A Beginner's Guide to Social Media Strategy for Local Events

Brief Overview of Social Media Tools

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I recently gave a talk to a 4th year university art class that will be curating an art show and wanted some background information to carve out a social media strategy for the event. I figured the best way to introduce social media and choose a strategy, would be to run through all the major platforms and tools, and decide based on the available talent and needs, what would be the best approach for their particular event. In case there are any similar groups looking to socialize their event, but feel a little overwhelmed with the options and tools available, here are some starting tips.

How Foursquare Can Increase Business Adoption as Well as Checkins

Foursquare undoubtedly has attained critical mass but if you live in a city other than New York, LA or San Francisco, you're probably at a loss for finding a good Deal Nearby. In my hometown of Ottawa, the only place I've noticed with a Foursquare deal is the Mercury Lounge, where checking in gets you free cover. On a recent journey to Hull, Quebec, I was surprised to see that a local restaurant Zest, offers a free sandwich on your 7th checkin (pictured above).

Coupons and deals is where the real value of Foursquare lies. In the case of Zest, the restaurant has found a new way of implementing loyalty cards and they're leveraging a viral marketing element, thus creating loyalty cards 2.0.

The most common criticism I hear of Foursquare is, "why should I bother checking in?". A friend and colleague of mine, Jeff Bacon, sums up his own frustrations with the service on his blog, basically saying it takes too long and he may not want his location constantly broadcasted. What I propose, is that if more businesses were on board, and the incentives were more clear, you would have more check-ins and even greater consumer adoption. Also, you would probably see an increase in spending for those businesses that are hip to the trend and implement creative checkin deals for users to take advantage of.

Foursquare's strategy for business adoption seems to be to attain consumer adoption, focus on brand promotion, and wait for small business to find out how to sign up their place for a deal. Foursquare seems to really love partnerships with big brands like HBO, Bravo and Mazda, yet for some reason they aren't interested in the shift that's occurring when a small business like Zest offers a free sandwich in exchange for 7 checkins.

So how can Foursquare get more small businesses to sign up and create deals? Specifically, how can Foursquare educate those businesses in small cities like Ottawa, where the business owners may not be tech savvy? How will these businesses know if they don't watch Gossip Girl, where they'll hear that Chuck Bass just checked in to Blair Waldorf's underwear? Here are a few ways I think they can do this:

Print and traditional media advertising- Small business owners are most likely best affected by word-of-mouth and traditional print. They aren't managing a Google Reader account, and could care less what an RSS feed is. They do read the paper though. Ads in local papers like Metro would probably go a long way to reaching a demographic that doesn't care what a "blog" is.

Exposing API data through thoughtful blog posts - Journalists aren't exactly programmers but there is a wealth of data available to anyone who can hack the API. By mining the data themselves, and exposing it on a corporate blog, Foursquare can make the data available to everyone. I'm sure they could tell you a lot about your city, its local economy and what consumers are looking for. Foursquare should be sharing this data because it helps everyone in the long run.

Partner with coupon services to deliver checkin-based coupons - Groupon was offered a $6Bn acquisition from Google and they weren't interested. It's not obvious what the terms of the deal were, but keep in mind Groupon is rumored to make around $2Bn per year. At a 3X revenue buyout from Google, it's not the deal of the century. That being said, Groupon's business model is great and Foursquare needs in. I'd like to see Groupon offerings based on people checked-in. The deal would read: "if 50 people check-in to Mercury Lounge this Friday, shots are $1." There are probably liquor laws preventing this exact deal, but you get the idea. #epicswarm

Offer deal redemption awards to your users - Badges are getting lame. Telling your friends you got a badge was cool back when Foursquare was relatively unheard of, but early adopters aren't interested in telling their friends what virtual reward they've earned. Instead, give your users awards that are potentially worth real dollars. Virtual goods may seem worthless but they're quickly gaining in value. Avatars, profile customization, gifts, anti-gifts, credits and community respect are all worthwhile incentives for users. Offer these rewards to users who take advantage of deals and help drive the viral promotion of small business incentives.

Foursquare and Gowalla offer some great potential for broadcasting your location but I'd like to see more emphasis on check-ins and incentives. Every time I walk into a restaurant, I'm tempted to check-in but the value proposition isn't really there. With a good incentive system, I guarantee you I'll be checking in to every venue possible.

Lessons Learned from Loyalty Programs and Gaming Applied to Social Networks

I've recently taken the time to put some effort into my LinkedIn profile and while the experience does include some powerful game elements, it's still lacking in some fundamental places. With a few more game incentives, I believe LinkedIn could dramatically increase the time spent on the site, and the amount of connections a pro user collects.

Capping profiles at 500 to say 500+ is an interesting limit. The average number of friends a typical Facebook user has is around 130. LinkedIn likely used something like this as a benchmark, to try and drive up the average number of contacts a typical user may have. It doesn't seem to have worked all that well, because as of around 2008, the average number of connections for a LinkedIn user varies between 23 and 150.

In the book Game-Based Marketing, it says that Air Miles had a hard time trying to figure out how to cope with the large number of users that hit the 1M air miles mark - something they expected few to achieve. They began to roll out higher levels with bigger prizes for reaching several more million points. I would like to see LinkedIn take a similar approach, and find new rewards and ways to differentiate those users that are passing the 500 connection milestone.

The idea is that you should have a plan for a never-ending list of benefits that your users don't necessarily have to be told about, but will learn as others progress through the "game" of adding connections. For example, when you reach the 250 mark, you should be able to upload a more high-rez image of yourself. When you reach 500 connections, your status appears a little brighter in your connections' feeds. When you exceed 1,000, your profile gets a special border and when you reach 10,000 connections, you're featured on the LinkedIn homepage. But why stop there? When you reach 100,000 connections on LinkedIn, you get a lunch with a CEO of your choice. Of course, you'll have to find ways of verifying that these connections are genuine, and build security measures to stop people from cheating your game, but that's just the nature of creating a great game. As long as users know there are rules, and you enforce them, it will make winning all the more incredible and the story that much more powerful when somebody does finally win.

The above not only applies to LinkedIn, but it could just as easily apply to Facebook and Twitter. Facebook limits the number of friends somebody can have at 5,000. I know this because my friend Cindy is an MMA fighter who is constantly struggling with this cap. You shouldn't punish your power users by limiting them, but rather encourage them with incentives and ways to differentiate themselves, other than by a small number. Twitter limits their users by capping the number of ReTweets at 100+. I know this because I actually hit that limit during the earthquake in Ottawa when I made fun of the Canadian government. Twitter should let everyone know exactly how many people RT'd me, and give me a reward for it. If I get a reward for 100+ retweets, rest assured I will let everyone know and they will also strive for that reward, thus boosting the total level of user engagement.

Social networking is a great opportunity to promote yourself and boast about your accomplishments. With a few lessons learned from games, social networks could benefit tremendously.