Foursquare
If 2009 marked the year that the restaurant industry discovered Facebook and Twitter, than 2010 is gong to be year that puts social media on the map – literally. With the GPS capabilities of handheld devices reaching ever increasing levels of sophistication finding a restaurant nearby is going to be as simple as logging in and picking a cuisine. Leading the pack in this new geo-specific world is FourSquare.com.
FourSquare encourages people to explore their neighborhoods and then rewards them for doing so. They do this by combining their friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics – users earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites. Patrons can then be rewarded for visiting the most. Once your venue signs up to promote themselves the website makes analytic tools available that actually help you track who visits your bar and/or restaurant and when they do so. Using these types of tools you’ll now be able to offer time sensitive specials to potential customers based on their location. This takes promotional efforts to a whole new level of sophistication and effectiveness.
And it doesn’t stop there – FourSquare has recently introduced an entire console of tracking tools that not only give you direct control over specials offered at your restaurant, but also provide a sophisticated collection of metrics that can tell you who, what and when. Combining this data with the feedback you collect from Facebook statistics and third party Twitter apps such as Hootsuite you can draw a very specific picture of how your social media marketing efforts are working and who is responding. In my next article we’ll explore the different tools available for aggregating this information into a cohesive and usable report.