Last Friday, I had the pleasure of leading a brainstorm and learning session here at Zócalo about geotagging and location-based services. I figured as the current "mayor" of the agency on Foursquare, it was at least my mayoral duty!

Location-based services are mobile applications, utilities or games that use positioning technology to provide functions based on a user's geographical location. This can mean a variety of things to different users... from automatically detecting your bank's nearest ATM, to tracking the whereabouts of your friends as they bar-hop through the weekend.

These applications allow people to find services on the go, to broadcast their own location to their friends (or to the world... why not?), and to keep a record of where they've gone and when - like keeping a blog, but with latitude and longitude coordinates.

So what can businesses do with location-based services? Foursquare has some suggestions of their own, but, tools aside, here is how we break down the business benefits conceptually:

1. Become easier to find
Optimize location-based search to make sure people nearby know your business is around. Provide "anywhere" access to customer service by making your stores, branches and representatives dynamically visible on a map.

2. Target the right consumers
Analyze traffic and presence trends in order to plan your store openings and market expansion strategy. Watch where your brand advocates go in order to choose promotional event partners.

3. Engage with consumers
Create real-time promotional offers and loyalty incentives. Issue mobile calls-to-action, and obtain instant feedback/insights.

Want to read more? Check out these 7 ways marketers can use Foursquare, courtesy of MarketingProfs. Any other ideas?