What is Foursquare?
FourSquare a hybrid of a social network mixed with an interactive real-life game, accompanied by a very cool smartphone app. After account set-up, FourSquare is primarily used on your smartphone. You “Check-in” to places while physically at the location and offer “Tips” to other potential customers about what not to miss when they visit.

Restaurants, bars, and live music venues are Foursquare’s initial focus, but other Local Businesses can and are already starting to add their physical locations as “Venues” to FourSquare in order to show up in “Check-in” searches.

Here’s what you need to do to get your business listed…

1) Sign up for an individual profile on their website.

Don’t create a profile for your business. Create a profile for yourself. Do not skip the “upload a photo” step. You cannot collect “Badges” if you do not have a photo, nor can you become a “Mayor”. Do not use your business logo.

2) Search for your business.

There is a slight chance your business is already registered as a venue and will come up in search results, so perform a quick search. If you don’t find it, click “add things” in the top navigation menu then follow these steps…

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1. Click “add a venue”, then enter the name of your business.

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2. Enter the address. FourSquare requests that you use abbreviations for streets and avenues. Cities should be spelled out. States and countries should be abbreviated in CAPS, like this…

100 Main St.
Dallas, TX 75043

3. Enter your business’s Twitter ID.

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4. Add appropriate tags (i.e. keywords) relevant to your business. The default is that all Tags appear in lowercase. Very important: Add the city and state of your business as a Tag. It doesn’t make a difference in searches on the website version of FourSquare, but it does in the iPhone App!

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When the steps above are completed, here’s an example of a correctly added Local Business venue: http://foursquare.com/venue/559367

3) If you have a smartphone, download the FourSquare App and then Check-in to your Local Business venue. Foursquare is available for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre.

Download the App, Check-in, and then on the next day, Check-in again. At that point, you become the “Mayor” of that venue. You have arrived!

If you liked this tutorial, you’ll find more like it in Module 2 of my Local Marketing Training Series.

Related posts:

1. MyTown Getting Six Times More Check-Ins Than Foursquare
2. Foursquare: The Good, The Bad, & How to BeSquared
3. Smartphone Usage Shifting from Business to Personal