Facebook Places and foursquare – Can your mobile customers find you there?

I just completed a workshop on Facebook Places and foursquare for business people at the BizConNH Social Media Community Monthly Meeting in the Monadnock Region of NH. Although people are not as mobile/social savvy here as say Boston or Manhattan, our group was engaged and could see the potential for mobile users to make shopping choices “on the street” and learned new ways to connect with customers. It’s important for these business to be found by “flatlanders” that come to town for the quaint towns and villages experience in Peterborough, Keene and surrounding towns, and as well as local mobile users. Mobile users share more in social media and can of influence others to come with their comments, photos and reviews.

Although Facebook Places with the Facebook user base of 750 million people is definitely the “Place” to be, there are other players in the geolocation market allowing customers to actively check-in to your business on their mobile devices. Do you know who they are? Are you doing anything to delight them? Local businesses that get involved can get ahead of the competition or at least stay in the game by doing so.

Foursquare recently reached the 10 million user benchmark and Brian Solis gave an overview of their progress in his blog post Foursquare Now 10 Million Strong: Has Your Business Checked-in? Their growth rate has out-paced Twitter. Does this give you an idea of how important the mobile user engaged in social media is to your business? Not only are they checking in to restaurants and retail locations, but also conferences and weddings and births. The infographic that foursquare created also shows their sentiment at different locations ranging from awesome to happy to okay to blah to sucks to wtf.

Remember that as with your business and all social media, you get out of it what you put into it. We’d all rather have someone say awesome rather than wtf. To learn more about social media, join in our free  monthly social media meetings the second Tuesday of every month except September  – 7:00 – 8:30 pm.