More motivation for me to work out.
We love when people tweet about dragging themselves to the gym to earn the Gym Rat badge, or about trying a new restaurant hoping to unlock the Pizzaiolo badge. Encouraging real-world actions is a big part of the mission behind foursquare. We’re also aware that some of those behaviors…
Exciting news for #sm lovers. “Gap taps Foursquare Founders for Holiday Ad Campaign”. (thx for the find @nicole_hering)
What the Foursquare?
I’m getting ready to release Molly Pitcher Inn & The Oyster Point Hotel’s first ever Foursquare Specials, and I feel like a proud parent about to give birth.
*photo credit Google search for “baby” which yielded this result:
http://s.myniceprofile.com/myspacepic/697/69714.jpg
To create this special, I consulted with our Director of Sales, our Project Manager, and our Reservations Manager. We devised a 200 character special that is designed to reward our loyal customers, and act as an incentive to bring new ones in.
I sent the special (the same for each hotel) to Foursquare, got it approved, and will be releasing it next week once all our staff is aware of how Foursquare works before it goes live. We don’t want to pull a Gap.
Social Media Shout-Out: thanks to @foursquarehelp’s Twitter acct. for clarifying that a special won’t run (even after Foursquare officially approves it) until I make it live.
Stay tuned…(and stay with us!)
I’m always looking for Foursquare deals in my area, and am glad to have found this article (via Likeable Media, which I found via @nicole_herring’s RT) since I didn’t know about 3 of the 6 deals they listed.
Slightly Unrelated Sidenote: I was filled with excitement after reading the APP article about Whole Foods offering a “free foldable tote” Foursquare special, until I noticed that the special says it’s only available to first time check-ins.
They did include this in the original article, but I got so happy when I saw the word free that I skimmed right over where it mentioned that it was only for first time check-ins. Hopefully this can save you the embarrassment I went through when trying to redeem the special yesterday (after having already checked-in to that store).
#foursquareletdown
The same thing happened to me years ago when I misread a Mrs. Field’s sign at the mall advertising “Fresh Cookies Baked Daily”. My selective reading (and appetite) convinced me that the sign read “Free Cookies Baked Daily”. I begged my sister and best friend to join me as I ran towards the mall kiosk to redeem what I thought were my free cookies. Long story short, the embarrassment I faced after the employee told me to re-read the sign again is a story they will never let me live down.
Fool me once Deb, but you won’t fool me twice.
Foursquare Taking Over Times Square (via Mashable) this advertisement is to announce American Eagle’s specials (15% off) running now through the 31st of August.
Foursquare taking over Times Square definitely brings us one step closer to no longer having to answer the question “wait, what’s Foursquare?”
However, some of the the comments (shown below) from today’s the Asbury Park Press article: “Location-based mobile services help consumers and businesses keep track of each other” prove there’s still a long way to go before this trend becomes widely accepted and understood.
Thundercrack wrote: Why in God’s name would people want everyone to know where they are all the time? What ever happened to personal privacy? The only people who know my cell number are my wife and siblings. Everyone else can call my home phone and leave a message. I don’t want anyone to know where I am.
"Wouldn’t it be great if Foursquare could tell you in minutes (rather than meters) how far away a location was?"
— random thoughts from the longest roadtrip ever.
The Gap Read My Tumblr
…well, not exactly.
BUT The Gap (and over a thousand others) did read my post on SocialMediaToday.com that originally appeared on my Tumblr. After this post went live, it received some extremely strong feedback which I measured by the insights at the footer of my article (shown in this screen shot image)
The Gap just e-mailed me to let me know they saw my article, and that they would use my feedback on their Foursquare campaign. I think it’d be unfair if I failed to acknowledge that The Gap e-mailed me to apologize for my mishap. (I added a note about this to the bottom of my SocialMediaToday.com article.)
But the moral of the story is, social media truly does allow everyday citizens to have a voice (and a loud one at that)!
What to Watch Out for When Running a Foursquare Campaign
When you decide to run a Foursquare campaign for your business, make sure all of your employees know what Foursquare is.
I don’t want to rush release a Foursquare special campaign for my two hotels. The Gap is a good example of what happens when you release a campaign, and not all of your employees know exactly what you’re doing.
I recently learned that The Gap is running a special for 25% off your entire purchase for Foursquare users. I haven’t been to The Gap in years (my college wardrobe consisted of Forever 21 and Hanes men’s t-shirts with black spandex) so since I needed some new “real people” clothing I figured going to The Gap (with 25%) off would be a great idea.
But today when I went to The Gap, instead of being granted the Foursquare promotion and feeling like I was a valued customer, I felt embarrassed.
When I went to ring up my items the employee at my local Gap wasn’t as excited as I was to redeem this offer. He, and the customers behind me, laughed when I said I wanted to use my Foursquare special for 25% off. “Oh, the hopscotch special with the magic code” he said sarcastically (and I know sarcasm, I speak it fluently), “right, let me enter that in…”
I smiled back (although I guarantee I was beet red) and tried to politely ask if I was the first one to unlock the special at that particular store.
“Yes,” he said “…and the code your phone gave me actually didn’t work. But don’t worry, I let you have another offer anyway…”
I was thrown off for several reasons. The first, was that the employee was acting as if he was doing me a favor by allowing me to use the 25% off deal that his company was advertising, even though the promotion code was incorrect. He told me he wasn’t sure if “my deal” was legitimate. The second, was that he chimed in with the customers behind me and made fun of Foursquare-even though Foursquare itself was the only reason I was in his store. I think this is an example of what can go wrong if a Foursquare campaign hits a national level, and your employees don’t know what Foursquare is.
I realize I have a bit of a digital obsession, and that I know a little more than the general public about smartphones, but I’m not that out of the ordinary. For a cashier to mock someone for trying to redeem one of their promotions is pretty offsetting. I don’t think I’ll fall into to the Gap again anytime soon, but I did enjoy the deal itself (I saved $66) and the clothes I purchased.
(*I didn’t use the antique Buddha to redeem my special, I just don’t have anything else to do with him-so he’s where I charge my Droid)
