If you know me at all, you know I have a habit of checking into the places I visit on services like Foursquare, Gowalla and now SCVNGR. My wife recently asking me, “Do you HAVE to check-in everywhere we go?” A friend also questionned the reasoning behind all my check-ins. She could understand when I update my status for smaller, independent, mom & pop shops around the city. She just didn’t think I should be giving free advertising to the mega businesses like McDonald’s for instance.
A check-in this evening is a great example of the power of Foursquare. My wife and were looking for a quick bite to eat before we picked up the kids and headed home. Last week after we’d already eaten, I remembered that our local Bonefish Grill has $5 Bang Bang Shrimp appetizer. Bang Bang Shrimp is one of my wife’s favorite dishes. We missed the opportunity last week, so we weren’t going to miss it this time.
Once we arrived, I checked in like I usually do. Many times I’ll share my Foursquare check-ins on Facebook. This evening, the exchange illustrated in the graphic.
The Power of Foursquare
My posted check-in was immediately responsible for another set of customers going out of their way to grab a meal of their own from Bonefish, and some Bang Bang Shrimp.
If you’re a business and you want to expand the connection you have with your customers, look at the power that Foursquare and Facebook can have on your business. If you want a fantastic case study of how to use social media tools to connect to your customers, just look at local restaurateur Scotty Wise with Scotty’s Brewhouse (On Twitter @brewhouse and on Facebook). Or, how Papa Roux uses Facebook to draw customers to cajun restaurant in like a tractor beam each day he’s open.
If you’re completely new to location based status services like Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR, my friend Ricky Lee Potts has started a series on Location Based Services.