Grow By Thinking Outside the Box

Do you ever stop and consider how you could do what you do only different?

We tend to get very wrapped up in our day to day lives. Marketing our products and services, frantically trying to bring new customers in to door or drive them to our websites.

But to you ever just stop? Sit back and think. Think about a different way to do things. Think about a new product from your service or a new service for your product?

Well this is exactly what Foursquare is doing…

Foursquare is an online service. A free online service at that. It is part of a newly emerging area of social media called location based social networking.

There is even a built in game aspect. Most people that I know who are using Foursquare did not start using it for the game. In fact I know people who avoid and even hide every single game on Facebook because they are not interested in the least. So they certainly didn’t join Foursquare to play a game.

But somehow Foursquare has managed to do something that Facebook couldn’t. They have included a game that you play no matter what, but it is not intrusive and you find yourself playing even it you don’t want to.

This game includes things like badges and earning the right to be called the “Mayor” of a place. Foursquare has also taken over the term “Swarm”. (The mayor is a person who checks in at one place more than anyone else and a swarm is when a large group of Foursquare users all check in at one location at about the same time)

So you are probably wondering how this is outside of the box?

Well the type of service alone is different. They took a couple of different services and kind of mooshed them together. A game kind of like Facebook, A stream kind of like Twitter, and location based lookup, throw in the ability to “become friends with someone” or “follow a brand” and you have Foursquare.

But now they are taking it one step further.

See as part of the game you earn these little graphics called badges. There is one for being a newbie, there is one after you check into 25 places that is called the Explorer badge. There is even one you get if you check in at 5 different airports.

It is fun to check in places and have these little unexpected announcements pop up saying you have won a new badge of some kind. There are even contests and plans on how to get certain badges, so people will go to certain venues just so they can earn a new badge.

But today I found out about a new outside of the box idea from Foursquare. They are taking those fun little badge graphics and opening a store. They will have pins, patches, t-shirts, stickers and more all available through their store.

In fact if you go to their headquarters they have some of this stuff now. They had it made up as fun things to give out to the tourists and at events and as their giveaways when they have tables at trade events. But the demand for these items has become so big that they stopped and thought…

Hmmm, we are a FREE online service. We enter into agreements with large brands to market and promote them (this is how we make money), but our users are asking us for more. Our users was badges and swag they can touch. Our users want to promote us and brag to their friends….

So…we will product a product to sell.

So they have figured out a way to turn their service (their free service at that) into a physical product.

And poof… they will instantly increase their revenue massively. They will go into new markets that have nothing to do with their online service.

Take the pins for example. I almost jumped for joy when I read that in the article from Forbes.com today. You see I have collected pins since I was 10. That is ____ years. I love them. I have them for everything. Now they are going to put out an entire set of new, never before seen pins! Yaaa!

There are people who collect stickers, t-shirts, pins, etc all over the world. These people may not even register for an account on the online social networking site, but you can bet they will want to add these new and popular items to their collections.

So…have you stopped and thought outside of your box lately…?