Foursquare, the “media popular” location based – game like – social network announced the creation of local updates last week has followed that up with the ability to pay for “Promoted Updates”.
What does this mean for most small businesses?
Unless you are doing business in Manhattan, San Francisco or Santa Monica California, probably not very much.
You see, although the company claims 20 million users, the highest concentration of them are in these “internet company hotbeds” or a few other major urban centers and generally no place else. And while 20 million seems like a lot of people, that is really just the number that have activated the service – the actual active “players” are much smaller in number.
Foursquare has captured the imagination of some very big brand marketers – probably because they were among the first to initiate location based social networking and have a very well done user interface and app experience. And for some merchants, Foursquare has been a leading testing area for real time promotions and coupons via the phone. But the actual effectiveness and impact of these efforts are still unclear for the vast majority of businesses.
Local app promotions is an emerging area and will likely be an important opportunity for many businesses in the future. Claiming your Foursquare venue on the service is probably worthwhile. But putting any real effort into foursquare marketing – be it free or paid – should usually be lower on most small businesses social marketing priorities.
We know the good folks at Foursquare and we’re excited to see them rolling our new features and options. For some of our clients we do a lot with Foursquare but until the location based population and adaptation becomes more prevalent – this is not a mission critical area for most business social media efforts. That said – we’ll keep checkin-in with foursquare for you.
