SMO: Foursquare Tip Lists | The Digital Clicks Blog
With 12 million users, Foursquare is a fast-growing and largely popular geo-targeting site. Already a great form of gamification SMO for any company, they have taken their service a step further with their new feature “Foursquare Tip Lists." The idea behind this is that users can now take their jumbled and unordered tips and sort them into neat and helpful lists that can be either privately or publicly shared. The new feature has already spawned a variety of creative and helpful lists, for example, “Best Restaurant Views . Ever," the Duke University “First-Year Move-In Day," “Hidden New York,” and a whole range of other equally brilliant list ideas. The potential that this creates for geo-targeting as a part of Internet marketing strategies could be huge. What the feature essentially does is turn all Foursquare users into grassroots critics and hand them the power to personally recommend locations/business premises to other users in a way far more effective than ever before on the service. If a programmatic advertising agency were to get featured in a list of “Best SEO agencies in London” by an extremely influential Foursquare user, it would do wonders for their business. The newly improved service is even more likely to boost its usage as it has teamed up with a host of successful media launch partners. Some of these include Time Out New York, Lucky Magazine, MTV, Bravo TV, Spin Magazine, Wolfgang Puck, and Alicia Keys. All of these media and entertainment entities will be sharing their tip lists with Foursquare users and promoting the service. With the integration of the lists feature, Foursquare now provides a service not too dissimilar from that of Google Places. On Places, sites are found through localised search and then given scores based on customer feedback and reviews. While on Foursquare Tips Lists, users are personally (and collaboratively) recommending places to their friends and followers. As this is far easier than it has previously been and will likely inject new life into Foursquare, causing a surge of new users, it is more reason than ever for businesses to capitalise on the opportunity by registering on the service and adding another string to their SMO bow.