This week Forrester released a study that encouraged marketers to steer clear of location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Loopt. Their reasoning? That only 4 percent of online adults use these applications. Of this audience, 80 percent are male and 70 percent are college grads between the ages of 19-35. The study suggests marketers looking to reach a wide audience should wait until the applications reach more of the mass population before investing resources.

I always advise our clients to think about the strategy behind their involvement in a social network. Is it where their audience is? Where are they already being talked about? Do they have the time to devote to the application? Location-based social networks are no different. Do they currently make sense for say, a professional service client? For the most part, at this time they do not. However, they are a heck of a great deal for hospitality and retail clients. As I mentioned in an earlier post about Twitter Places, location-based social networks can be a free way to distribute offers to a targeted audience as well as reward your loyal customers.

As with all social media networks, it doesn’t make sense to participate just because there is a lot of buzz. At the same time a low, but growing adoption rate isn’t a reason not to. Brands who took a small risk and were early adopters of tools such as Facebook and Twitter find themselves leading the pack in innovative communication while other brands struggle to play catch-up. Where there is risk there is opportunity. I’m willing to take a risk and say there is opportunity for location-based social networks.

-Lacy Bronson