I admit, I didn't get it. Well, not completely. I knew Twitter had some value in marketing in some cases, but to make it work like Facebook does, I just wasn't as convinced. I felt that it worked well for celebrities, thought leaders, and perhaps brands that define a culture and somebody would want to follow to stay at the forefront of an industry; I got that. But when companies talked about the need for social media, and we ourselves presented social media, I was always hesitant to lump Facebook and Twitter together. They're not the same, interchangeable, and should not be mentioned in the same breath. That was my thinking anyway.

So as I go to log-in to Twitter a couple of days ago, I see their "new" home page that has the following image, which reads:

"Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what's happening around the world."

It's not an accident that the word "brands," "companies," or anything about commerce/retail was not mentioned. Even as Twitter attempts to monetize by appealing to brands with promoted tweets, trends, and suggested profiles, when Twitter speaks to it's users and suggests it is a way to get instant updates from friends, experts, and celebs, and leaves out brands, that means something. 

So, again, while Twitter can be a valuable tool for a brand or commercial endeavor, it is important to not just immediately lump it together with Facebook, but rather think about what the strengths of the Twitter format are. Then, if you are in a position to take advantage of those strengths, like an industry expert or celeb is, by all means, tweet away. 

I thought I would take a shot at anaylzing Super Bowl ads, and trying to identify the "best" ones. I heard a lot of disappointment in my circles, but I felt more positive about what I saw. Then after reading a few articles that had no consistency on the best and worst, I realized everybody was just giving their subjective opinions (like I would), and me adding my two cents would be nothing but another opinion that mattered no more or lesses than anybody elses.

For example, The Wall Street Journal offered these takes:

1. Groupon's commercial starring actor Timothy Hutton was slammed as offensive
2. CareerBuliders chimpanzees felt stale
3. Best Buy featuring pop star Justin Bieber and rock legend Ozzy Osbourne received high marks from Madison Avenue executives who said the celebrity pairing was a perfect match for the electronic retailer's message and will play well across generations.

Meanwhile, an Advertising Age writer agreed with the assessment of the Best Buy and CareerBuilder ads, but felt Groupon was a clever twist that didn't cross any lines.

Then looking at a USA Today group of 282 volunteers who had their reactions to ads tracked and rated, it found that the CareerBuilder ad received the 6th best response, while Bieber and Osborne got the 9th worst reaction to its Best Buy Ad, and Groupon, well, fell in the middle somewhere (which maybe makes the most sense).

I hate to say I told you so. Well, I guess I can’t really, because I didn’t tell anybody. But I swear I was thinking it! When I first read the story of Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, and a slew of other celebrities agreeing to their “digital death” in an effort raise a million dollars for HIV/AIDS relief in Africa and India, I thought this was career suicide!

Okay, maybe I’m overstating my reaction a bit, but really, I thought this was the worst fund-raising hook ever. For as much as people love Kim Kardashian, and her 5.5 million plus Twitter followers is quite impressive, how many of them would pay even the $5 minimum to resume receiving tweets about how she’s seeing snow in New York for the first time?

Apparently, not as many as she and her fellow celebs thought. Reportedly, after a week of ceasing activity on their Twitter (and some Facebook) profiles, the participating celebs became uneasy as the campaign had only raised about $500,000 to that point. So a billionaire pharmaceutical executive turned philanthropists chipped in another $500,000 to put the fund-raiser over the top and bring the celebs back to digital life (Read story here).

While I applaud all of the celebrities who participated in the effort by lending their voice, and in some cases, their income (Kim Kardashian reportedly receives up to $10,000 for promotional tweets), there are two important reasons why this idea should have been shot down the moment it was conceived:

1. As a celebrity, like Kim Kardashian, if you’ve gotten to a point where you’ve convinced businesses that you have this engaged following that wants to live like you, look like you, etc., why would you risk showing how little your followers truly care by attempting to create action in a space that is foreign to you. Now that you’ve shown your weakness, it is going to be a much tougher sell the next time you try to get a business to pony up for a sponsored tweet.
2.  It makes no sense that in your effort to raise awareness and funds, you silence all of the advocates. Granted, the ploy got you good PR when it started, but instead of reminders that “@ladygaga is still dead,” which only reminded us that she wasn’t dead, and also reminded us how little we missed her tweets about needing a yoga intervention, how about the good old days when action received support? When did raising your voice and taking a stand become shutting up and sitting down?

Can you imagine Martin Luther King Jr. refusing to tweet until Blacks were allowed to sit in the front of the bus?

How about women logging off of Facebook until they got the right to vote?

Or maybe George Washington shutting down his blog until America was free from the tyrannical rule of the King of England?

Ridiculous right? Then why in the world would these celebs take such a serious issue and subject it to the trivialness of “digital deaths.” It’s one thing to use social media as a vehicle to spread a message, rally support, and engage an audience, but to assume your social presence is so impactful that its absence will spur $1,000,000 worth of investments... Seems to me like some celebs needed to have their ego’s put in check, and it looks like they got just what they needed.

Do you remember what you’re mom used to tell you? “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” The same philosophy can and should be applied to your Facebook postings, with a minor twist: what you say doesn’t always have to be nice necessarily, but it should always be valuable.

Too often businesses think of social media as an avenue to stay “top of mind.” With that as the guiding principle, these businesses and their social media managers will fall into the trap of saying something just for the sake of having a post out in space, because after all, that is how you stay top of mind – right?

Well, kind of.  Sure, at face value, if you haven’t posted in a day or two, and your goal is to stay top of mind, then logic would suggest that you should post something, anything, so that people are reminded of your presence.  But that is inherently the problem in viewing social media through the lens of creating awareness.  I would argue that you NEVER want to remind people of your presence, but rather ALWAYS want to remind people of your value. 

There are some instances in which your value is so entrenched into the psyche of the audience that merely establishing your presence accomplishes the purpose of value awareness, inherently.  But those instances are rare, for those few companies like Nike and Victoria’s Secret where they have solidified themselves as the brand that defines excellence in their industry, and their presence exudes value.

But for the rest of us middle of the roaders, every day should be an exercise in showing your value, not just showing your goods.  This is why social media managers need to shut up for a second!

There are three possible outcomes when you make a habit of posting content on Facebook that is not particularly valuable:

1. Your fans will be less likely to see your posts: The default setting for a user’s Facebook wall is to show “Top Stories.” Top stories are determined by an algorithm Facebook uses that basically determines how much a user likes a page’s content based on how much it interacts with that page’s content.  So if you regularly post content that your users are not interacting with (liking, commenting, sharing), your posts will fall lower and lower down that user’s wall in the default setting of “Top News” until it eventually stops showing up at all.  Fortunately, this is probably the least of your worries as some reports say over 50% of users do utilize the link that allows the user to see “Most Recent” stories on their wall.  But this is still potentially a large number of impressions you are losing out on by not being more diligent with producing more relevant content (for more on Facebook's Top Stories algorithm, click here).
2. Your fans may unsubscribe from your posts: The “unsubscribe” is subtly different from an “unlike,” but for all intents and purposes is the same.  When a user unsubscribes from your posts, what they are doing is blocking your posts from showing up on their wall any longer.  They still “like” you technically, but the only way they will see your posts is if they make the effort to go to your page.  One benefit of the unsubscribe, as opposed to the all-out unlike, is that it still allows you to advertise directly to your fans, which the unsubscribed are still a part of.  But users are either unsubscribing because they no longer like you, and just don’t know the difference or don’t want to make the effort to officially “unlike” you on Facebook, or they still like you and want to reflect that on their page, but just don’t like what you post on Facebook.  Either way, take it as a sign that your Facebook presence has become a nuisance to their life, and you should reconsider the type of content you are posting, and how frequently you are posting it.
3. Your fans may “unlike” your page: See number 2 and just add on that they must REALLY be annoyed to make that extra effort to “unlike” your page.

There is a fourth outcome, that even if no action is taken, and you are getting “impressions,” those impressions are just over-looked and ignored because they have become accustomed to your irrelevant posts and no longer pay any attention to them.  At the end of the day, regardless of which outcome results, you have made yourself invisible. By posting irrelevant content with no value to your fans, with the goal of just posting something to stay top of mind, you have accomplished the exact opposite, and wasted resources in doing so.

So if you are going to make the time investment into using Facebook, it is only worth it if you are willing to budget the additional time it will require to follow a strategy that focuses on having users not just be aware of your brand, but more importantly, be engaged with it.

Subscribe to this blog or our E-newsletter for part 2 of this conversation that will discuss how to determine "valuable" content that is more likely to engage.

How do you market a new product that while beneficial to the entire planet, will likely only seriously appeal to a small segment of the general population? A product that is the future of an industry. A product that can potentially revolutionize America from our ecological footprint to our dependence on foreign and domestic oil, but the majority of Americans are skeptical of. Well of course, create a mass marketing campaign with television ads during the World Series being a key ingredient... no?

When I read articles like Will Consumers Get Charge From Electric Cars, it just burns me up inside. All of these big marketing execs getting paid millions of dollars to market a product, and even when they get the gift of a purple cow, they work incredibly hard to make a disaster out of it!

Briefly, for those who aren’t familiar with the concept of the “purple cow,” it is basically a unique product in the marketplace. Brown cows are unremarkable. If you see one, you probably wouldn’t think much of it because brown cows are everywhere. But if you were to see a purple cow, now that would get your attention, get you excited, and get you talking! For more, read the book Purple Cow by Seth Godin.

So back to this article, which is discussing the trepidation that despite electric cars being a seemingly clear cut example of a purple cow, will it catch on with “consumers.” Some of the numbers the article highlights in terms of purchasing attitudes towards an electric vehicle include:

•  65% of consumers said they wouldn’t pay more for it (compared to a standard vehicle)
• 51% said they wouldn’t pay more than $5,000 above the average price (of a vehicle)

In related surveys that inquired about consumers’ attitudes towards purchasing “green” products as a whole, some of the results were:

•  66% agreed with the statement, “The environmentally friendly alternatives for many of the products I use are too expensive”
•  74% of respondents rated prices as “extremely important” in their purchases of household paper goods, but only 15% said a product being “environmentally friendly” was “extremely important”
•  33% of consumers believe eco-friendly products don’t work as well as the “regular” ones

So in the face of these challenges with “consumer” attitudes, the article points to the direction Chevy and Nissan (with their soon to be released Volt and Leaf respectively) may pursue:

•  Based on the increase in TV advertising in the auto industry as a whole, the author’s hinted that television advertising would be a focal point of their marketing campaign (i.e. Chevy Volt’s ads running during the World Series)
•  They must effectively communicate the benefits of electric vehicles such as fuel efficiency (and the resulting savings at the pump) as well as the environmentally friendly aspect
•  It won’t hurt to mention the federal tax rebates of up to $7,500 for both the Leaf and Volt

So, if I have summarized this all correctly, what we have here are “consumers” who, though would like to be buy environmentally friendly products, aren’t willing to pay a premium, think they cost too much, and don’t really believe they work all that well. So the idea is to try to convince the “consumers” with as much advertising as can be afforded that it doesn’t really cost that much when you factor in what you save in gas and tax rebates. Plus, what’s price when you are saving the planet?

Somebody needs to read Purple Cow apparently (and/or Crossing the Chasm, The Tipping Point, and Unleashing the Ideavirus), the point being that instead of talking about what to say to them and how to reach them, the marketers need to focus more on who the “them” is they are talking to! You’ll notice I have been putting “consumers” in quotes. The reasoning is because the article continuously talks about marketing efforts to consumers as a vague concept where who the consumer is does not have relevance. It is almost as if they believe they should be trying to sell these electric cars to everybody who could possibly be in the car market in the next year.

If the author of this article, and more importantly, the marketing execs at Nissan and Chevy do not find an important distinction between their consumers, they will almost certainly be responsible for the killing of the second coming of the electric car (see the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car). They will overspend on advertising, not enough people will buy, and the car companies will scrap the vehicles claiming they did everything they could but the market wasn’t there. 

One of the important takeaways from Purple Cow is something that we all should’ve learned in business school, and that is the product life cycle and the consumer curve, where only a small percentage of consumers are eager for new. Everybody else is fairly satisfied and not eager for change. Where Purple Cow takes another step is in stating that not only are most people not interested in new, even when they are interested in what used to be new, you can’t sell it to them. Only the “innovators” and “early adopters” who are peers of the majority that buys later in the product life cycle have a decent chance at convincing them to buy your purple cow. With that said, for as tempting as it is to market to the biggest slice of the pie, it is inconsistent with what we know about how the consumer curve works, and at the end of the day, a huge waste of the resources that go into marketing to people who are ignoring you!

So back to the practical applications, is it really a good idea for Chevy to run television ads for the Volt during the World Series? Despite the fact this is the most obvious autumn mass marketing opportunity for a product that we’ve established shouldn’t be mass marketed (the masses don’t like purple cow), baseball has arguably the most conservative, traditional, and old-fashioned demographic of all the major sports. Think about it, they are still debating instant replay! Does that sound like a group that will be interested in your new futuristic car, Chevy?

Please Chevy and Nissan, please save your money! Put that money into creating iPhone apps and advertising on the iPad. Create a campaign on Foursquare or other newer social networks. Talk to people who LIKE NEW, not to people who HAVE CARS. It will focus your efforts and messaging, make your expectations more realistic, bring your advertising costs down, your ROI will go up, and the electric car will survive this time to meet the mass consumer.

Did you know the Gap had a new logo for about 4 days last week? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can join the reported 80% of other people who when polled, said they were unaware of the logo change.  So for 80% of you reading this, here’s a quick synopsis (and I do mean quick):

Gap felt like it needed a lift, so decide it should change its logo.  When the “public” caught wind of the change, they pummeled it soundly on Gap’s social networks.  The general gist was that either people were attached to the old logo, so why change it, or the new logo was just ugly, or Gap should be worried about trying to improve its quality of offerings, not its logo.  Regardless of the reasoning, bottom line, Gap missed the boat with the change.

As a reaction to the reaction, Gap felt that maybe they could counter the negative reaction by turning the new logo into just the start of a “crowdsourcing” project where they would be seeking ideas from the creative community to create the final new logo.  Again, Gap took a beating.  The reaction to the reaction to the reaction was either, “designers will not give you free work under the guise of ‘crowdsourcing,’” or, “we see right through your reaction Gap, and we’re not falling for it.  You messed up, just admit it!”

So they did.  4 days after the new logo was placed on their Web site, Gap released a statement describing their intent, admitting their mistakes and concluded with, “There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.”

This should be a lesson for marketing and design students for years to come, but my big takeaway is this: You tried something, for whatever reason, and it failed.  It happens.  You reacted quickly to try and remedy the situation, and that failed too.  It happens.  You quickly acknowledged the perceived mistakes and decided to put the debacle behind you.  That is the best thing that could’ve happened. 

Many businesses would have stubbornly dug their heels in and said, “This is just the digital elite talking and resisting change, but we are committed to this new logo and are confident that once the masses are presented with the new logo on our terms, they will get behind it and the new direction it represents.” And it is possible had they taken that stance, like several leading voices in social media communications stated they would have at the BlogWorld 2010 Expo, they would have been right.  But by folding, and cutting their loses, what was a huge story in small circles will be forgotten by most in a year, and for those that remember, Gap will likely be remembered as a redeeming figure (ala umpire Jim Joyce who blew the call at first base that cost Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game) that was responsive to its customers and community, was able to admit a mistake, and will proceed more thoughtfully in its future marketing efforts.  Then there’s the 80% that never knew, and now will never know! 

So all-in-all, a big kudos to Gap for trying something new, even if the results weren’t what they anticipated, but ultimately, the biggest thumbs up for listening to their audience, responding quickly, and making a molehill out of a potential mountain.   This goes to show that the power of social media isn’t just in creating massive successes quickly, but if monitored appropriately, can prevent massive failures just as fast.

Read some of the articles related to Gap's logo "fiasco"

http://adage.com/article?article_id=146417
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662470/gap-pulls-a-tropicana-nixes-new-logo
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69B05Z20101012?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Reuters/InternetNews+(News+/+US+/+Internet+News)

I had a great idea. I would tap into a group of 16 women’s networks and competitive spirit by holding a tournament style photo contest in which the contestants would get “Likes” as votes, and the woman with the most votes among the two matched-up each round would advance to the next round until we had one lady standing. Simple enough right?

The great beauty of this contest is the way Facebook works as far as “liking” photos. In order to “like” a photo, you MUST be connected to that page. So in order for these girls to win, of course they would be bringing new people to the page, and these new people would have to “like” the page in order to vote, so it was guaranteed to do great things in building up our number of fans. This was great, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, I assumed everybody participating would be upstanding citizens such as I am, so it did not even cross my mind that a contestant would create dummy accounts to add to their vote total. It also didn’t cross my mind that either some contestants, or their loyal friends and fans, would go so far as to “flag” photos as “inappropriate” in order to get them deleted! While certainly sexy, none of these photos were any worse than what you would see on the Victoria’s Secret Facebook page. I wonder if they are getting their photos removed by Facebook…

So, nonetheless, with these interruptions attacking the legitimacy of the contest at its core, why do I not consider it an utter failure? Because at the end of the day, though there were clear obstacles, the process did exactly what it was meant to do, and that is add fans to the page. Prior to the contest, we were adding about 150 fans per week. The first two days of the contest we added 800 fans, and the following days averaged over 200 per day! Outsiders suggested taking the voting off of Facebook to a site we could have more control over, and while it all made sense from a contest point of view, my #1 priority was adding fans, and an off-site vote would severely limit our effectiveness in doing that.

I want to be clear that “adding fans” is not some empty goal we were chasing because it’s an easy social metric. The value in fans is it is a database that we can market to. Just like postal addresses or Email addresses, having fans allows us to reach that database at will with marketing and sales initiatives. We can promote, engage in conversation, provide customer service, advertise, and so much more with our database of fans. On top of the value to the company itself, we are able to add value to the sponsors of the company’s event by providing access to our social database. While an off-site contest would still create some buzz (though likely not as much because of the propensity to comment, share, etc. on Facebook that wouldn’t happen to the same degree off-site), and we could show page views and other analytics as proof of our popularity, you would be hard pressed to find as innocent of a database builder as this.

So we persevered through round 1 of the contest. The dummy account creating contestant ended up having those accounts unverified and removed by Facebook apparently (and thus she lost her votes). While she was certainly none too happy about that, karma and justice were served and she eventually went silently into the night. The deleted photo scandal turned into a one day “like-off” where each contestant got 12 hours to get as many votes as they could to advance to the next round, winner take all. While perhaps a bit annoying to the fans who had to be asked in some cases to vote 3 times in one round, it ultimately left everybody feeling like we were trying to be as open, fair, and accommodating to all parties, and creates even more activity for the page!

Certainly, a lesson was learned in not assuming people will behave, and to thoroughly consider all possible bad turns an innocent promotion can take. But like the song goes, “If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.” So at the end of the day, even knowing what I know now, I still don’t see a better way to build this wonderful database. Do you?

Imagine giving a speech in front of a crowd of 2,700 plus, and having a few hecklers distracting from the message you are attempting to deliver. Nobody would blame you for requesting the ushers to remove the hecklers from the audience.

Taken to another level, what if while a television commercial was airing, viewers’ negative comments could pop right up on the screen. No way would an advertiser ever let that happen!

So it comes as no surprise that when the promoter of a music festival gets some negative responses on Facebook to the announcement of the night’s lineup, his reaction is, “should we just delete them?”

The bigger surprise may be my response, which was, “Absolutely not!” What I relayed to the promoter was that the disappointment these people were expressing is going to happen. You can’t please everybody. Having a sub-par lineup in the eyes of some is no crime, and there will be those on the other side who love the lineup and defend you. That’s just the way it goes. What would be a crime, and unacceptable to most of the Facebook community, is if you went around deleting comments or people from your community because they expressed not liking the lineup!

I went on to emphasize that this is the way the social world works. It’s not up to you to control, spin, or manage conversations. It’s only up to you to encourage, foster, and participate in them; and by participating, I mean mostly listen. What those engaged in social media find appealing is the power they have to share their world and opinions to others on their own terms. So to be filtered out of a conversation, by a business (who most would be just as happy without on Facebook) because of honest disagreement would go completely counter to the culture of social media. That would almost certainly do more harm than good, not only amplifying their initial complaints, but also giving them an even more fundamental complaint about disrespecting the social media culture and being scared of criticism and scared to be open to the public. You did your job by giving people something to talk about, now step back, and let the people have their say.

What the people had to say, though mixed with some negative feedback, was also responded to forcefully in support of the promoter’s position. All of the points the promoter wanted to make to defend himself were made by one community member or another, and probably meant even more coming from those community members as opposed to the promoter himself! The conversation coincided with an 8% increase in membership in less than a week (with only a handful of unsubscribes), and was easily the most viewed page in the festivals history to date, with over 15% of the community viewing.

The lesson here is that crowd control means something entirely different when in the social realm. While it means an authority figure controlling the crowd in most circles, in social media circles the best practice in crowd control is to let the crowds control themselves. In most cases they will, and will do it adequately to the point that your intervention is not necessary. However, you should always be prepared for when more active involvement in discussions become necessary, but the key is to not over-react to a conversation and inject yourself unnecessarily. People are going to be more honest, and almost inherently more brutal when it comes to opining about brands because people generally only see them as the brand, not the people behind the brand. So if you are looking to capitalize on the opportunities Facebook and other platforms provide to reach these millions of people, you must be prepared to swallow your pride to some extent and take a little bashing from the gallows. It’s their world you are invading, so take your shots, listen, learn, and by all means avoid suppressing the conversation. All conversation is good conversation, so let it happen!

I have a friend; let’s call this friend Marcella Arguello.  She is a very talented comedian who recently posted a great video spoofing Rhianna’s latest hit single, “Rude Boy,” and the MTV reality sensation Jersey Shore.   If you are familiar with neither, you might still find the video amusing, but if you are familiar with both, you will find it absolutely hilarious (click here, if you don’t mind humor on the raunchy side of conservative).

Regardless, this is not a critique of her video, well at least not the comedy. What I am more concerned with is why an up and coming comedian, who recently quit her job, did not take this opportunity to capitalize on this work of art, a la her idol Lady Gaga in her recent much talked about video for “Telephone” (I wrote a blog on that video a few weeks back).

Granted, Marcella’s views approaching 200 to date pales in comparison to Gaga’s over 25 million; but we’re not talking about asking Miracle Whip to shell out hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for product placement. How about getting a local tanning salon to put in $50 to be included in the storyline (if you know Jersey Shore, or watch the video, you’ll know why tanning salon comes to mind). Or maybe a local pool company to be a partner with the pool scenes? Arrangements can be made so that not only is the partner benefiting from video views, but also connected to her over 1,200 Facebook friends, nearly 300 Twitter followers…

Again, we’re not talking big business by any means, but we’re talking about business, where every dollar matters. So why not take a cue from the major players and do what they do on a scale that is appropriate to your status as a small business? This concept applies not only to entertainers, but small businesses of all sorts. If you’re a clothing boutique, what marketing lessons can you learn from Nordstrom’s and apply it on a smaller scale. Or if you’re an independently owned restaurant, what can you take from Olive Garden and make work for you?

It’s funny; they say, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” What they fail to point out also is that those who don’t learn from history may have a tough time duplicating it. To be clear, I am not recommending mirroring product offerings. This should be a value proposition that to the greatest extent is as uniquely you as possible. Rather, I am suggesting you copy processes and strategies that have led to the profitability of product offerings in your industry. There’s a reason these businesses are big businesses, and there’s no shame in following, as long as you’re following success. So as you think about your marketing plan and ways your business can be creating additional revenue, start with comparative favorites in your industry, and just copy them!

I love the concept of Foursquare. I never use it, but I love it!

Foursquare, if you’re not familiar, is a social service where you essentially let your friends know where you are. At a restaurant, let your friends know. At the mall, let your friends know.  You get points and neat "badges" and titles the more you play. It’s pretty simple.

When I first heard about the service, I was as skeptical as the next person. I personally wasn’t interested in letting the world know where I was, and I really couldn’t imagine why anybody else would care. So even though I signed up for the service because I recognized it was gaining traction, I hardly ever actually “check-in” to the locations I am visiting. It’s not something in my stream of conscious yet, to make sure I tell everybody where I am, and to assume people will care. I’m just not there yet, so the service sits as an app on my phone, pretty much useless.

So why do I love Foursquare then? Because there are so many fun things businesses can do with the service, if they would just encourage their customers to use it.

You essentially want to give your patrons recognition for repeatedly visiting, and even better, telling the world they are at your place of business. The most frequent visitor to your business on Foursquare is dubbed the “Mayor.” So how about a movie theater giving a free concession item to their mayor? Or a restaurant comping a free meal for their mayor.  15% off for the mayor of a clothing store.  We can go on and on, but it basically comes down to rewarding people for being loyal and vocal ambassadors of your business, and more so, finding a fun way to do it. Here is a link to how some companies are using Foursquare to engage their consumers.

But if I am any indication as to what a new Foursquare user is like, be sure your business has in-store signage that reminds them to “check-in,” and even encourages them to sign-up for Foursquare in the first place. This is quite possibly the most creative customer loyalty program ever invented, and the best part of it is the tools are already in place, you just have to take advantage of them! What’s that they say about looking a gift horse in the mouth? Don’t.