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What is Social Location Mobile?

Social Location Mobile refers to consumers interacting with brands, products and businesses by updating their social networks with their locations via their mobile phones. Broadly defined, it refers to any location-based engagement a consumer takes to interact with a geographic area via their mobile device. Social Location Mobile is based on two things:

1. Social Location Sharing
2. Social Location Marketing

Social Location Sharing

Consumers have the ability to choose who they want to share their locations and experiences with. While a large segment of people choose to only share their locations and customer experiences with their closed network of family and friends, there are also many people who choose to share their experiences with the world. People want to tell everyone about their experiences with a brand, and social networking platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare are the ideal places to do this.

Location Based Marketing is like Twitter for the real-world business. When people check-in at a restaurant, retail store or any other place, a tweet is automatically sent out. This tweet enables the smartphone user to tell his/her followers where they are, and the business also gets the benefit of the exposure because your business’ name will be included in this update.

Social Location Mobile sharing isn’t only about broadcasting your whereabouts or ranting and raving about a brand – it’s used to explore, learn and get the most out of your experience. Smartphone users use Social Location sharing as an information tool to check out “trending locations” (this lets you see where people are gathering now so that you can decide if it’s somewhere you would like to go). It’s also a convenient tool to use when you are traveling about and want to find out if any of your friends are nearby.

Foursquare brings gamification (using game design techniques and mechanics to engage with audiences) into the mix, with people competing for the highest number of check-ins at a specific venue. Users are able to “unlock badges” for visiting a specific venue a certain number of times and some applications also have “Leaderboards” that will track your check-ins and award you with points for visiting multiple venues in a day.

Social Location Marketing

Social Location Marketing is where businesses market on mobile devices to people who are prepared to share their location. The fact that businesses are able to interact and engage with consumers in this sphere presents businesses and marketers with a number of opportunities. Targeted messages, combined with real-time location data tracking, means that the playing field between large companies and small local businesses have been leveled out.

According to Global Industry Analysts, the global market for location-based services is projected to reach US$21.14-billion in annual revenue by 2015, registering 1.24-billion subscribers. The shift from desktop computers to mobile devices as a means of browsing the internet means that marketers’ focus needs to shift to mobile marketing as a means to market their business.