SEO Secrets: How Geolocation is the future of Social Media
Geolocation for social media or geosocial as its now becoming known as, is the utilisation of GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates to associate and engage users positions with their activities. User submitted location data can be coordinated by social media sites to provide useful information and offers about businesses and events in the users direct vicinity to enrich the social networking experience.
This allows brands to interact and play a part in users daily lives, not through interruption or broadcast means – but through engaging with users within the course of their everyday lives. Geolocation now allows the ‘how’ and ‘where’, to go along with the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the marketing communications mix.
The idea of Geolocation has been around for a while with marketers long dreaming of a way to connect with people based on location. The recent growth in development of geosocial platforms and uptake of these by consumers is due to
maturing social media populations – comfortable posting, sharing commenting within digital based channels
Improved 3G networks and GPS enabled smart phones
Two platforms currently dominate in this sector, Foursquare and Gowalla. Both have become synonymous with the current geolocation social media trend. So far more than 6 million people have signed up for both these services with more to come with sites like Facebook and Twitter adding location-based features, and Google, Yahoo, and other search engineers gearing up to serve ads based on a user’s location.
From an SEO point of view the benefits of such platforms are the same as social media itself, to allow a organisation to connect with customers with the aim of directing more traffic to there site.
The real benefits of Geosocial will be more apparent to organisations with street presence for example; if you operate a retail outlet, or a service centre for the public, you have the opportunity to learn more about your regulars from an unobtrusive distance, learning their habits, their frequency of visits, likes and dislikes. Who they are friends with and what they like about your business. You will gain the ability to reward them directly for their efforts.
What happens if your company does not have a street presence though? How can geosocial help your business? Imagine if you knew everything about your customers, what they were eating, where they were visiting, what they were saying about various topics when they aren’t in your presence. Your employees would be able to have a more personalised dialogue with your clients and the people within it and this in itself would be worth a small time investment.
The big plus from this new type of social media marketing is that the possibilities are endless and as more and more features and uses are developed there must be at least one avenue any given company could explore and benefit from.
