Checking up on Checking-In with Facebook
One of the awesome new, well relatively new, innovations from Facebook is ‘Check-In’s’. And of course when I say new innovations I mean the concept they ‘borrowed’ from Foursquare and Twitter. It’s strange really to think that people would want to alert their friends and stalkers to their current location, however, it’s become quite a craze. As with any craze, businesses should take advantage, what a great way to advertise your company! It’s believed that on average every Facebook user has around 200 friends. So, imagine 5 friends go to lunch and ‘check in’, your business was just advertised to 1000 people. Now surely that’s the type of exposure that your business could do with.
Now remember, this advertising is very different to radio or television because the advert isn’t coming from your business, rather someone’s friend. We all know that if we receive a recommendation from a friend we are likely to take it on board, and the added advantage is that if someone clicks on the ‘check-in’ they have all the details for the business. The location, contact number, bio, everything! This is far more information than you could EVER convey on a radio or television commercial, and it’s free!
Why more businesses aren’t getting on board with this is beyond me. What’s even more astonishing, well to me anyway, is that some businesses haven’t even claimed their ‘check-in’ page. So everytime someone ‘checks-in’ instead of the linked page having all your business details, it’s blank? I understand that it’s very complicated to do, clicking the ‘This is my business” button and all, but it’s worth it in the long run, I can guarantee you! This is particularly true when someone comments on a ‘check-in’. Say for example you run a restaurant and someone ‘checks-in’ there, and one of the attendees after the visit comments saying, “Wow that food was terrible, my soup was cold”, keeping in mind I don’t order soup at restaurants, but I presume a cold soup wouldn’t be good. That comment will sit there for everyone who clicks on the ‘check-in’ in the future. So the 1000 people you are promoting to, are now all very unlikely to come along, all because you didn’t have the time to click “This is my business”.
The point of this article is of course to urge you, if you own a business, any business, to get on Facebook and search for yourself (I’m sure you’ve done this before in Google so don’t be embarrassed now) and find your ‘check-in’ page. Claim the page and start monitoring it, remember it’s FREE advertising, how does this not get through to more people?
