The etiquette for interacting with a customer who walks through the door of your business is pretty clear. In most cases, you greet them with a warm welcome and ask them what you can help them with.
But what about the times when a customer walks into your business through one of the many new social-network doors? Do you greet them there as well?
More and more smartphone-carrying customers are checking in on social, location-aware services such as Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and now Facebook Places. While these services are primarily consumer-focused, room exists for the business owner to step in and engage customers. While you don’t have to use every location-based application out there, it’s important to know what each one offers business owners.
Foursquare — reward loyal customers: Foursquare offers awards to users who check in frequently to places, in the form of points and badges. The person who checks in most frequently at the local coffee shop, for instance, becomes “The Mayor” of that coffee shop.
As a business owner, you can offer specials to those users: your “Mayor” ought to be recognized — but you might also want to acknowledge first-timers, or people who checked in 25 times. Offer them a discount, a free drink, whatever — it’s up to you. Just like the oft-seen frequent-buyer card, you also reward loyalty.
Yelp — interact with your critics: Yelp recently added the ability for users to check in to all of the businesses listed on its vast review site. As business owners, you can see all the check-ins (at least on the mobile app), yet there is no way to really engage a person who has checked in.
The main way a business owner interacts with their Yelp customers is through the reviews, but cross-referencing the check-ins with the reviews could provide some interesting information.
Gowalla — put yourself in the game: Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla rewards users with pins — the Gowalla equivalent of Foursquare’s badges — according to how often and where they check-in. Gowalla also adds a geocaching element for users — they can look for, pick up and leave behind virtual items in the places they check-in to.
Business recently got the ability to claim their listing on Gowalla. The business can control the info on their location’ page and configure a welcome message users see when they check-in.
That’s it for now, but Gowalla promises more features are on the horizon. The network is expected to do more with its geocaching capabilities, allowing businesses to offer users custom stamps to collect — a feature that is currently available in San Francisco, New York City and Austin, Texas.
Facebook Places — fish where the fish are: Facebook Places extends the functionality of Facebook’s “business pages,” where businesses can connect with customers and post information about themselves and events. Like other services on this list, users check-in to your business and the mobile app shows them who else from the Facebook universe is there (or has been there).
Currently, Facebook Places does not offer a way to fully engage with checked-in users — as you can with Foursquare — but Facebook might be waiting for third-party developers to build those kinds of tools on their platform. One such tool, called Context Optional, shows you a leaderboard for all your customers who have checked in the most. It’s a small step towards engagement, but a sign that Facebook Places has potential.
For now, Foursquare is a business owner’s best way to engage customers in the virtual world of geolocation-aware social networks. It offers you a way to reward (and thus acknowledge) those who are showing up and checking in.
Have you had experiences engaging or interacting with customers through these location-aware social networks? Do you think it’s worth a business owner’s time to use them?
COMMENTARY: The latest Myxer BoomBox report on location-based social networks found that only 11% of respondents claim to use location-based services, with leading services differing greatly from those that get the most publicity.
According to Myxer's BoomBox 'check-in' report, of the 11% of respondents that do use location-based services, consumers heavily favored Booyah's' MyTown, which claimed 56% of those polled, while Loopt came in second place at 12%. Surprisingly, two of the more 'popular' services, Gowalla and Foursquare, trailed far behind MyTown, only capturing 8% percent each.
The study also revealed some surprising trends as they relate to preferences by those who use these services. 77% of respondents said they check into their network at home, more often than checking in from other venues.
For those who don't use the services, only 14% claimed privacy as the reason, while 56% claimed lack of interest, and nearly a quarter (23%) reported that their phone doesn't have the capability.
Of the 11% who reported using these networks, they appear to be increasingly active, with 73% citing an increase in their use of these services and only 27% reporting a decrease. And in terms of frequency, 31% said they check in at least once a day, and 26% said they check-in every hour, giving hope to a potential of high-engagement from a marketing perspective.
Additionally, among those polled who do use location-based social networks, 55% said that they have used location based social networks to attend a venue. Of those who attended venues using LBS, music events were most popular at 36%, followed by restaurants at 28% and bar/clubs at 19%.
"Our check-in report demonstrates that location-based social networks are growing but not mainstream yet," said Myk Willis, CEO of Myxer. "Suprisingly Booyah's MyTown seems to have the early lead in the space and most consumers check-in at home. We believe the success of such services hinges on the passive gaming element which may supercede true online-to-offline event discovery."
Since 2005, Myxer has cataloged various data points: age, gender, geographic location, phone model, manufacturer, carrier, as well as the operating system of each handset that initiated a download from its delivery platform that now supports more than seven million monthly unique visitors downloading over 80 million content items from Myxer each month. For this month's report, Myxer used PollDaddy, an online polling and survey tool, which gathered responses from more than 1,500 Myxer users.
This obviously does not bode very well for location-based check-in services when only 11% are actively using the service. Makes you wonder why?
Courtesy of an article dated October 28, 2010 appearing in SmartBlog on Social Media and an article dated September 2010 appearing in Wireless and Mobile News
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