Social Updates as a Marketing Medium: Part 2

15 Jan

Part 2: Using Foursquare via Twitter for Local Marketing

With the new trend of utilizing social media for getting out marketing messages, there has been a lot of buzz around here lately.  Most of the office is not on Twitter, and I don’t think any are on Foursquare, so when an email with this link from AdWeek circulated around the office, a lot was bounced around.

Some probably didn’t get it at all, some thought they got it but didn’t really, some thought it was brilliant, and some wondered whether it was spammy.

Foursquare’s Potential

I have been reading a lot lately about the potential that Foursquare may bring to local businesses to enable them to really bring marketing down to a local, and personal,  level – so I was unsurprised by the article and was glad to read that it is starting to get some publicity.

However, I do wonder if this new marketing trend will be short-lived.

“Too Much Clutter”

Using the Twitter updates as a means of telling Twitter users where you are for the sake of the game may not be too annoying when only a handful of your friends are doing it, but once everyone is doing it, it will likely start to flood the information-rich Twitter streams with useless information.

This made me wonder if Twitter will soon have to implement a “Hide Application Feeds” similar to that which Facebook implemented, allowing you to choose which app information you can see and which you block.  I love the idea of local businesses utilizing Foursquare by offering specials to the “mayor” or special deals for checking in so many times, but when you start using it to blast Twitter streams with marketing messages like “I just scored 5 TastiRewards points at Tasti
D-Lite Columbus Circle, NYC http://mytasti.com.”

Everytime someone checks in from a local business with a shout like that, I fear the value of the information rich Twitter streams that I surf through will be diminished, and Twitter may have a job on there hands to help me sort through the mess to make sure I can still fine the valuable links and updates that I am there for.

Only time will tell, but it will be interesting to watch it unfold.

Whats your take?

Read Part 1: Facebook Status Updates for Awareness >>

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  • http://www.altnewworld.com/ Royce

    I'm with a start up in the location check-in business – http://www.altnewworld.com – We are targeting niche markets (vs. the 'gamers') for social networks, conventions/seminars, travelers. Our site gets decent traffic with almost no marketing via the Android/Layar Augemented Reality application (http://www.layar.com). We hope to be back on the iPhone within a few weeks.

    We would love to have ideas on how to better position our product as the 'non gamer' alternative to Foursquare!

  • http://aprilmgeer.com/ April

    At first trial, your login functionality is pretty buggy.

    Thats kinda huge – a buggy login makes me feel like the whole site is likely still pretty buggy and I doubt I would go further than that. You should probably work that out before you try to compete with big players like Foursquare at a time when people are very critical of the interfaces since the early adapters have the biggest expectations.

    Just my 2 cents. Good luck!