TurnSocial bar adds Foursquare integration

Local business owners can add more value to their websites by giving their visitors information from social media sites about their own venue or others in the neighborhood. Integrating information from all the available social media sites can be difficult. The TurnSocial bar makes the process easy by adding a small toolbar at the bottom of your site with customizable links to social media sites of all kinds. It’s recently been updated to include Foursquare venue information as well.

By clicking the Foursquare button on your TurnSocial bar, your visitors can now see tips, the current mayor, the total number of checkins along with the usual name, phone number, address, etc.

Adding the bar to your site involves setting a few simple options on TurnSocial’s site and pasting a line of Javascript code into your page. There aren’t a lot of ways to customize the look, but the default should be good enough for most sites. You can see a live version in the bottom left of your browser window on this post.

In addition to Foursquare, you can link to your Facebook page, Twitter stream, a Twitter search, Youtube videos, a Flickr set, and a Myspace page. Other geosocial options include Rentwiki, Walkscore, and local news from outside.in. You can also show a search of nearby venues from Yelp or reviews from a specific Yelp venue.

The TurnSocial bar could be especially valuable for restaurants and bars and for groups like neighborhood associations. Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments. What other sites could make use of this functionality?