When talking about the online marketing trends for 2010, most marketers have predicted location trends will be the future! Location-based Internet marketing is of great importance both for your search engine optimisation and social media marketing strategy.

Using location-based Internet marketing in search engine marketing strategy has become very important for businesses these days. Location-based navigation is greatly used among search engines and mobile device makers. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing are already using location features as to help you narrow down the results to the searcher’s country. They are looking to localize Web searching as to make it more relevant for the searcher and draw more regional advertising. It is also predicted that GIS Latitude and Longitude coordinates within web sites will soon become an absolute necessity for everyone performing e-commerce via the Internet.

Location-based Internet marketing is becoming increasingly important also for your social media marketing strategy! Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Yelp. WordPress. YouTube. Foursquare. Gowalla. Myspace. Constant Contact. They are all content-generating platforms that focus to some extent on location features. Facebook allows you to be part of a location-based networked (e.g. London, New York) and to search people based on their location. LinkedIn also allows you to specify your location as to make it possible for professionals from the same region to search you. The location feature is available for most social networks and they are all working as to improve it!

Two of the social networks which have taken their location-based feature to a new level, are Twitter and Foursquare. At the very beginning of 2010 Twitter introduced a location trend feature that allows users to follow local trending topics on Twitter. It is a great way to find out what people are talking about around the world and has got a great feedback from users.

Another social network that specialises on the use of location is Foursquare. Identified by Mashable as ‘the future Twitter’, Foursquare is a location-based service based on your Twitter network with an added layer of social game play.

Importance of Foursquare for Businesses:

* Use it to explore your neighbourhood and then reward people for doing so. It combines their friend-finder and social city guide elements.
* Use it as a game mechanics – users can earn points, win mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favourites.

Location-based Internet marketing is one of the hottest trends at the moment and can be used very effectively by both small and larger businesses. When designing your social media marketing strategy and search engine marketing strategy, this new feature should be included. Please share with us your experience with location-based Internet marketing! We look forward to reading your opinions!

Creating systems for your business can be a real life saver in the long run. Even better when you have a system or procedure to follow because you do not have to remember all the steps, you wrote them down. I was recently challenged as to how I was going to provide written social marketing information to participants in a teleseminar. I personally love it when teachers and mentors provide a written guide to an audio program.

I learn better when there is also written material to follow along, Do You? It has something to do with the fact that we are receiving the information using two different senses; listening and reading.

Whether it be a live teaching or an audio CD I have found that my customers and clients learn more and retain the knowledge even better. I had been stressing about something this week and low and behold I found it in my notes, if only I had been smart enough to go to the notes first, because I had written it down.

Three benefits of having written procedures in place for your social media marketing…

1) You don’t have to remember how to do everything. I am sure you will agree that it is very frustrating to go and do something you have not done in a while and not remember all the steps. You know you did this before you simply cannot remember all the details. From that frustrating experience I decided to create index cards on how to do specific actions. Outline the steps and even in some cases what buttons to push and in what order.

2) Reduce your own stress. When you have things written down and stored away in a safe place you don’t have to remember! This little habit all by itself can really reduce the stress. You know you have to get something done, you haven’t done it for a while but you’re not concerned about it because you know that the directions are within your easy grasp. One of the more frustrating things about social media is that there is so much to learn and sometimes remembering it all is not easy.

3) You can easily outsource the task to someone else. When you are ready to have other people take care of your social media marketing you have great directions all ready to go. One of the biggest challenges with outsourcing is the initial training period and with your “notes to self” you are already half way there. OR you can take all of your notes and create an eBook or a workbook.

Internet marketing means creating websites for your business on the net. As a newbie, the first question that comes to your mind is, “What is a website?” Well, a website is simply the pages of information about your business seen in the web which are enhanced by the use of the software.

Websites require time, money and effort to be ready for launching. But, this does not involve large sum of money as it is not as expensive as having a server. You do not have to be internet savvy to be able to get a site. You just need to learn and know the following as a beginner:

Set up hosting and obtain a domain name – Hosting is making your business visible to the open world through the World Wide Web. This is putting all of your files on the web. All you have to do is subscribe for a space on a hosting company’s server for a very affordable cost per year.

Set up Content Management System – CMS enables one to have a blog even without having information on editing the programs in the computer such as HTML, PHP and etc. CMS has a series of different functions but for a start you can simply create a simple informational site which can be revised later.

Create a unique format for your site- At this point, you already have a live website. Usually when you have this CMS installed, you get a website that has one format so changing the theme of the site will be the next thing to do.

Put in content to your site – This is writing more information to the pages of your website through CMS.

These are just basic procedures to get you to a website or to internet marketing. If you want to have a more advanced website, you will have to deal with designers and programmers online who are developing more sophisticated programs.