Our guest on this week’s edition of the Bella Buzz podcast is Chad Elkins. You may remember Chad from the conversation we had about regarding the excellent social media efforts he is conducting on behalf of The Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. We are happy to have Chad back on the podcast with us to discuss Foursquare Day in Atlanta.

We invited Chad back to The Bella Buzz to tell us all about the hottest networking app Foursquare, and the grassroots event that took place on April 16th called Foursquare Day.

Foursquare is a location based application, which takes advantage of the social gaming excitement that has been most prevalent on Facebook. However in this case, Foursquare provides opportunities for real life customer acquisition and retention strategies for business. By checking in (identifying yourself as being present) at various locations, users can earn badges, points and even a classification as “Mayor.” If it ended right there, it would be a fun game that did not have much relevancy. With a back end built for business, it provides opportunities for incentives to users for checking in, privileges for Mayors, and at even more sophisticated levels, deep analysis and actionable user data.

Foursquare users can see others who are in a location where they have checked in, or simply just the Tips (reviews) they have written about the place. Since this is a location based application, it may push specials and offers from nearby locales as well.

Chad was putting together a group of venues who would participate with offers during Foursquare Day in Atlanta and for many this was their first foray into the service, so this application is still in its very early adopter stage.

In celebration of the “global social media holiday”, there were swarm parties hosted around the world where Foursquare users would gather to celebrate the event.  The founders of Foursquare were gathered in New York City, while Atlanta guests attended an event at The Cheyenne Grille as seen in this coverage from MetroMix.

Rumors appeared recently that Yahoo was making a bid to purchase Foursquare, however these are the founders of the previous location based service DodgeBall that was purchased by Google but ultimately was discontinued.

There are some serious branding campaigns that are using the badge features of Foursquare including Starbucks, Bravo and The History Channel. Chad has a great story about using the History Channel tips on a pilgrimage to the famous magnolia tree from the home of the Atlanta Crackers, Ponce de Leon Ballpark.

For more information about Foursquare, you can watch their blog and for Atlanta based activities watch Chad’s site at Foursquare Atlanta.

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At times we focus so hard to driving traffic to the social networks trying to form users into a community, that we forget to encourage that behavior when having face to face interactions with our audience.  Using the social media tools at our disposal we build out these vibrant blogs and Facebook Fan pages,  we try out new locations like Ning and encourage clients to leave reviews at Kudzu, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Angie’s List or the myriad of other review sites out there growing feedback. However, as Cameron observed first hand, having a strategy in place for driving your customers to those sites must include the “Offline Ask”.

A bed and breakfast where Cameron and Leigh stayed on Key West was called The Grand GuestHouse. The Ask strategy that they use is to stamp the back of a business card handed to the guest with a request to go to Trip Advisor, and in a personal way asking for “5 stars”.

On Danger Charters the ship’s crew made the Offline Ask as the ship was pulling into port at the end of the night. They used humor in their personal request “speech” to visit Facebook and Trip Advisor to review the experience.  This is most likely a training element that is instilled into the staff by management as part of the marketing strategy that they are using to marry the social networks with the offline activities.

This is indicative of the new form of marketing, that it’s no longer just a push or a broadcast of a message, rather it is a two way communication in which the audience or customer participates in a significant way.

Using social networks to maintain a strong relationship may replace B2C email campaigns simply because the overwhelming amount of spam has limited the effectiveness of email.

The Offline Ask has changed from “sign up for our email newsletter” to “become a fan of our Facebook Page & leave us a rating on Trip Advisor”.

Another point to consider is whether or not there should be some type of incentive or deeper instructions from the property to the guests regarding how to actually execute the placement of feedback.  How do you feel about giving exact directions or should you just gently nudge and let the customer figure out what to do?

Finally, encouraging photography and suggesting uploads to Flickr, SmugMug or Facebook with proper tagging is an excellent way for a destination to grow a community and gain some brand exposure. Having a Flickr Group set up would be a great way to encourage the posting process plus gathering assets that help promote the property.

Are you closing the loop performing an Offline Ask to encourage online feedback?

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