Foursquare's Effect On Local Businesses

Mar 5, 2010

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foursquare logo
Foursquare is what some would call the talk of the town and could soon be a household name along with Twitter and Facebook. Right now Foursquare is in its infancy and the majority of the users are also Twitter users. Foursquare is a new concept in social media, social marketing, a friend finder, a social city guide and a game all in one. I see Foursquare changing the ways on how some local businesses will promote their business online and how this may effect local seo. The simple way to describe Foursquare is that users can check-in and tell Foursquare where they are and the places they visit. They can leave feedback on local businesses and the more times they check-in users receive points which can then turn into badges. Foursquare is continually improving the way in which users can be rewarded. The system works with several mobile applications on iphone, blackberry, palm, android and others. Users can use their mobile phones to check-in and if that place is not listed on the network then they can add it.
foursquare.com homepage screenshot

As a local business owner you can choose to reward those that check-in to your business on a frequent basis. This is the online way of saying “You visit my business a lot, and I will reward you so tell everyone else” idea. Sign your business up for Foursquare specials.
reward customers on foursquare.com with promotions

Foursquare will be a great way to promote what specials you are running and you will also be able to choose what locations you would like to run them at. Some of the ways that I think businesses will be using Foursquare more in the future is by: Location Based Promotions With the use of Foursquare you will be able to see how many times people are checking in to your business location or around your business location along with when they are checking in. This is going to be some good analytics I feel in the future. Loyal Customer Rewards Businesses know that not all customers are equal as they all have their customers who come and say “I will take the usual.” Foursquare will also be a good way to promote rewards to those who continually check in to your business. When a customer checks into your business their friends can see that and so your “Usuals” will be a great marketing tool, so reward them. Shared Promotions With the ability of the users of Foursquare to see where their friends are checking in and what offers are being promoted by that business, there will be a lot of promotions that are given by local businesses that will get passed on through their users friends network.
foursquare business profile page

As with all new technology and ideas there will be some bugs and feedback that the Foursquare team will have to take into consideration and fix, but as a local business owner you will want to keep watch on this new phenomenon called Foursquare.

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