Now is the perfect time for local businesses to claim their venue on Foursquare while the platform is still in its initial growth stages. Foursquare has made the registration process easy and now offers an extra incentive for business owners: analytics. According to a recent Citibank survey, as much as 81 percent of small businesses still refuse to leverage social media for their business purposes. Arguably, this is due to several factors but a prominent one is that social media usually comes with a measurement barrier. How does a small restaurant owner justify, in simple financial terms, the ROI of having a Facebook Page?
Enter Foursquare's new Business capabilities. Venue owners now have the option of claiming their venue through a short verification process. Once they have claimed their venue, they can easily create Foursquare-specific specials and tap into an analytics dashboard that displays:
- most recent visitors
- most frequent visitors
- the time of day people check in
- total number of unique visitors
- histogram of check-ins per day
- gender breakdown of customers
- portion of Foursquare check-ins broadcast to Twitter and Facebook
This wealth of information can be invaluable to savvy small businesses looking to leverage popular technology to drive business. Catering to customers is easier than ever and the result of consistent usage and engagement will most likely be increased customer loyalty.
TIP: If you are a local food establishment owner, don't forget to add your venue to Snacksquare.com, the searchable Foursquare special directory.
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