Any Dentists using FourSquare?

[Ohio Dentistry]

Hello,

Our office just signed up for an account and verified our listing on FourSquare....so now what?

Has anyone else out there used foursquare for their office with the check-ins and what not?

Is there really any advantage or reason to use it?

Are there any odds and ends or tricks of the trade you'd like to share?

Just curious, thanks.

 

[Tyrand]

I don't see any advantages on using Foursquare for your office. Maybe just if your target clients are really young.

 

[Great Lakes Dental]

Hi Ohio Dentistry,

FourSquare is a useful site that can help your practice get found (infrequently) on a direct basis and (frequently) on a indirect basis. I'll give you two examples:

1. In Canada, our Yellow Pages mobile app directory is powered by FourSquare's location services.
2. If your Practice is listed on Pinterest, FourSquare also powers their location service.

Hope this Helps.

Dr. Jennifer Thomm
Great Lakes Dental
Sarnia, Ontario Canada

 

[WilliamGlass]

I'm a specialist in dental marketing, and I agree, fwiw, with Jennifer. Let me 'splain.

The issue is that the market has changed! Foursquare initially aimed at dominating local search for users. About the same time, Google amped up its google local, and provided users who searched the internet all that Foursquare had been hoping to offer.

Foursquare changed gears and made a play to be the location service behind other services and local listing providers (yp, pinterest, etc).

If you want to spend money on Foursquare, that's fine. But honestly, your money is probably better spent hiring SEO consultants to help you top the Google Local "3-pack." This is because, quite simply, the overwhelming majority of your potential clients are not going either through Foursquare or Pinterest. They are searching through Google, to the tune of 100+ searches a month just in Canton. Ranking in the Google Local 3-pack will get you (studies have shown this) a way bigger chunk of that traffic than FourSquare could get you.

To get started on that, you will want to:

1) Claim your Google Mybusiness listing if you haven't already done so.
2) Once you have verified (they will send you a postcard with a number in there), then look at getting that listing echoed in YellowPages, Yelp, etc.
3) Focus on your own website's content. Every update of Google algorithms is meant to reward fresh, relevant, unique, thorough content. Try to write content that other stakeholders in your industry will find compelling enough to share, reblog, etc.

Work on those things; you'll get what Foursquare could never give you. Additionally, doing these things and working hard to promote social media traffic will cause Google not only to reward you with 3-pack visibility but with higher rank in the organic listings as well. There are lots of things to buy out there; Google is still the best real estate on the internet, and there sadly aren't many ways to shortcut that.

Hope this helps.

 

[KickStart Dental]

Hello,

Our office just signed up for an account and verified our listing on FourSquare....so now what?

Has anyone else out there used foursquare for their office with the check-ins and what not?

Is there really any advantage or reason to use it?

Are there any odds and ends or tricks of the trade you'd like to share?

Just curious, thanks.

I wouldn't spend any ad dollars on Foursquare, but it is actually a very important site to be listed on, if for nothing else that it creates a nice back link to your website and this will help with your Google ranking efforts.

 

[Nuno Alberto]

I wouldn't spend any ad dollars on Foursquare, but it is actually a very important site to be listed on, if for nothing else that it creates a nice back link to your website and this will help with your Google ranking efforts.

Hey,

To appear in the "3 pack" is relatively simple. You just need a bunch of citations (more than your competitors). Citations are sites like Yellow pages, white pages, map quest etc..

What you do is create accounts on all of these sites (about 100 or so depending on competition) and you should see some movement in the local search pack.

Hope this helps!