A Tale of Two Cities: Engaging Citizens & Tourist Through Social Media

July 14, 2010 No Comments by Jessica Murray

If you haven’t been following me recently, I’ve started blogging for Social Fresh, here’s a piece of the newest blog I wrote about how cities, like Boston & Chicago, are engaging citizens & tourists through social media. To see the entire blog post and leave comments, check out Social Fresh.

CHICAGO

New York is famous for pizza, Memphis is famous of BBQ and Chicago is famous for the dog’s….hot dog’s that is.  Chicago is so famous for their hot dogs, the city has created an original foursquare badge for it!  The Chicago Office of Tourism recently launched an entire campaign on foursquare, hosting three Chicago-themed badges, which are Chicago Blues, Chicago-style hot dog joints and Chicago film locations.

Currently, Foursquare does not provide the City of Chicago a number of how many followers have been awarded one of their original badges but in order for you to earn any of these badges, you must follow Explore Chicago on foursquare and presently, they have 6,457 followers.

Sarah Best, Web Specialist for Chicago Office of Tourism tracks their social media efforts on a daily basis and says, “..we can tie check-ins at historic blues locations much more closely to our Chicago Blues badge, as these are sites that tourists are unlikely to visit for other reason.  We also added all these venues to foursquare.com just before launching the badge,” and they’ve tracked 2,090 “check-in’s” at the various locations participating.

Sarah added their future events may include, “…other ‘real life’ events and partnerships with local businesses this Summer and Fall.  I would love to do a Chicago-style hot dog crawl!”  I’m totally there!

Explore Chicago has gone one step further by using foursquare’s ‘Tip’ functionality by highlighting the hidden jewel’s in each of Chicago’s 77 communities.

“For example, when someone “checks-in” at Calder’s Flamingo sculpture in Chicago’s Loop neighborhood, they learn through our foursquare tips, about the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that was shot there.” Sarah and her team have recently expanded website content to include more than 2,000 additional locations and attractions to enhance tourists’ Chicago experience with convenient links to public transportation.