Foursquare – the game that has everyone all a twitter

Adaline Lau, reporter at Marketing Interaactive Magazine, examines the potential benefits of FourSquare as a business tool. See whether you agree with the experts' opinion:

Foursquare – the game that has everyone all a twitter
If you are at an industry party filled with digital gurus, but not sure how to break the ice, try this one liner: "Will you be my stalker? I mean foursquare friend!"

A recent Mindshare report exploring the foursquare phenomenon, predicted that if 2009 was the year of Twitter, 2010 may be the year of foursquare.

In January this year, foursquare went global, introducing the ability to add places and check in from anywhere in the world.

Tech blogger Scobleizer, says foursquare has some 300,000 users, while its rival Gowalla has more than 100,000 and MyTown at more than 600,000. So do marketers need to start taking notice of this new web fad? The answer, says Mindshare, is a definite maybe.

Its report states foursquare itself may not end up being a world beater on the scale of Twitter, let alone Facebook or Google, but the cultural and behavioural trends it showcases could have a lasting impact on how we interact with each other and with brands.

What's worth noting is foursquare has announced a number of partnership deals with major players in a wide range of sectors, including Bravo TV, restaurant-rating service, Zagat, film producers Warner Brothers, TV channel HBO and The New York Times. In the UK, it has partnered with Debenhams and Domino's Pizza.

The partnership will see the pizza chain offer free pizza to the "mayor" of its branches every week. Those who check in at Debenham on its Oxford Street store on Fridays will get free coffee.
Three digitally savvy agency professionals using foursquare in Hong Kong argue the "stickiness" or foursquare is hard to ignore, but the benefits to marketers is still emerging.

Brandon Cheung, strategic planning director for wwwins Counsulting, describes the tool as a location-based game that introduces the concept of "check-ins" to real- life locations. It uses the GPS in your phone to locate you and the people and places around you. The key difference here is that location tagging is controlled by the users as opposed to auto-tagging such as Google Latitude.

"The user opt-in approach is preferred to the follow-me-everywhere-like-a-stalker method of location tagging," Cheung says.

By inviting players to check in to their favourite locations, Cheung says a crowd-sourced list of businesses is created in each city where foursquare is played. The location-based list creates a new opportunity for local businesses to reach out and seek consumers actively.

Nic Tinworth, digital director at Fluid, which is implementing the tool to its sister company Graze Cafe, adds that foursquare is a "sticky" mobile social network as it gives you bragging rights to become "mayor" at a venue and gets you invested after the initial "fun" aspect of gaining points.

But what are the benefits? Yeelim Lee, account supervisor at Weber Shandwick, says the location-based service allows you to monitor where people are visiting. If you're the marketing director for a chain of restaurants, bars or tourist attractions, you can monitor the footfall and who your customers are.

He says it is very useful intelligence as it allows you to offer promotions directly to users or reward loyal customers. With foursquare, the action of internet search has moved beyond the local search engine. Cheung explains that as consumers roam the streets with mobile phones, foursquare can deliver a relevant list of friends and places in their location.

Given the nature of local businesses, he says foursquare provides more benefit as a sales driver. Listing yourself in foursquare is similar to placing a promoter in front of your store or restaurant to capture nearby foot traffic. Besides, the success metrics is measured by how many people have checked in or recommended your location on foursquare - a direct link between digital interaction and physical action.

Other benefits as Tinworth points out include the ability to gather behaviourial data such as who is going where, when and for how long. Some third-party developers are creating new sites to introduce behaviour-based offers and this holds expansion promises for foursquare as developers will increase buzz via their APIs.

Another key benefit is to enable hyper target messaging and offers. For example, Starbucks can send you a special offer-notice for a free drink if you check into a bookstore nearby, via the "special nearby" alerts.

Challenges ahead
Cheung says getting listed takes a few seconds, but what needs to be planned out is your business approach to creating incentives around the game.

"Some marketers may not be ready for this yet, but those that move first will gain an advantage from the passionate first-mover audience," he says.

Tinworth is more concerned that people might not be ready for a location-based application as a lot of people are private and those on Twitter and Facebook might get annoyed by the constant "I am here, doing this" status check-in messages.

He says if foursquare is to succeed, it will need an explosion of users to make it worthwhile for the average internet user to feel compelled to register and see what the fuss is about. He adds that foursquare must address safety concerns raised after a Dutch website provided minute-by-minute updates on people who had left their house.

In Hong Kong, Starstreet has listed all of its tenant locations in foursquare, but the promotional angle is still being co-ordinated.

At Graze Cafe located in Sheung Wan, it hopes to convert the virtual community into real customers by incorporating foursquare in its marketing initiatives.

While the mobile marketing potential is obvious, whether or not marketers see value in another fad in the fast-moving online world is yet to be seen.

Is PR giving ‘Social Media’ a bad name?

Here is my article that was published in the December / January issue of Marketing Magazine.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!

The bell has rung: social media play time is over.
Digital media is now a way of life for most, becoming a fundamental element of brand reputation management, yet the PR industry is still having trouble getting to grips with some of the fundamental basics. Play time is over and the industry needs to recognize the importance of digital communications.

Given that PR people have always been experts at building advocates, much more so than other disciplines, this creates a huge opportunity for PR agencies. However, agencies must upgrade their staff skill sets if they are to capitalize and survive in the future. Agency bosses must take digital communications seriously by investing in the right staff and training existing staff so that social media is ingrained into the fabric of the agency.

The social media pie is still relatively small in terms of revenue, but the pie is growing and clients are seeing it as a priority. A recent Forrester study, entitled ‘Global Social Media Planning Survey’, found that 53 per cent of marketing managers globally plan to increase their investment in social media. Bear in mind this was during a recession year! Furthermore, research conducted by Weber Shandwick across six major European markets, entitled ‘INLINE Communications’, found that online advocacy – defined as online user reviews and recommendations – has replaced recommendations from friends and family as the most influential source of information. Anectodal research confirms that Asian audiences are also relying more and more on internet dialogue for their information(while this isn’t Asian focused research, Weber Shandwick is working on this!). Therefore, creating an environment where conversations about your brand is encouraged and rewarded can play a key role in building your brand reputations.

Social media smoke and mirrors?
There is a great deal of hype without any real social media proof points within the industry. Part of the blame lies with those agencies that have no expertise but pretend they do. Sadly, social media expertise is increasingly being ridiculed coming a bit of a joke as so- called ‘experts’ do not understand the relationship between social media and a brand’s business outcome. The ‘fakers’ are making money consulting brands about engaging customers and brandishing buzzwords like ‘transparency’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘blogger engagement’. But they are failing to demonstrate how social media channels can really help businesses achieve theirits goals, and as a result, causeing serious damage to the reputation of our industry.

In addition, advertising, digital, media purchasing and PR agencies are all vying for ownership of the space. Of course, different disciplines will approach social media from different angles, but we need to consider which tactic/tool/platform/application in our toolbox will best help the client achieve its objectives. Agencies from different disciplines need to work better together to clearly define the use of social media for different objectives – whether it is to drive brand awareness, build communities of advocates, internal communications or to drive sales. By ceasing the bombardment of noise about social media and better aligning it to the overall strategy, clients will be clearer about how it will benefit them.

Digital communications should not be about campaigns or projects, but an approach that requires long- term planning and commitment. The real benefit of digital communications is that you can build communities of advocates that genuinely like a brand. These advocates have their own network of communities that in turn learn about a brand in an organic way, which may influence them to become customers and advocates themselves. Most importantly, as advocates for a brand, they are engaged and are not just viewers.

Social media in PR
From a PR standpoint, social media should not be considered in a silo, but rather an additional weapon tool in our PR arsenalkit. We should not be talking about an online or offline approach, but rather an inline approach; a strategy that utilizes tools and tactics that best helps a business achieve its goals, whether it is online or offline. By adopting a response-oriented and lead generation approach to social media, we can help brands build communities of advocates, increase their customer/follower database, increase search traffic and, thus create more brand awareness, thought leadership, and all those things that help make brands exceptional.

However, to do this, the PR industry as a whole, needs to build its own credibility to convincingly own its share of the pie. Agencies must develop expertise in PR and Digital – they are not mutually exclusive.! This year saw PR agencies taking the first step on the ladder by recruiting digital specialists. But this is just the first step. Agency bosses must continue to embed digital communication skills into the fabric of the agency, ensuring PR consultants are sufficiently trained in the new skills available to them and helping them to consider integrating digital channels as part of the work they are already doing. For example, let’s say a team is working on crisis communications on behalf of a client. Rather than just using traditional methods, they should also be thinking about the impact of online media and how social media channels can be used strategically.

To all those PR agency heads, here are three suggestions you may wish to adopt as your New Year’s Resolutions:
- Eat more pie: Build the agency’s digital communications expertise to better consult clients
- Be more truthful to clients: Don’t be a social media faker. It harms the credibility of the industry as a whole, not just your agency
- Invest in staffHelp my staff more: PR as it was will be no longer.! Arm employees with the knowledge and skill- sets they need to consult clients in this ever evolvinge new world of communication