What the Future Holds for LS ONE…..

“As more people use social media to tell the story of the future, the wants and needs of more people will be reflected” – Simon Mainwaring.  Although Mainwaring  is an award-winning branding consultant, advertising creative director, and social media specialist and blogger, no one can really predict the future.   Many people believe that Internet of things  will be an area of substantial growth.  Others have put much work in Artificial Intelligence. Although the future remains unknown, one thing remains certain – as technology progresses, so will advances in Social Media.

In an interview with James, Business Manager of LS ONE he is constantly improving his businesses application in order to keep up with the advances in technology as well as changes in  social media. LS ONE is a Loyalty Program which is downloaded to your smart phone.  Through the application, you can collect “tokens”, digital coupons and exclusive rewards with participating businesses.  The application uses beacon technology.

In an interview with James, he shares the future technological development of his application as it applies to Social Media.  “As Social Media is evolving, we too, as a business, must be always evolving and thinking of new ways to improve our technology”.  In Phase 2 of the development of the application, James explains his plan is to add a referral feature that links to Social Media. “The new referral feature will have unique ID codes saved per user, when a user decides to refer a business (their LS card) it will be shared via social media and other means such as SMS and emails. The system generates a unique link when User A shares the business when this link is clicked by another user (User B), it is then tracked and once that new user B goes to the store and uses LS ONE, user A gets a reward or point.,”  We have found through analysis that our customers/clients are really engaged through Facebook and plan to build our future features to the application around what they want.

Second future development is improving our beacon technology in our application.  “Currently, our beacons are set up to be received by LS ONE app users only. Our beacons signal ranges from 75 ft to 150 metre radius. This summer, we are releasing our beacons that will now be received by all Android and iPhone users that have their bluetooth on. This is a game changer for us as businesses can have another means of advertising to foot traffic and associations such as TABIA and OBIAA are able to receive analytics on traffic within the BIA’s (Business Improvement Areas) all year round and in a cost-effective solution.”  June 2017 Findings for bluetooth “on” rates have increased to over 60% (20% growth since 2015).  Location service opt-ins are between 55% – 60% of users. James mentioned further development and integration with Social Media with the following, “We are currently developing a way to tie in the beacons and Social Media via “check-ins” or “beacon hunts”. We will utilize our beacon placements throughout the cities and create campaigns to push customers to specific areas while being tracked live on social media – this is still in development but we are hoping to have this ready for summer 2018.”

Lessons for Others

As technology advances, so will Social Media.  It is important for businesses to continuously be aware of these changes and adapt their technology, products and services accordingly.  This is in order to reflect the wants and needs of more people.

 

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

---

References