I have been reading and hearing a lot about location based apps, namely Foursquare and Gowalla. I was even recently asked on Twitter which one I thought would be the winner for their user base. Foursquare seems to be aiming more for locations within a city, where Gowalla is targeting a larger market, the world with his “Passport” concept for his users. But then I wondered: Are rural businesses ready for location-based apps?

Living in a small town and having been involved in helping small businesses in a city without a traffic light get online has had its challenges over the years, but has also shown some major benefits. I’ve built websites that have helped small businesses in this no-stop-light town increase sales by up to 800%, with the addition of a well-designed website for their business. I also looked at the local Chamber of Commerce members in my county and other areas and noticed that only 10-15% of local businesses have a website. This is common with rural American businesses, they are sliding down the technology curve: they may not be ready for location-based apps with the benefits in sales and attracting customers from other areas, as many don’t even they have a website.

Many small towns and counties really have very few online web giveaways to share their services or events for the rest of the world to know about. Yes, there has been a shift in the digital divide of more bandwidth going out to rural America and the price of computers has come down a lot, but the prices of software and how to use these technical devices to help business is falling faster and faster. behind the technical curve.

I’ve been a small town tech person for some time now, over fifteen years, and I understand the views of small towns: the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality of business and the views of small towns. Cities tend to allow them to think local. Newspaper or tabloid advertising is the single best way to get people through your doors. The problem with this form of advertising is often the subscription or print numbers of these newspapers or tabloids, they don’t include how many of them are used to house train cubs or line the bottom of a bird cage and have never been read. But a website can advertise your business to a world economy. Small town businesses often don’t seem to understand this and overlook using a website to help attract more customers.

So the chance that places you might travel to in the countryside for your vacations or on your travels will have new locations via Foursquare and Gowalla might be slim. For users or subscribers of these apps, this is a haven for being the “Location Founder” and try to write a good recommendation for these rural business locations. But for businesses in Small Town America, this could be a future problem as they often won’t have a website or even a blog and will allow prospective customers to simply drive by on local US highways and highways with no idea of the possible services or goods that these small-town businesses could offer.

They’re saying that location-based apps are the new POP (point of purchase) display for businesses that use them. That 6% of viewers stop to buy something they see their friends using or that apps show them nearby. This is much larger than the old marketing hype of about 02% of direct mail advertising or newspaper advertising they claim to generate.

Adding that these services also allow a user to share their location via online social networks like Facebook and Twitter, it’s one of the best advertisements one could ask for: telling all your friends with a line that you like this. comes the golden service. But how much technology is actually used in rural America?

I have a good Facebook list and I know it is widely used in my city. High school alumni search is great for finding old classmates and friends around town and many are using it. But I also use Twitter, when I do a search using Twitterlocal for local users, I get ZERO: I am the Twitter Elite of my city with no competition. So my local places or events Twitter is only good to help bring some of my friends or followers to events in my city. This is common in small-town America, quickly falling behind the technical curve, with local places of business that don’t have a website or aren’t online to represent their town’s events.

I think these location-based apps, services, or games will be a promising major advertising venue for businesses of all kinds, but for now, it seems like there are a lot of people and places that need to log in or highlight places. For example; 34,000 places in New York City alone to eat and neither Foursquare nor Gowalla have that many places there, even with Foursquare located in New York. As of this writing, I searched for Chincoteague Island, which receives anywhere from 35 to 75,000 people during the Pony round, but only showed one post marked with Gowalla’s Chincoteague location and that was in the graveyard. I’m a big believer in these big innovations, and they’re a big plus within cities, but I really have to wonder if rural businesses and towns are ready for it.

I think this is a major untapped area for these two location-based apps, and definitely a great chance for website designers to also get a large number of customers who might want to take advantage of the added benefit of location-based advertising. the location through the use of Foursquare. and Gowalla. For now, it will be challenging to help rural businesses connect, and also add these services to businesses, tourist attractions, and events in your area. But without a website, adding location-based apps can be challenging.

With new mobile devices becoming the norm for today’s users, more and more people are using smartphones or iPhones for information and using location-based applications such as Foursquare.com and Gowalla.com. But is rural America ready for such big innovations? My answer is no; they are still falling behind the technical curve faster and faster.

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