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The newest social media site, Foursquare.com, lets users know where their friends are, what they’re doing and what they think of where they are.
Foursquare now has almost 275,000 users after launching just last year.
The site does more than help users keep in touch. It helps them function.
Need a place to eat? Check in on Foursquare and find out what others are saying about a nearby café. Need a car? Users can find out what others think of local dealerships.
As with any other social networking site, dealers are looking for a way to utilize this free site to make more money.
Tracy Myers, owner of Frank Myers Auto Max in Winston-Salem, NC, is a self-proclaimed early adapter of all new social media sites. Myers signed up his dealership up right away when Foursquare came on the market.
“Since we are in a fairly conservative town and the folks aren’t really progressive, we can ease into new trends like Foursquare easier than a lot of bigger cities can,” he said.
Foursquare also has something of a game aspect to it. Users can earn badges and other tokens along their journey.
Myers’ dealership launches its first official Foursquare campaign this month. Visitors to the service department can “check-in” with Foursquare and get a $9.95 oil change.
Patrick Maness, director of marketing for MLT Creative, said Myers has the right idea offering an incentive like discounted oil changes.
Savvy social media users, which is most of the people already on the Foursquare bandwagon, see through dealers who try to use Foursquare as just another place to place ads.
“The biggest draw of this is to engage with their customers,” Maness said. “It’s an opportunity to communicate with them.”
That means more than simply putting ads on Foursquare that consumers see already on TV or in a newspaper. Such shameless plugs may not only get ignored, Maness said, but they could actually gain dealers a bad rep.
“(Customers) want information they can use,” said Maness. “They want to feel like they’re engaged.
“Think of it as a cocktail party.”
Foursquare allows dealers to track what customers say about them, Maness said.
So dealers want to be sure the right information about them is out there.
While Myers said it’s too early to tell how Foursquare is working for his company, he has had luck with other social sites.
Myers said Foursquare is so different from the other sites it’s hard to compare it to anything. |
