As technology continues to progress, the number of resources that are available to the small business user for promotion of their small business continues to grow as well. Among the resources that I find particularly useful in the promotion of my online businesses are location based services.
3 Location Based Services You Should Be Using
1. Foursquare
Foursquare is a great service to get your business on the map by enticing friends of your existing clients to enjoy your products and services. Foursquare allows existing clients to check in using their mobile devices to share their current location with all of their friends and contacts, spreading the word about your business! To find out more about how to add your business to Foursquare take a look at the respective article here at Extreme John.
2. Gowalla
Gowalla is another location based service that allows your clients to check in from various locations, including your business, and share their current activities with friends and family! One of the great benefits to using Gowalla is that it creates a social “map” of your area which includes your small business!
3. Yelp
Yelp is an online resource that gives businesses a way to share their business and services with the public. Yelp provides the public with a local city guide online, mapping out all of the services and products within their local area! For more information on how to add your business to Yelp, take a look at this article.
Parting Shots
Location based services are a great way to market your business without too much effort on your part. As your existing clients spread the word about your business their friends and family are familiarized with your service without cutting in to your business’s marketing budget!
Your Turn
What other location based services do you use for your small business? Leave a comment below and share them with others!
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A good way to advertise. Well written and filled with very productive ideas and suggestions. 5 stars for this article.
Twitter: extremejohn
Happy that you found the information useful Cliff.
I was happy to
LOL
Using the social networking as a way to spread the word for the business among the locals or worldwide I really don’t think there is any need for all this stuff.
Who has more money to spend on these thing when one can do all these for free on Facebook or Twitter.
Twitter: extremejohn
That’s one way of looking at it Lance. One can only hope that the day will come where you open your arms to social media a little bit, you might be surprised with what the return might be.
Well I do use social networking sites for my business but the thing is what ever you mentioned wasn’t that useful. Anyways I have seen loads of people following what you publish on your blog. But in my opinion you always say good things in your article, until now I haven’t read any article of yours that mentions any negative effects of the tools that you mention.
Twitter: extremejohn
Feel free to write a guest post outlining the negative things that you would prefer to be mentioned. I guess because I prefer to look at things in a positive manor I have a harder time seeing the so many bad things social media can do for business. Like anything there’s risks involved, but that’s business. Either be in it or don’t be.
Well for sure there is a little bit of risk involved but there should be only little bit of risk!!!!
One should always look at both positive and negative aspects at the same time so as to minimize the risk.
If someone is just looking at pros of everything and neglecting the cons than I am sure that person is taking a huge risk not a little bit which can ruin that persons life.
Twitter: FreeTanOffer
Currently I am using Yelp.
Its very helpful and has benefited me a lot.
I have heard abut Foursquare and read an article by John after which I am thinking of using it but while using Yelp is there any need for using the others?
I mean after all they do the same job right?
Twitter: extremejohn
I would say that being everywhere in business is important, and if that means that potential customers like to play a game or check-in or whatever else it’s probably a good idea to be part of the game.
Twitter: FreeTanOffer
hmmmmm yea you are right. After all to beat your competitors one has to be every where always.
Foursquare gets def gets new customers in the door, it might not be a heard of them but it gets them there. Not to mention some of my customers like the idea of being mayor
I don’t personally do a whole lot of checking in myself.
Gowalla and Foursquare both are very good.
The only thing that I look for is that everyone should know about my business location.
Gowalla and Foursquare both perform the same task and what els do I need
Twitter: roof_cleaning
Lately, we have been using Stix.com, giving and getting recommendations from fellow small business owners. I never heard of Gowalla before. Thanks for the tip John!
Chris@Apple Roof Cleaning Tampa Florida´s last [type] ..Cleaning Black Roof Stains Tampa FL
Twitter: extremejohn
My pleasure Chris, now I’ll have to check out Stix.com I haven’t heard of it until now.
As mentioned before, I have tried to utilize 4square as a business with no support from 4square. I see that ET&S has no specials currently on 4 square. Have you tried adding any specials to 4square with any success?