As more and more business are adopting Foursquare as a marketing channel by adding incentives for checking-in, the need to track and analyze this data has resulted in the launch of a Foursquare dashboard.  In order to use this dashboard, you must claim your venue. You do not have to be the person that created the venue to claim it, but you must be available at the venue to answer a phone call from Fourquare and provide details/proof that you are eligible to manage it. You can either manage the account through your personal Foursquare account, or start a new one, as the details of the manager’s account are public.

This dashboard is a collection of venue check-in analytics including stats like:

Key Metrics: (Overview of activity)

- Total check-ins
- Unique visitors
- Percentage of check-ins shared with Twitter
- Percentage of check-ins shared with Facebook
- Gender percentages of check-ins

Top 3 Visitors

12 Most Recent Check-ins

All Check-ins (detailed list)

Time Breakdown (time users are checking in)

See Below:

Currently, there is no way to access the information by a certain week, month, or day, so for now, we are forced to record this data and move into a spreadsheet or other tracking software.

This is a great step in the right direction for a business using Foursquare. We anxiously await more detailed tracking options from Foursquare in the near future.

Courtesy of Flickr - jakerome

One of the hardest things to do in the social world is actually get people to engage with your brand on the various social channels. Anyone can set up a Twitter account and Facebook fan page and drivel on about the great things their company does and hope people come and engage with them. But the real genius is in the activation of these social properties. How do we get fans, friends, and followers to not only come to our social properties, but also engage with us and introduce us into their personal social networks?

I’ve come up with a list of 7 ways to easily activate your social platforms.

Integrate with current web properties: Chances are you have a website… Also, chances are you have traffic that comes to that website. Why not invite these visitors to participate in your social conversation? Integrate your social strategies into your company site or blog for a great start in your activation strategy.

Utilize Current Network: We all have offline relationships, whether they’re employees, customers, vendors, friends, family, etc. We should engage with these relationships and invite them to move online into the social space. These relationships are probably the strongest advocates for our brand and can become integral to developing a great foundation of followers.

Utilize Platform Network: Most social sites have an extensive search functionality. By understanding the valuable key terms and phrases within your client base, we can search these terms to see what’s being said, who’s saying it and begin to engage these individual’s in real life conversations.

Email: Never underestimate the power of email. It is a tremendous communication tool and the original “Social Media.” We should utilize our email contacts and invite them to participate in communications online.

Outreach: A little more time intensive, outreach with key influencers and building a relationship with them can jumpstart your social growth. By building a value-added relationship, with key influencers we have a great opportunity to be introduced into their vast social network with a high level of trust and credibility.

Paid Media: Another way to gain traction in the social space is to buy clicks and hope for engagement. Here we can purchase advertising (through Google or other ad networks) and develop a message that would persuade people to participate in the online conversations.

Search: Another great predecessor of the social revolution is Search Engine Optimization. Search is still and becoming an even stronger force in the social world. Understanding this and following a search strategy to maximize on specific keywords is a great way to begin conversations in the search boxes of Google, Bing, and Yahoo!

Activation does not equal Success

A little word of warning though… Activating your social properties and building a robust following does not equal success. You must continue to engage your network and provide valuable content or else the conversation stalls and followers defect. Building strong relationships with each individual follower takes time, energy, and patience; there is no easy way to social media.