A night out with FourSquare and FourSquare for business

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After seeing a friend become the ‘Mayor’ of her local butchers I decided to look into FourSquare a bit more and on Sunday I had the ideal opportunity as I was in London for the evening.

FourSquare is an app for your iPhone and you “check-in” when you go to local places. I download the app and set up my account and then waited to go to London . You collect badges along the way, send your check-ins as tweets and Facebook updates and it slots seamlessly in with all your other social media activities, but has the added advantage of actually being social – friends can join you at the your checked in locations (if you want them too).

Whilst we were approaching our destination, I stopped at the 4th plinth at Trafalgar Square and checked in . Then at Buck house , then at Christie’s where we parked and then at the Duke’s bar where we met our friends. So far so good – I seem to have got the hang of checking in

We decided that we would go to Shepherds Market and find a quaint little place for dinner. I checked into the 2 pubs we visited and at this point my friend who was fascinated by what I was doing decided to ask the barmaid if she ‘knew’ Keith C, the mayor of Ye Grapes. We figured he was a local guy as he had the most check-ins.

The barmaid squinted at the phone and declared she had never seen him before in her life! So we asked how long she had worked there – a year, full time and she had never heard of Foursquare and no, she never knew who her mayor was and that she  could treat him special as he was publicly advertising her pub. Every person through the door we stared at – was that Keith? Mayor of Ye Grapes? a glance at the barmaid and a subtle shake of her head… no that wasn’t Keith.

We sat back and digested the meeting and declared we’d use 4square to settle on dinner, we decided to go out onto Shepherds Market and take a look around. We walked past L’Autre a cosy looking place that served up Polish-Mexican and settled on Sofra for Turkish Meze.

We checked Foursquare as we took our seats. Nothing for Sofra, no tips from people having visited before and no mayor indicating a regular customer. Nearby, The Old Express had fab bangers and mash, L’Autre had a review too that was good and here we were tucked under an air con unit in the basement of a sterile feeling Turkish restaurant. Our friend decided that he was trusting Foursquare, the place had no mayor and no reviews so we were leaving!

We walked back to L’Autre, checked in there and sat down for a fabulous meal, very reasonably priced for Mayfair. The staff were charming and good fun – taught us some Polish, shared the history of the venue and really made us feel welcome. So I tried to leave a review, but found I couldn’t do it via the app (possibly user error) and had to do that when I got in.

As a useful gadgety gizmo, I like foursquare, I can see a use for it if I went out with friends often or I worked ‘in town’.

Looking Foursquare from a business point of view, if you have a bricks and mortar business then this is perfect for driving traffic. Whilst sitting in the sterile Turkish restaurant it was indicated to us there were Foursquare offers nearby – Debenhams Oxford Steet we offering a complimentary coffee. Hmm, perhaps the offers should be time reflective, being the shopper that I am, I know Debenhams isn’t open at 8pm on a Sunday evening. So a little more attention to detail or relevant offers at relevant times. They probably will call it making their brand visible .

Looking down the foursquare for business site, I see that North America and parts of Australia have already started offering incentives for ‘Mayors’ such as free coffee when they check in at their venue. As a local business this could be a good way of reaching younger shoppers or shoppers like me who were looking for reviews and regular customers to indicate a place worth visiting.

What about service based businesses?

For our delivery business we track our drivers, for them to use Foursquare on their smart phones for coffee of good local garages seems like a good idea. Many professional drivers know the good transport cafes and food stands, and this is a way of making them more accessible. But for our actual service itself? Hmm, I have yet to think of a way.

I have yet to think of a way a web designer to utilise foursquare, and that’s a good thing. An application that encourages socialising is a great thing, networking events will benefit greatly from using FourSquare, people can see the venues and previous attendees feedback and determine if the event is worth attending. No longer tied to a laptop for networking and something more than location based networking, FourSquare enables you to meet people you already have things in common with. You can even earn a Starbucks Barista badge if you check in to Starbucks often enough!

For the those analytically minded – stats are available do your retail outlet can measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and look at actually see who has checked in – tailoring your offers accordingly.

So will you FourSquare your business? Can you see a way for service based businesses to participate?

Share your experiences of FourSquare here

Sarah

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About Sarah Arrow
Sarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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