Location-based services help you to reach more potential tourism visitors. Two services to add to your tool box are Twitter Places and Whrrl.
(See How do you make Foursquare relevant in small towns for an overview of how location-based services help you reach more potential visitors.)
Twitter Places
By using Twitter Places, users can tie their tweet to your location without having to use up any of their 140 character limit. I see this as useful for events at your location, or festivals that bring lots of visitors to town. Users can see other nearby tweets, or can link directly to your location from the tweet (not your website, but your location).
Because Twitter has a huge existing user base, this has the potential to reach more people than specialty location-based services.
Get started with these two help files from Twitter:
Hat tip to John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing for pointing out Places.
Whrrl
Whrrl is one of those services that is growing on me. It has a small following right now, but lots of potential. The focus is on telling stories about a location with pictures and short messages. It also features “societies” or interest groups like mountain biking or Mexican food. Those are the features that make it interesting for tourism.
Whrrl also has an excellent free program for business owners, that they call a Merchant program. Of course, you can offer specials to customers, but it also gives you information about those customers, such as how many times they have visited or whether they are a regular. That’s much more valuable than only knowing about the one most frequent visitor.
Hat tip to Scott Townsend for re-introducing me to Whrrl. Here’s a society he created to feature the buffalo statues around his hometown of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. That’s a great tourism use.
Other Services
Because there are so many location-based services, with more coming out all the time, we’ll continue to profile them here. We’ll focus on ones that are most promising for drawing visitors, as well as those that have features we can learn from.
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Are marijuana shops good or bad for small towns? - April 22, 2021
- Downtown is your town’s core: How to make your case - February 22, 2021
- Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
- In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
- Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
- How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
- The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
- Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
- Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
- Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
Becky, I don’t have a smart phone, have no need for one. Can I try 4square recommended places via my PC? I have never thought of trying or reading their instructions. :)
Miss Dazey, here’s how I use Foursquare without a smart phone. I have a data plan on my phone, and use the mobile site: m.foursquare.com. You can actually access that from any browser anywhere. Most of the location-based services allow you to use their website directly from any computer, without using their mobile app.