With FourSquare hitting the 10,000,000 user mark this past week it’s time you do more than just claiming your business? You could go play real FourSquare with the hipsters in the park or you could start taking advantage of all the different features that FourSquare has to offer your business for free!

Create a FourSquare Special

When a FourSquare user checks-in, they are often times rewarded with some type of special. There are seven different types of specials including:
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• Swarm Special:
  • If 43 people check-in at your bar, everyone whom checked in will get 10% off of their bar tab
    • Can limit the frequency that this occurs and what number makes a swarm

• Friends Special:
  • Check-in with four friends and receive a free appetizer
    • FourSquare allows the number of friends that must be checked-in to be awarded the special

• Flash Special:
  • First 50 people into the store starting at 10:00 AM receive a coupon for $25.00 off of their purchase of $100.00 or more
    • Gives an incentive for individuals to come to your store at a specific time and specifically spend a certain amount of money

• Newbie Special:
  • On your first check-in, receive a free pedicure with the purchase of a manicure
    • Establish that relationship and hopefully gain a devoted customer

• Check-in Special:
  • A special every time a customer checks-in to your place of business

• Loyalty Special:
  • Every third check-in, receive a free desert with your dinner
    • Same concept as the Subway stamp card, reward your loyal customers for their loyalty

• Mayor Special:
  • If you are the mayor as of election day 2012, receive a free hour long party for you and 15 friends. All check-ins while mayor will be rewarded with 20% off of your bill.
    • Again, reward your loyal customers

So what are our good friends at Google up to this week? It ‘s always something, but this week there has been a convergence of four key online marketing and development trends.

The local, mobile, check in, and collective bargaining movements are starting to merge over at Google. Even though they aren’t always the ones with the first idea, if Google embraces it, you pretty much know it’s going to be big or is at least a hint at where the future is going. So let’s take a look at exactly what’s happening out west in good old Mountain View, California.

Google launched Google Places in April 2010 to help searchers find local business quickly on a map, without having to navigate through pages and pages of search results. Google Place pages allow a business to showcase their products, services, location and highlight important information like hours and contact information. Now users don’t have to go slogging through a phone book or a businesses website to figure out how to contact them. Google made the place pages easy to see in searches and over time they started showing up directly underneath websites.

It’s important to note that Google has been spending a lot of time working on their local listings and encouraging businesses to update their place pages. There are many reasons for this, but it’s easy to see that Google is distancing itself further and further from Bing and Yahoo. The Google business plan is to offering so many intuitive easy to use features that a user can find everything they want in Google. It won’t be long before you will be able to search for a pizza restaurant in your area and have a sample slice through Google…. Just Kidding. But seriously, things are getting crazy.
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Alright, so you’re back in the office and ready to start the year off right. You want to invest more of your marketing budget in social media, email marketing, PPC advertising. You know that this year is going to be different. You can feel it. But you sit back and wonder, “what’s going to be the biggest trend and growth area this year in online marketing?” Local search. Trust me. Everything is going local.

2011 is going to be the year of Local. The Internet is getting bigger and bigger. Google has indexed over 1 trillion websites. There are millions of pizza restaurants, cafes, and florists. There are millions of everything. What does this mean? Local matters. It’s no longer important or in many cases possible to be number one on Google for the entire country. What matters is where your business shows up in your local market.

Remember that Google can tell where someone is searching from and this means SEO and SEM become a local game. You want to show up higher in search than the pizza place down the street, or more importantly you need too. With Google Maps, Groupon, Foursquare, Bing Local, Yahoo Local, and Facebook Places it’s become a local game.  Just look at Google trying to buy Groupon for $6 billion….they understand what the most important trend is. The Internet has arrived in your neighborhood and it’s crucial that your house look better than the one next door, or at least be easier to find.

One place to start: Make sure your business address is listed on every database and online map you can think of. Google, Bing, and Yahool Local listings are critical in helping your business show up in local search. Claim the listings and optimize them to show all facets of your business. Always remember to think local.

For the first time, Social Media stepped to the forefront as a conduit of information, interactivity and instantaneous updates for voters, candidates and traditional media alike. How did this happen? When did Twitter, Facebook and even Foursquare become such relevant communicative devices with these participants? How is conceding an election via Twitter an acceptable method for candidates? When did Foursquare become a conduit for reporting voter fraud? How did a former Governor use these outlets to endorse candidates and turn them into national personalities?

In many broadcast newsrooms around the country, pundits were relying heavily on social media to augment their reporting – live interaction with voters and candidates alike. Foursquare offered an “I Voted” badge while Facebook had an auto Live Feed feature giving their users the same option. Independent and even International news outlets participated with live online video broadcast and blog feeds. Akamai Technologies Inc., which delivers about 20 percent of the world’s Internet traffic, showed rising traffic on Tuesday afternoon. Around 5 p.m. EDT, traffic was peaking at over 4.6 million global page views per minute. Based on GMA news, one of Akamai’s highest rates of traffic in its five years of measurement. To compare, Obama’s election night speech in 2008 at Grant Park had 4.3 million global page views.

An important and relevant trend has been brewing; Viewership & consumer online participation has increased for most of the current 4,600+ online reporting agency websites every year through 2009 (Nielsen Net Ratings). For the most part, these online new organizations have taken advantage of new social media technologies to connect and engage the viewer. Since the majority of online viewers “grazing” the internet for news rather than staying with one source, it’s important these online entities engross the viewer and interact via Twitter feeds, Facebook announcements and the like.
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Foursquare and other location-based marketing tools alike must be shaking in their boots today, while they un-eagerly await the big boy (Facebook) on the playground that’s about to show up in the sandbox that is location-based marketing.

Although rumors have been circulating the industry since May, Facebook is holding a large meeting at their central headquarters later this afternoon to officially release their plan for their location-based marketing tool.

When looking at current location-based marketing tools Foursquare is leading the way with over one million users. Well, when Facebook releases their program, it will instantly be available to 500 million users. (Yes, your math is correct, that’s 500 times the leader in the industry) With their whopping amount of users, it’s almost hard for anyone else to even compete.

So the question remains, will Foursquare and other location-based marketing tools become extinct upon the release of Facebook’s version? That is a question that can only be answered upon the release and evaluation of Facebook’s new tool. (usability, gratification, convenience, etc…)

One thing is for sure, this can be a great opportunity for local businesses to promote their company across the huge user-base that is Facebook, and directly offer discounts, information, and specials to them. Oh yea, don’t forget about nationwide companies getting in the mix, as McDonalds is in the talks as one of the first companies signing a contract with Facebook for the new location-based marketing tool.

Stay tuned for the soon-to-be-released details and specifics of Facebook’s 500 million user strong location-based marketing tool!

You’ve probably all heard the latest buzz on Foursquare, the location-based marketing game that has recently been blowing up the headlines.  With over 1.4 million registered users, Foursquare is a mobile application and website that allows you to check in on your phone where you are currently located and announce it to friends and share on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Foursquare also allows businesses to award those who check in frequently with discounts and incentives.

This week, Loopt, the first of the location-based marketing applications, with over 3.4 million registered users, announced a new mobile app, LooptStar, that will compete more heavily with Foursquare and Gowalla, but with more of a loyalty program incentive. Gone are the days of those little punch hole cards that I always seem to lose in my purse! Welcome are the days where your loyalty cards are right on your phone!

So what is the difference between LooptStar and Foursquare? The main difference that I like best is that it uses Facebook Connect instead of creating a brand new social networking site. This way, users don’t have to have multiple networking sites and portals for checking in and receiving discounts. For me personally, one social network (Facebook) is enough!!

Second, it’s main focus is on rewarding customers for their loyalty to their business. Big brands like the Gap and Burger King are partnering with LooptStar to start offering incentives for frequent check-ins at stores.  These stores can then use the data collected through the app to personalize their incentives and customize them to the user – therefore encouraging more return visits to the store, and ultimately more money spent! Using Facebook Connect also allows the sharing of these incentives as well as your whereabouts to your friends.
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When you think of foursquare, the first thing that might come to mind is a game you played at recess when you were in elementary school. Well, times are changing, and the next time you hear someone talking about foursquare, they’re probably talking about the ever-growing location-based social media tool.

How it works for users:

Foursquare is a social media tool that allows people to post their location from GPS based smart phones, or via text from a regular cell phone. This is called “checking in,” and the more you check in, the more “rewards” you can earn. There are two different types of rewards: badges and mayor-ships.

There are many different ways you can earn a badge on foursquare, but it will always involve checking in. One example of this is the “explorer” badge, which you earn after checking into 25 different locations. Foursquare also has badges that are location and event specific. Recently, they teamed up with SXSW (South by Southwest), a 9 day music, film, and interactive event in Austin, TX to create a cornucopia of badges a user could earn while “exploring” the event.  To earn mayor-ship of a location, you must have the most check-ins at a specific location in the past 60 days. Once you’ve achieved this, you become the undisputed mayor of that location…that is, until someone else frequents that venue more than you and steals the crown.

How it works for businesses:

Foursquare is a great way to get people to visit your business, post about their experience, and create an interactive community. Foursquare works well for places like restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, bars/clubs, gyms, hair salons, and other venues that people visit regularly.
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