With the Facebook Places announcement on Wednesday, many are anticipating the swift death/corporate absorption of all the other location-based ‘check in’ players. But Foursquare (4sq to its friends) has a few tricks left up its sleeve. Here’s what the location-marketing pioneer could do to fend off the Facebook frenemy.

Partner up to make Mayorship valuable

The very premise of the Foursquare check-in – “Hey everyone, I’m at one of my favorite places right now!” – has the potential to completely replace one of the oldest mainstays of traditional CRM: the store loyalty card (more on this in a future post). It’s only recently that retail giants like Starbucks have begun to catch on with high-profile partnerships, and the initial attempts have already met with great enthusiasm and will likely percolate down to small/medium businesses rapidly. Foursquare has gotten this far with giving away simple bragging rights to users, but beating Facebook Places will mean providing more tangible perks in order to keep its value, now that the service’s mere existence is no longer a novelty.

Faster/more accurate check-ins

With raised stakes comes a heavy responsibility to keep better track of things like check-ins and mayorships. When the perks take on tangible monetary value, maintaining people’s trust in the platform’s reliability and integrity will become of paramount importance – the “relax, it’s just a game” excuse just won’t fly any more. This isn’t currently a problem exclusive to Foursquare, (as Walt Mossberg describes in his first take on Facebook Places, around the 2:48 mark) but I guarantee that some poor team of GPS/data security engineers will be burning the midnight oil over this when they decide to get serious about tracking check ins, as it’ll become even more important to participants that their travels are recorded – and rewarded – accurately.

Make the online/offline experience seamless

This is the “Go big, or go home” play. I believe Foursquare could create its own embeddable button or widget to allow members to check in for digital destinations as well as physical – meaning that it becomes a platform that allows customers to be seamlessly recognized on brands’ and businesses’ online properties and content as well as within their physical stores. Checking-in for virtual entities like TV and other entertainment media is not an entirely new idea (Miso and GetGlue were quick to establish themselves in that respect), but Foursquare is the player with the critical mass and name recognition to make the concept work at scale, and facilitate people sharing their experiences with friends, whether they occur virtually or ‘IRL’ (I know, what is this, 2002?). Expect big repercussions for the real-time web, should Foursquare dare to tread this path. That, plus, the online privacy mavens will have a collective aneurysm.

Enable public leaderboards

Much like the updates printed on receipts that tell you how much more you have to spend to get that preferred customer BOGO deal, publicizing the leaderboards for individual venues will be a boon in stimulating incremental foot traffic to stores. Opening up that data to businesses could also pave the way for all kinds of fascinating interactive point-of-purchase display possibilities, visualizing the continual struggle among customers for the mayorship spot.

Make more winners

There can only be so many mayors, but customers will all want their fair shot at recognition. Foursquare can increase participation by expanding the set of titles that can be awarded. Although the badges are nice, they’ll quickly become worthless if mayorships are the only titles with tangible rewards. Vice-mayorships will only be the start – the system could very well expand to be a virtual state senate’s-worth of different titles (and associated perks) based on members’ checkin behavior.

What do you think? Does Foursquare have any other plays open to it in light of Facebook’s announcement? Sound off below in the comments, soldier!

Tags: checkin, CRM, customer data, facebook, foursquare, Google, gps, location marketing, marketing, online, popular culture, Social Media, trends