By Walter Elly
Senior Director of Internet Marketing
This month we had an interesting date on the calendar – 4/16. With 16 being the square of 4, a certain “bright-eyed” marketer realized that 4/16 could be Foursquare Day. His idea was to make 4/16 a day to celebrate and promote Foursquare- the mobile location sharing application that’s sweeping the globe. Foursquare is a mobile application that lets you know where your friends are and let your friends know where you are too. Users earn points and “badges” for using the service, making it into a game. Businesses benefit from being promoted through Foursquare location sharing and from the data Foursquare provides on service usage. The story of Foursquare’s involvement in Foursquare Day illustrates 3 important takeaways for businesses.
1. Listen: Foursquare Day wasn’t created by Foursquare, but was actually the idea of a fan who posted the concept to Foursquare’s support forums. Another fan replied a week later with another great idea – that Foursquare create a special Foursquare Day badge. That idea became the rallying point for fans to start lobbying Foursquare to officially endorse the day. Two weeks later a fan’s Tweet to Foursquare’s Twitter account resulted in Foursquare choosing to engage the community and recognize the day. By listening to what people were saying and monitoring conversations, Foursquare was able to discover a new opportunity.
2. Engage: After that fan’s tweet was posted, Foursquare engaged their fans with another Tweet, officially recognizing Foursquare Day. This single tweet ignited a firestorm around Foursquare Day and as a result, a firestorm around Foursquare. In the three weeks that followed leading up to Foursquare Day, major news organizations from CNN to The Christian Science Monitor ran stories about Foursquare Day. Foursquare continued to stoke the fire of this opportunity leading up to Foursquare Day through further communication. By engaging, Foursquare was able to help realize the full value of an opportunity that was discovered by simply listening.
3. Measure: Throughout the whole process, Foursquare and the Foursquare Day team leveraged systems that enabled them to record changes in important analytics and metrics over time. The Foursquare Day website tracked the number of participating cities and businesses. Foursquare tracked the number of people signing up for the service as Foursquare Day approached. By measuring changes in metrics over time as they engaged, Foursquare was able to discover whether or not their communications produced measurable results.
Ultimately 290 cities in 35 different countries participated and 20,000 people signed up for Foursquare in the days leading up to Foursquare day. Press coverage literally spanned the globe. Just after Foursquare Day registered users reached the one million users mark. Imagine what listening, engaging and measuring can do for you! We’d love to talk with you about it and help you power the growth of your business. Drop us a line, we’re listening.
PS: We’re very proud to say that Portsmouth, NH was the #1 city for businesses participation on Foursquare Day. Check us out on the news:
2 Comments
Nice job summarizing the #4sqday story as it unfolded into some quick takeaway points. I've been working on parts of this myself, but being at the center of it causes one to lose the objectivity a bit. Especially during the most heated times, it wasn't easy to tell what as a great idea and what crazy – things were just moving that fast.
Anyways, you guys certainly rocked up there and appreciate it! The effort of individual communities like yours is what caused the idea to go global!
@natebw – Thank you so much for the kind words about the post and about our #4sqday efforts (thanks to the whole Portsmouth Foursquare Day Team!)
It was amazing that so much happened so fast and went so right. It's the spirit behind the entire movement that transports me and gets me fired up. Foursquare Day was over a week ago but I haven't stopped talking about it – no one has. Thanks from all of us for sharing your idea, following up on it and shaking the world up until they recognized how awesome it was. Smiles all around, keep rocking!