Foursquare's (Lack of ?) GrowthFoursquare’s (Lack of ?) Growth

There’s no doubt Foursquare has grown substantially since the last time I posted data about them in January. In the first three months of the year (Jan 11 – Apr 11), at LORT theatres:

• check ins have more than tripled
• unique users checking in have almost tripled
• the number of theatres with any checkins has grown 30%
• average check ins per person has grown 41%

The number of mayors, tags, and notes at each of the venues has also increased in line with the growth in users. From the below graph, you can see that not only are the most active venues (left most data points) growing, but a whole bunch of the “somewhat” active venues (middle data points) are growing even faster.

Because there’s a high degree of variability among theatres’ check in data, we should be able to take a stab at finding predictive measures of success on Foursquare. You can see some of the lines below skyrocket upwards, while others are mostly flat. Now the question is why.

*note: 1 data point excluded (Jan: 300; April: 608)

So now we can talk a little more specifically about the top 10 theatres, and try to figure out what they’re doing (if anything) to encourage Foursquare usage. First, we’ll talk raw check ins:

1. Guthrie Theater
2. Alley Theatre
3. Lincoln Center Theatre
4. American Conservatory Theatre
5. Portland Center Stage
6. ACT Theatre
7. Center Theatre Group
8. Berkeley Rep
9. Fords Theatre
10. Alliance Theatre

The Alley and the Alliance broke into the top 10 in April, replacing Intiman and Denver Center. Guthrie leads the pack by a factor of 2 with 606 check ins. So what can we say about these theatres?

Is it the size of the audience?

They’re all TCG Budget group 5 or 6 theatres (meaning, they have annual operating expenses of >$5 million), so presumably they have among the largest theatre audiences walking through their doors each month. But, these aren’t simply the 10 largest theatres. And only 3 are located in country’s top 10 largest cities. So being big helps, but doesn’t seal the deal.

Is it Foursquare’s popularity/longevity?

Foursquare first rolled out in Austin, Texas in 2009. At the time, it was only available in 12 cities in the US. In July, it opened up to 8 more; in December another 15, in early January 2010 another 50, and just a few weeks later to any city anywhere. Only 2 of the top 10 theatres with the highest number of checkins weren’t in the initial March 2009 launch. Those two didn’t get access until round 2 in July 2009, and happen to be the two who broke into the top 10 in April (Alley and Alliance). However, there are notable theatres  located in “first round” Foursquare cities that didn’t make it into the top 10 list in January or April (I’m looking at you Arden, Arena, Court, Geffen, Goodman, Huntington, Manhattan Theatre Club, Roundabout, Shakespeare Theatre Co, and Wilma). Especially since only 3 of you aren’t a group 6 theatre. Again, being located in an early adopter city helps, but doesn’t ensure success.

Is it what the theatres are doing on Foursquare?

Only 6 of these 10 theatres have listed their Twitter handle on their Foursquare venue page. While all theatres had notes written about them by users, two theatres don’t have any “tags” listed by users (Berkeley Rep and Seattle Rep), and only Fords has a promotion running on Foursquare (and only then, because of a History Channel affiliation). Adding a depressing counterpoint, Kansas City Rep has the only official Mayor Special listed, but grew at about a third the rate of the average theatre venue. So there’s simply not enough data points to provide evidence either way that what a theatre does on Foursquare matters.

What about the number of Foursquare users?

While the total number of check ins matters in terms of exposing eyeballs to the theatre’s brand (assuming Foursquare users are linking check ins to their Twitter feed), so is the number of users important to create network effects. The top ten theatres by users:

1. Guthrie
2. Lincoln Center Theater
3. American Conservatory Theatre
4. Center Theatre Group
5. Berkeley Repertory Theatre
6. ACT Theatre
7. Fords Theatre
8. Seattle Repertory Theatre
9. Goodman Theatre
10. Denver Center Theatre

Now, the Goodman and Denver Center are our only new faces. And comapred to the January top 10 list, Goodman kicked out Intiman, otherwise everyone’s just switched a few places. Guthrie still leads the pack with 312 unique users, and Denver squeezes in with 58 users. Unfortunately, I don’t think we learn anything particularly interesting here.

Don’t we care about engagement?

Ok, yes yes. Engagement is the magic word in social media after all. So let’s check out average check ins per unique user because theoretically this would be a measure of loyalty:

1. Alley Theatre
2. Milwaukee Rep
3. Cleveland Playhouse
4. Florida Studio
5. Portland Center Stage
6. Asolo Rep
7. Northlight
8. Alliance Theatre
9. The Old Globe
10. George Shakespeare Co

Whoa. Where did all these folks come from? The Alley averages 9 check ins per user, while Georgia Shakes averages about 2.5. In order to get that high of user engagement on Foursquare at a theatre, you may start to suspect that it’s staff members checking in more than audience members. Which is not necessarily a bad thing after all; Yale Rep’s marketing, development, and general management staff have been in a race to see who can become mayor of the University Theatre (the building we all work in). If Foursquare keeps your staff having fun, and wanting to come to work, it’s easily worth its weight in gold.

What about how quickly they’ve increased check ins?

I excluded any theatre that had fewer than 10 check ins back in January (otherwise, the percentage growth numbers get all wacky) and was left with just 17 theatres. Of those, number of checkins had tripled on the low end, and increased 7 fold on the high end.

1. American Conservatory Theatre
2. Fords Theatre
3. The Old Globe
4. Goodman Theatre
5. Shakespeare Theatre Co
6. ACT Theatre
7. American Repertory Theatre
8. Center Theatre Group
9. Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
10. Seattle Repertory Theatre

Here again we see a handful of new faces, but these folks had extraordinarly low check in numbers back in January.

Interestingly, no theatre actually makes all 4 list, but ACT (both the Seattle and San Francisco versions), Center Theatre Group, and Fords make 3 of the lists (sacrificing check ins per person for raw numbers of check ins, people, and growth in check ins). The problem is, there’s no clear indication about why this is so.

Putting the pieces together

So let’s step back a moment here. By April 2010, just over 2,000 people had checked in to a LORT theatre venue. Somewhat impressive considering many venues had only been available for checking in since January, but compared to the hundreds of thousands of tickets sold over that time, and the (tens of?) thousands of Twitter and Facebook interactions, Foursquare check ins are still small potatoes in a very large garden. And much of the 3-month growth seems out of the control of the theatre (budget size, when Foursquare was released in their city). So what could/should we be doing?

Honestly, probably not a whole lot. On the one hand, Foursquare is a pretty simple social media platform for a theatre to manage. Add a badge to the front page of your website, create a mayor deal, post a sticker on your front door, add a Twitter handle to your venue page, and check the analytics every few weeks. Foursquare makes it dead simple; perhaps an hour of your time and you’re off and running with very little ongoing maintenance. Compared to the several hours each week you’re spending on Twitter/Facebook/Youtube, this is nothing. In short, Foursquare users don’t expect you to engage with them, they just want to play the game and maybe find a few good deals in their city.

On the other hand, unless you have a coffee shop/restaurant/bar in your theatre, I doubt Foursquare is bringing in any new or repeat business. As a relatively active user myself, I do care about winning the Mayorship of a few key locations around town, but I’m more interested in winning badges and points–both of which happen most often by checking into a variety of locations, not just one location repeatedly. And when I see a discount for $1 off a Tasti-Delite cone, I’m happy to drop by for a snack, but no way would a Mayor deal entice me to drop $50 on a theatre ticket. And unlike a bar, if I see a friend has checked in to a theatre nearby, I can’t just drop in on them to chat and hang out.

So what’s the point?

Well, now we’ve got a few clues about why and how and when we should be using Foursquare.

• Upsell concessions/merchandise to the people already in your building
• Engage your staff in a quick fun distraction (what else were you planning to do this summer?)
• Watch out for venues in your area that are offering Mayor deals with whom you could partner
• Monitor the “tips” users are leaving about your venue–these could give you great insight into how your audience perceives customer service, other features of your theatre
• Wait it out to see who wins the “location war“

And what we shouldn’t expect:

• Offer a Mayor deal and the Foursquare users come banging down your door
• High Foursquare usage just because you’re in a big city/theatre
• Low Foursquare usage just because you’re in a small city
• Very high user engagement (check ins/person)

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a Foursquare believer. It’s as addictive as Twitter, it’s growing fast (more than 1 million users in its first year), and it provides legitimate value to users and to venues. And given the small amount of resources it takes to make a substantial presence on Foursquare, managers should think seriously about investing a few hours, if just to show users that your theatre is ahead of the technology adoption curve (if you think that fits with your brand). But it’s useful to take pause about Foursquare’s mainstream potential.

For those who are interested in experimenting, there are some good models out there to copy:

• Discovering tips
• Breaking news
• Stalking celebrities
• Donating to charities
• Keeping tabs on what the boss is doing
• Giving stuff away
• Hunting scavengers
• Throwing parties around the world
• Creating a swarm

There’s a few caveats I should mention. Several theatres have more than 1 venue, or the same venue listed multiple times. In this case, I tried to use the most active record. Back in January, I appearantly missed two venues (MTC and Pittsburgh Public; I can tell based on the venue ID numbers listed in their URL)–it’s entirely possible I’ve missed other venues in this second round of data collection. TCG budget categories come from an amalgamation of the most recent Fiscal Surveys, Theatre Profiles, and IRS form 990s I could find. I don’t think any of these inconsistencies call into question my ultimate conclusions. But here’s the raw data, just in case.

Do you have a good Foursquare story? Wanna argue my interpretation of the data? Do you work at one of these theatres and want to explain more about what you’re doing on Foursquare?