Now that social media – which not too long ago was brand new to the marketing world – has moved onto the phone, marketers have a whole other marketing channel to concern themselves with: mobile social media. With the increasing popularity of smart phones the percentage of mobile phone users accessing social network sites from their phone increased to 16.8% this past year, the equivalent of 38.9 million people (US). This number is forecast to continue to increase greatly over the next few years; therefore, firms should be taking a critical look at whether mobile social media is something they can take advantage of.
Location based marketing seems to the way of the future with companies like foursquare pioneering the way with mobile “check-in”. After perusing the foursquare website for a while, it became evident that the mobile app has a lot to offer businesses and consumers. By downloading the app consumers can be alerted to businesses in their area, see if their friends are nearby, provide/access reviews, and get badges/points to unlock rewards. As a business, all this interactivity can be done with YOUR brand which is pretty great, assuming of course that your brand offering is valuable and doesn’t let customers down and lead to negative reviews. Ultimately, foursquare has the potential to greatly improve the customer engagement factor and create loyal consumers. Naturally Facebook (among others) has followed suit with their Facebook Places feature, it will be interesting to see which prevails.
Reference: Beyond the Check-In: best Practices for Location-Based Marketing
