GoWalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places. Sounds familiar? Of course they do. These a few sites form simply a tiny fraction of web sites that allow people to look at a particular place and share it with their friends.
Mainly known as location-based services, these sites can simply help your advertising and marketing and social media attempts. In time, they might in addition help your SEO efforts, but at this time their contribution to higher search engine ranking is debatable.
Why should you even contemplate location-based services, you ask? Here are the top three reasons the reason why:
1. Connect with the increasing number of people on-the-go whom rely on their cell phones. Every quarter, we read about reports of cell phone ownership and consumption. As time passes by, increasing numbers of people are opting to have an iPhone, Android mobile phone, Blackberry, and cell phones that are geared with regard to business and personal productiveness. This is because a lot more people are saved to the go and take more time being outside when compared to their homes or workplaces facing the computer.
Two. A good way to market socially. Location-based providers allow people to check into your venue. But which is not all there is for it. You could have a profile in these services that specifics your contact information, a roadmap that tells folks how to get to your store, links to your website and in many cases links to your social networking account.
But more to the point, as the customer assessments into your venue, he is showing his buddies that he trusts you or perhaps likes your products or services. That’s social recommendation at its finest.
You could also grow in customers when they are probably to visit you. Location-based solutions such as Foursquare allows its users to see just what venues are near them. So if they happen to be in the area having lunch time, they might look for a restaurant or a bookstore near the restaurant and find a person.
If you have specials, discounts and deals, location-based services could easily tell people about these, giving them an incentive to talk to your store.
But the true power of location-based solutions lies in its ability to allow you to run your own devotion program easily. They have built-in features that help anyone create and maintain the loyalty program that also makes it easier for your buyers to redeem afterwards.
3. People are using check-in companies. Much like Facebook and Twitter, lots of people are now using location-based services. With the increase in the quantity of people owning touch screen phones comes the improving number of people who will have the capability to check directly into different venues. Just imagine, there are currently more than 6.5 trillion Foursquare users who check into different venues at a rate of 2 million check-ins every day. That represents a jaw-dropping Several,400% year on year increase! And that’s only for one location-based service.
What’s much more, these sites also come with smartphone apps, making it easier for people to do research online for business of their area. They do not have to open their browser, contact a search engine and search. Everything will be clickable!
BONUS: Location-based services might help SEO.