Location Based Marketing

Foursquare and Your Small Business – A Quick View on Advertising your Brand

Written August 15th, 2011 by

So far we have talked about the basics of Foursquare use and the new features for businesses. What I would like to go into today is your Business Page on Foursquare.

For over a year businesses would fill out an application, supply graphics and then wait for Foursquare to approve their application. Once the application was approved, Foursquare would create the page rather than the business.
This process could take weeks and even months of back and forth communication before completion. With varying results in the last year they have helped over 3000 businesses by building pages for them on Foursquare. Originally this feature was first only offered to companies like Intel, MTV, the New York Times, Tiffany & Co. and NASA to name a few. This summer, however, the decision was made to open it up to all small businesses. What we are going to focus on today is a 25,000 foot view of business pages and how they can help your business succeed.

Creating Your Page

Firstly, creating a business page takes less time than it does to brew a pot of coffee. (Seriously) The directions are quick and easy to follow. To create your own Foursquare page, you will need the following:

  1. A Foursquare user account – if you don’t have one, you can sign up here.
  2. You need to agree to the terms of Service
  3. A twitter account for your business. Your new page’s link will be Foursquare.com/twitter_name

Once you have these you can go here to create your own page by following their directions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Local Businesses Can Find Great Opportunities in Location Based Marketing

Written August 5th, 2011 by

*This is a partial reprint of Liana Li Evans’ article from ClickZ

Mobile Marketing StrategyWith the exponential growth of Foursquare over the past year, there’s a reason why Facebook is rushing to capitalize on the mobile advertising with its own geo-social networking feature, “Places.” The opportunity is great for small businesses if they can harness interested Facebook users utilizing these types of services. They already see it with Foursquare’s user base, as people post to their profiles from the Foursquare smartphone apps.

However, that being said, geo-social networks are still not the mainstream social communities that Twitter and Facebook are. These geo-social networking communities rely heavily on smartphone adoption to allow the community member to get the best value out of the community. Many times I’ve walked into a local store, logged in, became the mayor, and told the owner, and guess what, they had no idea what I was talking about.

These geo-social networks provide a great opportunity for small businesses to find and engage with their most loyal customers and smart small business owners would be wise to adopt some kind of engagement strategy for utilizing these networks and their users. Most likely, these loyal users of applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, or Yelp have some affinity to the place they are logging into and if they are a mayor or they are uploading digital media along with their check-ins, you might even have found an evangelist for your local business.

Read the rest of this entry »

Understanding Foursquare’s Enhanced Specials & Deals

Written July 20th, 2011 by

Foursquare Logo & BadgesOne of the more resourceful things about social media is the ease it which to get the information we need as quickly as possible. Facebook really kick started a trend that had been laboring under the days of MySpace.  Now Twitter, Foursquare and Google+ continue the trend, taking Location Based Marketing to a whole new level. In an earlier article this year I talked about the basics of Foursquare and it’s practical uses for businesses both large and small. Since then however we have seen a few changes come to Foursquare and I’d like to take a brief time to go over them.

As mentioned previously, Foursquare has three basic functions. The first and the most popular is a location based mobile application. You check in at a location and let people know where you are.  These checkins can be posted to Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn.  In recent months this type of reporting has caused quite an uproar, with websites like “Please Rob Me” which scour the public Twitter feed for Foursquare check-ins and posting them, thus pointing out that thieves could use the information to know when you were not at home. With any technology there will be always be issues and that is as much as we will say on the matter.

The second is the fictional race to be Mayor of as many locations as possible.  This one is rather self explanatory, check in more to a location than anyone else consistently within a certain time frame and you can be Mayor of your local bar, restaurant, library, airport, etc. For some people this even supersedes telling your friends where you are, for others it’s about the perks the establishment may offer its Mayors.

Foursquare’s Enhanced Deals & Specials

It is the last function that I wish to focus on today however. The specials. In the past these specials were offered by the individual location. Things like a bottle of wine with your third check-in or 5% off you meal with your first check-in. In late June, after reaching 10 million users however Foursquare decided to up the ante a bit with a few new changes to the specials format.  Read the rest of this entry »

Promoting Your Blog: Not Too Late to Start Over

Written May 23rd, 2011 by

Over the average course of a person’s life he or she will reinvent themselves a few times; usually in High School, then College and again a few more times in the real world. We’ve all done it as individuals, but what happens when in comes to your company’s marketing strategy?  Are your present strategies working out for you?  Are you feeling stuck in a rut?

For the most part a good promotion strategy or ad campaign could last forever, but as the times change so should your thinking and planning. Granted,  there are those campaigns out there that are timeless gems. Nike’s “Just Do It” is a slogan that has lasted for over 20 years and doesn’t seem to be losing steam anytime soon. In fact, their competitors are finding that they need to keep changing their slogans just to keep up.

This simple slogan. Still going strong.

Currently, the phrase “Just Do It” is so synonymous with Nike that really at the end of the silent, visual ad,  all they say sometimes is “Just Do It” and you find yourself amazed that they did it again. In February we talked about the Super Bowl ads, what worked, what didn’t and why. One of the greatest strengths a company or even a blog should have is to know when it’s material is getting stagnant. For the purpose of this post we are going to focus on blogs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Free Marketing Resources

Categories

© 2011 - Da Li Integrated Social Media Marketing, LLC
Scroll to Top