Vanguard Social Media – A business perspective

Tim Martin, Australia’s leading digital marketing expert blogged recently about a number of emerging web services that fall into the social media domain – specifically FourSquare and Instagram.

Whilst neither is new (they’ve been around for a short while), I thought it was worth looking at some practical examples of Foursquare in use from an Australian perspective, particularly those I’ve witnessed as I travel around the country.

I’m seeing more and more companies in the retail/B2C space start to use Foursquare. They are clearly watching what is going on in overseas markets and applying these lessons locally.

Some good examples I’ve seen include:

Wagamama are actively in this space with many if not all of their stores offering specials to those who have mayorship of the stores location. What this means is customers are rewarded for being regular visitors with the reward delivered when they return with another diner.

Grill’d has taken a slightly different approach – check in and they offer you an incentive immediately along with a greater incentive if you’re the mayor.

Given most Grill’d restaurants are in busy retail locations and centres – this approach is an innovative way of encouraging real time patronage.

SSP Australia – Fresh on the Go. It took me a while to work out who these guys were. They operate at Sydney International Terminal and are very active on Twitter and Facebook.

What I really like about their effort is their focus on the consumer discussion – how do I eat healthy – not just the consumer but the consumers immediate circle of family/friends. I also like the locality specific nature of their outreach efforts – if you’re here – come engage with us.

We can learn a couple of critical points from this.

Firstly, all three companies start the engagement process via the corporate web homepage with obvious links to their core social media footprint – in this case it’s predominantly Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Foursquare.

Secondly, and most importantly, these examples demonstrate some simple, yet innovative ways that tools like Twitter and Foursquare can be used to differentiate and also create engagement.

Finally, these companies are clearly focused on value, innovation, and loyalty rather than this current mainstream media fixation with the bottom-feeder discount services like Groupon, Scoupon, catch-of-the-day discount services that seem to be dominating business discussion.
As Tim rightly identified, new services are emerging into the market and used wisely these tools can deliver significant value to you.