It's WILL be powerful. Get on board now!

Thanks for visiting.

I loved that you pointed out how little time would be saved by NOT doing LBM.

It’s relatively easy to claim your location in Foursquare and start making special offers. And it looks relatively easy to set up a “tour” in Gowlla. I think that could benefit lots of nonprofits.

Staying abreast of these developments makes it a lot easier to be able to communicate with donors that might be fans of our cause. charity:water didn’t know much about Twitter before Amanda and the Twestival folks contacted them. But they knew enough to realize Twestival was an opportunity.

I’m not sure LBM’s will be the next Twestival…but keeping familiar with them seems like a low risk, high opportunity activity!

The biggest thing to remember…and you did an excellent job of pointing it out, is that the players will change – so who cares whether you experiment with foursquare over gowalla? What matters is that you start thinking about it period because the game will only get more integrated as more and more people use the mobile web.

Chris Brogan talks about how New Marketing Labs is exactly that: a lab to test out new ideas on smaller scales. That's what LBM right now…a nice, relatively uncluttered lab for us to do experiments in.

Ian, I think you're absolutely right about where it fits in your strategy.

But what I would encourage every NPO to think about is how LBM, something I believe will be relevant to all organizations in a few years, can be part of their marketing mix, even in just a small way. Too many nonprofits fall behind the curve in new and progressive thinking and have to play catch up months or years later. Here's a plea to stay a pace!

Like all things in marketing, the right approach is to analyze the channel from a strategic perspective. Is location-based, and the segment that uses it, going to help my business? Now or in the future? By how much? How many resources will I have to invest? What else can I do with those resources?

The problem with "shiny new objects" as you called them in your other post is that they attract companies like moths to light and no one asks if they'll really be beneficial. It's all somewhat a shot in the dark, but we reduce the risk if we have a real strategy.

3 years ago everyone was buzzing about Second Life. Many companies got in with no real strategy. What was nestle chocolate milk doing in Second Life? How did that enhance the milk buying experience? It didn't, and it wasn't strategic. Orange got in and they did awesome stuff, built a community, made it work.

Now, Second Life hasn't risen to the top, so Orange can't have profited as much as they'd have liked, but who could have been 100% sure back then? But their strategy was sound, so it was a good idea.

Ditto with Foursquare. If you have a solid campaign based on strategic fundamentals, go for it. If you're just doing it to do it, you're probably wasting your time.

Just my two cents.

Ian