Social Mobile Marketing Tips for Local Business

Social media marketing has been transforming the way we communicate, shop, form and maintain relationships for years now. Mobile marketing has also been on the rise as more and more of us access the Internet from our mobile devices, and use them to help us to decide where to shop, eat, or stay. The convergence of these two concepts--social media and mobile has been facilitated by the ubiquitous mobile app. As the commercial says, "there's an app for that," is true about all of the most popular social media platforms. Now most people access Facebook from mobile devices than from their desktops or laptop computers. Your customers are on social media keeping up with friends and family, discovering hot new places to hang out, and sharing their likes and dislikes with all of the members of their networks. As a local business person, if you want to make the most of the convergence of social and mobile the first step is to set goals and then establish what strategies you will use to achieve those goals.

If you are not already taking advantage of the exposure and engagement you can get with social media marketing, choose which platform you want to get started with and create a profile. Decide on what you want to get out of the time and effort you'll be investing in creating a Twitter following. Set some goals and start Tweeting. The same applies to any of the social media platforms that you will be using. If you are going to be investing your time, know up front how your business will benefit from using the platform.

Here are some tips for using social mobile marketing to gain more exposure and attract more foot traffic to your business:

Foursquare
Using a free mobile app, this location based social media site makes a game of patronizing local businesses, events and venues by rewarding users with points and badges when they check in to specific locations. Foursquare users can visit their favorite coffee shop, check in when they arrive and see if there are any special deals that they can take advantage of, or if they have earned a new badge. Local merchants can offer special incentives to Foursquare users, such as awarding the most frequent visitor with the, 'Mayor' badge and any special discounts or prizes that come with that distinction.

Facebook Places
Local businesses can get visitors to their retail locations to check in on their Facebook Page. This increases traffic to your Facebook page, while rewarding frequent customers for visiting your store and checking in. When visitors check in you can offer them special discounts, or points towards a larger incentive.

Google+ Local
If you had your business listed on Google Places, it's now listed on Google+ Local. Your business' NAP information--Name, Address and Phone, are listed in a greatly enhanced listing that includes a map and a link to driving directions to your location. The integration of Zagat ratings along with individual user ratings helps to weed out those who try to leave bogus comments because they must be logged in to Google+ in order to give a rating.

Optimizing your Google+ Local listing is a cost effective way to get page one exposure on Google without the high cost of a PPC campaign.

Twitter
While your customers don't really check in on Twitter, they can mention your business using an @mention or a custom hash tag you've created. Depending on the nature of your business there are tons of Twitter promotions you can try including a Twitter party, rewarding the highest number of re-tweets, or @mentions from a single user.

All it takes is a little bit of creativity and you can learn to leverage social mobile marketing to grow your local business.

For more tips on social mobile marketing, and how you can use it to grow your local business visit http://googleupdatesexplained.com/ today.