There are six location-based applications / services I’ve had my eye on recently: Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl and Yelp. In this post I briefly describe each and offer a few ideas on how to take advantage of these tools to complement experiences, drive engagement, foster community and build brand relationships with audiences.
As experiential marketers, we are faced with an interesting challenge. Where we were once entirely focused on creating experiences which activated the emotional and rational levers of our audiences from a face-to-face perspective, we now have to account for the distractions of laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices. Additionally, social media has created a powerful back-channel which competes heavily with the experiences we work so diligently to engineer. Instead of contributing the the noise, if we take a targeted approach to engaging our audiences across their communications channels, we will be able to take what many see as an impediment to our success and turn it into an opportunity. Here are some thoughts on how.
As of late, there has been some discussion discounting MySpace as a viable channel for marketing. While Facebook has skyrocketed globally to more than 300 million users, MySpace has still been quietly delivering millions of visitors every month.
According to Quantcast, as of November 2009, MySpace has more just under 60 million regular users per month, making it the second largest social network in the US. 57% of users are female and 43% are male. As far as age is concerned, 46% of MySpace visitors are 18-34, followed by 13-17 at 26% and 35-49 at 17%.
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So how can event marketers leverage MySpace for events? Here are 8 ideas to get you started…
