How To: Use Facebook Questions and Places – Part 2

Facebook Places
Facebook Places was announced August 19th and is currently only available in the US. Similar to Foursquare and Gowilla, you share your location by checking in to where you are by using your smartphone.

What’s All the Excitement Over Location-Based Apps?

Autumn Morris from Ignite Social Media, explains it best (quoting her professor):

Imagine you are driving down the road and you pass by Starbucks. If you are carrying your phone with you, then services with location based technology have the potential to send you a coupon at the exact moment you are passing by that store. Would that be valuable to you as a consumer? Yes. Would that be valuable to you as a marketer? Absolutely. In both instances, the consumer and marketer are allowed communication at the most optimized moment - right before a potential purchase.

How Places Work

Places is meant to be used on a smartphone but can also be used from your laptop or iPod. To use Places, go to the Places tab on the iPhone app or, if you’re not using it from a smartphone, go to touch.facebook.com. The first time you use it, you’ll be asked if Facebook is allowed to access your location, click “Allow” and then you’ll be brought into Places. From here you can share your location, see where your friends are (if they’re checking in with Places) and find places near you.

Your check-ins will appear on your profile, in your friends’ news feeds and in that location’s activity stream.

While you’re checking in, you can also check your friends in. If they haven’t used Places before, they will have to approve the check-in before it appears in their newsfeed. Next time they’re in Facebook, they’ll be asked to allow or deny the check-in.

There have been privacy concerns over friends being able to check-in others in as well as who can see your check-ins. If you’re concerned, here’s how to opt out of Places. 

Places for Business

Companies can now use Places to claim the location of their business. Your location can be added to Places by you or another Facebook user but needs to be verified by uploading an official document, like your business license. If another Facebook user adds your location to Places, you can go to the Place Page and click on “Is this Place Page your business?”, claim the location and verify it. Facebook users can like your Place Page and you can post updates to fans, as well as update your company’s information.

Although Place Pages are currently independent of your Fan Page, Place Pages are meant to eventually replace Fan Pages.

How To Use Facebook Places in Your Marketing:

• Offer special discounts or promotions to people who check-in to your business with Facebook Places.
• Generate word of mouth. Encourage users to post reviews or share information about your business through Facebook while they are checked-in and about give discounts to those that do. People’s networks tend to be bigger on Facebook than other location-sharing sites so there’s more opportunity with Facebook Places for word of mouth to spread.
• Encourage customer loyalty by giving fans special discounts every certain number of check-ins.
• Advertising. Soon Places will allow marketers to target people who check-in with relevant advertising. Places is built into Facebook’s advertising platform so you can choose to show ads to Facebook users who have checked into specific locations. If you’re interested in advertising, Facebook has a Places for Advertisers FAQ. 

For more information about Facebook Places, Mashable has an extensive Facebook Places Guide.

While both Facebook Questions and Places are still in the early stages, it will be interesting to see whether or not they take off within the Facebook community. Facebook Questions has the potential to be an effective networking and lead generation tool and Places may be bring location sharing into the mainstream. What’s your opinion about these new features?