Title: The Power of foursquare: 7 Innovative Ways to Get Your Customers to Check in Wherever They Are
Author: Carmine Gallo
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
FOURSQUARE is a social, location-based service smartphone application that businesses of any size can leverage to tell their stories and engage their customers in an innovative way. Users sign up for an account by visiting http://foursquare.com. When they are out and about, they can pull out their smartphone and open the foursquare application programme (app) to see where their friends are or to explore places in their vicinity.
Foursquare will even recommend things to do or places to eat based on a user's check-in history and check-in trends of their friends.They can also upload a photo, leave tips, or send messages. They can – and often do – link these activities to Twitter and Facebook.
Since it is widely known that word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, this "sharing" feature is critical for brand marketers and merchants to understand, appreciate and leverage. Foursquare turns life into a game as upon checking in, users get points and compete with their friends.
"We're always surprised," says foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley in an exclusive interview for Carmine Gallo's latest book, The Power of foursquare. "We started foursquare so 50 of our friends could follow each other around New York City. I recall sitting in an investment meeting and someone asked, 'When are you going to hit one million users?' I said if we ever hit one million users, we've done something right. In one year we hit six million."
Even the most optimistic entrepreneur would have been astonished at how quickly foursquare has gained traction among millions of users. Foursquare was launched in March 2009 and grew steadily to one million users by the anniversary of its first year. By November 2010, it had five million users and it only took an additional 44 days to reach six million users by January 2011. On a spring Saturday in 2011, foursquare officially "arrived" when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proclaimed April 16th as "foursquare Day" in the city.
Foursquare is still growing exponentially; and is growing at a faster rate than Twitter did at similar stages. As smartphones continue to proliferate, the user base is only expected to grow. In 2010, 200 million smartphones were sold around the world. The number is expected to double to 400 million units in 2011, 600 million in 2012 and 700 million in 2013. Foursquare is growing right along with it.
Although foursquare was born in New York's East Village, 40% of its daily check-ins occur outside the United States. On 22 October, 2010, NASA astronaut, Douglas Wheelock became the first man to "check in" from space. Back on Earth, users checked in more than 380 million times during the year – at a rate of about 23 times per second – and did so in every single country, including North Korea.
Each day 35,000 new users join the foursquare international community. Foursquare is available in multiple languages including Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Italian and others. Millions of people are checking in to every possible location: train stations, hotels, shopping malls, art galleries, concerts, restaurants, bars, movie theatres, gyms, college campuses and many other venues. Some people (who are very much alive) are even checking in to cemeteries!
Businesses – large and small – are joining the community. Five months after its launch in 2009, only a handful of merchants inquired about joining the platform – about 15 brands in all. Today, around five hundred thousand brands, retailers, and local merchants actively use the platform to reward loyal customers, attract new ones, and engage those customers on a far deeper level than ever before. In addition these businesses are using the platform and accessing a treasure-trove of customer data for free. Brand marketers and merchants care about two things: retention and acquisition. They are asking themselves, "how do I get customers to walk in and how do I get customers to return?" Foursquare can help with both problems.
Some major brands that have active partnerships with foursquare include: Starbucks, NASA, Wall Street Journal, Jimmy Choo, Chili's Bar & Grill, Toys "R" Us, Barnes & Noble, Bravo TV, MTV, American Express, History Channel, RadioShack, McDonald's, Sports Authority, Starwood Hotel and Resorts, 7-Eleven and Wal-Mart. However, not just the big boys can benefit from a bond with foursquare. Other homegrown and family-owned businesses can also achieve great success with a foursquare association.
Through Gallo's book, we learn from marketing directors as they share insights into why they are going mobile, the results from their campaigns, and tips on how you can do it too. There are more than 50 case studies in the book that will inspire you to look at mobile social networking as an essential component of your growth strategy.
There is a boutique hotel that used foursquare to compete against larger, more established chains. We meet a matchmaker who owes her entire business to foursquare; a popular chain of ice cream parlours that have seen a sizeable increase in business since launching a foursquare campaign.
My favourite case study relates to the Corcoran Group (www.corcoran.com), the largest residential real estate firm in New York City with the core mission of communicating what it is like to live in an area in a way that goes beyond the four walls of an apartment to include what is nearby. Its story tells of how Corcoran put tips on foursquare i.e. inside information and recommendations about local venues in almost every neighbourhood in its territory. In offering such enhanced client services, it sets itself apart from other real estate firms and showcases in a real way that localised knowledge is at the centre of the Corcoran experience.
Corcoran's product is the physical property for sale or rent, but the brand stands for localised neighbourhood expertise. Foursquare became an "extension" of the Corcoran brand by demonstrating what Corcoran agents have always stood for – knowing the neighbourhood better than anyone else and sharing a deep level of knowledge about what it is like to live in a particular area. Foursquare allows the brand to extend the conversation and to engage in a digital dialogue with a new and growing base of users.
Gallo shares that he wrote the book because as a journalist, he was interested in the stories behind the application programme, the stories behind every special that each merchant offers. Every badge that someone earns on foursquare tells a story, as does every tip and every mayorship. Best of all, as co-founder Naveen Selvadurai puts it, "Foursquare gets you off your couch or your computer and encourages you to explore your world. Many other social networks are about being behind your computer screen or TV."
Social networking is no longer a trend – it has become mainstream. Mobile social networking is simply the next stage in the evolution of conversations. Gallo gives you three compelling reasons why you should care about foursquare – it is free and you have nothing to lose; your customers are probably already using it (and you might not know it); and the growth story is impressive and you will want to be a part of it. Check out foursquare. Check in today.
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