Hi there folks!
Today we are going to take a look into Foursquare and, more specifically, we're going to check out how to use it for events and conferences and uncover some of the answers to the questions that aren't as easily avilable through the Foursquare site.
Quick Background on Foursquare
So, we're not going to waste too much time on an introduction to Foursquare, because hopefully you've already been focussing on ways to incorporate this into your marketing plan. The implications for any business with a storefront or actual address are fairly straightforward, though the implications for online brands are a bit more difficult to tap into.
I had originally prepared a post dedicated to Foursquare and its impact on local and small businesses, however it seems SEO Doctor was one step ahead of me and produced this impressive guide before I was able to get my post out of the drafts folder here on SEOmoz. His post is extremely comprehensive though, so be sure to check it out!
I've been hearing loads of people talking about how "they don't get it" in reference to Foursquare and it's worth pointing out how many people were having trouble understanding Twitter as well. I would definitely recommend familiarising yourself with Foursquare now - especially if you work with any local companies.
The growth of Foursquare, Gowalla & Facebook Places has been extremely convincing, and the limited number of people making use of the "Specials" available by claiming your local business (for FREE) with Foursquare seems like an obvious missed opportunity - ignore Location-Based social media at your own peril.
Using Foursquare for Conferences and Events
At any rate, as you know, Distilled and SEOmoz have been busy over the last several months preparing for the #mozniar and the PRO seminar in London ( for which I would be remiss not to quickly let you know that tickets are still avaialble). In this preparation we have been looking heavily into ways to spice up the event.
Given my mild obsession with all ways to earn seemingly meaningless points and my new found hobby of Foursquare Roulette (jump off a tube station and randomly try whatever looks entertaining in the area) I proposed we look into Foursquare and what sort of things we might be able to do with it for the conference.
If any of you are as nerdy as I am, then I'm sure you will have noticed how some of the biggest brands as well as some of the largest events in the tech and music industries have been able to get their own Badges you can unlock by checking-in at various locations.
The first thing you'll notice is that these are not small affairs and there are potentially obvious reasons why these clients were potentially able to strike a deal to get a badge. You might also notice - if you've looked into this previously - that it can be fairly difficult to find any information about how these deals are struck, and it can be equally difficult to get in touch with the folks at Foursquare about striking up a deal.
Getting to the Source - An Interview with Eric F.
After enough prodding and digging through my own social networks for any potential "in" I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to get in touch with Eric, who happens to be the Director of Client Services - and was incredibly helpful and happy to speak to us.
Rather than be selfish with the responses I thought I would provide some of the answers he provided to my most burning questions about it all. Here are the responses I was able to dig up, I'll include a brief recap of the implications afterwards:
What would be your top tip(s) for making the most of Foursquare for conferences and Events?
EF: Setting up goals ahead of time is the best way to plan for a conference. You may have a single-day event and encourage people to check-in early, or you may have an event spread out over a few days or weeks and have people check-in early, in the middle, and at the end. We look at foursquare as a flexible platform, depending on event planners' needs. Some folks have found success with contests or tips to visit different booths. Others use foursquare as a way for attendees to connect and to see who else is at their event.
One recent conference used foursquare to show which events had the most people attendants, and then gave the speakers a chance to connect to their audience via Twitter after the fact.
There is a very robust API available as well that give event organizers the ability to show live check-ins and other interesting data about the event in real time.
In the past we've have seen badges from events and conferences (e.g. CES, Bonnaroo, SXSW, etc.) in the past- how does that work? Is that a service that people pay for? Is there generally a threshold about how "big" or "cool" an event is? Or is it more just about getting in touch?
EF: We're still in the early days of this, and have been testing different approaches around partner and event-related badges. Sometimes, we choose a venue because of a cool use of the platform; other times, it's to reach a new audience
In the future we hope to roll out a more structured plan for event planners and conferences - but for now we are inspired by the ideas and implementations we have seen from these events.
Is this a market Foursquare has considered? There seem to be loads of conferences and events and it seems like partnerships (with badges and such) could be a real opportunity.
EF: We are concentrating on the best user experience possible. If this comes at events and conferences, we are doing our job right.
What things can/should any event organiser do with Foursquare in the short-term? Obviously there is more to be done for a massive festival or conference, but what about one-off events or smaller time affairs?
EF: We look at our loyalty offers (in the form of special offers and mayor offers) as a big win for anyone with a physical location. These reward people that go somewhere for the first time, or are loyal customers. This also lets merchants track success with redemptions and foot traffic.
We know that business accounts are free, but how do your partnerships work with larger brands? Is there a general price range on these? How much does it cost for a brand to get their own badge? What if they want more than one?
EF: All business partnerships with foursquare are totally free. This includes someone with a single location such as a bar or restaurant, to a national retailer with 10,000 locations. To be 100% clear, we offer the ability to see analytics, run specials, and interact with new and loyal customers totally right now.
Badge programs have either a monthly cost associated with them that is directly tied to promotional consideration and reach, as well as the longevity of the campaign.
Who should large brands try to get in touch with if they want to team up with Foursquare?
EF: We have a dedicated support area for businesses: https://support.foursquare.com/forums/177952-foursquare-for-business
This ensures that the proper person will be able to answer the proper question whether it comes in from a local merchant, large chain, agency representing a brand, event question, or anything else that may arise.
What about smaller brands?
EF: Same as above - funneling requests through one system ensure that someone on the team gets back to people quickly, correctly, and promptly.
Finally, any previews/things in the works for business/marketing uses of Foursquare you're willing to share?
EF: Knowing where events are happening, or where people are gathered, is a great metric of discovery. We're all about letting folks know when something is happening, and most importantly where it is happening. We are looking at ways to empower users and businesses by giving them this knowledge at their fingertips.
Making Sense of it All
No surprise that the Foursquare team are keeping some of their cards fairly close to their chests, but there's definitely some key takeaways from this.
1. You don't have to be a global brand to get the hook-up. It seems pretty clear that any creative uses of the API are a definite way to grab attention from the folks at Foursquare, and is potentially a clever way to get your own badge.
2. There is no doubt that Foursquare and other location-based social media platforms are growing and now is the time to make sure that if you work with any local businesses: get on the ball, get your venue registered, and go to town. I would not be the least bit surprised if in some fashion or another this sort of data (rankings, tips, check-ins, etc) becomes quite valuable to the team over at Google when it comes to looking at local ranking factors.
3. If you decide to make location-based social networking part of your plan - let people know! There's no sense building the most incredible API to date to be used at your event, venue, etc. and not letting people know about it.
4. Even if you can't get your event/conference its own badge there is still plenty you can do to engage Foursquare users.
Examples for Short Conferences
- Be sure to set up your venue(s) as locations
- Create multiple venues for the same location (e.g. "Conference Room 1" "Bar" "Exhibition Hall" etc)
- Rewards for check-ins (forget about Mayor's - focus on the short term)
- Make use of Existing Apps. Check out ScreenScape, LocaModa, 2Know and if you're in London tell people to try out FourTap
- Create a new App
- Encourage early check-ins and sharing via Twitter
- Splash some cash and get your event a badge
Examples for Longer Conferences
- As above
- Have incentives for multiple check-ins
- Encourage check-ins from multiple venues
- Offer a prize for the mayor of the conference
Where exactly we end up along the spectrum of "things you can do" for London PRO for this year is still a work in progress, but you can bet I'll be championing for meaningless points and our own spin on the thing - and you can be sure we'll let you know what we come up with.
A very big thank you to Eric F. and the Foursquare team for taking the time to answer our questions!
Please let us know your thoughts below and any successes/hiccups you all have had using location-based social networking in the comments section below.
Hi Sam...
Now you left me with the curiosity to know what will you do with FourSquare for the Conference... just, please don't put check in rewards for the toilets use ;).
I think that this post + the Doctor SEO one are great base in order to start seriously using FourSquare as a marketing tool.
Even though it is not still very used in Spain or Italy (but the users are growing), I firmly believe that it is now the moment for any local business or organization to claim its presence on Foursquare.
The most important thing, apart the engagement factor and the direct marketing opportunities it offers, is the "citation" factor Foursquare can have thanks to the check-ins publications on Facebook and Twitter. Infact, the Social signs seems to be something that start to count also as ranking factor:
FourSquare can be a great complement to Google Places.
As I wrote in comment in the Dr SEO post, we could consider Google Places the classic organic search for local business, and FourSquare the Social Media mirror of the same smb.
Personally I still have not the possibility to test Facebook Places, but I think it cannot be such as flexible as FourSquare. Am I right?
Ciao!
PD: AH, I was forgetting. If anyone is in Milan (Italy) this week, Naveen Salvadurai (cofounder of FourSquare) will be speaking at this conference "GeoLocation is the Future" the day 24th during the Social Media Week in Milan.
Also our Rand will be talking in Milan this week: the same day 24th (Social Media: Strategy not Magic)
Thanks for the comments! We'll try to avoid any sort of reward for checking into the toilets too much though I'm sure a potty-humour badge could go a pretty long way in terms of building up a buzz.
My personal view on Facebook Places is that whilst the team at Facebook wants to continue as some sort of imperfect competitor with Google they probably won't be anywhere near as willing to share their data about checkins/reviews with Google... though I could obviously be wrong. For this reason I think Foursquare is definitely the place to start.
Facebook obviously has a much larger audience to reach out to, though I'm not sure what the numbers breakdown for members is and I'm still in favour of badges, useless points, etc :)
I definitely like where your head is at and I do sort of look at Location Based Social Media as a nice complement to Google Places as a social media opportunity for small and local businesses. Now to wait and see if there's any integration between the two :)
If I'm honest I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear that Google has some location based social media plans of their own - here's to hoping it catches on a bit better than Buzz, Wave, etc.
I'm more inclined to think that Facebook Places will win out over Foursquare, eventually. Foursquare is some way off reaching critical mass in terms of users and whilst points and badges are fun, it's hardly intellectual property. As Facebook Places develops it could easily come up with similar gimmicks and is at a massive advantage due to the amount of users Facebook has.
I think users are going to be more interested in the check-ins and reviews of people on their existing friends list in Facebook rather than the reviews of random near by strangers, or the comparitviely limited set of friends active on Foursquare. Foursquare has the advantage for now in terms of a developed offering, but already I know more of my friends who have used Facebook Places over Foursquare simply because it's there in front of them when they use Facebook on their Smart Phones.
I definitely agree with the sentiment that Facebook Places has access to a much larger audience and it would serve as a one-stop-shop but at the moment, the upside from a marketers perspective seems much lower with what Facebook is offering at the moment.
We shall certainly see what happens and I wouldn't bet against you/Facebook but I'm definitely pulling for the "little guy" in this case (to the extent that over 3million users is small) and sort of hope that as people become interested in location based social they try out their options (as has seemingly been the trend)... at the moment I think Foursquare is definitely a superior product but we'll see what happens!
At the moment I think Facebook Places helps folks like Foursquare and helps location based social become more mainstream, but as I said: I wouldn't bet against Facebook.
But if Facebook is the one to introduce location-based social networking stuff, why would people sign-up to Foursquare or any other new service? Facebook has so much more traction (who really knows about Foursquare??) and the people who are probably going to do this are already on Facebook?
Posts like these make me really want to try FourSquare, but I'm too embarrassed to have an account that makes it as far as "Dr. Pete is Mayor of his Home Office" and then just stops updating. I have considered dividing our condo into square-yard (or meter for you UK types) coordinates, and making each one a check-in - "Dr. Pete is at Living Room C4...".
Sorry, this comment has absolutely no practical value.
It's cool - in my zeal for Foursquare after I had just started using it, I may or may not have created a venue for "Sam's Desk @ Distilled" you'll have to swing by the London offices to find out for sure though :)
The other thing to remember is that Foursquare makes a great one player game. Using it for places you want to go, and a way to track where you have been makes it an off board memory for places too.
Exciting stuff here. Thanks for sharing the interview.
Question I have is how to communicate the benefit to a client. For example, let's say a client will be at an upcoming tradeshow. What compelling argument would you give them to create a Foursquare location for this event? Is it mostly because people that might not have known they are there might see them? Of course, you can have a give-away of some sort for the first check-in, or something along those lines, but what is the main selling point?
On a side note, I can't wait to see how everything plays out between Foursquare and Facebook Places.
This is a great point. Although I am an avid user of foursquare, I have difficulty explaining to others why I use it. People argue that it is a waste of time and that checking in does absolutely nothing. While I don't always see a benefit, I believe that once this trend gets picked up by more users and businesses, repeat business will increase for those businesses effectively utilizing the tool and the users will see more incentive to use foursquare because of the specials/discounts/etc. that are offered.
As for tradeshows, I think having a foursquare event encourages visitor participation and buzz about the show. Maybe you could have a special booth/tent that you could only find out about through foursquare or that offers an event specific giveaway *with check-in*. This will generate some buzz amongst the foursquare users as well as those who aren't yet utilizing the tool (encouraging them to do so).
@Kyle cool ideas here - particularly re the "secret" location check-in (problem being that it's way too easy to cheat, especially on smartphones without GPS).
As for the giveaway... definitely a good idea, had been thinking along the same lines
@Westgate it is certainly difficult at this stage of the game to communicate the benefit to a client. There are the "what if" and "just in case" benefits in the case that uptake continues and/or any sort of local search ranking factors are dictated by this (beyond idiots like me playing Foursquare Roulette). I look at it a bit like Twitter in that there is always a risk to early adoption, but if it takes off there is likely to be value for the early adopters.
The opportunity for digital folks is obviously much less known (unless you put on a conference or event), but I do think the potential value for local businesses is quite good: free analytics data about people who visit their shop, engage with their shop, and share this publically. As well as, the potential opportunity to rope people in with specials/deals and so forth. I have definitely been into places that I never would have visited (and that I now visit regularly) just because they were offering a free cup of tea to anyone who checked in!
I like this idea... it reminds me a lot the "secret room" of the RPG... and effectively the RPG style could be used, making of FourSquare somehow a Master of the "Conference Game" :)
Thank you for this interesting informations!
I do love Foursquare and I am sure that it will be one of the big players, too! People love to play and compete against each other and Foursquare gives us the posibility to make both combined in a phanatstic way.
I did like the recap of SEO Doctor, too. Thank you for the link.
Petra
Thanks for sharing !
Enjoyed this post tremendously. Could you perhaps fill us in on the direction you see the phenomenon of event's based microblogging/interactive real-time feedback mechanisms going forward?
I'm sorry to say that I don't have anything too groundbreaking to share on this front. My personal view is that they will become bigger still and that we'll see an increased usage of products such as Twitterfall and the types of "instant feedback/voting" that other sites (I'm thinking of Gizmodo here but couldn't find an example image) have done during liveblogging of events such as the iPad release.
I think these will become an increasingly important part of conferences, events and webinars but that's just my feeling!
Have you got any thoughts/insights you might want to share? Definitely an interesting conversation to be had!
I happen to have worked for a large B2B conference producer and oversaw the launch of their social media programs starting back in 2007. When I think how quickly Twitter has impacted the conference industry I have no doubt that these geolocation apps will also become integral to the experience. There are so many applications and I recently did an internal presentation looking at the possibilities:
Users checking in at registration - long way off because of the critical information that has to be captured, but to minimize the need to stand in line to validate your identity when you can check in and your badge printed out when you walk up could go a long way to minimize attendees time waiting to go and do what they want to do.
Checking in at sessions - a way to connect with other attendees, the speaker, etc. a tie- in to a mobile site can then allow the user to access material related to the session - going beyond the paper handouts so often forgotten after the session.
Now from an exhibit hall perspective, these apps could offer several possibilities, check in when you walk into a hall and immediately pull up map that clearly shows where you are and what booths are close to you, rather than the usual paper map. Also in B2B conferences, raffles are very popular to try and drive foot traffic to specific booths. With an app like Foursquare, become the mayor of specific booths increases your chance at winning a door prize, not to mention with a tie in to sponsors, a way for them to capture information for post conference follow ups.
These are just a few possibilities and of course beyond some of the capabilities that Foursquare can do today, but I believe they and others will soon work closely with conference producers to take advantage of tools that will only enhance the conference experience.
Hey, so I kind of spent most of today looking at 4square/linkedin api stuff - and some of it is interesting- for Conferences etc the Linkedin API looks quite handy - using something like Janrain on your registration forms allows you to pull in data from their social networks - I think thats pretty cool.
As to 4square/facebook I think in the b2b market its waiting for someone to hookup both the 4square and linkedin API - as that could be pretty huge.
Thank you both for your insights! Really great stuff.
And, Rob- please pass along my apologies to your CFO for having distracted you all day haha :)
Oh sh!t I knew I was supposed to be doing something today....
One note about foursquare is the potential for abuse.
As it gets more popular, more people could certainly fake check-ins in an effort to get free stuff. Geographically targeting a users location is only so accurate, combined with the fact that a user can enter an establishment and not purchase a thing. As services like this grow, the need to prevent fraud will become more and more important.
Dear Sam,
Well I come from the ultra-pessimistic camp instinctively with regards to microblogging but when a phenomenon weathers past the initial enthusiasm and hype and translates into something that is sustainable and/or clearly of reasonable utility past the 18 months phase I of course have to reconsider my position. With Twitter I have been immensely impressed with the way Web 2.0 has managed to authenticate/legitimize user participation from a concept that I'd have thought was open to widespread misuse, abuse and cases of identity manipulation and misrepresentation. Going forward..... I still see social networking and micro-blogging as more of an evolution than a revolution wherein constant minor gains, variations and value add-ons are built up over time. Facebook as a brand, utility and dare I say database holds such a strong position from gains made between 2007 and now that from a personal standpoint my non-SEO social-web engagement consists of almost zero micro-blogging activity beyond my Facebook status updates. I do, though, see value in the novelty of some of these applications in conference settings, specifically or with more emphasis toward non-techie professional conferences.
In the words of Tom Petty, "The future was wide open".
Matthew
Hey sam,
Nice post - I'm curious as to the support for big global brands - as at the moment I'm finding it tough to search all the countries for mentions of our brand - any tips on that? (at the moment you can only search within countries & have to manually enter "france")
I'd agree that this is an interesting area, I'm curious as well about what networks like MySpace & linkedin do here, especially linkedin as they already have the "events" feature which people neglect. I'd actually hazard a guess that for quite a few of the events you've listed here, which are essentially work events, LinkedIn could be huge - as you'd be promoting yourself, the event and all within your business network.
*HINT* the SEOpro event hasnt been taken by you guys on linkedin...
We got it now. Thanks for the heads-up, Rob :)
It's amazing that 4 years later this post is still so valid. I had no idea what Foursquare can do in terms of events and event specific badges. Thank you!
You also have tymr.com that is a social network oriented to places and events
Ever feel like you've missed a trick...why would I want someone to track my movements? It's all very amusing but honestly, what are the benefits?
I look at it as ambient awareness. Its great to know when friends go to a restaurant I love, or see a movie - its a great way to catch up with them the next time we hang out. Foursquare friends are usually people you spend time with each month, and seeing what folks are up to is a net gain for folks that use it. As I mentioned in another comment, there is also a strong single player version of the game which simply lets you track places you have been and places you want to try with the new tips and to-dos feature. You can add a "place" as a to-do item so that the next time you are out an about, or in a new city - all your items are in once place.
There arent really enough places in the UK that it works, which is really stopping me from using it. and GPS being such a massive drain on battery doesn't help either
Nice tips for this SEO side, thanks !
Hey Sam. I'm weighing in as one of the smartphone "have not's". As a result, I can't use the location based services, but I surely appreciate learning about them for the clients sake. And pointing me to SEO Doctor's post is much appreciated.