All the major US and Canadian sports leagues are looking to grow their social presence, digital business and fan experience. With these goals in mind it would seem that a marriage between Foursquare and these sports leagues is a no brainer. It’s odd that Foursquare has not incorporated events into the fold but I would suggest that a partnership with the NHL, MLB, NBA and NFL would be an easy and mutually beneficial place to begin. Let’s me take the perspective of the respective sports leagues and their teams.

The major sports have all been able to grow their business in the digital world through partnerships (e.g. fantasy gaming is huge) and content syndication but none have really been able to take a leadership role in the social space. With the knowledge that social interaction and building upon the passions of sports fans in an effort to connect them to their team in a social manner will ultimately translate into a more one-to-one sales and marketing relationship (see upcoming pieces for the value of Social CRM) and a better customer experience, better feedback loop and opportunities to direct sell, these leagues need to figure out how to do more than have Twitter accounts and Facebook fans. One thing that is clearly working in social media is the idea of “check-ins” and using these check-ins with business discounts driving sales and loyalty programs there is nothing for sports leagues to lose. However I wouldn’t suggest it for just those reasons, they’re obvious enough. Continue Reading…

There is no doubt that 2010 is all about mobile, geo-location and ultimately reviews, either through actually writing them or word-of -mouth generated by a check-in which is usually accompanied by a Tweet. This post is a compilation of my thoughts from a couple of events that randomly seem to fit together.

First the power of reviews and why I include them in a post entitled “Check-In Currency”. Reviews are the one area where Google knows they dramatically need to improve in order to have search become more complete. I don’t think this is conjecture on my part because it is no secret that Google recently tried to purchase the review site Yelp. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Search is pretty awesome these days, you can search for most local businesses by name and be directed to a page that includes the phone and address, hours of operation as well as a Google Map. There will often be some pictures posted and perhaps the odd review. I don’t think you could ask for much more. However try to do the same search for local coffee shops and you get a listing of them and even though there are some ratings its tough to get a real semblance of which one is best, perhaps closest but best, I’m not so sure. So if you’re Google you don’t want to lose people to sites like Yelp, because, while you’re Google. So you first try to acquire them but get rebuffed, and know everyone realizes that reviews are worth a big pile of cash to Google and everyone cares about something Google really cares about. Continue Reading…

There is no doubt that people love loyalty programs and retailers love the fact that you come back time and time again spending hundreds to earn a free item or small value perk. However when was the last time you actually wanted to take the time to dig through your wallet for your loyalty card? How many of those little tags can one person actually carry on their keys? Basically the loyalty program was getting stale. Sure there were iPhone apps that stored your card and let you present it virtually but that doesn’t do much to advance these loyalty programs in a way that made them work for the new ‘connected’ and ‘social’ customer. So I was impressed earlier this month when Mashable reported on a story where Tasti D-Lite (a frozen yogurt chain) announced that they were rolling out a new program (called TastiRewards if you care) that incentivised customers that linked both Twitter and Foursquare to the store’s loyalty program. It’s an incredibly simple concept when you think about it and the idea of loyalty combined with location services and social networking has a ton of potential if Foursquare (or others) help build out the business and make it simple for retailers to get on board. It’s this last point about integrating and showing value (versus simply signing them up to get numbers) to retailers that I think Foursquare will need to concentrate its efforts in order to make loyalty programs a decent size revenue stream. Continue Reading…