Why Geolocation is Your Next Marketing Project.

Mark my words.

“In 2010…Location, and what you do with it, are key”

I know what you’re saying…. “What the hell are you talking about Dr. Ben?”

There is a huge movement among the web’s content developers to start attaching their content to the location that relates to that data. So what does this mean exactly?  It means that the days of writing a blog post and trying to figure out where the author are from are over. It means that you’ll no longer have to wonder where a video or photo was taken (if the author of the media forgets to tell you…it won’t matter anymore). The Geolocation of everything that gets posted to the web is about to be data that is an automatic rather than the exception.

There is alot of proof-of-concept out there right now. Whether it be FourSquare, with their giant location based game; Yelp with their amazing Review/Augmented Reality App, or Gowalla with their cut and dry location tagging, Location apps are on the rise.

So why is so much attention being put on location based apps?

First an example from a site we’re working on: (GeoBluffee) We use geodata to plot all of our picture data onto a map. When +Bluffee users go to this site, it helps them visualize the scope of what we’re doing with +Bluffee. It makes our users feel even more connected to what we’re doing. They can see the photo’s from the party the night before plotted on a map that shows how far away we were from their house (silly but powerful).

The pure and simple fact is that this is being driven by the rise of some of the newer cellphone technologies. The majority of Internet usage is about to move from a Laptop/Desktop world to a All-in-One Cellphone World. Internet users are about to become a whole lot more mobile (and companies like Google love that) With the rise of the Iphone and Droid…this almost seems inevitable. Location data is finally getting its time in the spotlight.

EXAMPLE: You type in Coffeeshops in your mobile browser and it automatically locates any Coffeeshop within a 2 mile radius.

That’s pretty cool! But your also going to be able to see every tweet, every review, and every pic/video from and about that location. (Good and Bad)

In the next few years, everything you do will have a location tied to it…..whether it be a twitter tweet, a facebook update, or a photo that you just took. That’s all well and good for new data, but what do we do in terms of organizing data that doesn’t have location data tied to it. An interesting startup that solves this problem (as well as some very interesting other geolocation issues) is a startup called Groundmap.

I could spend a good amount of time trying to explain what Groundmap does…but you really need to sign up for their beta and see for yourself. Groundmap really has me thinking about the possibilites. My Idea for Groundmap….Index Everything and tie it to a location and then give users the ability to embed that data all over the web. (Lets say that I wanted to embed my office’s Groundmap feed into a facebook update…. Now that’s sharing!)

So why in the heck should your business care about GeoTagging?

Look at it this way… If people can find you….and everything that your other customers have said…in one place (a page that list all the internet chatter about you), then they can make a really good decision whether or not they want to do business with you before they ever set foot through your door or call you on the phone.

Geolocation is the next step for social networking…Its “word of mouth” taken to the next level.

Like it or not. Your business will become more findable and therefore more transparent in the next few years. Those that learn how this works and embrace the technology will be able to take advantage of the publicity (and get in front of any negativity that comes their way). Those that take it as an afterthought better hope they don’t have much competition in their field.

Location is about to be King Again… Are you ready?

(So the next post we do on this….will be how to do Geo right!……Stay tuned)

Tags: foursquare, geolocation, geotagging, gowalla, groundmap