Foursquare is a location based social networking site. It enables users to “check in” their favourite places and share where they are with friends. For some reason, it does not seem as popular here in the UK as over in the US, which was fine until now.
Pinterest recently introduced Place Pins – fab news for local businesses. However, Pinterest maps are powered by FourSquare. Often, when pinning images to map boards, the business is not listed on FourSquare so you are unable to map the pin.
How can you add a business to FourSquare when you are not the business owner?
This video shows you how.
How to add a business to FourSquare when you are not the business owner
You’ll need:
To be logged into your FourSquare account
Add a business to FourSquare at foursquare.com/add_venue
Video Transcription
Hi, it’s Jan Kearney at My Local Business Online. Today I am going to show you all about Pinterest map pins and how to add a business to Foursquare when you don’t own the business and the business is not already in the Foursquare database.
As you can see, I’ve pinned some blog posts from local businesses onto my Pinterest board of local business bloggers. If you want to join that board and you are a local business blogger just drop me an email or contact me via the comments below and I will add you.
If you want to map a pin, click on map the pin and choose your city. This is in Widnes. This pin is from Phoenix Counselling. Pinterest will then search Foursquare because the map is powered by Foursquare. Unfortunately, Phoenix isn’t listed on Foursquare, so I can’t map their pin.
If you are the business owner, don’t use this method I am showing you in this video. Instead, pop over to business.foursquare.com/listing hit the get started button and add your business details to Foursquare. That way you can have people checking in, offer prizes for being mayor and all sorts of wonderful things. Foursquare works best for entertainment type businesses; a pub, restaurant, cinema, bowling alley etc. So go to business.foursquare.com/listing if you have a business that people can walk into – you have a physical premises that people can visit.
What if you don’t own the business and the information is not on Foursquare, therefore you can not pin as a map place pin on Pinterest?
You need to have a Foursquare account. Log in to your Foursquare account and go to foursquare.com/add_venue and you come to the add details page where you can add all the business details. You can download the Foursquare app and do it all on your mobile phone. Since I don’t do mobile phones and I don’t do checking in on any site, it’s a bit useless for me!
So now I’ll add the business details in here so I can start pinning their blog posts onto my Pinterest map board. It is important to use the correct business name as it is shown on their store front. Scroll down to the little map and drop the pin where you want the map marker to show. You can also add the Twitter handle and phone number as well.
Once you have added all the business details and clicked the map where you want the map pin to drop, just click save. Once you’ve clicked save, that’s the business information input to the database. You can then share the listing. If it is your business you can claim it now to make sure all details are kept accurate and up to date. You can also leave a tip if you want to.
Once you’ve added all the business information it’s just a matter of waiting for the database to update itself. Then you can start mapping your pins.
It’s been a couple of hours since I added Phoenix Counselling’s information to Foursquare. I’ve come back to Pinterest to add the Pinterest map pin to a couple of blog posts that I pinned quite a while back now! Now to see if the info is here, I’m going to map the pin.
Choose the city. Start typing in the business name. Select the business then click map it. As you can see it’s mapped on Foursquare and it’s now on this map. I can continue doing this for all the Phoenix Counselling pins – I won’t bore you with them all!
It really is that simple. Enjoy creating your Pinterest map pins. Don’t forget to add the business to Foursquare so you have this wonderful bit of functionality in your Pinterest map boards.
Over to you…
Do you use Pinterest map boards? Will you use them more now you know how to add a business to FourSquare?
Don’t forget to follow me on Pinterest!
How To Add a Business to FourSquare for Pinterest Map Pins [Video] by Jan Kearney
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Great info. I’d be curious though how they manage to keep it secure as far as only the business owners being able to claim it. I wonder do they ever have issues with someone else claiming the business as their own.
Hi Misty, Claiming your business on FoursSquare is relatively secure. First there is the phone verification followed by either a credit card verification (£20 charge here) or mail verification. I won’t say listing theft doesn’t happen, but with the hoops you jump through it would be fairly easy to make a case if a listing was fraudulent and causing problems.
Hi Jan,
Never really heard of Foursquare ( maybe because I’m in Nigeria). Going by your explanation, I think the use of Foursquare will be good and great for local business marketing.
Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome James 🙂 Thanks for popping in!