Foursquare is a social media platform that you can use for your own personal use or as an effective strategy of advertising your business. Many businesses large and small are using Foursquare and other social media in order to keep their customers up-to-date on events and to reach out to potential customers.

 

What Is Foursquare?

Foursquare is a location-based social media application. It uses maps of local areas to promote social interaction and also includes games. Users can utilize the Foursquare application on their mobile devices to ‘check in’ at businesses and locations they are patronizing. Foursquare is free for users and the trend for ‘checking in’ is still growing. Users can also add a business they frequent if it is not already listed. For each check-in, Foursquare users will earn points, accumulate badges, and ultimately become the ‘Mayor’ of different businesses based on their check-in frequency.

 

How Does Foursquare Help Grow a Business?

Foursquare, like other social media outlets, can help bring a business to the forefront of the target audience. In many cases, the business itself does not have to be a very active participant in using Foursquare to successfully use it for promotion. As more people are proactive about using the application, businesses are reaping the rewards of word-of-mouth advertising.

Customers do a lot of your promotional work for your business on Foursquare as they can leave tips for other people patronizing your business. This can help to build your reputation in the online community. The more people share their location at your business, the more work will spread.

 

Effective Foursquare Business Strategies

There are a number of ways to use this social media application to improve your business and grow your customer base. Here is a look at some of the common concepts business have been using to promote the products or services:

Race for Mayor – users of Foursquare can hold the distinct honor of becoming the Mayor of your establishment based on how often they check-in at your location. To provide extra incentives for customers to seek the position of Mayor, a business can offer specials including free merchandise, gift cards, or exclusive discounts to whoever is crowned mayor.

Monthly Foursquare Events – through your Foursquare account, a business can offer exclusive deals or events that are only available to users of the application. Not only can this increase the interest in a business, it can also help encourage people to learn more about Foursquare itself thereby growing your potential audience.

Customer Incentives – there are many simple but effective marketing campaigns you can provide to your customers through Foursquare that offer incentives for checking-in that can be promoted through other social medial applications including Facebook.

Since Foursquare is an ideal way to make direct contact with your target audience, it is worth the time to learn more about the many ways it can be used to market your products or services in real-time. Consistency and active participation are the two most important ingredients in a successful Foursquare marketing strategy for any sized business.

Ready to try it for your business? Sign up here. Would you like a hand setting up your account and brainstorming some other social media ideas? Let the experts at IntelliSites and Burst Marketing help.

Filed under: Articles & News, Social Media, Web Tips and How-tos
Tags: business, Foursquare, marketing, social, Social Media
post a comment

The clock is counting down on the holiday season. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday are this week and that means companies around the country are ready with big sales.

The average American will spend more than $800 this holiday season — that’s up about 17 percent from 2010, according to American Express Spending & Saving Tracker.

Significantly more people said they will be shopping on Black Friday. About 35 percent of those polled said they would be surfing the web on Cyber Monday — up from 20 percent in 2010.

Almost half of consumers said they plan to shop online this holiday season, according to another report, Deloitte’s Annual Holiday Survey.

The Internet is now tied for 1^st place as the top shopping destination. Discount stores share the top spot.

And it’s not just young people. Consumers of all ages said they planned to do about a third of their shopping online.

“Social media will play a big role in how shoppers follow company sales announcements this holiday season,” said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, BIGresearch, as part of a report by the National Retail Federation. “From Facebook to Twitter and even group buying sites, ‘social’ retailers may be rewarded this season in terms of additional holiday sales.”

More than 17 percent of those polled said they will keep an eye on companies’ Facebook pages with just over 11 percent eying sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, according to the NRF.

Filed under: eCommerce, Marketing Your Site, Social Media
Tags: black friday, cyber monday, holiday shopping, online shopping
post a comment

Business networking lends itself to a certain level of self-promotion.

So when you’re in a discussion group with other professionals, you expect people to mention their businesses in hopes of getting new customers.

But just like at a networking event where you don’t have someone jump up on a table and start singing their theme song, there are certain rules that apply to LinkedIn discussion groups.

Here’s a perfect example:

First off, this is not a discussion — it’s a clear sales pitch. It just makes people mad — especially since they already invested time (albeit a split second) to read the first part of the headline. That leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

Is this spam or just an immature person posting like this?

There’s something to be said for guerrilla marketing campaigns, but this is hardly anything more than annoying.

To the credit of the person who made the above post, it did spark a chain of office discussion e-mails and this blog post. Perhaps it accomplished exactly what they were going for…

Have questions about how best to utilize social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter? Let the experts at IntelliSites Web Design help!

Filed under: Marketing Your Site, Social Media
Tags: LinkedIn, sales pitch, Social Media, what not to do
post a comment

So you want to upload videos to your website. For space, load-time and other reasons, the better option is uploading them to a third-party video site and embedding them on your own site.

But which service do you choose? We’ve done some research breaking down the pros and cons of arguably the two biggest players today.

YouTube:

When it comes to video online, YouTube reins king. If you want your video seen beyond your site, YouTube is the way to go

• High definition
• Upload files up to 20GB in size
• Up to 15 minutes in length (you can raise your limit by verifying your account)
• Allowed file formats
• Private videos (give specific people access)
• Unpublished videos (won’t list in searched, but assigned unlisted URL)

One big drawback to YouTube, according to some of our clients, is the related videos that appear at the end of the videos. But for others, the social sharing ability is worth it.

Vimeo:

Vimeo is newer than YouTube and tends to have videos of a more artistic nature.

• 500MB per week (up to 10 files per day)
• No video length restrictions
• High definition
• Vimeo Plus (which you pay for) allows for up to 5GB upload per week
• Allowed file formats

There are no related videos on Vimeo that come up at the end. For a site that is solely embedding the video for viewing on their site, this is the recommended way to go.

Still looking for some other ideas? Here are 30 more.

Do you have an idea for a video but aren’t sure how to execute? Are you looking for some advice on creating videos for your site? Ask the online video experts at IntelliSites.

Filed under: Content, Social Media
Tags: Content, video, video hosting, vimeo, youtube
post a comment

As a follow-up to last week’s post, we’ll be dissecting a recent study that breaks down Facebook best practices.

The group, Buddy Media, analyzed the posts of companies in a wide-range of industries and concluded things like the best time to post, the best lengths of posts and more.

The take-away from their study is basically to follow the KISS rule (Keep it simple, stupid) – aka don’t make your customers think too much. Keep your posts short, simple and to the point.

When to post

More people will engage with your Facebook posts if they’re made between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., according to the study.

Wednesdays had the highest response rate with weekends having the lowest.

What and how often to post

Simplicity is king on Facebook.

Companies that had the best results made two or fewer posts per day and had posts with 80 characters or fewer. The difference in response to posts under 80 characters compared to those over 80 was 66 percent higher.

And when it comes to discounts, “‘$ OFF’ offers receive twice the engagement of ‘% OFF’ offers,” according to Buddy Media. That keeps potential customers from having to do math.

Need some help getting into the Facebook world or just improving your day-to-day posting? Let IntelliSites’ Albany web design team help.

Filed under: Lead Capture, Social Media, Web Tips and How-tos
Tags: Facebook, marketing, Social Media
post a comment