Yesterday saw the the release of Facebook Places in Australia, a location-based application now available through the Facebook platform. It allows users to check in to various locations, add a comment, tag people they are with and publish it onto their profile, from which friends can like and comment. I wrote about the functions of Facebook Places in more detail a previous post.
As well as Australia, the application was rolled out about a month ago in the US, UK, Canada and Japan, and is available on the latest version of Facebook for iPhone or any HTML5-enabled mobile device via facebook's touch website. It's great to see a lot of my friends already trying out the app, and the connection with Facebook means it will most likely see far greater take-up than stand-alone location apps like Gowalla or Foursquare.
Facebook has an interesting, slightly sentimental video introducing the purpose of Places, in which they describe the feature as a "way to tear down the barriers and tear down the walls between getting us in touch with each other". While this is very true - the application does bring us closer together in a virtual sense - but I'd like to take a look at the application from a business perspective, and investigate what it means for business owners and managers interested in their organisation's social media presence.
Despite what Facebook says in their promotional videos, Facebook Places is made for businesses. From people I've spoken to overseas who already use Places, the general consensus is that users only check in to places they want to be seen in, like trendy pubs, cafes, shops and other hang-outs. That is, people don't check in to their Grandma's place, or while they're fueling up the car, because that's just not worth publicising, but for organisations which are part of an existing trend (coffee, music, food, etc), or even if it can foster its own trend, Facebook Places will play a very important role.
The real value in this application is the word of mouth marketing that comes from users checking in with friends, then sharing that information with all of their friends, and most importantly, the discussion that ensues on Facebook within the comments. The trick for businesses is to give users something to say about you, something 'shareable' that can be discussed among friends and encourage more visitors and more check-ins.
So if you want to stay ahead of the game, why create your business on Facebook Places, claim yourself as the owner, and brainstorm some ideas to get your customers checking in. Maybe it's half price meals for the 100th person to check-in, or 10% off for recurring visitors, or even a simple "Don't forget to check in!" sign at your front counter.
If you have any ideas, if you're doing something interesting, or if you've seen something interesting on Facebook Places, we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a comment below.
Chris is a specialist in Social Media Marketing at Traffika. Follow him on Twitter @chrispahor.
