Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

Getting People to Your Stores and Venues with Facebook Places

You know a few ways that you can access information about Facebook's location service, Places, via Graph API (see Chapter 10). You can pull information about single places. You can search for check-ins that users have visited. You can search for detailed information about who has checked in to a specific place.

You don't, however, have to use Graph API to get value from Places. The following sections discuss a few things that you can do with Places that will get more customers into your venues and stores and get them purchasing every time they visit. Not only that, but their friends will also see their check-ins and hopefully be enticed to come visit as well.

Using Facebook Deals

Facebook Deals is an advertising service that, like Facebook ads, allows business owners to target ads to specific individuals. The difference is that Deals allows business owners to target people at the actual location where they are. As I write this, Deals is also free, although Facebook says this is a limited-time offer.

Currently, anyone on a mobile phone can either open the Facebook app or visit touch.facebook.com and check in to the location where he or she is. Deals allows businesses to target “deals,” or advertisements, to people who check in to specific locations, or to be aware of deals if they are checking in at a location nearby where the deal is taking place. This is a great way to entice customers to come into your store during ...