Understanding Geotagging on Social Media Platforms for Local Impact

By Josie Mae Mitchell

Most forms of social media allow you to add a geotag, or location tag, to your posts. A geotag is simply a visible addition to your post that assigns it a location. By adding a geotag, you are telling your audience a place your post relates to. Often, geotags are the physical location the post was filmed or photographed. However, fictional or conceptual places can also be used. Geotagging is a perfect example of good location based marketing. By using geotags, you can appeal to a more local audience and boost engagement with your account. We at Marketing Choices love to utilize geotags. 

Marketing Choices is a team of marketing professionals dedicated to creating the perfect marketing plan for our clients. 

How Geotagging Boosts Local Engagement

Geotagging is one of the best ways to boost local engagement on social media. Local engagement can be particularly beneficial if you have a physical business location. Geotagging will help you reach more of your potential local audience, who can then be prompted to visit your business. 

Even if your business is online, tagging your neighborhood, city, or local landmarks can be beneficial. Many customers like to support people, and businesses, they can relate to. Through your geotags, your audience can see if your business is part of their local community. Whether your business is physical or online, geotagging can lead to local customer acquisition. 

Not every person will be inspired to directly support your business, but they might still engage with your posts. Local viewers may like, comment on, or otherwise react to your posts simply because of your geotag. Your audience might comment on the place you have tagged, including their own experiences with it. 

Additionally, geotagging can boost local visibility as a whole. Not only will it encourage viewers to interact, but it will gain you new viewers as well. Social media algorithms often show people content based on their interests and locations. Geotagging allows social media platforms to push your content to your local audience. Similarly, new viewers may find your account when searching for other content with the same location tag. 

Using Geotags with Other Location-Based Marketing Strategies

Geotags will work best if you pair them with other location-based marketing. Slapping a geotag on a post which is not localized might not be enough to encourage engagement. If your content or hashtags are completely disjointed from your geotag, your audience may be confused. To fully engage your local audience, you want every aspect of your posts to be somewhat targeted towards them. Having the location you geotag visible in your photo or video and including location-specific hashtags are good strategies. 

You do not need to change every aspect of your content to be strictly related to your local community. Isolating your non-local audience would not be beneficial. However, if you are prioritizing marketing to your local audience, you want your prioritization to be clear. 

One way to do this is to include local landmarks in your photos or videos. Additionally, you can use a variety of hashtags which include not only your specific geotag, but related locations as well. Try to use popular hashtags and include common keywords relating to your location in your posts too. 

For example, you could geotag a specific landmark, or your business, which is included in your post in some way. Then, you could tag the landmark, the neighborhood, the city, and the state as well through hashtags. This geo-targeting strategy will make your posts cohesive and interesting to your local audience. Your posts will be pushed even more towards your target audience, and they will be more likely to engage. 

More Location Tagging Tips                       

Choosing which locations to tag is important. To gain as much interaction as possible, tagging well-known locations can be best. That way, you make a reference the most local and non-local viewers will understand. Well-known landmarks or popular businesses are good options. 

It can be very beneficial to geotag local businesses you frequent. Again, it will make your account more relatable to local viewers and increase local visibility. Plus, promoting other local businesses can contribute to building a community online. You can foster a relationship of mutual support. If you boost local businesses, they may in turn boost yours. Both businesses will benefit, and so will your entire local community. 

You can also geotag your own business. Geotagging your own business reminds viewers of your location. Additionally, it can encourage patrons of your business to also tag it. As you gain a larger following, viewers may look through posts with your business geotagged. Having your own posts included amidst the collection can help them get seen. 

Lastly, keep track of the impact your geotags have. Experiment with a variety of geotags at first. See how your posts do with various specific geotags and different types of geotags in general. Experiment with the ways you relate your hashtags and content to your geotags. Over time, you will learn what works best for your content. 

Contact Marketing Choices to Learn More   

Contact us to learn more about optimizing your social media marketing strategy. From developing a marketing strategy to managing campaigns, Marketing Choices can handle your content marketing and online advertising needs. We are a team of smart, social, and creative people who deliver colorful solutions for our client’s Marketing Plan. To contact Marketing Choices and learn more about our services, you can email us here. We look forward to helping you through your journey!