michael pucher

 Social CRM Best Practices - Part 1: foursquare usage scenarios to increase customer loyalty for restaurants

There has been lots of buzz lately about foursquare, gowalla and other hot crowded LBS services. I don’t wanna describe what that services do. I prefer 4sq because it has more users and is available on more mobile internet devices.

But what do those services mean for businesses? Unlike giants use of foursquare including Intel or vodafone (German) it makes sense for small businesses as well.

Take restaurants. What restaurant do you prefer? A crowded one or an empty one? I prefer the crowded one.

What needs to be done to use foursquare:

• Make sure your venue is properly added/visible on foursquare so mobile Internet users are able to check-in
• Promote that you are on foursquare and announce concrete actions

How could those actions look like:

• Create contests (like 9 “real” checkins a month you get you next lunch free)
• If someone takes over mayorship of your venue, he will get a free lunch.

Possible Results:

• users love the “trending at the moment” feature and thel’ll follow friends
• users love this Mayor-Thing and they will start visiting again and again
• “mouth-to-mouth” propaganda on twitter, facebook, blogs and of course inside foursquare