Make belief – The official blog of Renaissance Creative

When talking about social media with a skeptic, I like to remind them that social media has been around for about 10 years, and blogs have been around for closer to 15. Only in the last two years has social media become commercially viable. I whip out that line whenever I hear people dismiss a new evolution in the social media space as being a ‘fad’ or purposeless.

The latest evolution in social media, geolocation, has dealt with the same withering criticism by non-users. The difference is that the commercial applications of geolocation are much clearer than they are with Facebook or Twitter. There are many companies and services vying for geolocation users’ hearts, but right now that crown belongs to Foursquare.

Geolocation’s early adopters who saw the commercial appeal included Starbucks, who signed a deal with Foursquare to promote their Frappuccino Beverage by offering a discount to the “Mayors” of individual Starbucks locations.

Now it has begun to trickle down to SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses), who are also beginning to offer discounts and benefits to customers who “check-in” at their store.

Here are some tips that SMBs can use to engage their customers, encourage them to check-in and get them to tell their friends:

1. Keep it simple: If you’re going to offer a special via Foursquare or another geolocation application, it’s critically important that the steps a customer needs to take to receive the discount are as few as possible — ideally no more than two.
2. Don’t be cheap: If you’re going to offer customers discounts for checking in at your business, make it worth their while. The better the offer, the more likely customers are to tell their friends.
3. Track your stats: Foursquare offers businesses an analytics dashboard if you register with them. This allows businesses to track the activity at their store, including who checks-in most often, who last checked in and what the busiest check-in day is.
4. Keep it fresh: Mix up your offers to correspond with specific events or products. This encourages repeat check-ins, new customers and raises product awareness.
5. Move offline: When your business gets a new “mayor”, offer to recognize them in-store by having their name on a board, or posting their photo.

Every business is different, and as such, each strategy for using geolocation will differ. But the above five tips is a good jumping-off point for creating an individualized strategy for a small or medium-sized business.