Posts Tagged ‘geolocal’

Posted on September 24, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

#GEOChat Transcript from September 21, 2010 – Tweets about location-based services

GEOChat covers all things location/geo related offline and online. The discussion also covers your favorite location-based applications such as Foursquare, whrrl, brightkite, Gowalla, TriOut, Facebook Places, SCVNGR, MyTown and more. Other topics includes privacy, API application mashups, offline marketing of location-based campaigns, and how does the entire GEO spaces affects businesses today.

If you have suggestions/questions/topics for #GEOChat please let me know in the comments. #GEOchat is held every Tuesday at 2:00 P.M. EST.

Here’s the #GEOChat Transcript from September 21, 2010

Posted on August 24, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

#GEOChat Starts today on Twitter at 2:00 P.M. EST, Discussing all things location

Topical Twitter hashtags conversations started a few years ago with #journchat by @prsarahevans. Now we have #b2bchat, #aptchat, #smchat, #blogchat and more. Today I’m pleased to announced #GEOchat starting today at 2:00 P.M. EST on Twitter. #GEOChat will cover all things location/geo related offline and online. The discussion will cover your favorite location-based applications such as Foursquare, whrrl, brightkite, Gowalla, TriOut, Facebook Places, MyTown and more. Other topics we’re going to cover will be privacy, API application mashups, offline marketing of location-based campaigns, and how does the entire GEO spaces affect businesses today.

To participate in #GEOChat setup your Twitter search for the hashtag #GEOChat at 2:00 P.M. EST and I’ll start the conversations off with about three questions and depending on your answers the chat will last for 30 minutes. If the conversation last longer, we’ll continue to 3:00 P.M. EST. In the future there will be guest host from other location-based platforms and marketing agencies leading in the location-based marketing space.

Kicking off #GEOChat here are a few of the questions we’re going to ask during #GEOChat:

1. If you’re a longtime user of other location-based apps are you now using Facebook Places as your primary LBS?

2. What is your number one concern about privacy using location-based apps?

3. What will drive the success of location-based services in the future? Gaming or group buying or coupons and why?

4. Outside of Facebook Places what new location-based service has impressed you? Ex. ShopKick, BarCode Hero, Hotlist, Picplz?

5. What features not in your favorite location-based service you would like to see implemented?

If you have suggestions/questions/topics for #GEOChat please let me know in the comments and I’ll tweet you at 2:00 P.M. for #GEOChat

Posted on August 8, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Top 10 Twitter list to follow for updates on geo / location-based apps

As we all know @Twitter is a great way to read news/information when it happens first. For startups and other tech companies having a Twitter account is almost one of those mandatory must have for marketing and securing your digital footprint online. With Twitter list which are now almost one year old, you can group companies/industries twitter accounts together making it easy to read tweets from your competitors or from companies you want to track.

If you’re in the location space and looking for Twitter list to keep up with the growing list of location-based apps here are the Top 10 geo location Twitter list to follow.

1. http://twitter.com/ericleebow/geo-location-services by @ericleebow
2. http://twitter.com/Scobleizer/geolocation by @Scobleizer
3. http://twitter.com/lawrencecoburn/geolocation by @lawrencecoburn
4. http://twitter.com/jeffcarroll/location-checkin by @jeffcarroll
5. http://twitter.com/jasonbirch/geo by @jasonbirch
6. http://twitter.com/GeoEntelechy/geo by @GeoEntelechy
7. http://twitter.com/tlists/gis-geolocation by @tlists
8. http://wefollow.com/twitter/location by @wefollow
9. http://wefollow.com/twitter/geo by @wefollow
10. http://mashable.com/twitterlists/tech-science/gis-geolocation by @Mashable

Although it’s not a Twitter list you can follow the @mr_lbs Twitter account. I’m not sure who manages it but it will tweet/retweet various location-based news from around the web.

Do you follow a geo/location twitter list that not listed? If so, let me know in the comments.

Posted on July 16, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Location Based Marketing and the 80/20 Rule of Business – Guest post via @GreggVM

Guest Post by: Gregg @GreggVM works as a business consultant, freelance writer and TriOut Sales Manager/Advisor. Gregg writes at http://www.greggmorris.com

In 1906 and Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto came up with a formula to describe the inequality in the distribution of wealth throughout his country. He found that 80% of the wealth was concentrated in the pockets of 20% of the people.

In the late 1940’s, Joseph Juran, a Quality Measurement guy, stated a principle that he called “the vital few and the trivial many”. He had found that 20% of the defects caused 80% of the problems. A few problems, those 20%, are vital and many, those 80%, are trivial.

Over the years the discovery of both men came to be applied, and appeared to hold true, for many areas in business and in life. Those discoveries came to be called the Pareto Principle, likely because it sounded so much better than the Juran Principle. It’s also come to be known as the 80/20 Rule of Buisness.

If you didn’t run across it in business classes, or while you were making your business “bones”, you’ve likely heard it mentioned in a number of places. 20% of your stock takes up 80% of your space. 80% of your stock comes from 20% of your suppliers. And the big one, 20% of your customers account for 80% of your revenue generation.

Small businesses, especially those in brick and mortar, seem to have a hard time buying into the principle sometimes. The value of the principle, whether you buy into the exact percentages or not, is that it reminds you to focus on the 20% who matter. You’ve likely heard it said that it’s a lot easier to get a current customer to spend more money with you than it is to get or acquire a new customer.

Those current customers are your 20% and location based marketing is starting to provide the means to directly interact and engage with them in ways you’ve never been able to. Through the use of welcome and check in specials, as well as location based coupons and other specials, you can reward your best customers and give them opportunities and incentives that will make them want to spend more money with you. And it won’t cost you much money at all to do so.

I wrote yesterday how I thought that the promotion Ann Taylor is doing with Foursquare, while good to see and very well crafted, could be improved to reward not just the Mayor of the stores, but those 20% who drive their business revenue as well.

Location based services and apps are starting to provide even more ways to market to and engage directly with your best customers. TriOut introduced their freemium and premium business models last week. Their premium package takes that engagement level up several notches with messaging and real time alerts. Imagine the possibilities that messaging your best customers could do for your marketing and sales efforts, your ability to build a community around your business. And that’s on top of check in specials and coupons too. You can also get real time alerts when a customer checks in, posts a photo or a review. The possibilities for customer engagement there is as exciting as it can be. To the best of my knowledge, TriOut is the only service offering this at the moment but you know the others won’t be far behind.

In the past, you’ve perhaps used some kind of loyalty card or program to reward those vital 20%. Are you beginning to get a sense of how location based marketing can not only drive new customers your way but how it can be used to grow your revenues and ring your registers through creative engagement with your best customers?

One last little nugget about Vilfredo Pareto. He also observed that we as humans are not really motivated by logic and reason but by sentiment. I’ll bet that you could use location based marketing to tap into that and form some great emotional connections with your community of customers. They’ll be telling great stories about you and your business forever.

Posted on July 12, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

11 Questions to Ask Before Using Location-Based Services to Market Your Business

Note: Originally posted on: SocialFresh.com on June 22, 2010

Location-based marketing (LBM) is here and it has been here for a long while, way before Yelp, Loopt and Foursquare. But now with the recent popularity in location-based mobile applications like Foursquare, TriOut (disclosure, I am a partner), Loopt Star and Gowalla, more brands and agencies are trying to take advantages of these services to increase sales, branding and in some cases just to look cool.

Emerging from a recent “future of location-based marketing” panel, much of the audience mentioned a need for more LBM brand success stories, to help get an idea of what is possible on these new platforms.

Reset Your Thinking

But it is important to remember that getting started with location-based marketing starts with a hyper-local twist. If you have your social media thinking cap on, I dare say take if off, sit it in a corner visit your local coffee shop and ask yourself what will drive more people to walk in the doors that are not customers or make existing customers visit more often before you even think about a badge.