How to Use Incentives to Encourage Check-Ins on Facebook and Other Networks

Do you know what Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, and some other social networks have in common? Users can use them to locate local businesses and check in to them. By checking in, they tell their friends where they’ve been while increasing the count of people who have publicly logged a visit to your business. While you can’t encourage people to write reviews for your local business on these sites with incentives, you can encourage them to check in for incentives. Here are the types of check-ins that these networks allow and the ways you can incentivize people to use them. 

Why You Need People to Check-In

Check-ins are great for local businesses for a variety of reasons. For starters, when people share their check-in activity publicly, they are essentially telling their audience on the respective network that they have been to and recommend your business. It’s great word of mouth marketing.

On some social networks, it’s even more than that. Facebook users who have Graph Search can search for businesses that their friends have been to based on check-ins. Yelp users can increase the likelihood that their reviews will be published on a business’s profile by checking in. Foursquare users can share their check-ins with their Twitter followers and Facebook friends, increasing their visibility.

Types of Check-Ins

In order to decide on incentive options, you need to determine what types of check-in activity each network records.

• Individual Check-Ins – Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, and other networks generally allow an option for individual users of their networks to check-in to a local business.

• The Most Check-Ins – Foursquare most notably offers recognition for the person who checks in the most at a particular location, deeming them the mayor of that location.

• Group Check-Ins – Foursquare and Facebook recognizes lots of people or friends check-in to a particular location in a short amount of time as a group check-in or swarm.

Incentive Options

Incentives can be chosen based on the network you are trying to encourage people to use.

For example, if you want to encourage check-ins on Yelp, you could offer a 10% discount for those who have checked-in repeatedly. On Facebook, you can create official check-in deals on Facebook at different levels including individual deals, friend deals (for groups of 8 or more), and loyalty deals (for people who have checked-in a minimum number of times). On Foursquare, you can offer check-in deals for individuals, the “mayor” of your business, and groups when a specific number of people have checked-in.

Sharing Your Incentives

So how do you get the word out about your incentives? After you’ve officially created the check-in deal or offer on the site itself, you will want to let people who are not actively using the app know. You can start with printing up flyers, cards, window signs, etc. to distribute inside your business for visitors. To help them along, add a QR code that links them to the network’s app download as they will need that to check in.

You can also create social status updates and even use social advertising to get more awareness to your check-in deals. This way, followers of your Twitter account and fans of your Facebook page will know which app to use to check-in and what they will receive when they do.

Measuring Your Results

Most networks will allow you to see the results of your check-in deals. Be sure to try deals on multiple networks to see which ones are used most often by your customers. Also keep an eye out on whether offering check-in deals increase your local reviews and traffic referrals from a particular network. These are great ways to judge whether your check-in deals are a success!

You can also sign up for a free trial account at SumAll and plug in your Google Analytics, Foursquare, and Facebook accounts, annotate the dates of your check-in deals, and see if they have increased your website traffic and fans of your business! You can also see if having available check-in deals for your business leads to more online sales as well!

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter and Google+.