July 6, 2010
Social media
Location³
Originally published in NZ Marketing March-April 2010, page 97
Social media has reaffirmed the old chestnut that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. But now there’s a new factor in the ever-changing social media equation: where you are.
Location-based social networking is the latest in a long line of New Things to attract the attention of geeks and marketers. And if you thought Twitter was a strange name, meet Gowalla.
Gowalla is just one of many similar location-based offerings connecting people through their mobile devices. And the most talked-about is Foursquare, a relatively new enterprise that Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has invested in.
Here’s how it works: I sign up for an account on Foursquare.com and install the Foursquare application on my iPhone. Then, if I have a meeting at, for example, Esquires Cafe, I ‘check in’ at that Foursquare location using the iPhone application.
Two things happen: first, my friends (other people who have connected to me) receive a notification that I’ve checked in. They may get this on their iPhone, or I can choose to share the check-in through Twitter or Facebook.
Second, points are awarded each time I check in and the person with the most points at any location becomes the mayor (anyone can create a new place, so it’s little wonder that one enterprising user created ‘Auckland City’ and promptly took the mayoral honours).
This shift to location-based social networks will definitely affect marketing, particularly retail, and it’s a continuation of the trend that Twitter started: two-way, out-of-control dialogue. It also highlights where a company’s brand really comes from—the people and the experience—and turns your happiest customers into your most powerful exponents.
This shift to location-based social networks will definitely affect marketing, particularly retail, and it’s a continuation of the trend that Twitter started: two-way, out-of-control dialogue
And it’s nothing new: customer-driven dialogue has been amplified by technology for nearly 20 years. I recall attending a mobile commerce conference in 2001, but back then we were talking theoretically about how we could market to ‘them’, the customers, out there. Now we’re hearing what people are saying about us to their friends.
Of course, some marketers are aware of the potential: Giapo Gelato’s owner Gianpaolo Grazioli checks in to his own store on Foursquare and mentions specials, including a free waffle cone for the Giapo ‘mayor’. It’s a simple, powerful way to bolster customer loyalty that is already very strong.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, a restaurant called The Pit uses Twitter and Foursquare as a kind of CRM system, getting to know its most wired customers and even tweeting them a reminder message when they don’t show up for their regular lunch.
So how can this be used strategically? It’s a question that is easier to answer if you jump in as an individual. Try out Foursquare or Gowalla for yourself, add a few regular haunts that you’re comfortable sharing with the world, connect to some friends and explore.
However, if you want to be strategic, don’t just dump your business into it. Do this as a personal experiment. And yes, it’s part of your job. All marketers must be innovators and innovation requires a bit of playing around from time to time.
Foursquare is also offering paid advertising, which offers deeper data around customer behaviour, and allows retailers and marketers to tailor their offers. But it’s still very early days, both as an advertising platform and in its use in New Zealand.
Just as Twitter had many competitors when it first started, so too does Foursquare. There’s the aforementioned Gowalla, which has the ability to ‘drop’ virtual items at a location and pick up other people’s dropped items. There’s also Loopt (which takes even more of a game-playing approach) and Brightkite, which simply lets users connect, in the real-world, to those in the same area.
If I were a gambling man, I’d bet that Foursquare will turn out to be the outlet that survives because it was the first to capture people’s imagination and provide a good enough service to keep going. But you may need to keep watching this fast-moving space.