Foursquare crowns you Mayor of a location when you’ve checked in from that location more than anyone else. So I decided to make it a personal quest to become Mayor of Rustico, a restaurant in Alexandria that I enjoy and visit fairly regularly. So for the past couple of months, I scheduled all of my lunch meetings at Rustico, and even took my family there a couple of times. About ten days ago, I finally unseated the current Mayor to become Mayor. Woo hoo!
But here’s the rub: aside from getting a congratulations message from Foursquare and a crown in my profile, being Mayor gave me nothing. I told my waitress when I became Mayor and she looked at me like I was nuts. Ditto the manager. Where other venues offer Mayors something special, I didn’t even get a thank you for promoting the resturant to my Foursquare and Twitter followers for the past few months. Many establishments, especially restaurants now offer “specials” to Mayors and people who check in xx number of times; it’s a great way to encourage people to come, to foster loyalty and spread the word about your company. When a friend called to invite my family to dinner at Rustico, he asked if being Mayor made it easier to get a reservation and I just snorted. Ha! I wish! Not even a free soda!
So I began to wonder if the folks at Rustico are even aware of Foursquare, Foursquare specials, and Mayors! I visited the Rustico website; no familiar links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I did manage to find Rustico on Twitter, but the page is not customized, there’s not even a description! Their Facebook page has 3 fans and no status updates. Okay, so it’s looking like Rustico hasn’t yet developed a solid social networking plan.
I don’t believe every business should be on the Web and every social networking platform; it’s just not realistic, practical or even necessary. What I do believe, however, is that every business should have a listening strategy so that they can know if and when their business is being mentioned or discussed in a significant way on specific platforms. Does Rustico even know that hundreds of people are “checking in” to Rustico on Foursquare and Facebook places each week? Gosh, it takes just minutes to set up Google Alerts and Twitter searches.
Imagine this: you set-up a Google alert so you’re notified when your business is mentioned on the Web. You notice lots of mentions on a specific social network. You check it out, learn more, maybe invest in ads or specials. Foursquare, for example, has a primer for businesses on how to use Foursquare to encourage more business.
As for me, I recently lost the title of Mayor of Rustico but I’m not upset. I’m gunning for Mayor of another restaurant that I KNOW offers specials to its Mayors.
How about you? Are you on Foursquare? Have you managed to become Mayor? Did you get anything special for it?
2 replies on “I Became a Mayor on Foursquare and all I Got Was a Lousy Crown”
The most intriguing thing about this post Joanna is that you expected “something” for spruiking the restuarant, and rightly so. It is a shame that businesses are not more tuned in to at least thank the loyal guests that refer other customers to them. The plain fact is that it is not always easy to know where all your verbal referrals come from. At least with an application like Foursquare, the “referrals” are tracked and monitored so that you can mature into a “Mayor” if you are the biggest “referrer”. It is a bit like Art imitating Life, but in the reverse, where Life really should be like FoourSquare, but sadly, falls short. If only real life business was like FourSquare…. A fun application that can teach businesses some manners about thanking referring guests, at least with a soda!
Check-ins need value, huh? Interesting idea and concept, but sounds like it might be a bit of a pain in the butt for a business to do it completely on their own. Who will provide the value around this type of consumer behavior and in what fashion? Surely someone will. Only time will tell.