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In our third guest post before our birthday event tomorrow, we hear from Rob Dyson, PR and social web Manager at Whizz Kidz.

Spaces… the final frontier

Are “spaces” the final frontier? Well not exactly, but location-based social media is a growing area where I think charities could be boldly going where few, so far, tread.

You’ll have heard of the ‘big three’; Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. All three – and many more – are smart-phone based platforms that encourage us to ‘check in’ to real places (restaurants, bars, museums, offices, and so on), using our phone’s inbuilt GPS. We can choose to tell our friends where we are – maybe a pal is in the area to join us for a cuppa? And what’s really smart is increasingly the proprietors of these places are using the tools to recognise and reward loyal customers. Checked-in 10 times to your favourite bar? Here’s a free cocktail (for example).

As well as this, Foursquare offers an in-game incentive in the form of ‘badges’ and ‘mayorships’ – so you could be the Foursquare ‘Mayor’ of YourLocalPub because you check-in every day (not advisable)!

Charities such as Action For Children, British Red Cross, and Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research are all using Foursquare – the latter has been using the network in the same way as Twitter to post updates to followers. However, I’d suggest Card Aid are ahead of the pack right now; adding ‘tips’ in the service around the City, so that when you check-in somewhere, you are alerted to a nearby outlet where you can pop in and buy charity cards. Nice.

Where I see some really nice innovation in location-based media is in the US, where Republican politicians adopted a special toolkit put together by Gowalla. By checking-in to political rally venues, supporters win candidate-branded “passport stamps” – using competitive game-play (how many stamps can you collect?) as a way of encouraging turn-out.

Foursquare meanwhile rewards users for gathering fellow game-users in one location. So back in October, the Jewel bar in London was the first place in England to hold a special event to get over 250 people all ‘checking in’ at the same time and in the same place. Users were all rewarded with a “Superswarm” badge. This badge is ‘worn’ on your profile, and gives your kudos among the game community. Foursquare has now created “Superduper Swarm” and “Epic Swarm” badges, open to unlock if you check in with 500 or 1,000 other gameplayers respectively!

I think the challenge to charities then, is how to harness these location games in creative ways to motivate and inspire our supporters.

Perhaps location-media might be used to encourage people to a fundraising event, or a campaign day? Or maybe, like Card Aid, you could leave ‘virtual crumbs’ around towns and cities. How about rewarding followers for ‘checking-in’ to charity shops, or when they take part in local volunteering? These are all viral tools too – in so far as they alert and update your friends to your activity in their newsfeeds. Your friends not using location-media? Rest assured you can sync your Facebook and Twitter profiles to them, so when you check-in to a fundraiser (London Marathon anyone?), your pals can see you’re there, and maybe they’ll come along too – or comment on your check-in (which their friends will see, and so on, and so on).

So if the world’s our oyster – where will check-in? And who will join you? Until Wednesday, this is Rob, ‘checking-out’.

Rob will be joined by Roberto Kusabbi, Communities and Social Media Exec at the British Heart Foundation. Looking forward to hearing more from Rob and Roberto tomorrow.

For those that can’t make it in person tomorrow night, you can participate online by following the event hashtag #NFPtweetup.

See you soon!

Teri