Facebook Location Features Will Unlock More Potential for Businesses

Facebook Location Features Coming Soon

We’ve talked about multiple ways Facebook can help your business online, and that is not limited to online businesses, although selling through Facebook is becoming easier and easier thanks to application developers like Payvment.

Facebook is getting ready to start offering location-sharing features. It’s not certain exactly when this will happen, but reports have suggested that it will be before the month is over. Code within Facebook’s touchscreen interface has been discovered that will place a “Places” tab on Facebook user profiles.

“This will be the biggest thing to happen to local businesses since paid search,” says Ian Schafer at AdAge. “The ability to leverage frequent visits to their locations to passively and actively influence others to do the same, deliver special offers, or redirect local foot traffic at a moment’s notice can lead to a direct, measurable impact on in-store sales and word-of-mouth.”

If you thought Foursquare had some good opportunities for local businesses, consider that at last count (months ago at this point) Facebook had over 400 million users.

Location sharing is an increasingly growing trend, and is influencing how people access information. It’s also playing more of a role in search. With or without search, Facebook participating is a game changer.

Foursquare alone just surpassed 40 million check-ins. I could see Facebook surpassing that in a week.

Let’s not forget that Facebook is also sending brick and mortar businesses decals to promote their Facebook pages.

Facebook has been a good way for businesses to engage with their customers in the past, and now there are an increasing number of ways to do this. One app will let you add an actual Support tab to your Page.

Google Patent Has Implications for Small Businesses

Navigator App May Get Beneficial Feature Additions

We’ve been discussing the importance of being listed in Google Places a lot lately, particularly since the company changed the name of its Local Business Center to Google Places and added some new features a couple weeks ago.

How important is Google Places to your business? Comment here.

There are a number of resources available to assist you in doing so, and Google also launched mobile-optimized versions of Place Pages last week. Bill Slawski at SEO By the Sea points to another interesting nugget, and what he calls a new reason to be listed. It involves Google’s Navigation Android App.

First off, features of Google Navigation include:

- Search in plain English (as opposed to address)
- Traffic View
- Satellite View
- Car Dock Mode
- Search by voice
- Search along route
- Street View

Videos demonstrating each of these features, as well as a screenshot gallery, can be found here.

What Slawski points to is a patent filing from Google, which seems to hint at additional features that would use info from your contact lists, Calendars, and task lists. Slawski explains:

For instance, you set up a task list on your smart phone to visit a new client, and then pick up stamps and mail out letters, drop off drycleaning, and go grocery shopping. You’ve also added the new client’s address to your personal information system contact list and calendar.

You have your phone set up to use Google Navigator as a GPS system for your car. The navigation system shows you where your client’s office is located on the map you’re following, and also shows you icons for nearby post offices, drycleaning shops, and shopping centers.

There’s no guarantee that this will come to fruition, but as Slawski notes, it seems like a pretty reasonable addition to the app. Google Maps already has the nearby places feature.

If you’d like to take a look at the actual patent filing, you can do so here.

It’s something to keep in mind, but really being listed here is a no-brainer anyway. Just think about how many people use Google, and increasingly so from their mobile devices.

On a related note, Google expanded its Tag advertising feature into more cities.

Get the Most Out of Your Google Places Listing

Resources for Making Sure Your Listing is Up to Snuff

About a week ago, Google announced that it had changed the name of the Google Local Business Center to Google Places. Along with that, however, they announced a good deal of new features that businesses should be aware of. If you are not, they include: service areas, advertising with tags, business photo shoots, customized QR codes, and more favorite places. You can read about them more here.

How important is Google Places to your strategy? Discuss here.

Don’t stop there though. Google Places may be a vital part of your strategy for getting customers to your location. The company has put together some resources for businesses to learn more about Google Places so they can maximize the benefits.

“With a new name comes a fresh support experience,” says Google Places Senior Strategist Brianna Brekke. “The Google Places team wants to make sure that, as a business owner, your experience with Google Places is a good one, so we’ve taken some steps to expand and refine our support offerings.”

There is of course a help center where businesses can learn more about managing their listings and new features, as well as report problems. A newly revamped user guide and support channels are available here. Google has made it more interactive as well, adding a guided tou of the Place Page.

If you have questions or ideas for Google Places, you can check out the Google Moderator page, where you can not only contribute, but vote up the ideas from others that you like. On May 21, Google is actually going to review the top questions and record video responses, which they’ll post in the help center.

Forums have always been great venues for the exchange of ideas and for people to get help with their problems. You can discuss how to improve your Google Places listing and other related issues at the forum they’ve set up. Help here comes from volunteers deemed “top contributors” as well as Google employees.

Finally, Google has webinars you can sign up for where you can educate yourself about your Google Places listing. All of the resources can be found here. You may want to bookmark it.

Local businesses should consider how big a role Google plays in many people’s lives when it comes to finding information, including something as simple as looking up a local business. With mobile usage on the rise, it stands to reason that this will become even more the case.

That’s not to say that you should stop at Google. In fact, I believe search is getting more diversified as a result of mobile. People are looking to more places (via apps) to find the information they’re looking for. Google is still a huge factor, however, and that will remain for the foreseeable future. Android usage is on the rise, and that means a lot of convenient Google Voice searching, and one-button Google searches.