How Foursquare is Changing Social Media Marketing

by Samir Balwani on December 3, 2009 · View Comments

Everyday I wonder what the next Twitter will be and how it’s going to impact online marketing strategy.

Here’s what I think. It’s going to be foursquare. So let’s take a look at how it’s driving new online strategies and changing our marketing theory.

What is FourSquare?

The best place to begin is with understanding what foursquare is. It’s a new website which lets you “check in” to stores, bars, restaurants, and other places. When you “check in” to a new place, foursquare will update your friends of where you are.

It’s addictive because as you start to explore new places or do specific things you start to unlock badges. So if you go out to the same place every night you might unlock the “local” badge.

The Shift in Strategy

Foursquare embodies the shift from our immobile computer to mobile Internet. Consumers are connected all the time. Twitter began the mobile trend and foursquare is continuing it.

Since more consumers are using the mobile social web, brands are able to connect with consumers within their stores. Marketers can create incentives and contests to drive customers into a business.

The continuing trend towards mobile Internet is a huge opportunity for brands with physical stores and offices.

Introducing the Microcommunity

With the mobile Internet comes changes in user behavior. The most prominent change is the idea of privacy. Although we know privacy is an issues on sites such as Facebook, foursquare opens up a whole new set of problems.

Most foursquare users are extremely wary of who they add as a friend. People are worried about letting strangers know where they are or where they aren’t.

Because of this selectivity, mobile communities are most likely to be much smaller than our normal friend lists. These smaller groups of friends can be defined as microcommunities. I think it will be rare to see a foursquare user with hundreds of friends like we see on Facebook.

Instead of being able to reach a huge following online, brands will have to target multiple microcommunities.

If you get one person to Tweet about your store, 5000 people might read the message. If you get one foursquare member to “check in” to your store, maybe only 25 people see that update.

However, since the foursquare user has only added trusted friends we can assume that the update has a greater impact than a Twitter message. This increased trust but decreased size will have major implications on future social media marketing strategies.

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Final Thoughts

It seems interesting that as social media and mobile Internet matures, brands have to continue becoming more personalized. As microcommunities start to gain in popularity, our marketing strategies might change from targeting groups of 50,000 followers to groups of 50 friends.

I’d love to know what you think about mobile Internet, social media, and foursquare. Do you think that foursquare will change the way you create strategy for your business? Are you on foursquare? Have you used it already? Share your thoughts with the community!

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Mike D. Merrill December 3, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Really like the support for the microcommunity. The biggest benefit is the influence will be so much higher. So it’s in a brand’s best interest to incent folks to share information about where they are at with their social stream.

There are also a bunch of implications to events, branding experiences, etc.

This has been very top of mind for me as well lately.

@mikedmerrill

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:51 pm: Thanks for the comment Mike. I think microcommunities are going to become more important in 2010. The increased trust is definitely a good thing though.

Gavin Heaton December 3, 2009 at 10:03 pm

It will be interesting to see whether Foursquare moves beyond the status update – or finds a way to easily update location. IMO it feels very clunky still and will need to be a lot smoother and easier to use before wide scale adoption.

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:50 pm: Agreed Gavin, it still has some time to go before it becomes something everyone will use. The user base is still small and it still has the look and feel of a beta.

Mogan December 4, 2009 at 1:26 am

I’ve been on Foursquare for 2 months now and was very active for a while. I see several commendable features and potential paths for development. But one gripe has been, even when the community was smaller, with the veracity of the leaderboard. There are a few members who check in at seemingly unrealistic rates within the first day or two of the week and take unassailable leads. While this is unlikely to influence the bulk of the community, the motivating factor of the leaderboard and scores could be enhanced strongly by managing these few members. Effectively, by curtailing the errant behaviour of a few, the engagement of a disproportionately larger segment of the community will be increased.

Anna Green December 4, 2009 at 11:00 am

Im going to give this a look, its sounds interesting, I missed the twitter wave so hopefully im in time to catch this one!

Pano December 6, 2009 at 3:45 pm

The real issue is will enough people go through the update process, regardless of seamlessness. Its going to have to be user initiated due to privacy concerns. So if its user-initiated, are enough users in a community going to keep it updated frequently enough? I don’t think competitive game play is enough. Offline couponing, discounts, etc, could incent usage. But gameplay is really a redherring to create long term usage patterns.

Samir Balwani December 7, 2009 at 10:35 pm: The competition side is really a lot of fun, but it would definitely have to be driven by coupons and discounts. I can see myself being too lazy to check-in sometimes.

Niall Harbison December 6, 2009 at 4:33 pm

I can see how Foursquare is changing the game and giving people the possibility to advertise to hyper local markets etc and really get it but what I worry about is people just jumpin gon the bandwagon of the latest service. I was at a presentation yesterday and somebody told me there were only 140,000 people on Foursquare. That is tiny. Now I know it will grow but so did Twitter and how much money are local businesses making on there? Wasn’t it the great big hope?

I get these services 100% and it is my companies job to get businesses to embrace them but I am a much bigger fan of sticking with the likes of Facebook that has the numbers to justify the time spent on them.

Samir Balwani December 7, 2009 at 10:34 pm: I agree Niall that sticking the big players is great, but I think it’s important to try and look at upcoming players too. If you grab a lot of the early adopters on FourSquare you build that community early. The more numbers you have, the easier it is to build more followers. So for some brands its important to be in new places early and try new platforms.

Gareth Wong December 6, 2009 at 6:39 pm

Thanks very interesting post.

We think alike.

However, sadly foursquare for me is difficult as I use blackberry in UK.

Privacy is key issue, I have an account but challenge of logging on seems a bit difficult.

Microcommunity is a great interim solution.. but friends that shares similar tastes (based on our limited trusted circles even with comparative transparent social media) is different from collection of a ‘trusted’ community which shares similar need/preferences but having the biggest challenge of ‘discovery’ taken out of the equation…

See my contrary comments on the reverse of ‘search’.. its a different ways of thinking of issue from a different angle.

http://garethcxo.blogspot.com/2009/12/search-will-be-killed-by-co-creation.html

@GarethWong

Samir Balwani December 7, 2009 at 10:32 pm: I totally agree Gareth, privacy is a HUGE issue. It’ll be interesting to see if people consider it too large an issue. It’s the reason why I only have a handful of friends on FourSquare and don’t always check-in.

John Lane December 7, 2009 at 10:00 am

Thanks for the great post.

I think it’s true that Foursquare has the potential to be another big thing in social media. I refuse to say “the next Twitter” because I don’t think of it as a replacement, it’s a different type of outlet. And the thing that makes it most different is germane to the conversation you’ve started: In Twitter, brands are trying like hell to insinuate themselves into conversations that were going along fine without them. In Foursquare, the brand is central… the conversation only exists because of brands.

This post will help me illustrate what I mean: http://bit.ly/5E3bkx

But if you don’t want the whole thing, the example breaks down like this: If someone on Twitter positively or negatively speaks of a brand, the brand is reactive in response. But Foursquare represents an action (i.e. I ate at The Pit and it was good). So an action can immediately be taken by the brand as well; Foursquare has pop-up alerts in which The Pit can pass offers to you when you check in there (i.e. Welcome to The Pit. Now that you’ve checked in, ask your waiter for the 10% discount on the pulled pork sandwich.). And, even better, I can add a review of what I ate, and when my friends check in there, they will get my recommendations (i.e. Get the pulled pork sandwich. It’s great!).

In all cases, the brand is central. And I think we’ll soon see more and more brands taking advantage of this system which is really brand-centric community.

Again, thanks for the great post.

@johnvlane

Samir Balwani December 7, 2009 at 10:32 pm: Thanks for the comment John. I never thought of it as “brand-centric” community, but it might be a good way to think about it. This is definitely something I’ll have to think about.

Paul Steinbrueck December 8, 2009 at 10:36 am

I do think Foursquare is on to something, however, I doubt the big boys of social media (Facebook & Twitter) are going to let Foursquare pass them by. The twitter API already includes geolocation and there are lots of Twitter aps that make use of it. I expect Foursquare-like functionality to become incorporated into Facebook and Twitter.

Chris Burdge December 29, 2009 at 7:48 pm

Signed up for FourSquare a while ago, but alas, it’s still not available in Victoria BC.

I agree that location based services are going to play a major role in the social web in 2010. However, whether FourSquare will be the one to capitalize on that or not remains to be seen. Especially with the recent announcement of Twitter’s acquisition of MixerLabs.

Patrick Workman March 29, 2010 at 9:22 pm

Ever since foursquare launched nationwide, it’s growth has been amazing. It went from being a niche platform to overnight sensation with big brand advertisers signing up immediately.

The potential it offers marketers in the hyper-targeting arena is amazing and it will be interesting to see where this goes in the years ahead!