Foursquare is a social media platform that you can use for your own personal use or as an effective strategy of advertising your business. Many businesses large and small are using Foursquare and other social media in order to keep their customers up-to-date on events and to reach out to potential customers.
What Is Foursquare?
Foursquare is a location-based social media application. It uses maps of local areas to promote social interaction and games. Users can utilize the Foursquare application on their mobile devices to ‘check in’ at businesses and locations they are at. Foursquare is free for users and the trend for ‘checking in’ is still growing. Users can also add a business they frequent if it is not already listed. For each check-in, Foursquare users will earn points, accumulate badges, and ultimately become the ‘Mayor’ of different businesses based on their check-in frequency.
How Does Foursquare Help Grow a Business?
Foursquare, like other social media outlets, can help bring a business to the forefront of the target audience. In many cases, the business itself does not have to be a very active participant in using Foursquare to successfully use it for promotion. As more people are proactive about using the application, businesses are reaping the rewards of word-of-mouth advertising.
Customers are doing a lot of promotional work for business on Foursquare as they can leave tips for other people who visit these businesses. This helps build business reputations online and the more people share their location at your business, the more word will spread.
Effective Foursquare Business Strategies
There are a number of ways to use this social media application to improve your business and grow your customer base. Here is a look at some of the common concepts businesses can use to promote products or services:
a) Claim Your Business’s Location
The very first thing any business with a physical presence should do is claim their physical locations to ensure ownership by their company on Foursquare.
Your venue is your business’s home base on Foursquare. To begin the process on your mobile phone, download the Foursquare app and attempt to check in by searching for your business.
If you don’t see your business listed, search it by name and if it still isn’t listed, scroll all the way to the bottom of the list where it says Add this place. The last step to claiming your location on Foursquare is vital, even though this field says the address is optional. When it comes to filling out a profile on Foursquare, it’s important to give as much relevant information in each field as possible to help inform your current and future customers. This is true for many other social networks as well, you can also do this on computer.
As a business i suggest you claim your venue by verifying it by phone, you will receive any automated message from Foursquare calling your location’s number asking for the business’s name and your relationship to the business. Your receive a four digit number on your screen which your should enter in to your phone to finalize the verification of your phone number for your business. After all this you will receive an email with a code to confirm location and at the end you will be billed $10 to process your venue claim. After all this now clients can find your business and check in.
b) Promote Local Updates
Send updates from your venue on Foursquare to allow your business to engage with people who have previously checked into your location and who are nearby. You can even share this update on the social media site your business is on like Twitter and Facebook. Here you can send updates to Foursquare user’s feeds about specials, coupons, deals,announcements and other relevant information about your location with attachments like images, videos and deals.
Race for Mayor – users of Foursquare can hold the distinct honor of becoming the Mayor of your establishment based on how often they check-in at your location. To provide extra incentives for customers to seek the position of Mayor, a business can offer specials including free merchandise, gift cards, or exclusive discounts to whoever is crowned mayor.
c) Offer Specials Tailored for Foursquare Users
As all businesses offer deals and specials to their clients, so can you. The unique way to offer socially focused offers is by connecting your customers online and offline with the Foursquare specials. Here exist many types of specials your business can set up for free for the purpose of attracting new customers and rewarding loyal existing customers. Some of the specials that can be used include;
Monthly Foursquare Events – through your Foursquare account, your business can offer exclusive deals or events that are only available to users of the application. Not only can this increase the interest in a business, it can also help encourage people to learn more about Foursquare itself thereby growing your potential audience.
Customer Incentives – there are many simple but effective marketing campaigns you can provide to your customers through Foursquare that offer incentives for checking-in that can be promoted through other social medial applications including Facebook and Twitter.
Loyalty Special – These are given if some one checks in your business on a number of times you set thus making it a game and competition for your chosen prizes.
d) Give Tips Which Are Engaging About Your Company and Others
People who use this application tend to leave tips on places they check and it would add valve if you could also say some after their check in and experience at your business. These welcome positive and negative feedback which needs you to verify. Foursquare helps your clients leave tips that can appear at the top of your feedback list and can get likes from other users, the idea is to rank these tips in such a way that highest ranks are the truthful tips.
e) Create A Foursquare Page
A Foursquare page is your company’s hub on the network where all of your locations can be managed in one place. Users can choose to follow Foursquare pages, which is most ideal for larger companies and brands with multiple locations like Cafe Javas.
This kind of page allows your business to brand itself on a single venue, it is starting with the profile picture and a banner. You can put your bio below the banner and all the other information you want to.
f) Use Lists On Your Page
This is another helpful feature that your page can use create lists of locations. Here you can create lists centered around various locations grouped by themes which can be extremely valuable to your business and your community on Foursquare. Here creating lists of your company’s favorite restaurants, bars and stores could be utilized in this feature.
g) Foursquare Plugins To Your Website
Integrate Foursquare with your website as an effective way to connect your audiences and boost your following on the Foursquare platform. This is possible because Foursquare features a ‘Like’ button and a ‘Save to Foursquare’ button that both offers a different kind of engagement with your audience.
h) Enhance Your Events
Using Foursquare on location at your events is a helpful way to drive attendance, while syncing interactions with your business online and offline.
Using updates from your page and check-ins on behalf of your company, your events can reach new audiences and promote interests in your services, booth, conference or store opening.
g) Create Badges
Partnerships have always been a beneficial way of growing your business, improving your company’s outlook and bolstering your presence in your vertical. Partnering with Foursquare is one way your company can be looked at as expanding your presence on Foursquare and with your customers online and offline. One way of partnering with Foursquare is to create custom badges for your usersto collect. Below is a sample;
Bravo partnered with Foursquare to create badges around their various TV shows to entice users to check in.
Badges on Foursquare are a way to entice users to check in, and as a reward, they’ll receive a badge created to mark the occasion. Badges are an easy way to make the check-in process more social and fun, while driving your audience to check in more frequently and giving your business more exposure.
h) Put Up Signs At Your
Locations
Locations
The unique aspect of Foursquare is that it’s connecting your actions in the real world to your actions online. It leverages calls to action at the physical locations you are at to encourage, communicate and support your company’s presence on Foursquare.
Use Foursquare window clings, stickers and signs at your business to remind customers to check in when they visit. Your customers take advantage of specials, while your location gets more exposure.
Use clings, stickers or signs in your location’s window or doorway to remind people to check in your business. One of the reasons people don’t use an application which is already downloaded is because they forget. Calling people to action about Foursquare in your location can drive your customers to check in, leave tips and become more active with your company on the platform.
Since Foursquare is an ideal way to make direct contact with your target audience, it is worth the time to learn more about the many ways it can be used to market your products or services in real-time. Consistency and active participation are the two most important ingredients in a successful Foursquare marketing strategy for any sized business.
If you have any questions about Foursquare and more information please comment below.
Can you use an effective four square campaign as a manufacturer? I have stores across the country who carry my bags, and thinking I can incorporate these stores into my four square campaignThanks for help and is their a company who mint be able to me at an affordable price point.Merle
Yes you can incorporate it, all you need is a social platform other than Foursquare that can put the word out about the check in at those stores and then stickers about your company and the bags at the same stores so people can check in and comment… take up majorships at those place and you reward them with something. i can help you with this if you could email me at kahillpatricia@gmail.com i will send you a small guide after understanding your product which will help you promote your bags with foursquare. you don't need a company to do this you can do it yourself or some one in your company can take it up to control expenditure