Five Reasons To Start Paying Attention to Foursquare

Like Facebook and Twitter before it, Foursquare is the newest social media tool riding a wave of buzz these days.

Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown are part of the growing trend of location-based mobile applications.

Generally speaking, these services work by allowing you to "check in" on your smart phone wherever you go -- information that is then shared with your circle of friends.

The idea is that when you see others are doing and they see what you're doing, you'll be more likely to meet up and explore new places in your city. The apps also allow user to earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people.

It's fun -- and growing. Foursquare now tops 1.2 million people who have "checked in" 40 million times. But why should businesses be paying attention to these services? Here are a few reasons.

1. They create free advertising opportunities to people already in your area


At its most basic, Foursquare is really all about businesses in your area. Where are you going to eat, drink or shop? Where are your friends going? This creates huge opportunities for businesses to increase their reach.
Nashville-based Tasti-D-Lite was a Foursquare early adopter. When you are near their West End Ave. location and log in to Foursquare, the app alerts you to deals like the one at left. What a simple, great way to spread the word!

2. They're catching on with big brands...
It's hard to ignore a trend that every major company from Starbucks to Domino's to the Wall Street Journal to Bravo is embracing. These brands and many more are buying into the geolocation craze early, siting the possibilities for content marketing, brand loyalty and more.

3. ...but smaller businesses have their own advantages
In my Nashville neighborhood, I'm more likely to hang out at a local restaurant than a chain like Starbucks. For people like me, Foursquare is a welcome reminder of all the sometimes-overlooked eateries and shops that don't have the big advertising budgets to catch my attention on a daily basis. Wherever I go, I can search Foursquare for unique, off-the-beaten-path places, even checking for tips left by others who've been there before.

4. They allow customers to advertise their loyalty
Pretty much all these applications build in rewards for loyal customers. In Foursquare, competition is often fierce among users to become the "Mayor" of a venue--a feat achieved by checking in at a place more often than anyone else using the service. As the service becomes more well-known, more businesses are catching on and providing perks to Mayors and other frequent visitors, thus generating more good word-of-mouth for the small price of a free soft drink or dessert. It's the online equivalent of a loyalty card, with added cache.

5. They turn users into viral marketers for the places they like


Not only do location-based applications provide a platform for businesses to market to customers, they also turn users into influential voices for the places they discover or frequent. Foursquare features include tips and "to-do" lists any user can create, which serve to champion local businesses.
Foursquare is also open to partnering with entities to create complete city tours with their own specialty badges--something the city of Chicago spearheaded and a model that's now being followed by other cities and states.


To learn more
To get started learning more, a good first step is to simply go to Foursquare and find out if your business is listed and what customers are saying there.
When you're ready to go further, here's a great primer on using Foursquare to promote a business.

UPDATE: The blog Brand Builder just posted a great, comprehensive guide to Foursquare for businesses.

Asheville Filmmaker Plans Social-Media Themed Comedy in Her Hometown

Last Sunday, I caught about 20 minutes of You've Got Mail and giggled when I saw Meg Ryan waiting for her dial-up modem to connect to the Internet so she could log her into AOL account, so she then could see whether Tom Hanks had sent her another message.

Remember the sound of dial-up?

Then I wondered, "When are we going to have a new wave of blockbusters that correspond to our newer forms of social networking, featuring things like Tweetups, not-so-chance-meetings because of Foursquare, or perhaps something along the lines of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist but with a blip.fm twist?"

Film production companies have been marketing movies on MySpace and Facebook for a while, and many A-list celebrities have been shouting from their laptops into the Twitterverse almost as long. However, I'm surprised that we've not seen any big productions – yet – that heavily interweave everyday social media channels into the plot, other than the Facebook movie, The Social Network, that is supposed to be released in October.

I'll follow that statement with a disclaimer: I don't go to movies much, so it's likely I may have missed something. Along the same line, I have terrible cable channel options, as I haven't had enough room in my heart for cable ever since MTV made a marked shift away from actually playing music.

Remember the first video on MTV, The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star?

So maybe the Facebook movie will be the first, but I also saw a tweet this morning that interests me even more than Justin Timberlake playing the role of Facebook Founding President Sean Parker. According to @AskAsheville via @GSocialMedia not only is another film of this type on its way, but it will also be marketed largely through social media channels, and it will be filmed in one of JCI's communities, Asheville, N.C., for which we produce Asheville Travel Guide, Asheville magazine, imagesasheville.com and feature on Livability.com.

The movie is being created by Asheville filmmaker, writer and comedienne Angela Shelton, a name you may know from the 1999 film Tumbleweeds, which she co-wrote (it has an awesome soundtrack, by the way). More recently, Shelton has gained a higher profile through her documentary and book by the same name, Searching for Angela Shelton, for which she drove around the country, seeking out all of the other Angela Sheltons she could find. She thought this concept would yield mostly funny stories, but through her interviews she also discovered that most of them shared something else with her besides a name: Seventy percent of these women had also been abused at some point in their lives.

As friends and supporters promoted the film and book via Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, Shelton saw the power of social media. That power, combined with her desire to switch gears to focus more on her comedic skills, inspired this new movie, a romantic comedy titled Online Dating for Food. Yes, there already is an OnlineDatingForFood facebook page for the film, but here's another disclaimer: Be aware that if you "like" it, people may just think you're into the act of online dating for food and not the film. I'm not making any judgment one way or the other on online dating, you just may not want to advertise that you're doing it for food. That could ruin your whole plan!

A movie involving food in Asheville makes perfect sense, of course. Shelton knows her hometown of Foodtopia. The social media aspects will make it only more interesting.

Will it be as big as You've Got Mail or The Social Network? That remains to be seen, but stay tuned to your favorite social media channels to watch it develop.

In the meantime, you can learn more about Angela Shelton and her latest project at Angela Shelton's website, and here is the link to the interview with @AskAsheville about Online Dating for Food and why she's hoping to do this film (and two others) in Asheville.

Social Media As News: Following the Nashville Flood

Here in Nashville we have been glued to the coverage of the devastating flood that struck our community this past weekend. But keeping abreast of breaking news no longer means tuning into your local news channel. Sure, that's part of it, and I praise our Nashville meteorologists and news sources for excellent reporting keeping us up to date. But some of the most relevant flood information I found during this disaster came from social media outlets, both traditional and new media sources.

Twitter
Back in January, Nashville had its first major snowstorm in years, which became known on Twitter as the hashtag #thesituation2010. As the rain poured down on Saturday, someone jokingly tweeted this should be known as #OtherSituation2010. And the name stuck. On Monday, some of the Nashville twitterati pointed out that using such a vague descriptor probably contributed to a lack of national coverage. (Though personally, I did have a laugh over #thesaturation2010.)

Using an application such as TweetDeck, it's easy to create a new column using a hashtag and follow along on your desktop computer or your smartphone. I've used these two columns to follow up-to-the-minute information on everything from tornado warnings and flood reports to details on how to help flood relief efforts and water conservation tips.

Think of Twitter as a news distribution source – a way to get people from one place to another. Many people used Twitter to share links to photos and videos of the devastation. One local business even used Twitter to show the damage it received.

Due to SEVERE flooding, Bates Nursery will be CLOSED until May 6, 2010...cleanup underway... http://twitpic.com/1khf6e

No matter how small, businesses can easily use Twitter to distribute their news, whether needing to tell customers that you're closed in a situation beyond your control – or, on the brighter side of things, using it to advertise discounts, sales and giveaways. In fact, it's often Twitter or Facebook that businesses use during situations such as this – it's faster, simpler and sometimes even has more reach than posting the same content on their website.

Facebook
Just as tweets about the Nashville flood were trickling in, my Facebook news feed was predominantly photos of my Tennessee friends' roads and yards that had become rivers and lakes. People used their phones to upload photos straight to Facebook even when they didn't have electricity:

When we all thought this was just a one-day thing, someone created this Facebook Page. This quickly became my go-to source for photos of the flood as it was happening.

Facebook also became a way for Tennesseans, both those out of town for the weekend and those who now live elsewhere, to stay updated on what was happening. And Facebook also helped those of us here reach out to our friends in other states and countries, who at first (given the other news of the weekend) had no idea of the severity of the flood.

YouTube
YouTube is the second-largest search engine, and video often speaks louder than words – and spreads virally to other social networks. A video of a classroom disintegrating on Interstate 24 first appeared on a local news station. I searched for it on YouTube to show some out-of-town family members – and I wasn't the only one. Soon, it showed up on my Facebook news feed multiple times, and I-24 became a trending topic on Twitter.

On Monday, the social media news site Mashable posted a video in a post titled "Tennessee Flooding Inspires Stunning YouTube Video." This – "Flooding Inspires" – soon became a trending topic because Mashable has such a wide reach, one post on their site spreads instantaneously.

As they say:

You don’t see YouTube videos like this very often, and as one commenter put it: “This video so captured the heart of this story… if it doesn’t move someone, they should check their pulse.” While most on-the-ground videos covering disasters and other world events are hurried and low-quality, this one is beautiful and professional-looking.

Blogs
The Nashville blogging community combined all of these social media resources to spread the word quickly and efficiently. They compiled news sources, shelter information, ways to help flood victims, videos, photos and more. They used their large followings to help prevent misinformation. They even blogged about each other's blogs – showing not just each other but Nashville, Tennessee and beyond just how social media spreads news – and the sense of community.

All of these are great examples of social media as news at work, even during an unfathomable disaster. Did you turn to social media during this or another major news event? What sources did you find most helpful?