Posts Tagged ‘Manage foursquare’

Foursquare 3.0 Aims to Improve Discovery, Encouragement, & Loyalty

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Foursquare 3.0, a new software release of the location-based mobile game, hit iPhone and Android markets on March 8th, with updates for Blackberry users also coming in the near future. This release includes multiple new features that will help to further engage users and provide small businesses with powerful new tools. As many of you already know, we at Catalyst have been a big proponent of foursquare since its initial release only 2 years ago. Since then, we’ve published a foursquare book and wrote numerous articles on the advantages for small  business owners using foursquare.  With the user base skyrocketing to 7.5 million, it may be time for your small business to seriously start considering utilizing foursquare if you haven’t already.

The foursquare team breaks down the objective of the 3.0 versions’ new features into 3 main categories; to promote user discovery with a new “Explore” tab, to add encouragement with a new Leaderboard system, and to increase consumer loyalty with the addition of 6 new “Specials” options. As we will explain further below, co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, when speaking about foursquare 3.0, emphasizes the ultimate goal of “every check-in counts.” According to Jennifer Van Grove’s of Mashable, “The new release turns on the power of every foursquare check-in accumulated over the course of its two-year history and transforms that data into recommendations.” Pretty powerful stuff!

New Foursquare Special Options

New foursquare SpecialsThe foursquare upgrade that will most directly affect small business owners’ ability to increase consumer loyalty and sales will be the 6 new “Specials” options. These new foursquare Specials can be geared towards foursquare swarms, groups of friends, new comers, regulars, Mayors, or everyone in general. To showcase these rewards to a foursquare user, the “Places” screen of the foursquare mobile application will now show all foursquare Specials within the user’s proximity. This feature enhances foursquare’s ability to be used as an effective marketing tool to draw new and regular customers to your small business. Also, with the new variety of Specials merchants can now offer, they will be able to be much more creative in designing a foursquare strategy to entice consumers to visit their business. From the user standpoint, there will be many more scenarios where they now qualify for a Special, further motivation to visit a participating small business.

New foursquare “Explore” Tab For Users To Discover New Small Businesses

foursquare Explore TabAnother key new feature of foursquare 3.0 is the addition of an “Explore” tab which recommends places for the user to visit based on a number of factors. Foursquare’s blog sums up the Explore tab with the following:

“tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find something nearby. The suggestions are based on a little bit of everything – the places you’ve been, the places your friends have visited, your loyalty to your favorite places, the categories and types of places you gravitate towards, what’s popular with other users, the day of the week, places with great tips, the time of day, and so on.”

A separate “Me” tab compliments the Explore tab by letting the user get ideas of places to visit based on where their friends visit and recommend. In a way, the Me tab is similar to when you ask a friend for advice of where to eat dinner. Your friend will tell you where he eats dinner and why he likes it, basically providing you with a recommendation. The Explore and Me tabs can now help you with those decisions, just in case a friend isn’t around. ;) A consumer will now be more likely to visit a business that fits their taste, increasing the chance of sales at participating small businesses.

New and Improved foursquare Leaderboard

foursquare LeaderboardTo encourage users to check-in more often, the Leaderboard has been revamped to a 7-day sliding barometer which displays check-ins of both the user and his/her friends. Also, one simple check-in will now have the potential to earn numerous points for dozens of different reasons. Examples of these actions include trying new restaurants, visiting new places, meeting up with old friends, etc. These new gaming mechanics will really encourage users to step outside of their norm and try new things. If a small business joins foursquare, their opportunity to attract new customers will surely increase with the updated Leaderboard feature.

We said we were excited about foursquare for small business before, but now we are ecstatic. The new features added to the 3.0 release will further engage current customers as well as encourage users to explore new places in their town (possibly yours). Additionally, it will help match consumers with small businesses that make the most sense for them based on their preferences. Although Facebook now has a “Places” feature built into its app, its capabilities and potential to increase a business’s consumer base are still light years behind foursquare.

Is your small business on foursquare? Perhaps you should be. Let us know how your foursquare experience has been. What’s been bugging you? What do you love? Please use the comments section below to share your thoughts with other small business owners who might be thinking about adding foursquare to their marketing mix.

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Experiencing Delays in Claiming Your Venue on Foursquare?

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Back in April we wrote about explaining the importance of claiming a venue on foursquare. Foursquare rolled out the ability for business owners to start claiming their venues just a few months back. It seems that foursquare may have rolled out the venue claiming tools prior to be fully ready to support the process.

Since we published our post providing business owners with a step-by-step guide to claiming a venue on foursquare, we have had several blog comments, tweets, and Facebook comments from business owners who have claimed their venue on foursquare, but have not heard anything for weeks from foursquare. The waiting process has been frustrating business owners looking to use foursquare for business more effectively. If you’re one of those business owners who’s waiting to receive confirmation that you’ve successfully claimed your venue on foursquare, you’ll be happy to know that there IS something that you can do.

Foursquare MarketingFor those business owners who have gone through the process of claiming a venue on foursquare, but have not yet heard back from anyone at foursquare, please feel free to email foursquare at bizhelp@foursquare.com or team@foursquare.com. Here at Catalyst Marketers, we claimed our venue a few months back. Like many business owners out there who are using foursquare for business, we did not hear back from the folks at foursquare right away. After a little research, we found the email addresses above. After sending an email to foursquare, we heard back from a foursquare representative within 24 hours. It was actually quite impressive. Not only did that individual confirm that we had successfully claimed our venue on foursquare, but we then sent a few emails back and forth asking a few questions about using the new foursquare tools. The foursquare rep got back with us immediately with the answers to our questions. It was nice to contact a large organization and get a human response.

If you’re one of those business owners who is waiting to hear back from foursquare about your claim, then shoot them a note to one of the email addresses above. Let us know how it turns out!

Download Your FREE Copy of the “How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business” eBook

Foursquare for business Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

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Foursquare eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

Monday, July 12th, 2010

We recently released our very first eBook, as part of a larger Catalyst eBook Series: Driving Growth for Your Small Business. We have had over 100 downloads so far, with all feedback being very positive. For those of you who don’t know what foursquare is, and how you can use foursquare to drive sales for your small business, you should consider downloading our eBook.

The eBook, entitled “How to Use foursquare to Grow Your Business“, is 22 pages of foursquare-related content. There’s no charge to download the eBook. We simply ask you to provide your name, email address, and answer the question, “Are you currently using foursquare for business”. The eBook is broken out into four main sections, each section containing multiple sub-sections. The content is broken down in a way that’s easy to follow. The four main sections of our How to Use foursquare to Grow Your Business eBook are:

Foursquare eBook

What is foursquare?

In this section, we take it from the top, explaining to our readers what foursquare is, the location-based application’s history, and how it’s currently being used. Here’s a small sample from the, What is foursquare? section of the eBook:

Foursquare is a location-based social application that combines local city mapping, social interaction, and gaming. Foursquare allows consumers to use their mobile phone to Check-In at retail businesses. Anyone and everyone can use foursquare. Foursquare users check-in at local businesses that they frequent during their daily routine. For instance, you can check-in at your local Target, Starbucks, the local tailor, or even a local flea market. If you go to check-in at a certain place, and it’s not listed in foursquare, then go ahead and add it yourself. By checking-in, users unlock badges, accumulate points, and also claim Mayorship over certain businesses.

How Can Businesses Use foursquare to Drive Sales?

Once everyone is on the same page as to what foursquare is, and why people are using it, it’s now time to discuss the business uses of foursquare. Foursquare, when used properly, can drive sales for businesses, both large & small. In this section, we discuss how business owners can leverage foursquare for business. Here’s a small snippet from this section:

Even if you are not actively promoting foursquare use, chances are that by having a robust and accurate business profile on foursquare, you’ll still capitalize on foursquare use by your customers. More and more people are beginning to use foursquare and I’ll bet some of those folks are your customers. As customers check-in, and leave tips for others, your business will be exposed to many more potential customers. Hopefully, over time, you’ll begin to start actively using foursquare for business, whether that’s through a foursquare Mayor Campaign, a foursquare Loyalty Program, or something totally new that you come up with. When you do, I think you’ll start to see just how powerful it is. Foursquare provided the platform, and now it’s our job to take advantage of it to help grow our businesses.

Real World Businesses Currently Using foursquare

Even though foursquare recently celebrated its first birthday, there are numerous large companies using foursquare to drive sales. In this section, we provide examples of how both Starbucks, & Marc Jacobs are using foursquare. Here’s a piece from the Starbucks is Using foursquare for Business sub-section:

The fact that Starbucks, a mega-brand with a HUGE marketing budget, is finding value in using foursquare for business, should be a clear indicator that you can use foursquare to promote your business as well.

What is the Future of foursquare?

In the last part of the eBook, we discuss what the future might hold for this young location-based social gaming application. We provide business owners with ideas for promotions they may see in the future.

As you know from reading this eBook, foursquare is still in the early stages of development and even though they have already made so much progress, a big smile comes to my face when I think about what the future holds for foursquare. There are a lot of folks out there who think foursquare for business is going to be as big, or bigger, than a lot of the current social tools out there today. Yes, I’m talking about Facebook and Twitter. Now is the time to make your investment in foursquare, so that you can be positioned well as new business uses evolve from the platform. The following sub-sections are a few ways businesses might leverage foursquare in the future. These ideas are not meant to show you future strategic uses of foursquare, rather they are meant as possible nitty gritty foursquare tactics that many business owners can latch onto and implement. Hopefully we’ll begin to see some of that in the near future.

Foursquare for business Here at Catalyst Marketers, we are big believers in the power of bridging the online world with the offline community, and foursquare is a great first step in doing just that. We hope that this post provides you with some intriguing information about our new foursquare eBook. We hope you will download the How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business eBook, and then let us know what you think about using foursquare for business.

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Foursquare Stats: The Importance of Check-In Time

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Have you already taken the first step to successfully using foursquare for business? Of course, that first step being claiming your venue on foursquare. If so, great job! As foursquare grows, more and more business owners are going to begin adding it to their Marketing Tool Belt. You are ahead of your peers when it comes to using foursquare to grow your business. One of the greatest benefits to claiming your venue on foursquare is your immediate access to foursquare Stats. Foursquare recently released their Analytics feature, with the goal of providing more value to businesses.

What we are going to discuss today is one component of foursquare Stats, Check-In Time. To access your foursquare Stats, be sure you’re logged in, you’ve claimed your venue on foursquare, and you’re on your foursquare venue page. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you’ll see the Stats section. Within the Stats section, further down the page, is a section entitled, “Time Breakdown”. The Time Breakdown section of foursquare Stats shows business owners when their customers are checking-in at their venue. Why is understanding when people check-in at your venue on foursquare important? Well, that’s what we are about to discuss.

Foursquare stats for businessThe Time Breakdown section of foursquare Stats shows business owners when customers are most active at their venue. The report is broken down into 4 sections:

  • Morning (6am – 12pm)
  • Afternoon (12pm – 5pm)
  • Evening (5pm – 12am)
  • Late night (12am – 6am)
Foursquare stats

Next to each time slot is the percentage of check-ins that occurred during those hours. Understanding when people are checking-in at your venue, helps you to understand your heaviest store traffic times, and your lightest store traffic times. Knowing this information can help you manage, and market, your small business much more effectively. Here are a few benefits to knowing the Time Breakdown of check-ins at your small business:

  • Preparing your employee schedule – Knowing when traffic is heaviest, and lightest, at your store, will allow you to schedule more employees to be in the store during peak hours, and less employees during slow hours
  • Cleaning & restocking – Have you ever been to a store when they are cleaning the floors or restocking the shelves? It’s a little bit frustrating and can lead to people leaving your store. By scheduling your cleaning and restocking during your slow times, you can avoid having frustrated customers.
  • Special sales events – If you want to get more people into your store during your slow periods, then create special savings events that are only valid during certain times of the day. If you can maintain your high traffic times, while increasing traffic during your slow times, you will see sales growth.
Foursquare stats

These are only a few of the benefits to knowing when your customers are checking-in at your venue on foursquare. Keeping a close eye on the Time Breakdown section of foursquare Stats is extremely easy, and very useful. Can anyone else think of any benefits from knowing when customers are checking-in at your venue on foursquare?

Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

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Add an Employee to Your foursquare Venue

Friday, May 21st, 2010

A few weeks ago we wrote about business owners being able to claim a business on foursquare. For this post, we are going to walk business owners through adding an Employee to foursquare. If you’re deep into your Online Marketing Plan, then you know that it takes more than one person to manage all of your online activities. Some tools make it easy for others to help manage your social media activities. A good example of this is the Facebook Administrator Permissions. Admin privileges allow multiple people to manage one Facebook business page. Now, foursquare has made it easy for business owners to get help managing their venue on foursquare.

UPDATE: Download our new FREE eBook: How to Use Foursquare to Grow Your Business

Foursquare recently made it possible for business owners to manage foursquare specials and review foursquare analytics. Having access to this data is going to be extremely beneficial for business owners. With that said, many business owners will probably enlist one or more employees to help manage their foursquare activities. Below is a step by step approach to adding an employee to your foursquare venue.

Claim Your Venue on Foursquare

If you haven’t already done so, the first step in the process of adding an employee to your foursquare venue is claiming the venue yourself. There can only be one foursquare Manager, although Employees of your foursquare venue still have the ability to create and manage foursquare specials, as well as, have access to foursquare venue data. In an earlier post on the Catalyst Marketers blog, we delve into how to claim your venue on foursquare – Check out that post, claim your venue, and then move on to step 2 below.

Add employee to foursquare

Add an Employee to a foursquare Venue

Once you’ve claimed your venue on foursquare, it’s now time to add employees to your foursquare venue. Be sure that you’re logged into foursquare and then navigate to your employee’s foursquare profile page. Once you land on that page, scroll down the right side of the page until you see the “Employee Of” header (it should be below Mayorships and above Friends). There you will find a drop-down box. Simply drop-down the selections and choose your venue. Once you’ve chosen your foursquare venue, simply click Add. That’s it! It’s as simple as that. Your employee now has access to manage foursquare specials and review foursquare reporting for your business.

Remember that success with Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing comes through a team effort. Adding employees to your foursquare venue allows your entire team to help out with your Marketing efforts. It takes a little bit of the burden of managing EVERYTHING off of you. You can even put someone in charge of managing foursquare specials and another person in charge of reviewing and analyzing foursquare analytics. Be sure to communicate to both employees that they should be working together, as knowing what specials to run, and how effective they are, should be a direct result of what the data is telling you. Please let us know if you have any questions about adding an employee to foursquare. We are here to help.

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