Being able to check-in at businesses is huge. Getting your customers to check-in on their mobile device is a great way to promote your business. It allows your customers to spread the word about your company a lot faster than traditional ways. As a small business owner myself, I have been looking into and playing around with location based social media to see how exactly I want to use it. If you want people to check-in you HAVE to give them a reason. So many companies aren’t taking advantage of this new product like they should.
If you have never heard of foursquare you should check it out, it’s an on
line “game” that encourages you to check-in at local businesses you visit. They have done a great job of making it entertaining and rewarding. The big kicker to foursquare is that they encourage businesses to get on board and offer “specials” for having people check-in. For example, if you check-in at certain Chili’s restaurants around here you get free chips and salsa, if you check-in with three friends you get your choice of a free appetizer. It’s pretty cool and has actually made me choose to go there over other restaurants that didn’t offer specials. As a business owner, I love the idea that I can get my customers to tell their friends about my business so easily. As I first started messing around with Foursquare, Zach asked why I don’t just use Facebook Places. So, I started looking into Facebook Places.
Generally, there are only a few times in your life when you have the opportunity to witness something truly great or life changing. Over the past decade, there have been several of these moments. Examples include the first time you ever Googled something. How awesome was that!. Or, the moment you realized how cool MySpace was… or how much cooler Facebook is. And hopefully the moment you finally ‘got’ Twitter.
Today Google announced +1 and I’m telling you now, this is Google’s biggest and best move since their search engine. This little addition is going to COMPLETELY change the way we interact with and use search. You can find the full announcement here and you can catch the 1 minute video about it below.
I don’t know about you, but my mind is racing. I guarantee that this is the biggest shift for Google and for Social Media that we have seen in a long time. If you aren’t amped about this, you are crazy.
Zach
This past weekend, I had an interesting experience and decided to blog about it (Kafe Bonehead). When you call out a small business, especially one that is a local coffee shop frequented by many of the people that follow you on Twitter or are friends with you on Facebook, it would be silly not to expect some disagreement or backlash.
After reading some of the tweets directed at me and also some of the responses on the blog itself, I took another look at what I had written. I don’t think I expressed clearly enough my side of things and I took for granted that everyone reading it sees things the way I do. Of course you don’t. I don’t expect or desire that you do see things the way I do. To this end, I felt obligated to offer one final response to the experience.
An Opportunity of a Lifetime
There are three ways the employees of Kafe Bona could have responded when I walked into Kafe Bona this past weekend:
- They could have done exactly what they did. I walk in and the employee enacts some policy about me not being able to have an outside drink in their store.
- I walk in and the employees say nothing.
- I walk in and the employees use me having a cup of Starbucks as an event that could transform me into a lifelong customer.
I don’t think most people see it this way… and I think this is why many small businesses are set to lose in the next few years. There are two things going on here. By doing the first one, you are risking offending a customer. Obviously, you don’t want to be walked on but offending people is not a great way of promoting loyalty. Regardless, I think my last blog focused too much on this.
The point I was making was that they are missing a HUGE opportunity.
The opportunity is in number 3. First off, instead of treating me like I was five they could have treated me like an adult. More importantly, they could have easily used this to make a connection with a customer (or even just a potential customer). You know, something you might expect from a small business.
Instead of having your employees trained to walk up to customers and tell them they have to throw away their drink or leave, why not have them trained to walk up to the customer and engage them?
