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Wow, Yelp, FourSquare, Gowalla and now Facebook gets involved in location-based services (lbs).
I don’t like it and do not think that I will use it (outside of my initial test). Why you ask? Well here goes.
I am a member of numerous Social Networks for a reason. Facebook for my friends and to keep in touch with others acquaintances, LinkedIn for my professional relationships, Twitter to keep up with industry information…the list goes on. Now there may be overlap between my friends, my co-workers and my business friends among these channels, but in general, there are distinct reasons why I keep them separate.
FourSquare is my tightest network, meaning that I do not friend people who I do not know, or have never met. I have only “friended” 57 people. While I have 600 “friends” on Facebook, some that I have not seen since grammar school/high school, I do not see the need to allow them to see my each and every move. I have ignored requests from people who I am connected with on Facebook and on LinkedIn when they request to be friends on FourSquare.
I really wonder what the adoption rate will be on Facebook. Now if I could put specific people within my Facebook Network into a group, and only share my “Place” with those people………What do you think, Will you use Facebook Places? Which way will you go?
Ok, I had to share this. I tweeted a couple of times over the last week referring to this story, but wanted to go into more depth here.
Twitter is a great tool for people and businesses; I think that everyone will agree with that. It is also a great tool for local businesses, if used effectively, and I wanted to share this story with you.
Early last week I was traveling to Calgary, Canada from Boston via Dallas,( please don’t ask, it’s a long story). While in flight from Dallas to Calgary American Airlines offered Gogo in-flight wireless internet service so I decided to pay the $10 to have it for the 3+ hour flight. For those of you that have not traveled with internet access on your flight, I compare it to JetBlue and having TV at your seat, yes, it is that good and I don’t know how I could have ever lived without either, anyway…..
On my way North, while traveling over Yellowstone I sent the following tweets:
What was really cool was that within a half hour, the account @Morningglorycof replied to my tweet:
I replied with “ I wish that they delivered” with a smile and then that was that, or so I thought.
Or Friday, I ran across this tweet:
It was really nice of them to do this, as I have never met this person and we had only exchanged a handful of tweets. I also decided to follow them back just in case I was ever in Montana. But the story does not end there.
On Friday we had friends that were going to Canobie Lake Park up here in Salem NH. It is basically 6 Flags (www.sixflags.com), but on a much smaller scale (maybe 10% of 6 Flags). Anyway, we let our kids go during the day with our friends and met then at 5:30. Upon arrival at Canobie, I checked in on FourSquare and posted it to my Twitter account. Within a few minutes I received this tweet:
Is that a small world or what? Talk about chance encounters. I am sure that they also had a flood of memories outside of the one that they posted.
So with this post I wanted to bring about your Twitter stories. What are the “chance encounters” that you have heard of or actually been a part of? Please share.
When I heard about Four Square day last week, on 4/16, I got a little excited. I had thought that it was a great idea. I found that one of the cities around me (Manchester, NH) was participating in the day. I looked at the local sponsors and tried to figure out how I could participate, given the fact that they were “passing out” a special badge to those who participated, I could not pass that up.
After looking at the Four Square day website I noticed that there were not many locations participating. I then went to the Facebook Manchester page and noticed that there were other places that were participating that were not advertised on the Four Square official page. Hmmmm, why not? Was this because Four Square did not promote this that heavily? Was it because the agency that was running the Facebook page did not upload the events into the Four Square Day page?
I am sure that the event was a success and got the word about to local businesses that were either unknowing of Four Square or unsure of what the benefits would be.
The promotion in my eyes seemed rushed. There did not seem to be much promotion over the event in general, a centralized location to find businesses that were participating, or a straightforward way to participate, from a business or end user standpoint. Maybe I am being a little harsh, but, as many others I really see the benefits that this application/tool has for local businesses.
For those of you who participated, what are your thoughts? Did you find it easy, or do you think that it could have been organized better?
ps. For some reason when I logged into the location in the area that was sponsoring, I did not receive the badge. I am not bitter by any means, am unsure why I did not get it, but still think that it could have been better organized.In the current state of the economy, it is no longer about simply reaching out to your audience and hoping that they purchase your product – keeping your fingers crossed that they will become a “fan” of you. It is now about creating, building and extending relationships with your audience. Whether they are direct consumers, partners or employees – it does not make a difference. Your company is at the center of all of these relationships. Businesses need to understand the importance of these relationships and how the “little things” can make a big difference.
Note: I am married and have always been told that it is the little things that make a big difference, and I am also still trying to grasp this concept
Case-in-point – FourSquare
from the nydailynews.com
If you are not familiar with FourSquare, it is a location-based application for your phone where you can “log-in” to places that you visit. You can “friend” other people and you can also gain badges for certain activities – visiting and logging in to 5 different Starbucks for example will get you a Starbucks badge – but more on that later. You can also become what they call the “Mayor” of these locations, meaning that you have visited that specific area and have logged in more than anyone else. There is definitely a gaming component to FourSquare as you can try to gather as many badges as possible, and take the Mayor-ship from others who you may, or may not, know – which makes it a lot of fun.
Now there are other things to think about when leveraging Foursquare, including who you friend and where you post your status updates, but that is not what this post is about, it is about how a Business can create, build and extend the relationships with its audience and embrace new ways to communicate.
When I got into work today, I opened Twitter up to see what was going on. After about 10 minutes, I saw this post from a former colleague, good friend, and Social Media (I hate to say this but insert a descriptive here – guru, all-star, rock-star, evangelist……) Aaron Strout (@aaronstrout ):
local @Starbucks celebrated wife, @MelanieStrout’s @FourSquare mayorship w/ this sign & free gift bag. Nice! http://tweetphoto.com/17496680
Welcome to Starbucks Mayor Melanie
Now can you imagine walking into your local Starbucks, and seeing that sign? Also, it was one thing for them to create the sign and to have their employees sign the banner, but it was another thing to put together a Gift Bag for her – likely related to her favorite drink, like one of those insulated plastic cups that they have (just a guess here).
I think that they key thing to think about is that this type of public recognition does not have to take part on a platform or technology like FourSquare – but it does need to happen in some way, shape or form to your customers, partners and employees in order to survive in this ever changing evolution of Social engagement. This is also another way to take online interactions and take them off-line, in the real world.
By the way, added benefits of their gesture – a Twitter post that easily reached tens of thousands of people instantly, and also encouraged this blog post.
Starbucks is a great example of a business that is embracing Social Media, between their FourSquare presence/partnership and the My Starbucks Idea that they have launched and continue to monitor, they are building their relationships and creating customers for life.
Have you seen other examples of this, and if you have, how has it changed your perception?
Social Media Strategy, Moderation & Management Musings 
