Using Foursquare for Business

Foursquare is a location-based game and social networking platform. To clarify, you check into places you go, get points, unlock badges, see where your friends are, and sometimes find specials and deals. Foursquare has made setting up a business account extremely easy, and they give business owners a lot of power. All you have to do is go to their page for businesses to get started.

For businesses, Foursquare is like a modern update of old customer loyalty programs. So instead of giving customers a card that gives them a free sub after 12 subs; you give them a special after 10 checkins. People can compete to be the mayor of your business, the person with the most checkins in the last 2 months, and you can give the mayor an extra prize. The goal is to give people enough incentive to keep returning to your business, time after time. Since you have the freedom to set rewards, you might want to give people incentives at every 5 or so checkins. That way people won't be turned off by the amount of checkins it would take to become mayor, or lose interest after an initial reward.

Foursquare's website shows off some cool ways to get people using Foursquare as well; such as prominently displaying the mayor's name, or putting up signs explaining rewards. You can also talk about Foursquare on your website, or other social media initiatives. Many people tweet their location on Foursquare, and friends can see each other's checkins; giving your business a lot of additional advertising for free.

While Foursquare might be the most natural fit for restaurants, due to the quality of rewards, you certainly don't have to be a restaurant to use the service. Where I live almost every business around me shows up, whether or not the business owner added themselves. I can check into gas stations, bookstores, CVS, and more. People want to check in, because Foursquare is a game at its core. Points are given for each checkin, combos and multipliers are added for venturing out, and there is a daily tally of cities and friends. Foursquare gives out badges for various things, such as becoming mayor of a place, checking in to 10 places, stopping multiple places in a night, and much more. Sometimes you'll check in, and a completely random badge will pop up- such as the "school night" badge, for checking into somewhere after 3:00 AM from Monday to Thursday.

The bottom line is that Foursquare is an exciting new opportunity to bring more people into your business. If you aren't using it yet, you should definitely give it a shot. No matter what kind of business you have, as long as you have a building, you're good to go. Just come up with some fun and interesting incentives, and let people know you're on Foursquare!