Location-Based Services – Insights by Location

What Are Location-Based Services?

Location-based services (LBS) is defined as a class of computer program-level services that use location data to control features. LBS uses or incorporates the location of a device to provide or enhance a service. Mobile users often turn these services on to help them quickly locate people, places or things surrounding them, get driving directions from their current location, find coupons or sale offerings at the store where they are currently located and many other location-based functions. Users can manually turn these location-based services on and off in most applications, but many social media networking sites are actually built around the location services.

Location-based services are all about convenience and proximity, giving users ultimate flexibility to better understand the areas and people around them. Organizations are taking advantage of this feature as well, finding it to be an efficient and effective way to engage with customers and prospects when they are most open to being contacted — when they are in a certain location where that engagement makes sense.

Location-Based Services Have Their Benefits:

• Know who is where doing what: The point of searching social media data is to gain insight into your customers, prospects, industry and competition. Using location-based services to pinpoint where conversations are happening adds another layer of detail to your research.
• See what’s happening in your area of interest: Sometimes it’s not just what people are saying but where they are saying it. When you can search conversations in a certain location, you can identify trends and sentiment that may directly affect your business or strategy.
• Learn about your customers’ habits: Most people frequent the same locations repeatedly, giving an accurate account of their preferences, hobbies, interests and activities. This is the kind of information organizations can use to craft more targeted marketing and engagement to customers and prospects.

Snaptrends can pinpoint social media posts on a map if the user posted the information with his/her location-based services turned on

Snaptrends and Location-Based Services

Snaptrends can help you quickly identify the people and conversations in a certain area, helping you better understand your audience, know where they are, and effectively and proactively engage with them. When people use location-based services, you have access to more than just their social media activity, but their location and where that social media activity is happening. The key is using the right software to truly leverage this rich data.

Using Snaptrends technology, you can:

1. Find your target audience faster: When you can locate the conversations around your brand, product or keywords, you can identify the influencers, the prospects with the most opportunity and those who may respond favorably to your marketing efforts. Snaptrends lets you create a geofence over any user-specified area of any shape or size so you can easily follow posts and conversations in a geographic location.
2. Connect with your audience more effectively: The best time to engage with customers and prospects is when they are in your crosshairs. If you know your customer based on internal records and their social media activity, you can craft custom messages that are more likely to resonate with them as they are in your area, increasing your chance of bringing them in and servicing them in person.
3. Understand your customers more deeply: Social media offers plenty of personalized data but when you can combine that with their location and places they frequent, your profile immediately expands.

Using Snaptrends, marketers, researchers and virtually any organization in any industry can leverage location-based services to pinpoint conversations and influencers in any geographic location. Narrow your focus and concentrate on the data that matters most to you and your business.