Vancouver Internet Marketing Social Media Marketing Consultant Canada

Sep 8, 2010

As location-based services have emerged as compelling ways for businesses to interact with potential customers, there have been a flux of marketing and social media platforms that help set up campaigns. Context Optional, SnackSquare, Geotoko, Sprout Social and a number of other platforms are helping brands run campaigns on services like Foursquare, Twitter, Gowalla and now Facebook Places. PlacePunch is launching its platform in the space, and has already enlisted a well-known brand as a client.

Geomium offers four main sections and information can be viewed on a map or as a feed: People (all friends near your current location), Places (all the nearby bars and restaurants), Events (all nearby plays, festivals, concerts and parties, which can be filtered by type and date) and Deals (all the local deal, discounts and offers from nearby bars and restaurants).

So, for example, you might spot that their is an event in your locality that your friends are already at or attending. Afterward you want to find somewhere to eat/drink and see that there is a special offer at one particular establishment. That’s the idea anyway.

Geomium is a new location based social network application launching in UK now, then Europe, then USA later. Canada? Maybe to follow.

Does it feel too late to be coming on the scene with another "check in" application? Almost. Pretty hard to follow Facebook Places given their huge userbase. The unique Yelp, Qype, Eventful dataset and the People, Events and Deals integration features of Geomium had better be amazing and extremely easy to use if it's to expect to carve out any market share before its competitors such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla copy geomium's unique features. It's a (decreasingly) big world, so maybe there's a little piece of the pie left to grab in Europe? More competition is a good thing.

How can anyone commit to one location-based platform during these wild-west days of social network geolocation shootouts on main street. There goes a tumblr tumbleweed going rolling by. Is your iPhone/Android smartphone's main screen filled at least getting full of all of the different location-based apps like mine? Just wait til your boss gets a whitelabel location based app for your company (E.G DoubleDutch), and then the local grocery store gets one, then the local mall. Soon with location-based apps auto-sensing where you're at (if you let them) there won't be a place too small or too remote that you can't check in to.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

We are at the beginning of an exciting new era of location based advertising that integrates geo-location with advertising and apps. Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, Yelp, BrightKite, Loopt. These are just a few of the geo location based applications that are going to change everything in advertising & marketing.  Location based advertising allows anyone to target potential customers when they are within a certain distance from a select location such as a store, event or meeting place. Start thinking now how your business can integrate its goals, offerings, services and products with location based advertising opportunities.

Have you claimed your business location in Foursquare or Facebook Pages? Do it today. We can help with all of your social media marketing needs. Take control of your social media presence so your existing and potential future clients and customers can accurately find, check in and post about your business.

Geolocation-based social network Foursquare just might be the internet's 'next big thing'. While it isn't anywhere close to the size of Twitter or Facebook, the young company last month passed the million user mark.

That's a memorable milestone for any consumer internet startup, but the company's progress is perhaps better measured by the number of marketing deals it has inked with bigger companies. Here are 10 of those deals.

Well, Yelp (CrunchBase info on Yelp) has now copied the checkin gesture that Foursquare (Crunchbase info on Foursquare) introduced to us all and also they added badges of their own. I already am the baron of my favorite Mexican restaurant in Half Moon Bay.

This copying behavior demonstrates to me that Yelp is definitely jealous of the attention Foursquare is getting and isn’t able to innovate on its own.

This seems to be a problem for Foursquare. But is it really?

Yes.

Here’s why.

Foursquare, the smartphone app that gives you points and badges for "checking in" at clubs and convenience stores, is about to reach the one-million-user mark. That's a big deal. But it's also a reminder that, try as we might to cover its every move, most of you haven't tried Foursquare yet. (Or you're using its scrappy archrival, Gowalla.) Here's what to expect when you do:

It doesn't take long to get to stage five on Foursquare or Gowalla without an active network of friends using the same social application. Even then, with just getting virtual stamps, mayorships and virtual goodies it might get boring quick. What's next to keep people checking in? Find real money or songs or tv shows or movies or movie tickets or coupons instead of virtual goods? Become the real mayor of a town for a day after 250 check ins at city hall? Move to Rally Up http://www.getupandrally.com to cut down on the stalking and frequent home break-ins when you broadcast to the world you're out of town?

A new geolocation app for the iPhone was released today called Rally Up. What differentiates Rally Up from the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla is that it has a strong focus on privacy and content sharing. Rally Up bills itself as “a social network for real friends,” letting users share messages and photos with the people they trust.

To this end, Rally Up takes a very different approach to friends lists and friends management from other social applications. For instance, Rally Up doesn’t integrate with Twitter (). What?! I hear you gasp. As the saying goes, “It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.”

Microsoft has some new ammunition in its battle against rival Google: geolocation service Foursquare.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company’s Bing Maps tool will soon feature tips and comments from the burgeoning mobile service, which has taken off in popularity among smartphone-enabled urban users on the East Coast for its addictive mix of information and competition.

While Foursquare and Gowalla garner much of the buzz around location right now, Booyah’s MyTown continues to garner many of the actual users. In fact, the service has crossed 1.5 million users. And it’s gaining them at an incredible rate of 130,000 new users a week. Compare this to Foursquare, which during SXSW crossed 600,000 total users. And MyTown is showing no signs of slowing down, with another new version of the app now available.

It's like real world monopoly for your iphone