user and the registered “check-in” spots/“venues.” The location you “check-in” at can be shared with your friends and networks. Doing so allows users to bookmark future destinations of interest and assist with vacation planning and touring cities and locations unfamiliar to the user.

Using Foursquare for business is great because it creates a way for customers to interact with your brand and allows you to offer incentives to keep customers coming back. These incentives are known as “specials.” Specials can be tailored to fit the needs of the business while encouraging customers to visit your venue. In this case, because Jayne “checked-in” at Trimana a certain number of times and was designated “Mayor of Trimana Café,” the café gave her $5 Trimana Bucks for a future purchase. Way to go, Jayne!

In the past we’ve seen some epic office battles between coworkers enthusiastically trying to beat one another out for the title of “Mayor of Gunn/Jerkens.” But with Jayne’s new position, it’s only eminent that a new battle is on the horizon.

To stay up to date on all the new and innovative happenings at Gunn/Jerkens, check back often, follow us on Twitter (@GunnJerkens) and “Like” us on Facebook.

According to reports from RadioShack^®, those who use Foursquare spend 3.5 times as much money on products as those who are not using the location networking app. The article further reports that because Foursquare users are generally young and tech saavy, Foursquare has become a very valuable marketing tool. For more, check out the article.

Once again, social media proves to be one step ahead of the game. So what about you? Do you follow brands on Foursquare or use it to find your next new gadget?

Jennifer has been training for The Nation’s Triathlon for about five months. Her workout schedule is intense: she’s training six days a week which includes a coached swim every Wednesday and an ocean swim every Saturday. Saturdays are also when she does her “brick” workouts where she trains for two disciplines back-to-back. She’s been training so hard that she’s the Mayor of her gym on Foursquare and she has the Swimmies badge!

Of course I had to know about her diet! She’s started hydrating for the race already to help prepare. Her food schedule for the next few days looks like this:

• Day before: Lots of carbs, including the “Inspiration Dinner” with lots of pasta
• Day of the race: Her coach’s mantra is “Nothing new on race day” so that isn’t going to be a day where she’s trying new food. She’s going to go with some peanut butter and bread and maybe a hard-boiled egg in the morning and then some energy bars for during the race. (She is the energy bar queen; she was rattling off names of bars I’ve never heard of!)
• Post-race: Party time where she can celebrate with her team by pigging out and dancing!

Most importantly, using e-mails and Facebook (even Facebook ads!) to reach out to her network of friends, Jennifer successfully raised $3,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society; since she started training for races five years ago, she’s raised over $20,000 for the organization.

To read more about Jennifer’s motivation, or to continue donating to support her training and the cause, you can visit her fundraising page through Team in Training.

Join us in wishing Jennifer (and her entire team) luck with her race in D.C. this weekend!

WHAT’S FOURSQUARE?: Real quick – Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices, and also a game. Users “check in” at venues using the program. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.”

So, I have been checking in at our building and our office, and as I have the most check-ins at these locations, I have been elected the “Mayor.” Now, as soon as someone checks in one more time than me, they will oust me and become the new Mayor themselves. Well, I will tell you right now that I have campaigned too long and too hard for that title, and I refuse to just roll over and watch one of my co-workers nab it from me.

Currently, there are two other employees that hope to steal this great honor from me. I won’t divulge their names, but they know who they are. The battle is on, guys. Bring it!

“ ‘Checking In’ can actually change your behavior.”

So when you check-in to a local business with your favorite mobile application (mine is FourSquare), does your behavior change? Do you make your purchases differently? Were you driven to the location by an incentive provided by the application? All of these things have a lot of powerful people talking about the potential of location-based mobile games and apps.

It sounds strange, but I can absolutely see this behavioral change happening. For developers, I think that the long-term goal is always the same despite the function of the application or game: influence consumer behavior and drive traffic. As many of the most quickly emerging mobile applications are utilizing geolocation, these developers see location as the biggest and most important piece of the puzzle in terms of attaining that influence.

How have you seen this in action?

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. ~ Emma

Many people consider things like Twitter and Facebook to be “silly” wastes of time. However, put a knowledgeable person behind a keyboard on one of these forums and watch what happens. You’ll notice that a steady stream of comments about sandwiches and celebrities will quickly transform into an invaluable information feed.

Everybody likes to go their own way–to choose their own time and manner of devotion. ~ Mansfield Park

Check that out – the brilliant Austen, in all her glory, predicted the demise of “push marketing” before anyone else! No one wants to be told what to do and when to do it, and this is directly connected to our current obsession with social forums. People would much rather turn to review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor than take their cues from more traditional marketing efforts (i.e. print advertisements). That’s not to say that those aren’t important. It’s just that now most people want to hear from other folks about their real-life experiences, and then make decisions based on the candid opinions and feelings that they share. Jane was on to something big.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. ~ Pride and Prejudice

Books, books, books. Three of my favorite things.

I think that if Austen were around today, she would be thrilled by the amount of literature she’d have access to. She’d probably own a Kindle (I don’t think she would even care about the increased royalties paid to e-book authors), and I’d imagine she would be devoted to her Google Reader. That has me thinking…gosh, I probably could have written a whole post on this idea alone: “Jane Austen, Proto-Blogger.”

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies. ~ Jane Austen

Now, I don’t think anyone will argue with me over this one. Voyeurism is all the rage. Twitter and Facebook are a couple of ways to get your fix, but let’s look at FourSquare specifically. Now you can follow a friend everywhere they go – every day, in real-time. It’s really astounding how quickly the technology for these new “spy” tools is being created. And I’m not going to lie, I love it.

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company. ~ Jane Austen

We often refer to social media as the great “conversation.” I may not share her exquisite talent with a pen, but Austen and I do have this in common: we love to talk with people. That’s why I always seek out experienced individuals with wisdom to share, stories to tell and jokes to crack. You never know what one discussion will lead to, and these days you can be having multiple chats with various folks all over the world, and all at once. It’s truly remarkable how far communication has come. Jane Austen might be overwhelmed by the amount of noise at first, but once she created a few lists on Twitter, joined a group on LinkedIn and filtered out all the nonsense, she’d be getting more than her fill of good company.

So maybe it was the cup of tea I was drinking, or just my loving devotion to the author, but I felt like I needed to share my thoughts on Austen and social media. If you know me, then you probably saw this post coming.