Social sharing platforms have changed the way we connect with the world around us. Businesses around the world have started reworking their promotional strategies to make space for the use of social utilities to better connect with their customers. There are plenty of social platforms available now that offer businesses the ability to interact with their customers on a more personal level.

In this article we take a look at Twitter and Foursquare and evaluate their business benefits. At the onset, I would like to clarify that both of them have started to make businesses sit up and take a close hard look at their value in terms of satisfying business needs and objectives.

This is an attempt to help those business owners who have very little idea about what these social sharing platforms bring to the table.

Twitter

If you think you can only target the “Twitterati” with this social platform, think again.  To say that a lot of businesses have ‘micro-blogged’ their way to success will be a bit  of a stretch, but there is no doubt that Twitter now plays an important role in the  Internet marketing strategies of businesses, irrespective of their size.

By using Twitter, you will be able to share information, gather new insights in your  market and also enable you to start a conversation about your business. Using social  media as a business, you can build a loyal customer base that actually cares about  your company.

• Clue in to the Local Buzz

Become a part of the growing Twitter community and know about the local trends that are hot topics for discussion. This helps you develop a strategy that focuses your attention on local customers specific to a given region.

• Track where and when your business  is mentioned

Twitter helps you monitor the various ‘circles’ in which your business is being mentioned. Doing a search on Twitter can helps you to keep track of who is talking about your company and what is being said. This allows your business to respond to customers in real-time through the search results page itself.

• Tweet Promotion

This is a unique kind of advertising helps you connect with even those people who don’t follow your Twitter account. If you want to reach a broader audience, you must choose ‘Promoted Tweets’ over regular tweets. The way it works is that you attach a keyword with your promoted tweet. When a user searches for that keyword, your tweet will be seen in the search results. The great thing about promoted tweets is that you only pay if the user replies to the tweet or if the retweets your tweet.

Foursquare

The second social networking platform we will discuss is Foursquare. This one is primarily for mobile users. It gives users a platform that not only helps them to connect with each other, but also explore the world around them. So, whenever users are checking out a new store or visiting a new restaurant, the activity along with the location can instantly be shared with their friends.

How can this platform be leveraged for better business promotion?

• Merchant Platform

Free tools are available for merchants to help them attract customers and also promote brand loyalty. As a merchant, you can offer Foursquare Specials to your repeat customers. These ‘Specials’ are in the form of discounts, prizes, or coupons that are made available to users whenever they are near your location. Their status and recent updates will tell you where they are whether they are near your venue or not.

You could think up innovative ways of attracting customers and even up the ante by offering a little bit more in the form of enticements. The more innovative you get, the better you can attract your customers using Foursquare. One of the main benefits of using the foursquare merchant platform is that you have access to the website’s very own Venue Stats dashboard. This helps keep track of customers’ history and activity.

• Foursquare Pages and Badges

Your foursquare page is your very own business homepage. Consider this the base from which all your branding will take place. You can put location centric information on your pages that gives your prospective customers a better idea of where you are located and what are your special offers.

Another element of branding through Foursquare is the Partner Badges. They are a reward that can be offered to users if they achieve something special on this mobile social networking platform. Partner badges are essentially badges that are offered to users if they follow a particular brand. This helps customer feel that they have a personal connection with the brand.

Twitter vs. Foursquare

Well, this is a difficult one, and there is no clear favorite. Each has its own unique selling points that help businesses leverage it to the maximum. While Twitter is a microblogging platform that is more about catching the trends and riding them; Foursquare is more about location-linked branding wherein the distance between a prospective customer and the vendor location dictates the branding parameters.

More importantly, foursquare is a platform that targets mobile phone users, and its business friendly features focus on their specific needs and requirements. On the other hand, Twitter has also gone mobile, but it doesn’t bring anything special to the mobile platform in comparison to non-mobile devices. Its business benefit remains about the same.

Both platforms want merchants to innovate and attract customers through a bit of strategic marketing that aims to clue into their interests and preferences. There is no clear winner here and one doesn’t triumph over the other.  Keeping in mind the expectations that you have for your business, and at the cost of sounding diplomatic, I have to say that both are fantastic platforms. I recommend making use of both Twitter and Foursquare if they are at all compatible to your business objectives.

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