5 ways businesses can use Facebook Places

Location based services just hit the mainstream. Here’s how you can capitalize on it.

Foursquare was doing very well for itself. It was marching along at the head of the location based services (LBS) trend with almost three million users having fun by “checking in” to restaurants, stores and other places via their mobile phones. Yesterday, a bombshell dropped on the LBS movement as Facebook gave its 500 million users a similar service. Foursquare may live on, but it’s suddenly dropped into a distant second after being the long time leader.

If its users take to it, Facebook Places will vault LBS into the mainstream. As marketers, we couldn’t be happier because this unleashes a new array of creative possibilities for brands to get in touch with fans and have fun doing it. Here are 5 ways you can use Places to get your audience involved. Bear in mind that some of these depend on future developments of Places and just how open Facebook are with its information. Knowing Facebook, it’ll be pretty open.

Reward users for check-ins and loyalty
Foursquare’s major advantage over Places is its reward system where users get badges, points and “mayorships” for their checkins. But there’s nothing stopping you from creating your own rewards for users who checkin to your location, which isn’t that difficult to track as each Place has its own page. This can also be real world rewards where users take their phones to locations like shops and restaurants and show their Facebook stats to get free stuff. This is a big draw as it essentially turns day-to-day life into a game where ordinary tasks become accomplishments.

Reach out through your Place Page
Speaking of each Place having its own page, you can go into Facebook and claim your business’s location as your own by uploading proof in the form of a business license or the such. You can then send messages to the people who “like” the page with updates, offers and contests. You can get users to talk to each other about their experiences and provide reviews. If they’re positive, they can be extremely effective.

Networking
When you go to conferences and events you can checkin and see who else is attending. You can then check out their profiles and decide which ones are worth reaching out to. You can also keep an eye on what competitors are up to by seeing what events they attend. 

Create checkin based apps
Facebook has opened up the Places API, which means you can create apps that use the checkin data gathered from Places. This has the potential to bring together and reward people at events by checking in through the app. You can also create location based games or contests like scavenger hunts that send people around cities to find specific locations and complete tasks. An app could also come with auto-notifications that send a message when a user nears a specific location. There are loads of possibilities with this one.

Create a friend for fans to hang out with
I’m not sure this feature will be around forever as it has loads of potential for blowback, but why not have fun with it while it lasts? You can tag friends when you check into a place, and said friend may or may not actually be with you. Creating a humorous brand profile that people can check into locations with could be a fun way to get people to interact with you to earn rewards and status, while giving you greater exposure as your profile shows up in news feeds.

Those were a few of our initial ideas. Any lightbulbs going off over your head? Let us know. Here are some more thoughts on the future of location based advertising through Facebook from eMarketer.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry.

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