Location Based Services: So Shiny and New, But How Does Your Organization Use It?

Posted by on Aug 4, 2010 in Social Media | 0 comments

foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Pegshot, Brightkite – LBS overload – oh my! I’m likely missing a boatload of LBS services currently available on the market, but you get the picture that there are a lot. If you haven’t been on some remote island or on a Carnival Cruise for the past six or so months, you are likely aware that LBS or Location Based Service is a sizzling hot topic. Even my mother is talking LBS (Oh geez…first Facebook, now foursquare!). 

While there are dozens of LBS’ out there, one in paricular that has dominated the market is foursquare. With two million members and 15,000 new members joining daily, it has quickly become the new pretty girl at the party that everyone wants to be friends with. 

According to Wikipedia, Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for “checking in” at venues. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook or both. Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency or for other patterns such as time of check-in.    

If users check into venues multiple times over the course of several months, they are reigned the “mayor” of that venue. I have become the mayor of several venues including Bikram Yoga Studio, Red Hook Brewery, and Boloco in Concord, NH.    

While the majority of venues don’t even know what foursquare is and that they have their own mayor, there are those few businesses, the early adopters, that are jumping on the foursquare/LBS bandwagon and taking advantage of how they can incorporate this new technology into their marketing mix. Boloco is one of those businesses that is testing the waters with foursquare to figure out how they can use it. For the mayors of their individual locations, they receive a discount on each order. This is a great way to build loyalty among their most passionate barritoistas (yes, I just made that word up).    

It certainly works for me, but I recently lost my mayorship to another yahoo and working hard to get it back!   

So, many of you might be saying to yourself…yeah so what does this mean for my business? And even if I did care, how do I begin to leverage foursquare and other LBS platforms within my organization? If this is the case, then I encourage you to tune into the next Awareness, Inc. webinar on 8/11 “Foursquare for the enterprise, a brave new world” with Jason Keath, founder of Social Fresh, a social media education company. Some key takeaways which Jason will discuss during the webinar include:  

  • Asking the right questions before using foursquare for business
  • Experimenting with foursquare as a user first
  • Listening to customers through foursquare
  • The basic marketing pieces of foursquare (tips, specials, badges)
  • Extending offline community through foursquare
  • Integrating foursquare marketing
  • How to train for foursquare
  • Promotion of foursquare marketing

 Hope you can join us. To register for the live event (which will be recorded and available on demand later) click here.