Looking For Business Uses

We’re big fans of Chris Brogan. He has a down-to-earth approach to marketing and he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks, even if it isn’t the most popular opinion. He has an interesting blog post on location-based social media applications. This created a bit of discussion in our Vancouver PR agency.

AHA Take

Overall, consensus is that we can’t quite find the business use for these location-based social media applications yet. At this point, I can’t think of any of our clients that would benefit. We don’t have any retail clients at the moment and will look much closer at these tools when we do.

On Friday afternoons (especially in the summer), we like to slow down and engage in discussion on how we can provide additional value for clients through new approaches. We don’t bill this time to our clients, it’s just us taking something like Foursquare and having a brainstorm on how it might be used for a client. It lets us get our creative juices flowing and it lets us think out of the box – sometimes way out of the box!

There are times when this brainstorming leads to something that benefits a client and there are times when we just keep hitting dead ends. I think hitting the dead ends is valuable. Knowing what doesn’t work is as important as knowing what works, in my opinion.

What’s your take? Are location-based social media applications something you would use – either personally or professionally?

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  1. Shirley Weir

    I tend to agree with you FOR NOW. However, it was only a couple of years ago that I was saying something similar about TWITTER…and now, having successfully included TWITTER in integrated marketing campaigns, I’m happy to say “no more dead ends”.

  2. Hi Shirley — We’re all about the NOW. We are always returning to review different social media tools to see how they fit today. It all depends on the specific client and their objectives.

    It comes back to defining the right strategy and identifying what tools support that strategy. It’s a never-ending process and one that we love! The AHA Friday afternoons can be quite entertaining as well as providing us with an opportunity to see things from a different angle and to learn more about how we can use different social media for our clients.

    Ruth

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