With the increased use of local search from mobile devices, finding a preferred place in a new city or for that matter finding new places in your own city is now so much easier.

And Foursqaure has made things even more easy!

Foursquare is a local search site that provides customized local search results based on your preference. It is an extremely helpful application to have while in your own city or when traveling outside your own city or country.

Here is how it works:-

1. Register with Foursquare
2. Select your likes and preferences
3. Start searching

Foursquare takes into account your likes and preferences, and matches you to search results based on your preferences, your likes, your ratings of places, expert ratings,etc. The outcome is a highly customized result.

For instance, if you prefer vegetarian food and have selected it as one of your likes and preferences, when you search for food, Foursquare will show you results based on your preference, expert’s ratings, and ratings from your friends and close to your location. How much more customized can things get!

How can webmasters utilize Foursquare to benefit their local businesses?

With the onset of searching from mobile devices, never have things gotten so much better for local businesses. Here is what local businesses should do to ensure that thay make the most of this potential business opportunity:-

1. Register their business on Foursquare.

2. Businesses should remember that these customers have found them because of the customer’s preference and choices, the customers are searching for your products and services, so basically they are almost on the verge of conversion! Do whatever it takes to help customers reach you and not your competition first.

2. Opt to run Ads on Foursquare. This will help in attracting more customers. The concept is pretty much like Ad words. You only pay when someone clicks on your listing.

3. Provide correct store timing, contact number, special offerings, anything that will make their business stand out from the competition should be clearly spelt out (USP should be clearly mentioned)

4. Since the target audience is close by, they can drop into the shop within minutes, all that a business owner needs to do is provide assurance, and guide the customer into their shops.

Always encourage happy customers to write about your services, even a few words of appreciation from a happy customer on Foursquare can do wonders.

Users today are spoilt for choices between Yelp, Foursquare and now even Google provides customized recommendations. It makes perfect business sense to have a listing in Foursquare. A listing that provides precise and persuasive information will certainly find customers.

If you have put up ads on Foursquare not only would you get noticed more than your competition, the chances are that people will contact you because your listing will be prominant, and when people search from their mobile devices thay will want to get to the information as soon as possible. The additional advantage of availabity of analytics from Foursquare will help your plan and target your ads even better.

Go on… get your Foursquare visibility up and about …just in time to make the most of the holiday rush.