Social Media Trends: Narrowing Down Location

While location is something of a social media trend, still only about 5% of users are employing location-based services.  It is still in business's best interests to try and incorporate this capacity in some way or another: the smaller the business, the more low hanging fruit can be gathered from the social media trend of and capacity to pinpoint locations.

And yet, another social media trend, slightly contradicting the buzz about location, is emerging, and in the form of curation and news feed customizing.  That is, social media users are starting to feel the discomfort of overexposure - no doubt no thanks to Facebook's privacy setting faux pas's - and are starting to rein in their usage.  Or, at least the subject matters about which they post.  Some of this may be due to yet another social media trend businesses are showing: that of having a social media policy.  But, a lot of it may also be because Big Brother is watching.  This is the way many users are starting to feel about the Internet and social media sites.  And so, influenced by their fears of bugged wires and hidden surveillance (or social media's equivalent), users are starting to become very selective about what they consider to be newsworthy, and who they consider to be a good source.

This is one reason why the already common (but often under-regarded) concept of niche markets is a valuable asset to businesses.  As users "specialize" in their social media engagement patterns, the better businesses will be ready with specific, custom-made marketing plans for these new niche groups that are already forming.  Overall social media usage certainly won't go down, of course, but the way it is used will radically change over the new few years.  As social media usage gets more narrowly focused, so will location-based services in order to accommodate.  This means that, instead of broad location engagement - like posting where you are tweeting from, perhaps - specific apps tailored to specific industries and interests will start popping up everywhere.

Shopkick, for example, kicks in as you walk into a store, and provides deals and information about that store only.  When a user enters a different store, Shopkick pulls up that new locations information, as well as any relevant sales, deals or coupons.  Foodspotting does the same thing for a foodie.  Xtify is a location-based service that helps businesses target their preferred demographics with mobile advertising.  These custom ads are triggered by a mobile phone user's location, which makes them very timely indeed.

What all this essentially means for businesses is a speedy, location-based marketing campaign that zeroes in on one or two target audiences.  Since one of the business-impacting social media trends is information selectivity and specialization, better businesses will be there (each for their own chosen target group), popping up at just the right time.

Photo Credit:Pradeep Kumar