You may heard your family and friends mention that they have “checked in” to earn “badges” or even become “mayor” of certain retail locations in your town. Huh? You may have even wondered what this talk is all about.
These are three common terms among the users of foursquare (yes, with a lowercase “f”), a social, location-based service application for your smartphone.
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What is foursquare?
Foursquare began when co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai met in 2007 while working in the same office space in New York City for different companies. Working from Dennis’ kitchen table, they began building the first version of foursquare in fall 2008, launching it in March 2009. “We started foursquare so 50 of our friends could follow each other around New York City,” says Crowley.
Today, the users of foursquare number over 20 million people worldwide. They log in, or “check in,” to the site over 3 million times a day to connect with over 750,000 businesses who are on foursquare’s Merchant Platform.
How foursquare works
When foursquare users are out on the town, they will access their smartphones and foursquare to see where their friends are or to discover new places to visit. Foursquare will recommend things to do or places to shop based on where users have already been or on the advice of their friends. Foursquare users can check in by tapping the venue or place name on their phone. They can also choose to let friends know where they are and what they are doing.
When they check in, users get points and they can compete with their friends. They can earn virtual “badges” for their loyalty. And the person who checks in at a particular location the most in a given period of time is declared the “mayor” of that location.
Why foursquare matters
“As a local business, you better know about it, how it works, why it works, and most important, how to make it work for you,” advises Carmine Gallo, author of The Power of foursquare.
“This combination of friend-finder, city guide, and game mechanics creates a highly addictive platform that encourages users to return again and again. It sounds simple, and it is. It’s also ‘insanely addictive’ for many people and very powerful.
Here is the truly compelling part, especially for businesses: foursquare turns social networking into a game with its badges and mayorships. This might sound silly to you – it did to me until I was ‘outsted’ as the mayor of my local coffee shop. Mayors will visit an establishment even more frequently to regain their title. That’s powerful!
35,000 new users are joining the platform each day, more than one million each month. These users are waiting for you to engage with them.”
Since smartphones now outsell personal computers, the phone will play an ever-increasing role in our lives.
“Over the next couple of years, the adoption of smartphones is anticipated to grow more than 50 percent, resulting in dramatic increases of location-based services usage,” says Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider, authors of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies. “As a result of the rich data, engagement, and loyalty that location-based services facilitate, more and more businesses are adopting these technologies.”
Small businesses no longer have the luxury of not knowing who their customers are.
“Social location sharing allows customers to not only take part in a social game but to be rewarded for doing so,” says Simon Salt, author of Social Location Marketing. “Businesses need to start realizing the benefit of knowing that they have regular customers and believing that it really is easier – or at least less expensive – to keep a customer than to obtain a new one. Small businesses . . . realize that the closer they make the customer feel, the better the chances are the customer will return. Knowing when their customers are at one of their locations, knowing which of their customers are regulars, and which are first timers are all extremely valuable to any small business.”
Why claim your business’s location on foursquare?
Three reasons why your shoe store should participate on foursquare:
* Reward your best customers
* Offer valuable tips, insights and information to keep existing customers and attract new ones
* Get free access to data and real-time statistics about your customers that you have never be able to see before
To learn how your business can start to reap the rewards of participation on foursquare, click here.