Foursquare: Great for Business
by Joey Hernandez on Monday, May 3rd, 2010
I just want to say that I knew that Foursquare would blow up. They’re a little over a year old now and just reached one million users. It took Twitter roughly that time to gain mainstream notoriety (they did have a little help — thanks to Mr. Kutcher)
Just recently, Foursquare released a small but significant update to how venues are displayed.
As you can see from the screen capture, a link has been added where the manager can claim ownership of the business.
Before, a business owner had to submit a not-so-well-advertised form to claim ownership and then set up perks. Now, thanks to the update, it’s super simple — here are the exact details from their site:
Step 1 – Confirm your business information
In order to give you the power to create specials for your venue, we need to confirm that you’re the person in charge of managing that venue.
By claiming your venue, you’ll also get exclusive access to the stats we collect for your venue — how many people check in on what days and times, and lots of other goodies.
Step 2 – Create your first special
We offer a few choices for how foursquare users can unlock your special:
- Mayor specials can be unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days).
- Count-based specials are unlocked when a user checks in a certain number of times.
(“… on your 10th check-in”) - Frequency-based specials are unlocked every so many check-ins.
(“… every 5th check-in”) - Wildcard specials are always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the special.
(“Free drink with purchase of an entree when you check in”) - More to come!
A few more things to keep in mind
One active special at a time
While you can create multiple specials for your venue, initially you’ll only be able to have one special live at a time. But fear not! Our Manage Specials page will make it easy for you to turn specials on and off.
Getting your specials approved
When you create a new special, it’ll have to be approved by our team of small business specialists. The moment your special is approved, we’ll fire off an email to you with a link that will whisk you away to your Manage Specials page, where you’ll be able to make that special live.
Because of this, Foursquare has been receiving an influx of requests from business owners wanting to take part.
This is great news — not only to the business, but for the consumer.
Seeing specials will drive more visitors to the business. In turn, the business will be seen as “hip” and “current” in the eyes of the Foursquare consumer.
As a matter of fact, check out this special from Ono Sushi in San Diego:
Stay tuned as I go through the process of getting a local restaurant’s promo added to Foursquare and its positive effect on their sales.
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