Foursquare as Museum Marketing Tool (3)

Posted on 21 May 2010 | Comments Off

(Posted on Linkedin): I’m a Foursquare user and I’ve added my museum as a check-in location, but I think there are numerous challenges with Foursquare for cultural organizations (and other challenges, too). I think the Foursquare folks conceived it as a tool for restaurant- and bar-hoppers, and it works well for that, but as far as I can tell there’s no Museum Maven badge, for example, for museum-goers. (There is a badge for film-goers, finally.) Like Joe, we’re not having a lot of luck using it to encourage visitation, which is probably a problem of critical mass and the demographic currently using the app. We recently ran a promotion during our local Poker Tour, with prizes for the first 10 check-ins. It seemed liked a perfect fit, because Poker Tour participants were moving from one venue to another anyway, but only one Foursquare-user came to collect a prize.

Like Nadine, I’m finding it sort of limited. It’s very web site-dependent for me; there are so many features I can’t use from my Blackberry. I’m already frustrated that the points seem meaningless. On the other hand, it’s fun when I can see that “friends” are in the same place–I can look out for them–and the fact that Foursquare is now encouraging other app innovators will make it more user-friendly, the same way Twitter became easier to use thanks to the apps.

Elizabeth P. Stewart Director at Renton History Museum

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