Geo-location = social media marketing promise for small businesses

Social media marketing among B to C companies is growing, even for small businesses (per a study earlier this year, 260,000 small businesses are engaged). I imagine that geo-tagging advancements are going to influence an explosion in those numbers for adoption. For example, concepts like foursquare are already taking off, and there’s been a buzz for months about implications and opportunities for Twitter geo-tagging. So, what does this mean for marketers?

For one, there’s opportunity to target potential customers with incentives when they’re on your doorstep. foursquare, a network that keeps tabs on places your friends visit in your city and lets you know who’s near your current location, is one type of network that offers this option for businesses. This could offer a huge opportunity for small businesses like restaurants to share discount offers.

Two, targeting tweeps on Twitter based on their location will become easier to make outreach and promotions more relevant (at least with users who opt-in to share their GPS coordinates once this feature on Twitter is launched). This has huge potential for grand opening publicity, etc.

Obviously, there are privacy trade-offs. For example, most people in my foursquare network share only the first initial of their last names, myself included. (I assume because they don’t want just anyone to know exactly where they are at any given time.)

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