This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Facebook Places is essentially free word-of-mouth advertising for your business. When customers check in, they’ll automatically be telling their Facebook friends about it. If you run a small business with a street entrance, there’s a good chance that it’s already a part of Facebook Places — with or without your input.
By claiming your Page, you have the opportunity to customize that free advertising. It also makes it easy to purchase pay-per-click advertising for your Places page.
Here’s how to get started.
Open the Facebook app on your mobile phone. Depending on which device you have, you’ll either hit “Places” or “Check In” on the home screen of the app. Type the name of your business in the search bar. If there’s no listing for your business, there will be an option in the search results menu to add it. You can do so by adding a description and selecting “add.”
If your business has already been added to Facebook Places, you can skip this step.
Open Facebook on your desktop and search for your business. Click on the Places result.
Beneath the image on the Places page there is a hyperlink that says, “Is this your business?” If it is, you can click it to start the verification process.
Before Facebook will let you edit the page, they ask for either a business email address or a document that has your name and business’ name on it. After you supply either, it can take as long as a week for Facebook to confirm your request.
Image courtesy of the University of Kentucky
More About: facebook, Facebook Places, MARKETING, small business
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Solidifying its relationship with SCVNGR, Coca-Cola has launched a summer promotion with the location-based service to challenge teens to go around malls, concerts and amusement parks to get instant rewards.
The game, called “Happiness in Numbers,” asks consumers to fulfill challenges like taking photos and checking in at various locations to accumulate points. Prizes include T-shirts and gift cards.
Coke and SCVNGR launched a smaller version of the program in November around Black Friday. Like that program, Coke has seeded Simon Malls locations with challenges. But this time around, Live Nation is participating and will offer challenges at 31 “secret sound check” locations.
The promotion expands SCVNGR’s relationship with Coke, a coup for the location-based service, which competes with the likes of Foursquare and Facebook Places.
SCVNGR surpassed 1 million users in February and continues to score new partnerships, including recent ones with Subway, Sears and Swatch. For its part, Coke’s big rival, PepsiCo, chose Foursquare for a location-based loyalty program last November.
More About: coca cola, Facebook Places, foursquare, scvngr
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The last presidential election was only three years ago, but that seems like a generation in the social media age.
Just think, back then Twitter was a novelty. Facebook was popular but spent the first half of the year being the second-biggest social network behind MySpace. U.S. smartphone penetration in the U.S. was just 20% by the close of 2008 vs. a projected 50% by the end of this year. The biggest political marketing innovator in 2008 was Barack Obama, who employed Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to great effect, and took Howard Dean’s online micro-donation idea to the next level.
Obviously, 2012 will be a different landscape for several reasons, but the biggest is the ascendance of mobile and, in particular, location-based services. Up until now, such services have been a curiosity driven by early adopters who have no issues about broadcasting their whereabouts to the whole world. In a nation of 310 million people, this is still a niche market. The biggest of the services, Foursquare, has about 8 million users, which is respectable but not mass.
Part of the issue is a lack of purpose for the activity. Let’s face it, being mayor of your local Chinese food joint has limited appeal.
All that could change in the coming election. In this deeply polarized nation, a fair amount of people care about who wins in November 2012, which gives them a reason to make sure their like-minded friends hit the polls. Until now, the only way you could do that was to drive them there yourself.
Imagine, however, a grass roots organization that depended, in part, on committed volunteers who were charged with getting as many people in their Facebook and Twitter networks to commit to vote. Then, when Election Day rolls around, they can prove that they at least got those people to go to their local polling places. Finally, a scientific way to prove political marketing efficacy.
The infrastructure is already in place for such a plan. Thanks to a nonpartisan, get-out-the-vote effort in 2010, Foursquare made it possible to check in at any of the country’s polling places and then broadcast it. Of course, Foursquare’s not the only game in town; Facebook Places lets you check in at the polls and tell all your Facebook friends about it.
That ability — to check in to a physical location and thus bridge the offline and online world — didn’t really exist in 2008 and could be a game changer in the coming election. The major challenge for political marketing has always been getting voters to actually go to the polls. In the past, get-out-the-vote campaigns have consisted of a combination of door-to-door, telephone and snail mail reminders. For a portion of the population –- say those over 65 or so -– this will still have to be the case, but for younger voters, an email plus a pledge to vote -– to be verified with a location-based check-in, will do.
Some politicians are already seeing the potential of LBS. It’s unclear at this point whether Obama’s campaign will lean heavily on such services, but likely Republican candidate Tim Pawlenty’s campaign is already awarding points and badges to supporters a la Foursquare.
Will it work? Don’t underestimate the value of peer pressure. On November 6, 2012, everyone will know if you actually voted. Not doing so will effectively disqualify you from kvetching about either political party. At that point, being a voter may trump being a mayor.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Joe Shlabotnik
More About: 2012 election, Facebook Places, foursquare, location, Location-based services, politics, trending
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Facebook will soon be expanding checkins beyond Places and will add them to Event Pages in the next release of its iPhone application. The coming-soon feature will allow Facebook iPhone app users to check in to Event Pages and tag their friends in the process.
“We’re currently testing the ability for people to check in to Events,” a Facebook representative told Mashable. “The feature will be available with the next iPhone version release.”
According to a report from All Facebook, the “Check In” button currently appears on Event Pages on the day of events for select iPhone users.
The new checkin button will likely come as a welcome addition for most event organizers. Attendees who check in to events will presumably share the checkin with their Facebook friends, an activity that would help promote the event in question.
More About: checkins, facebook, Facebook Places, iphone app
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Remember the inPulse Smart Watch we showed you a few months ago? Now, inPulse lead designer Eric Migicovsky has created an app that lets you use the watch to check into Facebook Places with just a few taps.
The inPulse watch uses Bluetooth to communicate with either a BlackBerry or Android smartphone, and in this case, it uses the phone’s 3G connection to hook you up with Facebook Places (will there be a tethering fee?).
As you can see in the video above, this clever app uses GPS and map data from the smartphone, locating nearby establishments, and as soon as you choose your current location, you’re checked in.
The long-awaited app-running inPulse Smart Watch ($149, $199 in black) has been talked-about and anticipated since last summer, but now it’s said to be available for pre-order, and a quick peek at the inPulse website uncovers claims of watches shipping in “16 to 30 days.” Let’s hope this Facebook Places app will be available soon after the watch actually ships.
Watches that run apps: Is this a peek into the future? How about it, commenters? Could something this small replace the smartphone?
More About: bluetooth, checkin, Facebook Places, inPulse Smart Watch, smartphonem apps
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Facebook Deals, a service that enables users to surface nearby deals using their mobile phones, went live in five European countries Monday morning.
Facebook users in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy can now take advantage of the first round of offers from companies like Starbucks (free coffee), Mazda (20% discounts on Mazda MXes) and clothing retailer Benetton (£2/€2 charitable donation to Architecture for Humanity). Users can find deals by looking for the yellow icon when they check in to venues using Facebook Places, available through Facebook’s official iPhone and Android apps, as well as touch.facebook.com.
Users can simply click on a deal to claim it, and then show it to the cashier to cash in. Deals claimed can then be shared to their newsfeeds, which helps spread awareness about popular offers through users’ networks of friends.
Since Facebook Deals launched in the U.S. in November 2010, “millions” of people have used the service, and more than 50% of merchants have elected to renew their offers, Emily White, Facebook’s director of local, told the Wall Street Journal.
Other European countries will be added “as soon as we possibly can,” Facebook VP Joanna Shields said.
Image courtesy of the University of Kentucky
More About: advertising, facebook, Facebook Deals, Facebook Places, MARKETING
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