Are you currently using Foursquare for your business? If you’ve avoided the site up until now, it might be time to finally give in.
In its beginnings, Foursquare was simply a mobile app used as a tool for letting friends and family know where they could find you. You could check in at local restaurants, stores, gyms and other locations, and have that check-in show up in your social media feeds.
Now, Foursquare has evolved to include so much more than that. It is now used as a way for people to discover new places and for businesses to develop loyalty and build relationships with their customers.
Foursquare isn’t even just a mobile application anymore. It has grown to include a Foursquare website, which up until now didn’t offer much. With the new redesign, however, the Foursquare website has much to offer its visitors.
Some of the most notable changes on the website include the homepage. It now features a large map that displays all the interesting things happening near you. For example, the map shows:
- Your friends
- Nearby trending locations
- Places on your lists
- Places that are offering specials
- Popular locations
The zoom function allows users to take a closer look at what is happening around them. As users move around the map, it will automatically update to continue showing trending locations and the other features.
The most exciting feature of the Foursquare redesign is the new planning tool. Not only can you check in to places you visit, but you can actually plan your day. If you have a conference in Chicago, you can actually plan every aspect of your trip before you even arrive. Just some of the ways you can plan your day include viewing popular locations near where you will be, finding deals at local restaurants and stores, and viewing tips from people that have frequented the locations you are considering.
Foursquare is tapping into this market by offering increased usability through its full website. While the functionality on its mobile applications is still intact, the enhanced website will make it easier for users to get even more out of Foursquare.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »The fundraising, IPO and growth periods can be a very exciting time for young and old companies alike, with new products, services and ideas. It can also be one of the most challenging and stressful times. The entire company is forced into focusing on numbers, reports, and analytics to support projections and ultimately secure the biggest investors and ensure future hockey-stick-style stock charts. The latter typically becomes the norm of a company’s culture during the fundraising phase and clouds the huge marketing opportunities of the former.
What I’m talking about is the exciting part of the business—the new ideas and products that got the company where it is. The business and consumer world is also excited about these products, and your visibility tends to pick up steam once people catch wind of the magical word IPO.
Here are some ideas on how to capitalize on that visibility with SEO:
- Social Media: This is the best time to get Twitter churning, Facebook humming, and LinkedIn working. As word gets out that you’re shopping for capital investors or prepping for an IPO, people are going to start talking: Financial commentators, CNBC, MSNBC, Entrepreneur magazine, Jim Kramer… the list goes on. Every time someone is mentioning you, it’s a chance to connect and interact with that member of the community via social media.
** Will your company ever get this much coverage and press again? Hopefully, but maybe not.
** Wouldn’t this be the best time to attract top talent, and could social help? Absolutely! - Company Feedback: As your awareness grows and your social marketing kicks in, it quickly becomes a firestorm of re-tweets, mentions, hashtags and most importantly, feedback. Make sure you’re capturing the social community’s consensus on your products and company. This is a great time to find product pitfalls and highlight the features your community loves, all of which create opportunities for link bait and content.
- Link-building: Again, every time your company is mentioned on TV, the Internet, radio etc., it’s an opportunity to build links. You can use the market sentiment, analysis and broadcasts as link bait on your website. You should also be using this as compelling content that can be distributed across the Web with links and anchor text. Will there be a better time to generate links?
- SEO: Market buzz and the former present boundless opportunities for fresh content on your site. Take advantage with a "What they're saying" section that highlights prominent press mentions. Think about the blog posts, incoming text links and website integration with social profiles. The list of SEO opportunities is endless.
Don’t think for a second that these social, link-building and SEO initiatives won’t have an impact on business objectives. As awareness spawns awareness and your savvy Web marketing team starts to focus this attention, you’ll be able to control the conversation and steer the masses to product purchases.
The awareness will also spark the interest of the business world’s commentators and analysts. This in turn won’t go un-noticed to pre-IPO investors, both existing and new. Post-IPO, your stock will explode because of the underlying fundamentals and revenue generated from social, SEO and Web marketing, along with the hype these initiatives will ultimately create. The only question now is in-house or outsourced: I’m sure you know which way I’m leaning.
3 Comments »Oftentimes when a new client comes to Fathom, we quickly realize that it doesn't know what is special about its products or services. Certainly the client believes in the wares it offers, but really can't explain why consumers should buy from it instead of from a competitor. It thus becomes part of our Internet marketing campaign to help these clients hone their "elevator pitches"—what is now often referred to as their value proposition.
It seems the old world of advertising and marketing and the new world of holistic online marketing are not so much colliding but rather moving in synchronous orbits together at times, and the branding strategy of the value proposition is definitely one of those occasions. Helping a client to discover and then to present a value proposition gives us a chance to truly empower a client with a multi-faceted tool, as the value proposition can be used in slogans and mottos, on printed collateral materials by salespeople, and liberally all over a company website for branding initiatives.
The value proposition as presented in the interesting marketing fable, Roar!,* offers a solution for a painful situation—a solution that can be solved uniquely and best by the company presenting the value proposition and by its products or services. A few handy tips towards discovering and creating that value proposition include:
- Creating a 160-character-or-less statement explaining who the brand is, sans marketing jargon
- Listing the 3 greatest strengths/weaknesses of the brand
- Discovering what makes the brand stand out or appear different from competitor versions
- Understanding what value the brand brings to consumers
- Assessing why customers buy the brand the very first time
These and more, when applied objectively to a brand under observation, can help marketeers to fathom exactly what it is about a brand that makes that brand "pop, " and can help the brand to become more popular.
Socrates said it best when he said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." That ethic applies to branding as well, and Fathom proudly helps our clients to do just that - examine their brands and present them for their validity and necessity to their clients around the world.
*[Ed. note: In the interests of full disclosure, the author of Roar!, Kevin Daum, once served as a consultant for Fathom.]
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Have you given any thought to how mobile advertising will change the face of online marketing in 2012? Well, with more than half of Americans predicted to own a smart phone before the end of this year, you should. Add the emergence of tablets into the mix, and you have a growing market in need of attention.
Please join Michael Kartson and Michael Goff on December 14th at 1 p.m. EST for their Going Mobile with Your PPC Campaigns webinar. We will cover what to do as well as what NOT to do when it comes to new PPC mobile campaigns.
Why is having a mobile-optimized website and landing pages so important? What should you focus on when it comes to lead-gen vs. E-commerce? Should you use click-to-call or display ads?
Register for our webinar to get the relevant information you need to make your 2012 mobile PPC campaigns successful.
No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome. »The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently polled over 2,250 Americans to find out why they use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. The published report, “Why Americans Use Social Media,” led to some interesting findings. Most notably, it was found that keeping in touch with current friends or reconnecting with people they’ve lost touch with are the two most popular reasons for embracing social media. The lowest motivators for using social media included making new friends, finding dating partners or following celebrities.
With 91% of respondents citing that “staying in touch with current friends” was a “minor to major” reason they use social media, it’s clear that many Americans choose to embrace social media for this reason. 87% of respondents said that “staying in touch with family” was their reason for social media adoption, while 86% said that “connecting with old friends you’ve lost touch with” was their motivation.
Of the respondents who use social media to stay in touch with current friends and reconnect with old ones, I found it interesting that this was most relevant for people under the age of 50. In fact, roughly seven out of ten users under the age of 50 say that staying in touch with current friends is a major reason they use social media, and approximately half say that connecting with old friends is equally important.
There were many other interesting insights gained from this research, and you can read more about the research by viewing the entire report from Pew Research.
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