Using Social Monitoring to uncover the Analytics of Geolocation –

Geolocation and mobile computing are trends that are now in the mainstream so it’s about time to examine what kind of analytics we can get and what we can do with it.

Note – I wrote this post first for for IQWorkforce.com Web Analytics RockStars blog where it appeared this week; it also appeared on Webmetricsguru.com, my web analytics and social media monitoring blog.   As a result of the IQ Workforce post I am thinking of an A/B test for a case study comparing gifting to people in Social Media vs. Random customers.

For one thing, Geolocation and Foursquare can be your best friend, especially if your business is brick and mortar, like a restaurant or even a hardware store (though, besides Home Depot, there aren’t that many hardware stores that are fun to hang around in).

Take Havana Central, a New York Cuban Restaurant chain who is a client of mine and who aspires to be the Roger Smith Hotel of local restaurants here. Through my WebMetricsGuru.com blog I have become known to many in the Social Monitoring sector and have access to many of the best platforms, tools and agencies of choice to work with. One of the tools I use often is Radian6, a Social Monitoring …

Geolocation and mobile computing are trends that are now in the
mainstream so it’s about time to examine what kind of analytics we can
get and what we can do with it.

Note – I wrote this post first for for IQWorkforce.com Web Analytics RockStars blog where it appeared this week; it also appeared on Webmetricsguru.com, my web analytics and social media monitoring blog.   As a result of the IQ Workforce post I am thinking of an A/B test for a case study comparing gifting to people in Social Media vs. Random customers.

For one thing, Geolocation and Foursquare can be your best friend, especially if your business is brick and mortar, like a restaurant or even a hardware store (though, besides Home Depot, there aren’t that many hardware stores that are fun to hang around in).

Take Havana Central, a New York Cuban Restaurant chain who is a client of mine and who aspires to be the Roger Smith Hotel of local restaurants here. Through my WebMetricsGuru.com
blog I have become known to many in the Social Monitoring sector and
have access to many of the best platforms, tools and agencies of choice
to work with. One of the tools I use often is Radian6, a Social
Monitoring platform that is used by many marketing, PR and
communications agencies to monitor “online chatter” and “buzz” for
their clients or own businesses. Radian6 is also known as the first
“listening” platform to integrate with WebTrends (and Omniture) as well
as SalesForce for SocialCRM.

I set up  Radian6
alerts set up on Havana Central that sends email status every 10
minutes  when anyone tweets or mentions the restaurant chain in any
way.  It just so happens that I was in the 46^th street
Havana Central location with the community strategist Cecilia Pineda Feret location one evening to check on an expected guest and received an email alert from a
customer who was saying she was in the restaurant – via Twitter. 
When I read my email alert from Radian6 I immediately realized the
customer was in the restaurant at the very same moment I was.
This is what the alert looked like on my iPhone:

TWEET FROM: KIMBERLY819

Source: twitter.com, Posted on: Mar 01, 2010 9:36 PM by KIMBERLY819
Chillin with my girl Yesenia in the city!! Great restaurant Havana Central!! Great Live salsa band!! Oooooooowwwww!!!!
Following: 86 | Followers: 65 | Updates: 270 | Sentiment: Positive

The alert took place in real time –
I suggested to Cecilia Pineda Feret the customer and her friend should be
given free drinks and discounts that evening. That’s all I did – and as
we acted in real time- within 10 minutes of the initial tweet – the
response was interesting.

The customer, Kimberly819 and her friend got their free drinks.

Later on that night I got another alert – guess what this one said:

	TWEET FROM: KIMBERLY819
	Name: KIMBERLY819	Posted on: Mar 1, 2010 1:07 AM
	Followers: 66	Following: 87

What a GREAT night at Havana Central!!!! My new favorite spot!!

Link	http://twitter.com/KIMBERLY819/statuses/9811482654

That got me thinking … if we could do something like
this – foster customer loyalty – that easy (hell, just give the lady a
free drink) what would happen if we gave everyone who tweeted at one of
Havana Central’s 3 locations a free drink?

To be fair – the idea of giving customers a free drink was a natural evolution from outreach work Cecilia was doing – my role was to tie in Social Media Monitoring and push past boundaries and show we could act on these alerts and what the value of that action might be.

I used analytics to figure it out. How often could
Kimberly819 happen and what would it mean to Havana Central in
increased revenue? I found on first pass, exporting
Radian6 data from a “River of News” Widget I set up for the restaurant
alerts that at least 20 times in the last month a customer tweeted they
were in one of Havana Central’s locations – though in retrospect – that
number is way, way too conservative – I put it more at 100 times a
month, at least, and maybe even double that – if we take every
variation of announcing “I’m at Havana Central”.

Source: Radian6 – Tweets & Facebook announcements of presence at Havana Central

For those customers who have linked their Foursquare accounts with
Twitter and Facebook the numbers are even higher with about 5% of the
total conversation recorded as having happened at one of the
restaurants  – and I can swear the number is closer to 10% as we get 2
or 3 tweets a day from people who are announcing they are at one of
Havana Central’s locations.

Source: Radian6 – Alerts with Foursquare check-ins included

Suppose we go with the higher number (around 60 individuals a month
say “I’m at Havana Central” in one slang way or another) and estimate a
typical loyal customer will return a certain number of times and spend
a certain amount in per visit – we can get a approximate ROI number.

I’m going to make a deduction the a typical “rewarded customer” we
find via Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook might spend $300-$500 a year
at the restaurant in addition to anything else they might have spent
there if they had not been rewarded. I was told by Jeremy Merrin, one
of the owners of Havana Central that the number might be considerably
higher than that (add up all those blueberry mojitos and live Latin dancing, etc)– but I’ll be conservative, just to be safe.

One possible result is increased revenue of close to 30K a month –
over a year that could mean as much as 360K – just by making someone’s
visit a little bit friendlier and better for them.

Check out Marshall Sponder’s blog  – www.webmetricsguru.com.