Facebook Friday: Rewarding Customers and Reaching Others with ‘Facebook Places’

Facebook recently introduced “Facebook Places,” a feature that allows users to “check in” to a venue, alerting friends to their whereabouts while providing online exposure for that restaurant, school, golf course, whatever.

We’re in the midst of planning the PR and social media aspect of a client’s golf fund-raiser and have incorporated Facebook Places into the mix. When participants visit the registration table for the “8th Annual TBC Classic” on the morning of Oct. 5 and show they’ve checked in on Facebook Places (or Foursquare), they’ll receive a sleeve of Titleist ProV1 golf balls, courtesy of the company behind the fund-raiser, The Brick Companies.

That’s a nice gift for just pushing a button. At the same time, the golf course (Queenstown Harbor) and The Brick Companies will get a lot of extra social media exposure, as each check-in generates wall posts to the participants’ connections. With the average Facebook user having 130 “friends” that’s a potential added reach of thousands of people.