Foursquare Marketing: Add Checkins To Your Facebook Page

by Scott Bishop on March 4, 2010

Is Your Business Using Foursqaure To Reach Customers?

How To Add Foursquare Checkins To Your Facebook Page

As Foursquare, the mobile location based social app becomes more popular to users, businesses are going to benefit from using it for marketing purposes. As I explained in a previous post, 7 Quick Steps To Foursquare Marketing…a good practice is to check in to your own business to build awareness to your networks.

Note: If you’re a business where customers come to you such as a bar/restaurant/etc you don’t need to self-check in

However, as @northeastclng of Northeast Cooling emailed me and pointed out…it would be a big help to be able to add check ins to post not only to Twitter, but also to a brand’s Facebook Page.

Foursquare does not currently have an option to check in to a Facebook Page, only a profile. So I had to get a bit creative to pull this off.

Here’s How To Post Foursquare Check-In’s To Your Facebook Page

Install the Selective Twitter Status App
Sync Your Foursquare & Twitter Accounts
Use #fb hashtag on your Foursquare Check ins

Step 1: Install Selective Twitter Status App On Facebook

Log into your Facebook account
Go to the Selective Twitter Status app
If you’re taken to their Page select “Go To Application” (top left under logo)
(default page should be “Your Profile”) Add your Twitter handle and hit “Save”

Go to the “Your Fan Pages” tab
Add your Twitter handle to the choosen Facebook pages

Select “Grant Permission“
An “Allow Setting” tab will pop up…click on the pages you want added.
Select “Allow Publishing” button

Now you should see a “Yes” next to your pages
Select “Save Changes“

And you’re all set!!! That’s It. Your Facebook Page or Pages is set to recieve updates from Twitter. So now any tweet you send with a #fb hashtag will show up as a post to your selected Facebook Page.

Step 2: Sync Your Foursqaure Account To Update Twitter

Login to Foursquare
Go to the “Settings” page
Scroll down to “Linked Accounts“
Add your Twitter Handle

Step 3: Foursquare Check-in With #fb Shout

When ever you check-in to Foursquare select “Tap to add a shout!“
If you want them to show up on your Facebook Page, include “#fb” hashtag to your shout.

Now, whenever your Foursquare check-in is posted to Twitter…your Facebook Page will recognize the #fb hashtage and auto post to your selected Pages. There will be a slight delay in updates, but this is the easiest way to update your Foursquare Check Ins to your Facebook Page.

BOOM! Done-zo…that’s it.

You’ve now successfully pimped your Facebook Page to add Foursquare Check-ins.

If You Like This Post, You Will Find These Valuable Too

Tagged as: check in, Facebook, fan pages, Foursquare, foursquare marketing, mobile location, Twitter

Article by Scott Bishop

Scott Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and is the Director of Social for an integrated marketing firm. He is an avid blogger and active across the net. He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

Scott has written 127 awesome articles for Us.

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http://www.patrickworkman.com/ Patrick Workman

Good how-to, but this type of cross pollination within social platforms could signal the end of geo-location based services. The firehose of information they are spraying the social web with is irrelevant to the channel and makes for a fragmented user experience.
sbishop

It's certainly a feature to be used with caution. I rarely tweet my Foursquare check-ins. Unless there is a specific advantage and value added, there's no reason for it. I think that Foursquare, used strategically can be an effective marketing tool for certain businesses and in some cases it does make sense to add to Facebook. But generally, I am not a fan at all of social network cross pollination. Each audience is different and should be communicated differently, so we are pretty much in agreement. Thanks for stopping by Patrick.
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http://www.sundaymorningsoliloquy.com leyla_a

Scott! This is a great post. I honestly had no idea how to connect my tweets to FB in this way (I just use Tweetdeck) but now I can use #fb too. I used your step by step tools here and did it all.

Thank you!

BTW, how about writing a post on how brands can use Foursquare for marketing OR have you already?
http://www.sundaymorningsoliloquy.com leyla_a

Scott! This is a great post. I honestly had no idea how to connect my tweets to FB in this way (I just use Tweetdeck) but now I can use #fb too. I used your step by step tools here and did it all.

Thank you!

BTW, how about writing a post on how brands can use Foursquare for marketing OR have you already?
sbishop

Thanks for the comment Leyla. This Foursquare check-in to Facebook post was based on a question from a reader and I wanted to figure out the answer. I'm glad you and others also found it useful. As far as an article on Foursquare Marketing, I've written this intro article. http://realtimemarketer.com/7-quick-steps-to-fo…
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Knowledge gives weight, gives glory to achievement, most people only see the glory, not to weigh the weight!
http://www.canno-tmake.com
http://www.searchengineoptimisation.com Phil

This is nice article, i am trying to find more and more in foursquare usage and great article
Mossack Anme

Why the delay is too long? I just check-in more than 15 minutes ago (with #fb tag, see @MossackAnme) and there's no change in my page (facebook.com/mossack.anme) status.
sbishop

Did you apply the Facebook Selective Tweet app?
sbishop

Thanks for the comment Phil. I'll have more on Foursquare Marketing as well as geolocation services. Thanks for stopping by and stay tuned for upcoming articles.
Mossack Anme

Yap. I follow all steps precisely. So?
What am I supposed to do?
http://www.opheliaswebb.com Elisa Doucette

Scott, too funny that I re-found this through a Google search when it obviously filtered through my Reader a few months ago.

I just re-set up my Facebook page since so many of my column's readers were adding my personal FB account. It's not that I *don't* want people on there but it's a tiny bit too much to just carte blanche my online life like that.

Since Portland is such a small city people like to know “what the singles columnist is doing and where she's going.” This will be SO MUCH easier. But I might update to Gowalla if Foursquare doesn't get cooler FB graphics like they have. Can you suss out how to connect those sites?!
http://twitter.com/my4square David McKinney

There is another way of displaying your foursquare badges and mayorships on facebook.

Just go to http://myfoursquare.net and grab the My Foursquare app for Facebook.

This lets you display your badges and mayorships and checkins and stuff straight on your profile as a tab. I just added it, and it's pretty sweet!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-Ripley/100000189990326 Steve Ripley

Frustrated! This technique is working for text-only tweets, but Foursquare shouts & map still only appears on my personal wall, not my page wall. Did I miss something?
sbishop

I'll check and see if anything got changed…but the key is to backdoor the whole process by having a specific hashtag that gets auto-posted to your Facebook page from Twitter, so that must be included in your shout. Is your Page attached to this app?
Chewieez

I think you may have left one detail out of your instructions. I think you need to enable the “Allow the #fb tag anywhere in the tweet?” setting in Selective Tweets. This is due to the fact that Foursquare will put text after your #fb tag.

Many times if you do not have the #fb tag at the very end of your Twitter post, it will not get cross-posted. But thankfully there is a setting to allow the tag to be anywhere in the Twitter message.

Be careful though to check when you ReTween someone elses posts that they do not have a #fb tag in their post as it may cause you to cross-post that RT to Facebook in-advertently.
http://twitter.com/ungdalalvarna Ung Leader DalÄlvarn

I can’t mark “Allow the #fb tag anywhere in the tweet?” permanently. It gets unmarked when I click “Save changes”
Lladamscbw

ok I have a question…..what if you just want to “check in” on your Facebook but you don’t have a twitter account. Can I do it without having a twitter account? I’ve already downloaded the Foursquare app on my Blackberry Thanks!
Jbrewer

Works if you post directly on twitter, but using Foursquare to post causes the tweet to not show up on a page even if you check the allow #fb hashtag to be anywhere in the post.
Jbrewer

oh, because the settings only apply to the personal account. bummer.
http://twitter.com/loonathecat hanna choi

so anyone found a workaround for this yet?
Cory

This works as far as syncing to my Twitter acct and then it goes to my personal FB acct but it doesn’t go to my Business FB page. Here is what goes to my Twitter:
“work_it_off Work It Off

Off to go running #fb (@ Work It Off LLC) 4sq.com/zDVeTT”

You’ll notice the “#fb” tag is there but it doesn’t seem to wanna post to my FB page. Any thoughts?
Arshan Pouladdej

Someone please help! this is the email conversation I’ve had with Foursquare and still no help:

Me:
Hello my name is Arshan Pouladdej. I am a frequent daily foursquare user. I would like all of my foursquare check-ins from the foursquare app and check-ins on foursquare from instagram to show on my facebook map, but I do not want those check-ins to show on my facebook wall. What settings do I need to set on facebook or foursquare in order for all of my checkins from foursquare (ever since I started using foursquare) to show on my facebook map but not on my wall?!

Foursquare:
Thanks for reaching out! We’re awfully sorry to say but at this time there is no way to send all your Foursquare check-ins to appear on your Facebook map. We really appreciate your feedback and always take it into account as we improve our product. Keep updated via our blog atblog.foursquare.com.
We apologize for the inconvenience!
–
team foursquare
@4sqSupport

Me:
My Foursquare check-ins do show up on my Facebook, thats not the problem. My question is, is there anyway I can avoid them from showing on my wall, and just have my Foursquare check-ins show in my Facebook map ONLY? I have friends who have their facebook – foursquare application setup in a way where every time they check into a place in foursquare, it shows in their facebook map but not their wall. Any help or tweaks that I would have to make to my settings would be really appreciated.