2010  is the year of geo-location, and now the name “foursquare” (the business leader in this space) is creeping across the desks of CMO’s and marketing types around the world. They’re now asking themselves the question, “Should my business be on foursquare?”

Well, maybe. So read on..

Argument for foursquare
- 1.8 million users to date, one of the fastest growing social media technologies out there
- Big brands are doing it, (Starbucks, NYTimes, Zagat, CNN, WSJ) we should follow along.
- We’re a retail establishment. We have a local presence in XYZ city and should engage with customers

Argument against foursquare
- We’re NOT a retail establishment (duh)
- It’s just another flashy social media play, we don’t have time for yet another social media thing
- How do we know it’s worth it? Are people actually “checking in” to (insert name of your business here)?

We could spend days debating the pros and cons here, so let’s not debate. Let’s educate ourselves and try and answer the last two points above. To help, I’ve just tried out Awareness’, “foursquare Perspectives” a brand new tool that helps enterprise marketers:

a. take inventory of their existing (customer-generated) presence on foursquare
b: deliver comprehensive reports to uncover trends across multiple foursquare venues.

Testing out foursquare Perspectives
So, let’s pretend that I’m a marketing person at Massachusetts General Hospital here in Boston. I chose MGH because, well, they aren’t necessarily a “retail” establishment per se, but they do have a physical presence, and actually, multiple locations, right?  I tested it out by doing a quick search here for Massachusetts General Hospital. Here are some screen shots of what came up.

Quick Reactions:
Well, if I’m a marketing person at MGH, I have just learned the following things…
-There are three MGH “campuses” that my customers are checking in to on foursquare.  Should I, as an administrator/marketer set up other official MGH sites for the many campuses/offices I have?
-The main campus is the most popular one by far, I should focus all of my effort on marketing there…
-Looks like my “customers” -patients, employees and volunteers, are checking in pretty regularly (repeats ratio of 3.6)  how could/should I engage them?
-I have roughly 300 customers that I can engage with using foursquare. What should I/could I do. (interesting conundrum here…as a hospital, do you want regular “customers” – i.e. patients checking in often??!)

Next Steps for You as a Marketer
- By using this tool, you’ve just tapped into the magic of foursquare and been given a quick, visible snapshot of the value of foursquare to share with your team. Maybe you’ll act on it right away, or maybe you’ll wait and see, but at least you have a snapshot in time for where your company stands
- Spend some more time on foursquare. See if you can identify, interact with, or somehow connect with your “mayor”. What works, what doesn’t?
- Take a look at Awareness’s new Social Marketing Hub. This answers your question of the “I don’t have time to do all of this social media work” If you’re convinced of the power of social media, and want to be publish, manage, measure and engage with your customers across all the major social platforms, maybe this is for you?