This Week in Social Local Media

On the blog this week, Mike B. covered the big news about Foursquare’s new app and introduced us to Lolay. Jed shared some thoughts about the deal between Bing and The Dealmap to aggregate deals while AT&T announced its own group buying platform as did The NY Times. Jed also answered some questions about social media data from last week’s webinar and I previewed DemandForce’s new Facebook product.

And we shouldn’t pass up pointing to Charles’ post on the survey from Suffolk University that suggests the most overlooked element of small-business marketing is the uniform. The survey found 80% of general building contractors believe their uniform was more effective than Internet advertising. Really, no fooling.

Here’s what we uncovered this week out there in the socialsphere:

What the $%@! Did Your Agency Just Tweet?

Chrysler had to fire its social media agency for tweeting smack about Detroit. No bail out for that tweeter.

Citibank Goes Long on Social
Citibank’s CEO spent a fair amount of his company’s annual report talking about how it needs to embrace social media (and make money), not necessarily in that order of course.

SCVNGR Combines Groupon and Foursquare
LevelUp, a new service from SCVNGR, teaches marketers how to combine game dynamics, social media and location-based services to turn customers into regulars, according to Erica Naone. SCVNGR, financed in part by Google Ventures, makes location-based services a game.

Telmetrics Tracks Calls for Yelp
Yelp will use Telmetrics to monitor and track the volume of calls from its more than 45 million monthly site visitors who write more than 16 million reviews. Jonathan Allen explains how Telmetrics will track the volume of phone calls driving consumers to Yelp-listed businesses.

A Watch for Checking In
Facebook check-ins got easy with inPluse, but the technology is anything but simple. The lead designer at inPulse, Eric Migicovsky, created an app allowing those wearing the watch to check in to Facebook Places with a few taps.

Facebook Places: Fill in the Blanks
In a clue as to the future of Facebook’s social and local media direction, the social network has been asking Places visitors to help improve content on pages by filling in the blanks. Jackie Cohen tells us what people see when they log in and the type of missing information.

Identifying Unobtrusive Social Platforms
Lauren Fisher points to the challenge for brands to serve up more relevant content across a variety of sites without becoming too intrusive to consumers. So, she provides insights on how to take advantage of emerging social trends, from personal recommendations to shopping and sharing purchases to social currency.

Buying Social Followers
It’s getting more difficult for small and medium-sized local businesses to stand above the crowd. So, more often owners have begun to think about buying social followers to help jump-start their community and tap into what Gregg Stewart calls it the “network effect of people online.” He outlines an experiment and provides the key takeaways.

Charitable Social Media Strategies
Nonprofit organizations typically rely on goodwill and lots of free help. Amy Silver provides tips on building a social media strategy to support local charities to spread the word and build support. The advice ranges from where to look for charitable individuals and organizations to social media resources and informative tools.

Now get out there this weekend and drive like a Detroiter.