I don’t intend to suggest that RowFeeder is in any way related to Point of Sale systems; mainly, I’m combining two ideas in one post for utility.
RowFeeder is a new Social Media Monitoring platform I’m playing with right now and I’ve been granted an unrestricted account to play with it – here’s the results of a complete RowFeeder Account on the term “webmetricsguru” (RowFeeder for webmetricsguru). Rowfeeder analyzed TechCrunch Disrupt (which I attended) last spring here in NYC but I didn’t connect with them at the conference (if they were actually present).
I’ll be speaking with Adam Schoenfeld at Rowfeeder later today and will have some questions (and if anyone has anything to comment now – before or even after my call, I’ll relay it to Adam and try to get it answered).
Right now, for the kind of PR work I’ve seen asked for, for example, Rowfeeder would fit in well as a low cost monitoring tool – it would also work well for conferences. Most of what I saw so far is all from Twitter and obviously there is a lot more to report on (the tool does have Facebook access – but I did not see anything from Facebook in the reports I pulled this morning). The tool is still early stage but I like the approach and concept.
Getting to Point of Sale systems – the reason I bring it up is connected with the Business Development Institute Mobile Social Communications sessions I attended this Wednesday, link to recordings is here, seemed to all bring up a common point (in my mind) that a way of tracking a mobile check in or even presence in a location (buzzd, for example, does not formally require someone to check in and broadcast a tweet as they can also resolve common terms such as “I’m at” and ” I am at”, etc, as being a statement that a person is at location – this is similar to what I have been doing with the Havana Central Case Study which I presented a few months ago for the Columbia Business School Alumni Club in New York) is from a device that can act as the Point of Sale device – be it a bar code reader or a enhanced cash register.
A few of the case studies brought up POS systems in a very direct way (but they were called something else in most cases, but at the end of the day, that’s what we’re talking about). For example, the Case Study: Using Social Technologies to Reward Brand Loyalty
Presented by BJ Emerson, Social Technology Officer at Tasti D-Lite LLC (you see the Tasti D-Lite stores all over Manhattan in brisk foot traffic areas where they sell a version of non-fat ice cream that has about 25% of the calories of normal ice cream (and they are usually packed, mostly with females – but the ice cream does taste good, and I can attest to that part).
It turned out that part of the case study involved a third party integration with a company called PCAmerica, that was able to instrument mobile coupon tracking along with additional software/firmware on the Cash Register (a.k.a Point of Sale system) to record a social media / mobile generated offer into a cash receipt item that you can now track just like any other case sale a retail outlet is accustomed to tracking.
Note: PCAmerica does not mentions the Social Media Enablement they did for Tasti-D-Lite – it turned out to be an additional button on the Cash Register so a person who is taking the order can input or redeem the mobile code that was generated for a customer, they mobile code they found out about via Twitter or Facebook.
Thereby, the “Social Media ROI” becomes realized as cash and not equivalent value to cash that most people end up reporting for social media outreach and it’s something that would make the TheBrandBuilder happy, along with others who want to see cash in the bank. But it’s also interesting to note the kind of work it takes to track Social Media ROI (which I’ll cover in my webinar on September 28th, all are welcome).
It’s also not the first time I have brought up POS systems recently as I wrote about it a few months ago and here’s some of the original stories that inspired that post.
FourSquare experiments with mobile bar code readers
Foursquare Extending The Physical Reach Of Offers And Hints At Hardware Integration
ShopSavvy Barcode Reader for Android: Now With QR Code Support – Interestingly, this article mentions the McDonald’s promo that was part of a case study mentioned at the BDI Roundtable I attended.
The integrations needed will be different somewhat for every business although I suspect that it will be similar by segment (ie: most restaruants will have similar needs, similar data and similar Point Of Sale system enablement). In fact, I predict POS systems will become Sexy again (if they ever were sexy) and they are part of the enablement that’s needed (along with RFID and Geo-fensing) for real Social Media ROI (the kind they fly you to a castle to present – chuckle)
The presentations for the BDI conference I attended will be posted in a few weeks and I can share them at that time.
And, by the way, I’ll be talking about all these things – what you have to do to track ROI practically – at the Compete Webinar on September 28th (which will also have a White Paper/White Book) you can download.
