A New Way to Use Foursquare
With every passing day the location based social media phenomenon known as Foursquare is teaming up with big brands, corporations and events.
The most recent addition to their partnership list, which includes MTV, New York Times and Bravo, is C-SPAN.
You can head over to Mashable to see exactly how Foursquare has created campaigns specific to the mentioned companies.
With the way location based social media is growing (Facebook just announced it will soon begin to dabble with location features) I am constantly thinking of new ways individuals and companies can get a piece of the action.
I've heard lots of people claiming Foursquare is useless for their business because they are a service company that travels to customers instead of customers coming to them.
Seeing as how I have a secret crush on Foursquare I took each of these exclamations personally and vowed to prove this theory wrong.
After much meditation and reflection the revelation finally came as I was driving down a busy Boise road.
I glanced over to see a van belonging to a well known catering service.
I thought to myself 'how could this catering business use Foursquare when all their business is done at different locations throughout the valley?' Thinking outside the box What if the catering service used Foursquare backwards? As they attended events and venues they would check-in and ask that the venue owners or event coordinators re-tweet their check-in.
In return the caterers would offer discounts on their current or following event.
Example I came up with in 60 seconds Craig's Catering is hired to cater a company party for a local Ford dealership.
When Craig's team arrives at the party he checks in using Foursquare and his Twitter status would say something like "Craigs Catering is at Richmond Ford.
" In turn Richmond Ford would ReTweet Craig's message, perhaps adding how great the food and service was.
Here is where things get really exciting for Craig! Instead of doing the typical thing and asking Richmond Ford to mention his services to a few friends Craig has asked the Ford dealership to let all their Twitter followers know how great his catering services are.
First of all re-tweeting a message is about as easy as breathing so the dealership should have no problems there and second think of the eyeballs and attention Craig's Catering will get if Richmond Ford has 10,000 followers? That's called word of mouth on steroids!! Take it one step further and imagine what would happen if Craig used this strategy with all his social savvy clients...
yeah just keep imagining that for a while.
I'm convinced that when something like Foursquare comes along and is booming you've got to explore every avenue possible to make it work for you.
Of course there are circumstances where it's not a good fit but coming to that conclusion is time well spent, and I would say that is true with all the social networks.
The most recent addition to their partnership list, which includes MTV, New York Times and Bravo, is C-SPAN.
You can head over to Mashable to see exactly how Foursquare has created campaigns specific to the mentioned companies.
With the way location based social media is growing (Facebook just announced it will soon begin to dabble with location features) I am constantly thinking of new ways individuals and companies can get a piece of the action.
I've heard lots of people claiming Foursquare is useless for their business because they are a service company that travels to customers instead of customers coming to them.
Seeing as how I have a secret crush on Foursquare I took each of these exclamations personally and vowed to prove this theory wrong.
After much meditation and reflection the revelation finally came as I was driving down a busy Boise road.
I glanced over to see a van belonging to a well known catering service.
I thought to myself 'how could this catering business use Foursquare when all their business is done at different locations throughout the valley?' Thinking outside the box What if the catering service used Foursquare backwards? As they attended events and venues they would check-in and ask that the venue owners or event coordinators re-tweet their check-in.
In return the caterers would offer discounts on their current or following event.
Example I came up with in 60 seconds Craig's Catering is hired to cater a company party for a local Ford dealership.
When Craig's team arrives at the party he checks in using Foursquare and his Twitter status would say something like "Craigs Catering is at Richmond Ford.
" In turn Richmond Ford would ReTweet Craig's message, perhaps adding how great the food and service was.
Here is where things get really exciting for Craig! Instead of doing the typical thing and asking Richmond Ford to mention his services to a few friends Craig has asked the Ford dealership to let all their Twitter followers know how great his catering services are.
First of all re-tweeting a message is about as easy as breathing so the dealership should have no problems there and second think of the eyeballs and attention Craig's Catering will get if Richmond Ford has 10,000 followers? That's called word of mouth on steroids!! Take it one step further and imagine what would happen if Craig used this strategy with all his social savvy clients...
yeah just keep imagining that for a while.
I'm convinced that when something like Foursquare comes along and is booming you've got to explore every avenue possible to make it work for you.
Of course there are circumstances where it's not a good fit but coming to that conclusion is time well spent, and I would say that is true with all the social networks.
Source...