So while recently attending RIM WES 2010 (RIM as in the makers of Blackberry) I got an idea for using Foursquare at events.

Simply, if I were attending a conference and had a booth or meeting room for my business, I’d find ways to get people to check in at my booth as a way of connecting with them online, driving more traffic to my booth and finding new peers and contacts.

Think of it has “hyper hyper local.” There’s nothing on Foursquare now that says a location has to be a Starbucks, grocery store, …. why not your booth at a conference?

I’d track who checks in at the booth, reward my mayor, have people tweet it, run give-aways for people who check in (beyond the usual useless conference schwag) and try to get people to connect with each other at my location.

I’d be cautious of conference trolls who are just looking to score prizes but we could find ways to weed them out.

Foursquare might also be a good way for a company that is sending people to a conference to see where employees check-in, less for “monitoring” and more to see who they are having a chance to connect with while there.

Admittedly the strategy needs some flushing out but what do you think? What ways would you use Foursquare at a conference?

Update: Misha Williams from iMergeMobile.com dicusses how he used Foursquare and other social media platforms in a manner similar to what I’ve suggested above to drive traffic and business to his booth.

When it comes to Foursquare you probably love it or think it’s ridiculous. But like it or not, location based services are going to pick up and the business models that will evolve from them, like the early days of Twitter, are yet to be determined. While the use of location based technologies is nascent at best, it’ll be fun to see how they evolve.

We don’t know exactly what will become of services like Foursquare but there is one thing they have done with ruthless brilliance that should serve as a business lesson for us all:

They’re turning us into Pavlov’s dogs.

Face it, no matter how intelligent we may be, our behaviors are not hard to condition and Foursquare (and Gowalla) have us on a leash.

A Brief History

In the 1890′s Russian Psychologist Ivan Pavlov was investigating reflex systems research which led to his description of what most of us know as “classical conditioning” or “associative learning.” In the most basic of terms what Pavlov described was this: Organisms (animals, people, systems) can be trained to respond in a predictable manner to a specific stimulus under certain conditions. In the case of Pavlov’s experiments, he observed that dogs would start to salivate when a lab technician, who normally fed them, entered the room (presumably they recognized the technician and were anticipating dinner). Eventually, he began to use a metronome to indicate feeding time, and with enough conditioning, the metronome alone would cause the dog to salivate, even if food wasn’t there. Stimulus conditioned response.

Fast Forward to Foursquare

One of the “rewards” for using Foursquare is earning various badges. The other is being declared “Mayor” (when you check in at the same location more than anyone else you are declared “Mayor” of that location). The more badges you earn, and more the Mayor-ships you acquire the more addictive Foursquare becomes because we know if we peck away at our smart-phones long enough we’ll get another reward.

As young as Foursquare is I’ve observed people going to the same place repeatedly (usually spending money there) to try to oust someone as Mayor or because they’re fixated on staying “Mayor.” Keep in mind, being Mayor comes with no material benefit in most cases, though a few business are starting to “reward” their Mayor’s in various ways. It’s simply recognition reinforced with social proof as validated by Foursquare and often tweeted on Twitter. Social validation is the real reward by the way, remember, this is about People and we crave social validation.

Badges are another matter. Do certain things and earn them, sometimes you know what to do, sometimes you don’t. But if you keep checking in the badges keep coming. More socially broadcast recognition via “accomplishment” (if you can seriously call it that).

The point is that Foursquare has created an environment where telling people where we are has become a rewarding experience so we keep doing it, and that is exactly what services like Foursquare want us to do. (Can you imagine the demographic trends and socioeconomic data they are mining!). It’s so powerful we forgo privacy (to some degree), spend money and use mobile minutes for the reward of social validation. Can your business do that?

Your Business

Now the challenge is to apply a little psychology to your business. How can you make the process of interacting with you or your business not just positive but truly rewarding such that you clients and customers will want to come back to you time and time again? Think about the power of that for a minute, if every time I deal with you it’s rewarding for me, it might make me a very regular repeat customer don’t you think? I’ll come back even when I don’t really need something because the experience is rewarding.

While every business and situation will vary I’ll give you two important clues:

1. The reward, however you make your customers feel that way, has got to come very close in time to their interaction with you. There is a direct correlation between the amount of time that passes from when they receive the reward and how closely they will correlate that reward with you or your business. The longer it takes the less powerful the stimulus.
2. It should always be positive and doesn’t have to cost anything. It’s how you make them feel. Yes, your product should be good but it’s how your customers feel about you that will keep them coming back.

This was a fun post to write and I can’t wait to hear your ideas about how you might apply a little psychology to your business. Run with it… and try not to drool every time you check in.