Foursquare: A New Marketing Tool
Anne Rauh, Syracuse University
Carolyn Rauber, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Foursquare is an application combining social networking, geolocation, and advertising. At its heart, Foursquare is a mobile app that encourages users to share their location recommendations with friends and provides an opportunity for businesses to offer incentives to current and potential customers.
Users can download the Foursquare app to their mobile device for free. Currently, Foursquare maintains apps on all major mobile platforms and also exists as a website. Because a user typically creates an account and “checks in” when he or she visits a location, Foursquare works best when a user’s mobile device can be geolocated, either through global positioning systems (GPS) or Wi-Fi capabilities. A check-in on Foursquare lets others in the social network know you are at a physical location and provides further options.
The check-in is already a familiar concept for us. For instance, after checking in to a hotel, you might get local recommendations from the concierge. The Foursquare home page encourages user to check in. Similarly, Foursquare generates recommendations and provides deals and tips. As an added incentive, Foursquare assigns points to each check-in. With each check-in, users can see, scoreboard-style, the points they and their friends have accumulated over the course of a week.
Foursquare’s “Explore” feature provides custom recommendations based on tips from other users, frequency of check-ins, and whether a user has indicated that they like a place. Foursquare might recommend a restaurant based on where your friends have checked in, whether a deal is available to Foursquare users, the popularity of the location, or how new the location is.
Businesses (and libraries) can get in on the game as well. A business manager starts by claiming the venues he manages. From there, he can post local updates, upload photographs, and post “specials.” These activities enhance a venue’s page and attract users.
Why should libraries use this tool? First of all, if your library is open to the public, there is a good chance that people are already checking in to your location via Foursquare. They do this in order to earn points and “badges,” a Foursquare award for achieving certain goals, such as checking in to fifty locations. Libraries can also use Foursquare features, including specials and updates, to connect with their users. When a user checks in, he or she is automatically notified of the library’s current specials and recent updates. Additionally, once you claim your library as a venue on Foursquare, you receive a weekly summary of activity, including the number of check-ins your library has received over the past week. Foursquare can serve as another way to view and assess how users interact with the library data.
In this chapter, we describe how to set up an account and claim your library as a venue, populate the outward-facing library venue page, use Foursquare for advertising, and evaluate Foursquare’s impact. We highlight the New York Public Library as an exemplar of a Foursquare-engaged organization. The chapter concludes with a set of best practices and recommendations.
FOURSQUARE FOR MARKETING
As with other social media tools, there are a few steps needed to create an effective Foursquare page for marketing. The sections below guide you through the process.
Creating an Account
To implement Foursquare, a library must first create an account. Visit Foursquare’s website, www.foursquare.com, and create an account with an email address and a password or sign up using an existing Facebook account. You can create a new account in the library’s name or use your own personal account. It is best to create a general library account separate from any personal account, especially if you are already an active Foursquare user. This is particularly relevant if you plan to demonstrate Foursquare at a meeting or presentation—you might unintentionally show your colleagues where you checked in last weekend. You can assign additional administrators and transfer administrator duties at a later time. If you decide to create both a personal and a library account, make sure that you have a strategy for keeping them separate.
The first time you log in to Foursquare on the web, you will be given a list of suggestions. These suggestions might be people, brands, or institutions that you may wish to follow. You will also be asked if you would like to add Foursquare to your mobile device. Foursquare currently supports iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phones, WebOS, Symbian, Series 40, and Meego.
Once you have registered for Foursquare, take some time to use it before moving on to create your venue. If you have used it only on the web, try downloading the app on your mobile device. If you have never used Foursquare for recommendations, try the “Explore” button on your mobile device or use the web interface to explore venues nearby, as shown in figures 7.1 and 7.2.
Each time you visit a location that is represented on Foursquare, you are given the option to check in at those locations. When you check in, you are notifying other users that you are physically present in that location. Foursquare uses your mobile device’s GPS to determine your location. Do not try to check in unless you are at that location as Foursquare attempts to prevent “cheating” by using GPS to make sure that the position of your phone corresponds with your check-in location.
Figure 7.1. “Explore Foursquare with Recommended Venues” screen
Figure 7.2. “Explore Nearby Locations with the Mobile App” Foursquare screen
While exploring, you may see that, for each venue, Foursquare lists the total number of unique users who have checked in, the total number of times those users have checked in, and the number of people who are currently checked in at that venue. If you have connected with friends who use Foursquare, you will be able to see if any of your friends have visited that venue. In addition, you will see “mayors” listed for each venue. The “mayors” are the users who have checked in to that venue the greatest number of times in the past sixty days.
Once you have explored venues and connected with friends, you can begin checking in at venues and earning points. Points are awarded to Foursquare users for the different activities they perform. Some examples of activities that receive points are checking in, creating venues, becoming the mayor of a venue, and checking in with friends at a location together.
Along with earning points, users accumulate badges based on their Foursquare activity. Badges can be awarded for the number of points you have accumulated, the frequency with which you check in to a category of place—such as university campus locations—or the number of other Foursquare users at a venue with you. Figure 7.3 shows an example of a badge.
Organizations are able to design and award their own badges for user activity, just as NASA did when astronaut Doug Wheelock checked in from space (Kincaid 2010). You can see the badges each user has earned when you view their profile, along with any tips they have left for other visitors of a particular venue, as shown in figure 7.4.
Figure 7.3. Campus Explorer badge on Foursquare
Figure 7.4. Foursquare profile with tips and earned badges
Figure 7.5. Photo integration
Foursquare encourages interaction by allowing both users and venue managers to upload photographs. When a user checks in at a location, they are automatically given the opportunity to upload a photo (fig. 7.5). Even after the user checks in, Foursquare gives them another opportunity to add a photo. Photos add visual impact to every part of the Foursquare experience and are strongly encouraged.
Populating Venues
Once you have established your account and explored Foursquare, it is time to create your venue. Before creating a location for your library in Foursquare, you should do a search for your library to see if a venue has already been created. Just because your library has not set up Foursquare does not mean that your library is not there or is not actively being used. Foursquare users can set up locations wherever they like, so be prepared to find venues representing different floors or rooms of your library. You can check by searching for your library name – or any nicknames your library may have—in either the search bar of the web interface or in the search icon of the mobile app or site.
If you do not find a location for your library, you have the option to add a new place to Foursquare, or you can use the “Add Venue” form at https://foursquare.com/add_venue. Foursquare provides guidelines for adding and editing venue information, which include naming and street address conventions (Foursquare 2010a). Venues with multiple locations or branches, such as public libraries, are discouraged from using suffixes in their location names. Instead of “Municipal Library—Main Branch,” for example, Foursquare recommends simply writing “Municipal Library.” Many public libraries use suffixes to identify the branch name; however, the location description and street address are more appropriate ways to identify the branch.
Academic libraries, on the other hand, often have recognizable names, such as Carnegie Library of the Syracuse University Libraries, shown in figure 7.6. In this instance, the name of the individual library should be used, rather than the name of the library system. Use common sense when choosing a naming convention—remember that you want your users to recognize the name of your library when they go to check in.
Figure 7.6. Foursquare venue page for Carnegie Library
In addition to the style guide, Foursquare has House Rules, a set of community-developed guidelines and best practices. Most of these guidelines are for the end user who is checking in to a venue. However, one guideline deals with venue creation etiquette: do not create venues that do not exist (Foursquare 2011). Foursquare is intended to represent only physical locations, while tips can be used to represent the events and services taking place there. For example, you can create a venue for your exhibit space but don’t create a venue for the specific exhibit in that space this month.
Once you add your library or determine that your library already exists on Foursquare, you now have to claim it as a venue. Claiming a venue makes you the Foursquare manager of that venue. Once you are the manager of your library venue, you can change listing information, such as the address and the hours that your library is open. Managers can also access analytics about who is checking in to your venue and when. To claim your library venue, search for your library’s name and look at the venue page. On the bottom of the page there is a link that says, “Do you manage this location? Claim here.” This link takes you to a form where you verify that you are an employee of the venue or are working on behalf of the venue. Once you fill out the form, there is a second verification step done by either mail or telephone.
Figure 7.7. Foursquare brand page for Syracuse University Library
Foursquare has different forms for claiming one location, ten or more locations, or one hundred or more locations. The forms are intended to help managers of multiple venues claim all their locations at once. These forms are particularly helpful if you have a number of library branches or multiple locations within your library that you would like to organize under one library system. When filling out a form to claim multiple venues, you will be asked to set up a brand page and enter the Foursquare URLs of the venues that you would like to add to that brand. Your brand page is an overarching page for your organization that points to all the venues in that organization. The Syracuse University Library (fig. 7.7) is an excellent example of a unified brand.
Once you are a verified manager of your library and its venues, it is time to start populating the venues with information. If you set up a brand page, the information you add to that page will also appear on each individual location. It is best to keep the brand information more general and make sure that it applies to your entire organization, not just to one location. Good things to add to your brand page include a link to your library’s website, brief information about the library, and the services and resources for patrons.
You can use the individual venue pages to list library hours for each branch and the specific collections, services, or resources available there. At the Syracuse University Library, different libraries hold different call number ranges; the range information is included in each venue description. Syracuse University Library also uses the tips feature to notify patrons about events going on in the library and to respond to user comments. Carnegie Library notifies patrons that calculators are available with the Math Collection, while the Bird Library uses tips to respond to check-in comments complaining about noise by pointing patrons to quiet study spaces.
While setting up your venue pages, you may find duplicate venues. If Foursquare was actively used by your users before your library decided to manage the venues, there may be multiple user-created venues for your library. They may all have the same name or a nickname could be used. For example, “Club Bird” is a popular nickname given to Bird Library at Syracuse University. By merging the “Club Bird” venue into the “Bird Library” venue, users who search for “Club Bird” are automatically taken to the Bird Library page to check in there. While editing an individual venue, see the “Advanced Tools” section for instructions on how to merge duplicate venue pages.
After you establish your venue pages, consider adding some photos. Libraries can upload photos when leaving a tip or they can use a feature called “local updates.” Updates are another way to push information to the users in a way that display more prominently than tips. An update appears when a user checks into or views the location which allows an image to be added. Since it is a low-cost means of promotion, any library can quickly add value to its Foursquare page with effective use of photos.
Another privilege that you have as a venue manager is to create “specials.” A special is a reward that Foursquare users receive for checking in to your venue. Specials can be customized, such as one that can be unlocked by every person who checks in to your venue, or you can award specials to loyal visitors after a certain number of check-ins. Examples of specials include discounts for new customers or a loyalty gift, such as a free cup of coffee (Foursquare 2012b).
Libraries should think creatively about how to apply specials to their venues. In April 2011, University of Southern California Libraries gave a free book to users who checked in at select campus libraries (Masters 2011). USC Libraries also offered the libraries’ mayors free membership to the Friends of the USC Libraries. The University of Kansas Libraries gave away flash drives to users who checked in to three campus libraries from August 19, 2011 to September 19, 2011 (University of Kansas Libraries 2011). The first example is what Foursquare refers to as a “Check-in Special”: it is awarded to anyone who checks in. The second example is a “Mayor Special”: it is awarded to the mayor. The third is a “Loyalty Special,” as it encourages repeat check-ins (Foursquare 2013).
Navigating all the possibilities can be tricky but Foursquare has support available. If you have questions or run into problems, visit the Help Center (http://support.foursquare.com) or tweet your question to Foursquare support, @4sqSupport.
Maintaining and Advertising
After creating a Foursquare account and taking on the management duties of your venue, it is time to plan for the maintenance of your venue. By looking at other libraries’ Foursquare pages, you will see that there are many different approaches to maintaining this social media tool. There are libraries that have not claimed their venues but have created a library account and comment on the activities taking place in their online space. Other libraries have claimed their venues and update the location information, although they do not interact with their Foursquare patrons. There are also libraries that frequently interact with patrons and carefully maintain their online locations. All are valid ways of using Foursquare. How you use this tool should be determined by the amount of time you are willing to invest in it and the frequency with which your library users engage with the tool.
There are a variety of suggestions for maintaining your venues. These recommendations should be considered when engaging library patrons with any social media tool, not just Foursquare. The first recommendation is to have a backup plan in case you can no longer manage your library’s Foursquare account. If you use a library account, provide log-in information and training to another staff member. If you use a personal account, add a second administrator to your Foursquare venues. Even if that person is not interested in actively participating in managing your Foursquare engagement, it is a good idea to have someone who can back you up or who can reassign administrator rights to the tool if you change positions.
Once you have a back-up plan in place, decide on the types of interactions you want to have—or are willing to have—on Foursquare. Are you going to offer your own tips or are you going let library patrons leave all the tips for each other? Are you going to engage with patrons who use this space to complain about library services? Are you going to take those complaints as seriously as you would an e-mail? Are you going to report what the library has done to fix the complaints and issues of Foursquare, or you are going to publicize the resolutions through another venue?
Additional facets of your management plan should include the frequency and content of your venue’s updates. Are you willing to update Foursquare, and any other social medial tools you are using, every time there is a change at your library? If you add a tip about an event at your venue, should you remove it once the event has taken place? If you are concerned about keeping your venue page current, do not include highly variable information unless you plan to update the page frequently. For example, Syracuse University does not include library hours, which shift at different points in the semester, on each library location in Foursquare. Instead, each venue contains a link to the library website where current hours are always listed on the home page.
Now that you have your venues set up and a plan to keep them up to date, it is time to promote your Foursquare presence. You can add a Foursquare badge to your website or include it on your contact page if you list other social media accounts there. You can also place a Foursquare window cling on your library entrance—Foursquare will send you a free window cling when you claim your venue that lets patrons know that you are participating in Foursquare when they enter your building. These are a sample of options that your management plan should address. Be prepared to revise the plan as other items arise or as assessment and evaluation dictate. You should also remain aware of trends in social media.
An additional way to promote your presence on Foursquare is to leave tips at other venues when there is a relevant connection between your two venues. For instance, if there is a theater production taking place in your community, you can leave a comment at that location pointing visitors to the library to find the book on which the play is based. Similarly, if you see students complaining about writing a research project in a campus study space, you can remind them to visit the library for research help. Next time a student checks in to that space, they will see your reminder to ask a librarian for help.
Evaluating, Assessing, and Using Statistics
Many of us are familiar with collecting a variety of data for libraries. Circulation numbers, e-resource usage statistics, and library webpage data inform libraries where best to dedicate resources and energy. Foursquare also provides data about your venue and automatically analyzes and displays it graphically. In the same way that circulation statistics communicate use patterns, Foursquare analytics, which are provided free of charge, will help your library identify behavior patterns in your Foursquare user population.
It will take some time to accumulate enough data to make full use of the Foursquare analytics features, but once your venue or brand has sufficient data, the analytics are quite robust. Remember that the data differ from more traditional webpage analytics in two important ways. First, Foursquare does not report interactions with the page, except to record data about check-ins. It does not track the number of photos uploaded over time, although it will tell you when a photo is uploaded, and it will not tell you how many times your venue page was viewed. Second, Foursquare stats are recorded at a much more granular level than traditional usage statistics. You can see a breakdown by gender and how many first time check-ins occurred over a week.
According to Foursquare support (Foursquare 2010b), you can expect to see data reporting:
1. Most recent visitors
2. Most frequent visitors
3. Time of day people check in
4. Total number of unique visitors
5. Graphics describing check-ins per day
6. Gender and age breakdowns for customers
7. The portion of Foursquare check-ins broadcast to Twitter and Facebook
Log in to your Foursquare account to access analytics for your venue or brand. Make sure that you are using Foursquare as the location or brand for which you want to see statistics. Hover the mouse over the name in the top right of the screen and select the account you wish to control. The toolbar at the top of the page contains a “Dashboard” button. Click this button to view and download statistics. If you manage only one venue, you will see only the statistics for that venue. If you manage multiple venues, you will see an option to view statistics for one or all venues you manage.
The dashboard provides two statistics categories: real-world analytics and long-term engagement. Click “View Report,”to see detailed statistics in each of these categories, shown in figure 7.8. Real-world analytics statistics consist of:
• Number of check-ins shared over Twitter and Facebook
• Unique customers
• First time customers
• Top visitors
• Recent visitors
• Recent mayors
• Demographics
Long-term engagement statistics include:
• People who liked your venue
• People who liked your updates
• People who liked your tips
• People who saved your lists
Some statistics take time to accumulate; others require your involvement to create. In order to count people who have liked your updates, for example, you need to have posted some updates. Additionally, long-term engagement statistics will not appear until sufficient data has been collected. Weekly stats are also delivered to each manager’s e-mail address, an example of which is shown in figure 7.9. These statistics include total number of check-ins for the week and breakdowns according to the day of the week, user gender, and the nature of check-in (first time versus repeated). These weekly e-mails also identify “top customers” who have checked in most frequently over the last sixty days.
Figure 7.8. Foursquare report example
Figure 7.9. Weekly statistics e-mail from Foursquare
Foursquare statistics provide hard data about who uses Foursquare in the library, when, and how often. Assessing the impact of Foursquare with these data should be informed by your user population, how they interact with Foursquare, and the questions you are trying to answer. Foursquare’s analytics can be used as its own assessment tool, and you can combine the statistics with statistics from other social media platforms. However, using Foursquare statistics on their own to draw far-reaching conclusions, unless the user base is very broad and engaged, is discouraged due to a high likelihood of sampling bias.
On the other hand, these statistics may give some insight into the specific population that uses Foursquare. Noticing patterns related to the number of check-ins per time of day or per day of the week may inform decisions about when to offer specials or post local updates. Following these statistics with other formal or informal assessments, measuring how many specials were redeemed, or determining how users heard about an event or gathering would provide additional insight into how Foursquare is used in your library.
SUCCESS STORY: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
The New York Public Library (NYPL) main branch sits in Midtown Manhattan at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The building is a historical and cultural landmark that attracts many millions of people every year (New York Public Library 2010). A visitor might pose in a picture next to the famous marble lions guarding the entrance, visit the Main Reading Room and snap an artsy image of the book-lined walls, stop by the gift shop to purchase a finger puppet, or attend a reading by the author Don DeLillo in the Celeste Bartos Forum. Many visitors to the New York Public Library main branch have done all these things and have left a record of their activities on the NYPL’s Foursquare venue page. As of this writing, over twenty-one thousand individuals have checked in at the main branch of the Library. The location itself has received more than thirty-four thousand check-ins, and users have uploaded nearly 1,500 photographs taken in or around the library. Figure 7.10 shows a screenshot of the NYPL’s Foursquare page.
The New York Public Library is an example of a Foursquare success story. The library has engaged in Foursquare at all levels, including:
1. Creating a brand for the library system
2. Claiming and managing each branch library venue page
3. Uploading photographs and adding tips
4. Creating specials
5. Partnering with Foursquare to create a badge
While these features may not be viable or desirable for every academic, public, school, or special library interested in using Foursquare to market their services, we have seen that libraries have many of the same tools and opportunities available to them. With the Foursquare features previously discussed in mind, we can see how the NYPL puts it all together to create a very effective marketing tool.
The NYPL has a physical location in Manhattan, open to visitors and members of the public, and wants to market its space and services. However, the Manhattan branch is only one location in a larger library system; thus, the NYPL system has created a brand page, shown in figure 7.11, establishing itself as a one organization with many branches.
The branch libraries, including the NYPL main branch, are claimed as individual venues. Each branch could have claimed its library building venue and been added to the NYPL brand, or the NYPL brand could have claimed each venue. As we have seen, claiming a venue gives its manager control over some of the venue page content, access to the Foursquare analytics, and the ability to add updates and create specials (Foursquare 2012a). The New York Public Library is a contributor on its own venue page, uploading photographs, adding tips about the location, and posting local updates.
Users can like the NYPL’s brand page, an equivalent to following on Twitter or liking on Facebook. When users like the page, the events and specials that the NYPL System promotes will appear on the user’s activity feed. On the brand page, the NYPL’s locations are visible, as are tips and photographs uploaded from all of its branches.
Similar information is available on the individual venue pages, including the position of the venue on a map, photos, and tips about the specific location. Visitors to the main branch of the NYPL have left many tips about the building’s architecture, the availability of free Internet access, and even how to move chairs silently in the reading room. The NYPL has written a number of tips, including one tip advertising tours.
The NYPL main branch page highlights an active special that the library is promoting. The NYPL offers a special for every check-in: a 10 percent discount on purchases in the gift shop. For libraries without a gift shop, a little creativity must be employed to make use of specials, and as long as staff members are aware of Foursquare specials, these can be applied to anything from coffee shop purchases to ticketed events, and even to Friends of the Library memberships.
Figure 7.11. Foursquare brand page for New York Public Library
In 2011, NYPL was the first library to offer a Foursquare badge, celebrating the library’s one-hundredth anniversary (New York Public Library 2011). The “NYPL Centennial” badge is awarded to Foursquare users who check in at three NYPL branches or check in at the main branch five times. Foursquare is extremely selective in the badges they choose to support, and they do charge for the creation of a badge; however, if your library can pitch a compelling reason why Foursquare should partner with you, the badge option is available and can be an effective marketing tool.
The NYPL main branch is a strong example of a successful Foursquare page and libraries should adapt its success, and the successes of other libraries, to their own user population and library spaces. Foursquare encourages users to interact with the unique attributes of individual locations; the candid nature of users’ tips and photos allow library staff to see the library through the eyes of their most loyal and engaged patrons.
BEST PRACTICES AND CONCLUSIONS
Throughout this chapter, we have made some suggestions for effective use of Foursquare in a library. We would like to reiterate some of those points here and to provide additional suggestions for making the most of this tool.
When setting up a Foursquare management plan at your library, be sure that more than one person can edit your Foursquare venues in case the primary manager is unavailable or changes jobs. While Foursquare provides many statistics on your venue’s use, be sure to remember the limitations of these statistics and be wary of using them on their own for large-scale assessment and decision making. Using these statistics is a good way to understand how your Foursquare users interact with your virtual and physical venue; however, until you reach a critical mass of users, such as the NYPL, the user base may be too small to draw widespread conclusions. For best results, combine Foursquare statistics with other types of assessments in order to make decisions for your library. Additional assessment of your Foursquare users, such as surveys, may help further understand their motivations for using the tool and how Foursquare enhances their library experience.
One of the best features of Foursquare for libraries is the ways in which it incentivizes users to interact with your venue. Foursquare motivates users to accumulate points and earn badges by checking in; thus, they are gaining something from interacting with your library venue without necessarily requiring you to provide additional incentives.
Foursquare is a great marketing tool for library services and resources as well. In the Foursquare environment, an engaged business makes for a more engaged patron and it is easy for libraries to get in on the game and to stay connected with their users.
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Foursquare. 2010b. “What Are Analytics?” June 16. http://support.foursquare.com/entries/196050-what-are-analytics.
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University of Kansas Libraries. 2011. “KU Libraries Launch Foursquare Special.” August 19. www.lib.ku.edu/news/2011/foursquare.html.