Both Foursquare and Facebook allows users to check into their place. Create a Foursquare brand page for your business.

 We recommend using both, but in this post, we’ll talk more about foursquare because it has a lot of cool features that not all businesses may know about.Why use both?  Different perks for different customers- not all your customers will check in through Facebook, and foursquare users are accustomed to receiving the badges earned on Foursquare; Foursquare embraces the gamification of social media.

What are badges?

Foursquare gives out special badges depending on the type of check-in:

If you check into a movie theatre, you get the popcorn badge, If you check into somewhere for the first time you get the newbie badge. If someone checks into a business many times, they can eventually get the mayor badge.

If a person becomes a mayor, business owners should respond to that appropriately.  Not only is that person a loyal customer, but they are publicizing they are at your location.  So if you aren’t taking advantage of that free publicity, you should.  In order to take advantage of this free publicity, you should set up a campaign that gives your customers special treatment for checking into your place often, for the first time, when they bring a friend or two.

Whether your customer checks in with Facebook places or Foursquare, either one allows users share their status update to Facebook, but only Foursquare allows users to share their status update to twitter and facebook.  If they have their twitter account connected to Linkedin, their Linkedin contacts will also see their location.  Either way, each one has its advantages, but setting up both could help you grab a higher percentage of market share.

Foursquare, however, has a few more things that would give you even more visibility.  Here’s a little more about how you can use foursquare to invite repeat customers:

In addition to offering a special deal to clients that check in to your location for the first time, you may also write a tip, that will allow customers that check in to a nearby location to see your “tip.”  This tip could go like this, “Since you are at….(nearby location)….Check out (your Location).”  You should especially do this if you know there is a nearby location that gets more foot traffic than you normally do.

Likewise, share the love and place tips about businesses around town.  It will not only show that your business is happy to live in that area and promote local businesses, but may also get you some exposure.  You may do this with your own profile, your business profile, or your business brand page.

Business brand pages are new on Foursquare.  Foursquare has been an app that local businesses use to get clients., but now brands can put up brand pages.  What does this do? It allows brand pages to place tips about places around town and tips that you feel are relevant to help promote your company from the Website or on a iPhone.

It allows you to showcase your brand to locals and those visiting your local town, so that they recognize your brand.  See the check-in snapshot of Vania’s iPhone after she checked in to Cruzio.  It shows Vab Media placed a tip! Cool.  To get started, you can go to foursquare.com/create_page and put in your companies information.  A Foursquare brand page has the potential to become an essential social platform in a world where businesses are using social media tools to get their name in front of as many people as possible.

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