When Foursquare first came out, it seemed like just another silly social app for iPhone geeks, but now that it has had some time to grow, it’s becoming a must have for just about any business.

Major players like Zagat have signed on and will be doing more than just providing badges (the way users boast to each other on Foursquare). The foodie staple will be interviewing the mayors (biggest visitors to a venue) of Zagat-rated restaurants and will also suggest local Zagat restaurants to users.

Foursquare has also penned deals with Bravo that correspond with network shows; with the new star vehicle “Valentine’s Day;” with HBO’s “How to Make it in America” — even Harvard University.

If you aren’t already on Foursquare, you should be. No matter what kind of company you have, the old adage of marketing is “meet your customers where they live.” And your customers are on Foursquare.

A lot of companies will get on Facebook and Twitter and say they have a diverse social media portfolio, but these secondary social sites are key to getting to as many people as possible. So instead of playing on Facebook for far too long and calling it work tomorrow, get on Foursquare, Mobile Spinach, Whrrl, Loopt, GraffitiGeo, Hotlist, Yelp, Qype, Brightkite, not to mention Google Maps.

EQUTE — With SES in Chicago in full swing, there are a lot of great SEO ideas floating around and coming out to the tip-hungry public. But it was a state of mind rather than a tip that was one of the most interesting things to come out of SES so far — how to look at social media.

WebProNews has a good write-up about small business social media use, but the thing that stuck out the most was what Jennifer Evans Laycock, Search Engine Guide’s editor-in-chief, said.

[Laycock] prefers to think of it as a dating experience - “social media dating for small business marketers,” if you will — and went on to explain why.

Laycock believes there are seven common rules. First, people must listen. They must learn to be romantic (using what already exists for their own benefit), and not expect sex on the first date (think patience and persistence). It’s also important to be yourself (look at how Blendtec embraced its identity), to make yourself available, to seek out the right match, and to value long-term relationships.

This is the heart of social media marketing — it’s not a sure way to conversions, but joining the conversation where your readers or buyers live is the first step to meeting them and their friends or followers.

It’s hard to track social media, it reaches people at their most comfortable, where they are intrinsically not seeking advertisements. So build trust, spring for a dinner and a movie — even a peck on the cheek (a retweet or unsolicited shout out) can mean a lot online.

The ad network Chitka did some research and found that more than anything, Twitter users want news.

A total of 28 percent of links leaving Twitter went to news stories.

So what can advertisers learn from this? Don’t just send out deals or coupons, make some announcements, tell your Twitter followers about something new and interesting you’re doing. They might repay the favor with a re-tweet and thus you’ve gone viral — at least a little bit — on Twitter.

Most every company is — and all should be — using social media but learning how to use it successfully can be really difficult. Should a company get someone to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day, or should they make contests and other engaging activities for customers — how should they spend their time and money?

No company is the same, but the researchers at ENGAGEMENTdb have compiled a report detailing how the big names successfully use social media to stay engaged. The report [PDF] details how the most engaged companies use social media to their advantage.

Starbucks is the current number one head honcho when it comes to social media engagement. So how do they do it?

First, it started with Starbucks’ desire to stay in contact with their customers, it might sound obvious, but the desire to engage an audience is crucial and it can’t be an afterthought or customers will figure out that the company really doesn’t care about what they are saying.

Alexandra Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy, at Starbucks told ENGAGEMENTdb about their social media philosophy.

“We live in the physical world with thousands of natural touch points, so when we laid out the vision for our social strategy, it felt like home for the brand. It’s about the relationships we form with our customers, not marketing,” Wheeler said.

Starbucks’ small — six people — social media team has beaten every other company with one simple mantra — stay in touch. Starbuck’s Twitter account is basically a mass of @replies to its 276,000 + followers and others. All it takes is a few filters and someone watching the Twitter account to make a real, valuable and intensely personal connection.

@Starbucks I need beans again. Any suggestions?
@bangengeman have you had Guatemala Antigua? It’s on my desk right now, and it’s delicious.

This extremely short correspondence is just a part of what makes Starbucks so successful, but this interaction can scale from a huge multinational company down to the local pizzeria. Take this interaction for example.

@johndoe I’m hungry, also broke
@localpizzaria Hey @johndoe I’ve got coupon for $3 off your order, call me up!

Instant engagement, @johndoe might not come down for the pizza today, but next time he’s thinking about food, he could well think of @localpizzaria.

Starbucks does a great job of cleaning up messes too, their logs are full of responses to people saying things like “the music is too loud at Starbucks.” To which Starbucks replied “tell the barista to turn it down or call us at 1-800-STARBUC.”

Their Facebook interaction is similar, but instead of the Twitter team replying, Starbucks can nearly let the fans take control and talk about how much they like the coffee. When it started its own corporate Facebook page, it went around asking each Starbucks group if it could take control — and most groups happily diverted their fandom to the Starbucks page. Starbucks makes bigger announcements on Facebook, including free pastry day, new items and the like — giving customers a reason to get off the Internet and go to the store.

Announcing deals, events and new menu items could bring people into that local pizzeria too.

Here is a sip of what Starbucks does on YouTube, again it engages customers and puts their new coffee in their mind through beautiful images on a very stripped-down commercial for the new bean.

That local pizzeria could take a hint from this, by putting up a quick video of a chef concoction or a new menu item. Maybe just ask some of the customers in the store what their favorite thing to eat is — anything to keep people thinking about the pizza and the pizzeria.

Starbucks also created a secondary site dedicated to customer and coffee fan ideas. Users can add their own idea or discuss ideas with others. But to vote, you need a Starbucks account, of course, then you’ll be getting promotions in the e-mail or snail mail too — adding another level of real interaction started via social media.

This option is available for most anyone, but for smaller businesses setting up a new site means investment, so they should makes sure people are going to respond to it, or it could just be a waste of time and money.

But getting stories from the delivery man could be a great way to engage the readers through creativity, the now defunct Streets of Pizza blog for example could serve as hilarious inspiration for a secondary viral site to carve out a warm spot in a pizza fan’s heart.

Starbucks says coordination and consistency is key to running a successful social media campaign. And that’s true, making a plan and keeping up to date with the non-stop social media flow is key. But it all boils down to engaging customers where they live and play.