5 Geo-Location Tools for Social Media Posts

What people across the country are saying about a local business isn’t nearly as important as what’s being said by potential customers down the block. This is one of the reasons why geo-location is playing such an important role in the world of social media marketing.

As social media usage takes off among SMBs — more than four-out-of-five businesses report having a presence on social media, according to a 2014 survey by Borrell Associates — geo-location is an increasingly relevant topic. When businesses listen primarily to the opinions of consumers in their direct marketing areas, they’re better able to streamline their listening strategies and optimize their social media marketing programs.

Here are five tools that businesses can use to geo-target their social media strategies.

1. Geofeedia: Geo-locate social media postings in real-time.
Geofeedia is a social media monitoring tool that organizations can use to search by location in real-time. Users enter an address or draw a custom perimeter on a digital map around the area they want to search, and Geofeedia pulls up all the content that’s been posted on social media by users within that area. Geofeedia covers a number of social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Businesses can see what consumers are talking about in their areas, and they can capitalize on those trends by using the appropriate hashtags or keywords to enter into the conversation. Geofeedia offers custom pricing based on the features that individual organizations need and the number of locations being monitored.

2. MarketMeSuite: Connect with local social media influencers.
A social media engagement platform for businesses, MarketMeSuite has set up a real-time search feature that allows users to geo-target their keyword and hashtag searches on Twitter and Facebook. Businesses can search for keywords, names, or specific accounts, and they can narrow the results they see by place-name or zip code. MarketMeSuite lets users target their searches between 5 and 1,000 miles, and results are continuously re-populated as new content rolls in. This means businesses can search for keywords related to their industry, posted by users in their towns. (For example, tweets mentioning “yoga,” posted by users in Denver.) MarketMeSuite ranges in price from $20 to $245 per month.

3. WeLink: Monitor the conversations happening on city streets.
WeLink lets its users drill down beyond cities and zip codes, to track the conversations happening between social media users on specific city streets. Businesses geo-fence their desired locations, and add any keywords or hashtags they’d like to track. WeLink then captures the chatter happening on networks like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, and Flickr. Businesses can pull out the most relevant content being posted by social influencers in their areas, and engage those users with targeted offers or incentives. WeLink says it uses WiFi and cellular data mining to gain more social media data than competing products.

4. Hootsuite: Filter social media searches by distance.
For businesses that are interested in engaging with potential customers who’ve indicated an interest in their specific industries or products, Hootsuite offers a geo-located search tool. Businesses search for specific terms being mentioned by users on Twitter, and they click on a crosshairs icon to find local search results within a 25 km radius of their current dashboard locations. Hootsuite says its geo-located filtering feature helps businesses save time and improves the effectiveness of their local outreach efforts. Hootsuite’s Pro plan for businesses starts at $9.99 per month.

5. Sysomos: Understand the topics local consumers are talking about.
Sysomos’ social media listening tools make it possible for businesses to dig into the digital content being posted by “influential” consumers in specific cities. Unlike competing solutions, Sysomos searches through the content being posted on blogs and forums, along with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Conversations can be filtered by demographic (like age and gender) and keywords. Businesses can find out which topics, products, or brands their customers are most interested in, and they can develop marketing campaigns or special offers based around these topics. Sysomos offers software licenses on a monthly subscription fee.

Know of other platforms for ge0-locating social media posts? Leave a description in the comments.

Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.