A few weeks ago, Joe Sorge showed us how he used Foursquare to get a flash mob of 150+ people into his restaurant, AJ Bombers. This Friday, with a little help from Milwaukee’s online community, he pulled together the most successful Foursquare-based event run by a restaurant to date in a 24 hour period, and proved that his Foursquare formula truly works for restaurants, and that it’s repeatable. By the end of the day on Friday, 231 people had checked in at AJ Bombers’s “I’m On A Boat!” badge party, and Joe had done more business at lunch in one day than he ever had. In this post, we’ll share some media and stats from the gathering, discuss exactly what it takes to pull off one of these events, and Joe will share some lessons learned and tips for using Foursquare to drive business.

Before we dive into my interview with Joe where he discusses how he did it, here’s some video, media and stats from the event so you can get a flavor of what it was like:

Video From AJ Bombers’ “I’m On A Boat!” Foursquare Badge Party:

Foursquare Check-in and Share Stats to AJ Bombers for 4/16:

Photos From The Event On Flickr

My Interview With Joe Sorge

Q. Joe, back in March you put together what turned out to be a hugely successful event for your restaurant using Foursquare. Over 160 people showed up for that event and earned the Foursquare swarm badge. When we broke the news and documented how you did it on this blog, even though we had pictures and video of the event, some people thought that it was a fluke. But here we are. Your second event’s done, and was even more successful than the first. What would you say now to the people who said it couldn’t be done again?

JS: I hope the skeptics can now see that not only is it possible to use foursquare to drive sales at your business, but that it becomes slightly easier with each event like this that you pull together. As your customers look to you to provide this type of event as a part of their entertainment schedule, even going so far as to share their suggestions with you for the next event.

JS: Actually we were very careful to duplicate the steps exactly as we had during the Swarm badge event. I wanted to be sure that we were going to prove that there could in fact be a systematic way to create this style of promotion.

JS: On March 22nd an uber Foursquare fan from Tampa, Nate Bonilla-Warford came up with the brilliant idea to declare April 16th Foursquare Day (4 squared = 16. 4/16. Get it?). It started with a blog post, and the idea caught on and spread over the next few weeks – by last week there were small events being organized in cities all over the country to celebrate the day thanks to all the chatter about it on the web. People were getting into it. So I looked at the badges that were available to the average foursquare user to base our own event around and we chose one that was hard to acquire, but also would be fun to acquire with a group of friends. Did we have a boat? No. But with a little creative thinking, we partnered with another local business, got a kayak and went for it anyway.

JS: In contacting foursquare about earning the badge, I asked the question about what was required to earn the badge.  My question was, “are there two things needed to acquire the boat badge, a) a boat and b) a boat “tagged” venue page?  They confirmed that was in fact the case, but there was also a third way to earn the badge.  That’s the route we chose, to have our customers check-in in the boat itself and add a “shout” to their check-in: “I’m on a boat @AJBombers”.

Q. You chose Foursquare day to hold the event. How much did people’s enthusiasm for the that affect your success.

JS: It certainly helped to keep awareness high in the days immediately leading up to the event, ironically it was our customers who continued to tweet with us about how excited they were to be celebrating foursquare day by earning a new badge together @AJBombers.  We even had a little fun with adding: Happy @foursquare Day to the front of the “I’m on a Boat” badge shout, which earned this players the additional Four Square Day Badge, a fun bonus for all involved.

JS: Again, we followed the exactly same method as the one that we used to promote the Swarm Badge event, just in a shorter overall timeframe.  That is, we chose the badge to acquire, contacted foursquare about the process of acquiring the badge, built the twtvite.com invitation and began to promote it via twitter and facebook during the 1 day leading up to the event.  With the date also being foursquare day, we researched the badge that might be awarded for that day and changed our twitter avatar to that badge for the two days leading up to the event.  The entire process of putting the pieces in place took less than two hours to pull together and we tweeted with approximately 50 users to get the ball rolling in the last 24 hours before the night of the event.

JS: I was a little afraid that another business may try to duplicate the idea quickly if I released the idea too soon, so yes I did keep it a bit of a secret. I Only privately DM’ed our customers that I knew would think it was fun and who could keep a secret!

JS: I don’t think that you could be anywhere near as successful without employing partners in these events.  Without our neighbor, outdoor outfitter Laacke & Joys, we wouldn’t even have had the boat!

JS: I hope that the fact that we were able to achieve our best sales day so far with such a short duration of well planned promotion via social media tools lends some credibility to the opportunity for measurable ROI that so many of those skeptics of our Swarm Badge event were previously critical.

That’s a wrap. If any of you out there have additional questions for Joe on this, I’m sure he’d be happy to discuss them with you in the comments. Also, if you have your own ideas or case studies you’d like to share, please do. It’s discussion time….

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

I’m On A Boat! – How To Use Foursquare To Get 231 People to Check In To Your Restaurant In 1 Day

Restaurant owners are quickly discovering how to use social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and Yelp to their advantage and drive customers to their tables, but there’s a guy in Wisconsin doing it better than almost anyone else.

Joe Sorge, who runs a burger joint in Milwaukee called AJ Bombers, shot me a tweet yesterday to tell me about a Foursquare party they had this week that brought a flash mob of 161 Foursquare users to his restaurant.  My eyebrows shot up when I read that number. 161 check ins in one day?! How could that be? There are only about three or four hundred Foursquare users total in Milwaukee?! Over 150 of them were in the same place, on the same afternoon?

When I called him up, Joe explained. They came to earn the highly coveted and elusive Foursquare “Swarm Badge” – something you can only get when 50 or more Foursquare users check in at the same place at the same time. I hadn’t heard of it, but apparently the promise of this coveted Foursquare badge can really draw a crowd.

Before I launch into my interview where Joe discusses how he did it, here’s video from the  beginning of the event so you can get an idea of what was going on at the restaurant at the start of the event.

Video From The AJ Bombers Foursquare Swarm Badge Party

Flickr Photos from the AJ Bombers Foursquare Swarm Badge Party…

Wonder how AJ Bombers did it? Here’s my interview with Joe…

Q: What made you to decide to take the leap to try and base an event around the Swarm Foursquare badge? (did you see it done well and replicate? did foursquare come to you? How did you find out about it and decide to go for it?)

A: We had been noticing our twitter fan base really getting in to Foursquare lately so I went about investigating the various badges that could be achieved and found the elusive Swarm badge at the bottom of a badge page, awarded for a gathering of 50 or more foursquare users. We thought it was a great idea, so we started searching the web for how the badge worked and got in touch with Foursquare who helped us out.

Q: How did you organize/coordinate the event with foursquare?

A: Total time considered, organizing the event took us about a week. Once I connected with Foursquare, I emailed back a forth with them about logistics and asked some specific questions about how the badge was awarded and to how many users, etc.   They were TOTALLY on board with the event by the way, even tweeting about it themselves just hours before we were to be awarded the badge

Q: How did you get the word out before the event?

A: We used twitter primarily, but the main tool was called a Twtvite from the good tweeps at TwApps. Here’s the Twitvite we sent out. We cross promoted the event as a fundraiser for Milewake SWSX.  As we got closer to the event the invite spread out on social networking sites like Facebook as well. We had almost 100 people sign up beforehand, and over 100 people Tweeted about it. By 1:30pm, before the event was supposed to start, the restaurant was already packed with people.

At almost 3pm on the dot, people on the inside of the restaurant all got notification at the same time from Foursquare that they had earned the Swarm badge and they all started Tweeting about it. There was a lot of energy in the room at that moment that I wish we could have captured on video. There was so much word of mouth happening when people started telling their friends on Twitter that they’d gotten the badge. New comers were earning the badge for over 3 hours, right up until 6:20pm. Even 56 users who’d never used Foursquare signed up and checked in just to get the badge.

Q: Did you have any anxiety/legitimate concerns that it wasn’t going to work before the day of? (if so, what were they)

A: Absolutely I was concerned that we couldn’t get to the number needed all at once. FourSquare assured that the network would be there for us, and it was!

Q: Just one more thing, got any tips for managing the mob when they show up?

A: Eat, Drink and Check-in!

Q: What sense did you get that people really wanted out of the event? To meet others? Were they there just for the badge? How many of them knew each other already (i.e. did they come in groups, or were they all individuals who came alone)

A: This event, like nearly every Social Media event that we do was and is all about community and building something, or in this case earning something together.  We are, after all, a restaurant built by twitter and now made even more fun by foursquare.

So there you have it, right from the horse’s mouth. I hope this confirms for any nay-sayers out there that social media can work for you. If you have any questions for Joe, let’s discuss them here in the comments.

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Case Study: How To Use Foursquare To Draw A Crowd Into Your Restaurant

This (above) is just one example. I’ve talked about how tons of people are hacking their Flip cameras because the company isn’t listening and offering a wide-angle lens adapter. There are a ton of blog posts and YouTube videos about how to glue-on wide angle lens adapters to make the Flip more useful…and these lenses only cost 30 bucks. If the company was listening, they’d be partnering with a lens maker (or making their own) and offering a premium version of the Flip with an adapter included. The trail of breadcrumbs around the Flip already shows that people are willing to pay for the parts and go through the extra hassle to get the improved performance, so this is a no-brainer.

What’s the trail of breadcrumbs around your product telling you about your customers?

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

Your Customers Leave A Trail Of Breadcrumbs Online

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

How Social Media Can Boost Restaurant Business

This post was written by Steffan Antonas. Find more at blog.steffanantonas.com

The Four E’s Of Social Media Marketing