Foursquare's Twitter mention for check-ins

Hey there,

Just a quick tip for Foursquare managers.

A disclaimer, though: in general I am almost religiously against auto-syncing between social media platforms. This is one of those exceptions, and the main difference is because this is content shared that is user-driven. And when it comes to your audience, your customers, you generally want to accommodate their choices.

In this case, it has to do with what happens when they check in to your venue or event. Foursquare gives them the option to share it to any social networks they've connected to their account. If you go to the "Tools" panel on your organization's page, you'll notice theirs a box underneath "Connected to @[YourOrg]", and it says:

"Mention me when customer check-ins are shared to twitter"

You WANT to check this box. I really can't think of any reason not too, other than maybe you don't have a Twitter account for your organization yet. But I'm always open to new ideas, and if you can think of a reason you wouldn't want this checked off, please share it in the comments.

The win-win for this is that you will then get a notification on Twitter, in real time, when someone's checked in to your venue or event and decided to share it on Twitter.

Not only does no such notification exist, to my knowledge, on Foursquare, but then you can Retweet and/or Favorite their check-in tweet. This is especially great if they took a photo. And I would say as a matter of habit, you should definitely reply to their tweet, thanking them, welcoming them, and wishing they have a great time, or something to that effect.

More #DCdance! (at @danceplace for ClancyWorks Dance Company w/ 2 others) 4sq.com/ZpIMIY
— Grace Cunningham (@gracecunning) March 10, 2013

As you can see, not only did Grace check-in to the venue, but she checked-in to the event that evening, a feature I mention in the post on my event creating ritual.

Anyway, that's it. Make sure you have this feature enabled. It's just a win-win. Would love to hear your thoughts, but also any reasons you think an organization might have not to enable this. Leave any and all of these in the comments!!

JR