Photo credit: jalalspages
July is almost over – and it was a scorcher, wasn’t it? Luckily, we’ve had a few cool things to read about social media, location-based marketing, cause marketing and PR – while staying indoors. Enjoy, and stay cool this weekend!
Events
What We’re Reading, July 16th
Happy Friday! It’s been a busy and exciting week here at Tuvel – wrapping up projects, kicking off new campaigns, seeing great results from current ones. It’s always so exciting to see the fruits of our labor! Tuvel was also featured in two articles this week – from Convene Magazine and the Omnipress Blog – which are part of our weekly recommended reading list today (but don’t just read them because we’re featured – they are truly interesting and insightful reads)!
2 Event-Friendly Location-Based Apps that Go Beyond “Checking In”
Location-based services are the newest trend in social networking, and as such the big players in the space (Foursquare and Gowalla) are getting all sorts of attention and scrutiny. While many users of such services love broadcasting their whereabouts to their online friends and earning badges and titles of distinction in the process (Player Please badge, anyone?), others are a bit wary of them and their usefulness – and are especially concerned with potential privacy issues.
Businesses, on the other hand, are starting to find value of their own in using location-based services as a marketing tool. Even event marketers are starting to experiment with location-based social networking to promote a conference, specific exhibitor, or special sessions – something we did for this year’s NAB Show.
The only problem is when it comes to events and conferences, services like Foursquare and Gowalla aren’t quite ready for prime time. While the concept of checking in to an event or exhibitor booth in order to drive traffic and generate interest is definitely cool, the functionality is not conducive to a conference setting due to two big issues:
- A venue page is built based on a single address – where several different events may take place over time.
- Lack of interactivity and ability for attendees to do what they would be naturally inclined to do at a conference – network with each other.
Recently, I had conversations with folks from two different location-based apps that have set out to change all of that.
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