Small businesses can now create their own hot destination!!

During the past several months I’ve been exploring Foursquare, the popular location based social network that incorporates gaming elements.  Foursquare encourages people to explore their neighborhoods and then rewards them for doing so.  Users share their locations with friends by soliciting a location based “check in” and whoever has the most “check-ins” at each venue becomes Mayor until someone else tops that number of check-ins and then they become Mayor.  Points are earned and badges are unlocked for various accomplishments from trying new places to revisiting old favorites to checking in at multiple venues the same day. As the points and badges add up our competitive nature kicks in.

Why have I been interested in Foursquare?

• Predictions for 2010 include the acceptance and popularity of Location – GPS aware applications
• I recently purchased a Motorola Droid
• I love social media, competition and playing games
• I am always looking for ways to help local small businesses

How can we apply the Foursquare location based data to help local restaurants, clubs and retail establishments ?

Here are five ideas that can create a hot destination by filling the seats in a restaurant, bring repeat business back in the doors, provide value to customers and reward those who continuously patronize the establishment.

1. Add your business to Foursquare and sign-up to offer specials.
   

   foursquare coupon

2. Promote your endorsement of Foursquare and your special offers

• print fliers and place on tables,  in the bar, entrance, bathrooms
• use signs and blackboards announcing daily specials and beverage discounts
• include foursquare in your traditional advertising

3. Integrate your Foursquare account with your Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts

• shout your special offers on twitter
• post pictures of the current mayor on your facebook page
• use facebook events and invite all your fans to a foursquare party
• organize a local tweetup and give a gift card each time the mayor changes during the event
• post videos about your foursquare activities on youtube and share on facebook and twitter

4. Sponsor a special Foursquare event

• celebrate the mayor
• create a special drink or dish
• offer specials or discount for those who check-in
• make announcements using public address

5. Partner with other venues to have a local event

• give away a large joint prize
• get a media sponsor (radio, tv, newspaper)
• create a contest using the foursquare points
• sell t-shirts with logos from each venue
• span over several weeks

Who’s following You?  Have you looked in the mirror lately?

What’s the fastest growing marketing tool for businesses today?   It’s Social Media, and did I mention it’s free? We call it BIZ2.0. It’s a new way of thinking and doing business. For simplicity let’s focus on three of the most popular business tools - LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

So you’re collecting Connections on LinkedIn, Friends on Facebook and Followers on Twitter.

• What’s your criteria for following back?
• Are you effectively building your network?

Chris Brogan, a well respected social media thought leader, wrote “You’re Doing it Wrong” openly discussing how we participate in social networks. Here are some of his comments:

• You follow too many people on Twitter.
• You don’t allow blog comments.
• You add people to LinkedIn that you don’t know very well.
• You have ads on your blog.
• You use partial RSS feeds.
• Your blog posts are too short (too long).
• You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
• You don’t follow people back.

Shawn Welch wrote a follow-up post suggesting that “Social media is not the place for instant celebrity…” and adding

“It’s tempting to join a network like Twitter and follow everyone under the sun because it’s easy and that feels like success. But even if you pick up 500 or 600 auto-follows or a few polite follow-backs, you’ll quickly find you’re not the success you think you are.”

Shawn states there are two key principles to social media:

Patience — slow growth wins over aggressive expansion

Build relationships along the way, interact and engage

What’s your strategy?

• Which tools are you using – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook?
• What is your strategy for building these networks?
• What are your criteria for accepting a Connection, Friend or Follower?

The Tools – Each tool has a different reach and target market – who uses it.

Reach:

• Facebook - 400 million people globally are active users -50% active users log on to Facebook in any given day and more than 35 million users update their status each day
• LinkedIn - 60 million professionals with high personal incomes
• Twitter -18. 1 million unique visitors in December 09- 579% growth from December 08

Who uses it?

• Facebook – 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base,  55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009.
• LinkedIn - In US 52 % are men and 48% are women; 38% make over $100k per year.
• Twitter – 70% are over 25; more females than males

BIZ2.0 Strategy
It’s clear that social media is impacting the business world as documented in Jeremiah Owyang’s Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009. Social media is re-defining and expanding relationships in the global business community.

The key to BIZ2.0 is the building of a strong and relevant network. In the traditional business world, networking is considered a very valuable marketing tool for sales, recruiting, exposure and building relationships. In a WEB 2.0 environment, BIZ2.0 is becoming a tool to build your personal brand, become a Thought Leader and generate targeted sales opportunities. This network represents you and reflects on the work that you do. In addition you now have opened your contacts to the business world.

Social media tools are new to most business people. For the most part they have not developed a strategy to build their valuable network. Many people just collect friends — as many, as fast as they can. They are called open networkers. There are no criteria. You are virtually accepted on a cold contact, based on their belief in open networking or referral from another follower. The more the merrier! The alternative is to step back and develop your personal BIZ2.0 strategy using your own social etiquette.