Global or local, don't ignore the social

15/04/10 posted by Liz Niland

There’s been plenty of Twitter-talk doing the rounds this week, mostly surrounding Promoted Tweets, as we noted yesterday. Flying slightly lower on the radar, but having no less significance to dedicated tweeters, is the launch of another feature, Points of Interest. As beneficial to business as Promoted Tweets may soon be, Points of Interest will allow users to “click on a place name (or a location tag, if one exists) in a tweet and see that place on a map.” (via Webmonkey) As well as seeing the mapped locale to which the tweet refers, users will also be able to see what others are saying about that place.

Given the rise and rise of the mobile web, it’s not surprising location is, as predicted, shaping up to be a major social media feature of 2010. If your business is running a bit behind the social media times simply because you can’t seem to find the evidence to justify the hassle, Mashable are reporting this week that, on average, a Facebook fan is worth $3.60. Considering it would take a work experience kid no more than the blink of an eyelid to set up a fan page for your business, what’s stopping you from winning Facebook friends and influencing scores of people? Even the maintenance of your social pages requires less than five minutes work a day - interact with a fan or two, post a link to your latest blog and sign off until tomorrow.

Not only will this assist with your search engine optimisation efforts and generating traffic to your site, it also gives a face to your company that prospective clients would otherwise not see. Unlike the early days of Twitter, Facebook and others, today there are millions of people across the world trawling the internet for services just like yours. And even if you provide goods or services to an area no more than 20 kilometres beyond your front door, social media is still a tool best used rather than ignored. Particularly now, with more location-based marketing tools popping up than ever before, you can narrow your efforts to a particular area and measure their effectiveness with increasing ease.

Well-maintained and correctly executed search engine optimisation and marketing strategies are incredibly beneficial to any online business. You can have the most dazzling web design and mind-blowing web development but, if no one knows who or where you are, what is the point?