PR Week FourSquare podcast: addressing personal privacy issues, brand promotion and protection

33 Digital’s Drew Benvie and I participated in this week’s PR Week podcast. During the conversation we discussed how brands can promote their business on FourSquare, protect their reputation and privacy issues.

The podcast resulted from personal privacy concerns that have had FourSquare on the offensive in the last week following the launch of PleaseRobMe.com a mash-up that tracks the movement of individuals on FourSquare and overlays images and Google Maps.

Issues of personal privacy have arisen with almost every new generation of personal technology: voicemail advertises that you aren’t at home; away-from-email auto-messages advertise that you’re on holiday. If a criminal wants to rob you there are very easy ways of tracking down whether or you’re at home.

FourSquare is currently a niche social network (300 brands and 300,000 users worldwide). It’s the first generation of a platform that combines a mechanism for brand promotion with physical location and social networking. Whether it succeeds or fails alternatives will almost certain arise.

Here are the five the promotion and reputation opportunities that we spotlighted during the podcast for brands on FourSquare:

Presence – if you have a physical presence (retail premise, office location etc) share it with FourSquare to ensure that you are correctly represented on the network
Reputation – Monitor your locations on FourSquare for tips left by visitors (good and bad reviews) and your Mayor
Engagement – If you’re a retail operator that uses price promotion or loyalty schemes as a means of marketing consider extending your offers to FourSquare
Promotion – If one your brand values is innovation consider the PR benefits of being one of the first brands to use FourSquare as a marketing platform for bespoke campaign
Measurement – track usage to determine return on investment and determine the value of engagement and promotion

Also posted on www.speedcommunications.com