In real estate, the simple mantra is timeless: location, location, location. You've heard it said a million times: the sheer wonder of being at the right place, at the right time. Did you ever stop to take these trusty wisdom-isms and apply them to your social intelligence strategy?
Location data has been on the up-swing for awhile, back since FourSquare didn't have Swarm and Yelp gave a voice to the people on their favorite and not so favorite locales. Location-based data can improve social intelligence and help marketers and advertisers make smart, insight-driven decisions.
Tweets which are geotagged provide extremely accurate location data (with latitude and longitude coordinates), down to even a street-level view. This allows marketers and other professionals to see countries, regions, towns or streets people are in when they talk about a brand or topic. It allows for pinpointing which part of a large building (such as specific airport terminal or store within shopping center) they are in.
Location-based social media data can help organizations in many ways:
Source Relevant Content
Let's say a company is hosting a promotional or corporate event or serving a brand's product or service at a large event like a sport stadium. Location-based data can help find moments that are ideal to share, opportunities to engage, and offers up the ability to reply to questions from people already discussing said event.
Another benefit is that location-based data can help professionals find conversations about their event, even if those social posts are miles, states, or even countries away. This can present the unique opportunity to target locations they would have otherwise not taken into consideration for this event.
Monitor Events in Real-Time
Learn what prospects are saying about a brand at an event or go even further and use location-based social listening to find tangential information- like popularity of topics, speakers, entertainment, and venues.
Even for global events and social media discussions, location-based data gives insight into who is talking about a brand, company, or event at that specific location. Perhaps a ground team for a guerilla marketing campaign is targeting the Las Vegas Strip during a conference like CES, but they see lots of relevant Tweets of interest from folks at a specific hotel. They can head on over for face-to-face interactions and engage with them on social.
Generate Leads
Finding customers at the point of sale can be a tricky business, and also a huge missed opportunity if a brand or company isn't listening closely (or intelligently) on social. Location-based data reveals the most relevant time for buying decisions and brands can engage people with helpful insights or discounts to ensure they purchase products.
Again, it's also a great way to ensure people interested in your brand are getting the information they need. Perhaps your sales team is targeting Boston but there's a large area of interest in Chicago. With location-based data they can re-prioritize and adjust based on where the social conversation reveals there is an opportunity.
Identify Location-Specific Competitive Intelligence
Using location-based social listening can help teams at large sites such as hotels, concert venues, and airports learn how to improve their marketing, customer service, and operations. The unsolicited and very raw (re: honest) feedback on social media pulls back the curtain on how people really feel.
Discover Regional Trends
Want to find relevant and popular topics within particular regions? Location-based social listening could help social listeners find what's trending or declining in popularity, enabling location-specific ad buying, shifting shipments, and optimizing marketing strategies.
Is Houston all abuzz on social about doughnuts? If that's the case, a doughnut brand can consider opening a store in that region, or selling to vendors in that specific city based on demand as discussed on social media. Talk about something sweet to savor.
Brandwatch has recently launched location-based social media analytics and visualization features in its platforms, Brandwatch Analytics and Vizia, to help users make the most of location-based data. The above use cases are just a few examples of the ways in which location-identified social conversations can help marketing and advertising professionals make strategic, data-driven business decisions to increase sales, connect with their audience and fans, and market better overall.
In the world of social data, it really is all about location, location, location.