Jeremy Zucker is Principal of ZBC and he chats with us about creating good content, the driving force behind social media. He gives his opinion on what social media platforms are tops for business.
Ahhh, March! Time for some basketball madness and it all starts with Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament March 10-13, 2011 here in Indianapolis. This is the seventh year for Indianapolis to host the tournament and it will back again in 2012, according to Indiana Sports Corp. This is the seventh year that both the Men’s and Women’s tournaments have converged in Indianapolis. The city posts street signs with the on the corners of downtown streets that surround Conseco Field House to welcome each school in the Men’s and Women’s tournaments. Thirty thousand people are expected to visit Indianapolis over the course of both tournaments, according to Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association Spokesperson, Chris Gahl. He said that the economic impact is expected to be $10 million left behind in local restaurants, hotels, and attractions.
Visit the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association’s website to find the bar/restaurant hosting your team’s fans for the weekend. Click here to find tickets to this weekend’s games.
The “next big thing” on the web is going to be based around location-based services. It’s already easy to see them starting to pop up all over the Internet. Google released Latitude not too long ago. Twitter recently unveiled a location feature that allows users to attach a location to each of their tweets. Other services like Foursquare and Gowalla give users the ability to inform their friends of where they are, in case anyone want to join them. Even Facebook is in the exploratory process. (They referenced it as far back as this blog post in 2008.) None of the services are using location in exactly the same way right now, but it seems like Foursquare’s approach is one of the most interesting. Here’s an example: if you decide to spend a night out on the town for New Year’s Eve, you can update your profile with your current location, and your friends would know where to join you at any point during the evening. You may also notice that one of your friends is at another restaurant, prompting you to change your plans and meet them there.
Here’s how Foursquare describes their service:
People use foursquare to “check-in”, which is a way of telling us your whereabouts. When you check-in someplace, we’ll tell your friends where they can find you and recommend places to go & things to do nearby. People check-in at all kind of places – cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, homes, offices.
You decide who your friends are, and they are the only ones who can see where you’ve checked in.
The cool thing about these services, from a business perspective, is that unlike Twitter, everything revolves around the location. Your business can be the center of attention! Foursquare has created a mechanism for venues to add specials to their profile, so customers who visit them come back more often to compete for points, discounts, and/or freebies using Foursquare. One example of this is Scotty’s Brewhouse, which has a pair of locations in Indianapolis. Their special:
Show that you’ve checked-in on Foursquare and get $10 OFF every 10th Visit! Must spend a minimum of $8 per visit.
Foursquare automatically keeps track of how many times users have checked in at Scotty’s, so all they have to do is show their phone to the server to prove this is their tenth visit, and they get $10 off their bill. Meanwhile, they have already spent a minimum of $72 getting to that point (nine visits x minimum $8), and most likely quite a bit more. Bjava Coffee and Tea offers 50 cents off a latte for every Foursquare check in. I’ve never personally been to Bjava, but I know about their special because Foursquare let me know about it when I checked next door at Puerto Vallarta during dinner a few nights ago. Foursquare is advertising on your behalf, to people who are already in your immediate area!
It’s a great time to get involved with these location based services, before everybody else is doing it. The cost is negligible, and your exposure is higher, because none of your neighbors are doing it yet. It’s easy for you to add your business if someone else hasn’t already. If you are interested in integrating location based services into your marketing plan, but aren’t sure where to start, feel free to shoot us an email and we’d be happy to help you out.
As you can see, this is the first post on our blog. We’re a brand new company in Indianapolis, and we’re working hard to add clients to our portfolio. As a company, we’re loaded with talent in various disciplines, ranging from print and web design to branding, marketing and event planning to web and content development and web application development.
We’ve done our homework.We’ve got over 25 years of experience in our field, and our staff has worked with incredible clients, including the Smithsonian Institute, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Space Center Houston, and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
We’re passionate. We love what we do, whether it’s big or small. We enjoy getting to know our clients, and we produce work that makes them look good. We like to push our clients to think about things they haven’t imagined. We’re definitely idea people.
We’re here for you. We want you to love us, we want you to tell your friends how great we are, and we want you to mean it. And you will. Got a project you think we could help you out with? Give us a call. Shoot us an email. Nothing coming to mind right now? Keep reading our blog. We’ll fill it up with tips, tricks, and hints, along with samples of the work we’re doing.