Have you ever bragged to your friends about how much you visit your local pizza restaurant, sports bar, or coffee shop? You’re always talking about how the owners of these places should give you a discount because you frequent their business so much, but unless you say Hello to them every time you’re there, they have no way of knowing how many times you’ve been there. Foursquare, a new location-based social networking web application, will help validate your bragging rights to your favorite watering hole or pizza joint. Foursquare is going to change the way we think about social media and how small businesses use it to market their products and services. It’s social networking with a gaming element to it. It allows you to “check-in” to virtually any business around town, and you are awarded arbitrary points for checking in. Once you’re the first person to check-in at a particular place, you become the “mayor” of that establishment. Your mayorship can be dethroned if someone else checks in more than you in the future. There’s also badges that you can unlock for completing certain tasks. I know, it sounds a little weird, but it’s very fun, and it brings out the friendly competitive nature in all of us.

Here’s how it works:

1. Visit their website and download one of their smart phone apps. They have one for the iPhone, Android phones, and Blackberries.
2. Sign up for a free account and build your profile.
3. Choose a hub city. Which ever big city you are closest to, pick that city as your home city.
4. Next time you are at a restaurant, bar, retail store, or any other small business, pull out your phone, open up the App, and check to see if the place you’re at is already in foursquare’s database. If they are, simply hit the “check-in” button and you’ll notify foursquare friends where you are and foursquare will award you points for checking in. If the place isn’t in their database, then Google Map their address and enter the information into foursquare so others can check in without searching for it in the future. Foursquare awards 5 points for adding new venues.

How Small Businesses Can Use Foursquare

Every small business wants to build a core base of customers that keep coming back to their store or restaurant over and over again. Once you’ve built a loyal customer base, your business will start to grow from word-of-mouth marketing and personal referrals. Like Facebook and Twitter, foursquare uses the power of sharing to connect people and businesses. Businesses can post incentives on their foursquare page such as:

• One free beer for the Mayor of John’s Pub
• Free side item every time you check-in at Joe’s Pizza
• Free shampoo after your 3rd check-in at Mary’s Salon

The possibilities are endless, but the incentive should never be too good so that customers don’t try to abuse the system. I like really like the idea of getting something only when you show someone that works at the venue that you are checking in. Then, there’s no way they could have cheated the system to gain the incentive. We do internet marketing in Orlando, Los Angeles, and West Palm Beach right now, and all of those cities already have great presences on foursquare. I’ve already seen the huge growth of foursquare in Orlando, and it’s pretty fun to see how I stack up against other foursquare users.  Foursquare can build brand awareness for your business, make customers more loyal to your business, and give them another reason to give referrals to their friends and family about your business.

Foursquare for Social Media Marketing Professionals

It’s a great concept and a great resource, so as internet marketing professionals, we should be integrating social networking applications like this in our overall strategies for small businesses. Facebook and Twitter promotions work, but they don’t provide an incentive for customers to come back after their first visit. Foursquare does this, and brand loyalty is huge for small business owners.

If you’d like to talk to us about starting a social media marketing campaign for your small business, please contact us or call 352-871-0794.

Related posts:

1. Why Social Media Marketing Works Best For Small Business
2. What Social Media Marketing Really Is
3. Use Social Networks To Make Customer Service More Efficient