Companies covered in the report include:

• Buddy Media
• Context Optional
• Hearsay
• Involver
• North Social
• Postling
• Sprout Social
• Votigo
• Vitrue
• Wildfire

While researching the space, I was particularly struck by those companies that are riding on the back of the Facebook platform and building a “platform within the platform.” While the fragmented nature of this beast means there will be opportunity for numerous service providers, some of the companies we have profiled are rapidly building impressive beachheads, which should serve them well in the ongoing battle for digital marketing budgets.

Social Local Media Advisory clients can access the report here. And please let Jed and me know what you think.

The post ‘The Social Media Management Evolution’ Report appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Jed told us about Travidia’s Find-n-Save app, which helps publishers promote local social deals.

Here’s what we uncovered this week in socialsphere:

How to Get Started With Social Media
Where do I start? That’s the most asked question by marketers at small-and-mid-size businesses when first considering creating social media campaigns in Facebook, Twitter and similar social sites, according to Anne Field. So, she gets advice from three experts: Rhea Drysdale, Lee Odden and Wendy King.

Are You a Q&A Expert?
Looking for a way to build a social presence on Q&A sites? Aliza Sherman steps through ways to use Quora, Focus and Namesake to improve your professional reputation and showcase your expertise. She also provides a few extra tips such as incorporate the site into content production, and become a true experts in one, not many things.

Tips on Managing Social vs. Search Promotions
Getting the most out of Facebook and Twitter promotions might seem like an art, but it’s really a well-thought-out science backed by a bunch of numbers and stats. Define goals, set metrics, evaluate and adjust as often as necessary, according to Alanna Francis.

LivingSocial in the Money
Since LivingSocial secured $400 million from several investors, the company now is reportedly worth more than $3 billion. It plans to use the funding to close the gap in the daily deal market with Groupon. Evelyn Rusli tells us about LivingSocial Instant, a mobile app delivering discounts to users on the go. It’s only available in the Washington, D.C., area.

Differences Between Social and Search
David Sasson serves up interesting tidbits on bounce rates when someone finds the site via social media compared with search. He also tells us how to write better headlines, make content visual, and hold on to readers through awesome content.

Un-silo Local, Social, Mobile
Gregg Stewart warns against placing in silos local, social and mobile marketing efforts. Beginning with a local business listing, Stewart provides recommendations for success aimed at small and medium-sized businesses.

Attracting Face Time on Facebook
Buddy Media released a report providing tips on best day of the week or the best time of day to post to your brand’s Facebook page. Marc Babej describes some tips such as writing shorter than 80 characters will produce better results than longer posts.

Buy on Facebook; Pick Up in Store
Retail stores that sell goods on Facebook aren’t new, but Gamestop this week launched a buy on Facebook and pick up in store option at one of the company’s more than 6,660 stores. The feature allows consumers to pre-order games.

What I Really Meant to Tweet
The intellectual types know mining for sentiment and opinion, or reading between tweets on Twitter, takes a sophisticated software program similar to the one created by Rohini Srihari at the University of Buffalo. Christopher Joyce tells us Srihari created the app because “history is best told not by what the Napoleans say, but by the foot soldiers, or, in this case, the tweeters.” Interesting read.

This weekend let’s hope this #shutdown is not a trending topic.

The post This Week in Social Local Media appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

While much has been made of how social media is changing consumer behavior, advertisers are struggling to keep up with and make sense of this shiny new toy. Matthew Goldman is the executive director of product management for subscription ad products at ATT Interactive (parent of YellowPages.com). Goldman is ATTi’s point man on social strategies for its advertisers.

What Products Are You Responsible For?
I am responsible for Consumer & Advertiser Products including IYP products, YP 360, websites, mobile websites and social media products.

How Does ATTi Think About Social Media Regarding Its Advertisers?
Social needs to be interwoven into everything. Three years ago there was hardly any focus on social within the organization, and perhaps in the industry. Now it’s everywhere and we’ve bought into that.

We are providing the basics. For example, when we build a website for an advertiser it will have FB like button and Twitter feeds. If you add video there are video sharing tools and virtual tours. In addition you can add a Facebook Fan page to your site.

What Are You Doing for Reputation Monitoring?
In August 2010 we rolled out our Online Presence Manager, which allows a business to review its reviews from a variety of review sites. We are private labeling Marchex’s platform and integrating it with ATT’s single sign-on. Any ATT customer who buys any ad product, including a bold listing in the book, is provided with ability to sign up for a free/lite version. The lite version limits the number of trends you can track and provides a monthly email summary of activity. For businesses that don’t get a lot of reviews, this is a good way to start. The paid version is about $30/month and includes unlimited history and alerts and competitor comparison view, so you can see how the guy across the street is doing. We are seeing pretty strong take rates and now have over 10,000 customers, many of which are paid.

ATTi’s Online Presence Manager Reviews Dashboard

ATTi’s OPM Competitor Dashboard

Once Advertisers Sign Up for Reputation Monitoring, Do They Actually Use the Service?
We are seeing double-digit usage from those who sign up. There are basically two types of behaviors. The plumber who doesn’t get new reviews every day comes in and bounces out because they are not seeing any new data.

But once an advertiser is engaged in the service we are seeing them spend several minutes per visit and coming in more than one time per month. That said, the email reports allow the advertiser to engage with the data without actually using the site. When offered the email reporting, we usually get a good take rate.

One indicator of success is that our YouTube video on how to use the service has almost 10,000 views.

Does the Service Bring In a Lot of New Business?
The service is a good door opener, but for now it’s a marketing service vs. a lead generator. One of the benefits is that it unearths less visible sources of reviews. Not every review happens on Yelp after all. It’s a time-saver for businesses.

What’s the Future of Rep Monitoring Tools?
Our goal is to make it more about meaningful insight. I want them to log in and know what the best thing on their menu is or which employee needs more customer sensitivity training. When we see a change in review behavior we can ask the business if they made any changes on a certain date so they can correlate the two events.

As far as the future goes, we think about things like can we create a wizard that helps you figure out how to make a status update that’s relevant and then provide keys to “social SEO.”

When we amass this kind of data we can educate the business about how to use the data to market themselves.

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On the blog we also covered Closely’s debut of Social Select, a way for merchants to share deals with their best customers that they can share with others. And we uncovered a post by Ross Mayfield, who strikes a chord with insights and anecdotes about how social engagement empowers organizations.

Here’s what we uncovered this week in socialsphere:

Facebook Allows SMBs to Convert Profiles Into Pages
For those SMBs that didn’t really get the difference between a FB Profile and a FB Page this announcement by Facebook might help them figure it out and create a stronger Facebook Page offering.

How To Target the Affluent on Facebook
Marketers want to get ads in front of the affluent, but there’s no way to target job titles, incomes, or property values on Facebook unless you think outside the box, explains Merry Morud. She demonstrates Facebook’s new broad-category targeting, and points to geotargeting as a marketer’s best friend.

Kawasaki’s Secret Social Marketing Strategy
Guy Kawasaki attributes, in part, marketing techniques for getting his latest book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions” on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists within a week. Kawasaki steps through 12 things he did to launch the book.

How to Leverage Missed Opportunities
Creating a connection between offers, location and value takes skill. Lori Luechtefeld demonstrates how it’s done through what she calls “missed opportunities” in location-based services. She talks with Alistair Goodman is CEO of Placecast to get answers.

Reaching Customers Through Social Media
While there is an abundance of ways to invest in social media, Bruno Aziza believes his methods can help marketers do it wisely. Start by forming a solid customer service strategy and don’t implement solutions, but rather solve problems.

Six Q&A Location-Based Sites
Sarah Kessler tells us about six new location-based Q&A services that send questions about places to locals likely to have the answers. Some provide recommendations. It seems as if the sites took a cue from Ask.com’s latest business model, but these have an interesting twist.

Twittering for SEO Value
Lisa Barone gives us five ways marketers can get more from local, social media. She explains how companies continue to invest less in local directories and more in websites and social media, according to stats Barone shared in a prior blog. Search engine optimization (SEO) and Twitter are two main topics covered in the post.

Sporting the Check-Ins
New features in GetGlue let users not only to check in to tell friends about a favorite book or television show, but also when landing at a location such as a bar. And since watching sports is a social event, David Chartier tells us the app has finally built in custom support for teams, leagues and networks. Wonder if he’s a sports fan.

A Car That Connects to Facebook and Twitter
Aston Martin and Mobiado teamed up to develop a concept phone and I couldn’t help but tell you about it. The phone acts as the key to the Aston by unlocking the doors and connecting to the car’s internal display system. GPS tracking provides a social media experience through Foursquare and cameras in the car automatically update Facebook and Twitter with pictures, according to Shahzad Sheikh.

This weekend ponder if you are playing it too safe in social. Remember what happened to Thia:

The post This Week in Social Local Media appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Meet +1: Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button – Danny Sullivan

Google did say that if someone does a +1 on a web page, then that will show up to others who find that page in search results. That’s going to be a huge bribe, in my view, for getting wide adoption of these buttons on web sites.

Now Google Social Search will gain +1 recommendations, content that people are explicitly recommending using Google’s +1 buttons. Google Social Search remains, but in addition to the first two items below, it now gains a third feature:

Show content created by those in your social network
Show content shared by those in your social network
Show content recommended by those in your Google +1 network
Social search signals, including the new +1 recommendations, will also continue to influence the first two things below plus power the new, third option:

Influence the ranking of results, causing you to see things others might not, based on your social connections
Influence the look of results, showing names of those in your social network who created, shared or now recommend a link
Influence the look of results, showing an aggregate number of +1s from all people, not just your social network, for some links

What’s +1 mean for Facebook? A very good chance that Facebook’s seeming monopoly on how people “like” pages will be over.

Google’s Answer to Facebook Likes: +1 – Om Malik

For the longest time, Google has resisted the idea of human interference in its flagship offering: search (and advertising.) Lately, thanks to the fast growing volume of information and rising importance of social validation, the search giant is changing its tune and is reluctantly embracing humans.

Google’s +1 A Potential Boon To Paid Search Marketers – Greg Sterling

According to Christian Oestlien, Google’s Group Product Manager for Ads, +1 will appear on all Google search ads by default.

And if advertisers use organic URLs in their ads that have already been +1’d, they also will show up in the ads. And according to Greg:

Pluses will be counted as one of the signals that Google eventually uses to determine organic rankings.

Sure, I Could Join a Google-Based Social Network, but Why? – Mathew Ingram

everything the company does is still seen through the lens of search, which is why it has so much trouble understanding how social features work (see Buzz) and sees social as something that can be “bolted on” to its existing services.

On one hand I am concerned that the propagation of +1s onto the SERPs is going to clutter the results display, making it potentially more confusing. On the other hand, I see the benefit of getting recommended results in the SERPs as long as they are not gamed…too much.

More thoughts to come after we’ve seen some +1’s out in the wild.

The post Is Google’s New Social Service a +1? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Some excerpts to whet your appetite:

Greg Oxton from the Consortium for Service Innovation (CSI) shared with me a model for understanding how engaged enterprises really are:

• 1% of customer conversations are assimilated as organizational knowledge
• 9% of customer conversations touch the organization, but no learning occurs
• 90% of customer conversations never touch the organization

But before you leap into reinventing your processes for transformative value, step back. You can’t collaborate with your customers before you learn to collaborate with your employees. In the spectrum of risk taking, its best to deploy from the inside-out.

In larger organizations such as Intel, if you measure it, you will find people spending a day a week searching for people and information. This isn’t just a search problem, its a sharing problem.

Have you ever asked a question on Twitter? Odds are, you got a pretty decent answer if you have a decent sized network. You probably got a couple of answers, mostly from people you know, with real social context. They may have informed a decision, but the amazing thing is how you did it. You didn’t interrupt anyone. You didn’t occupational spam a mailing list, run down your buddy list or worse, call a meeting. You didn’t demand real time interaction from someone, or have them spend 15 minutes cognitively recovering back to the task at hand (the interruption tax). But with Twitter, and enterprise microblogging, it is a reply-optional medium that benefits from brevity. The benefits of being able to get answers from people without substantially decreasing productivity is hard to measure, but should be clear.

We can grow the 1% of conversations about a brand that a company learns from, most likely to 10%, and do so with systems as the barrier, with less time looking for people and information and with more people contributing informing your decisions faster. This 10% should be your goal this year, and you should start working on the other 90% by listening first.

Learning is perhaps the most important step in these times. You need to sense changes in this turbulent environment, make sense of these changes, and how you should adapt. Having conversations about the conversations around your brand.

When I first started blogging, Ross’ posts were an important influence towards how I engaged my readers.  If you are interested in how social media is changing our businesses and the world around us, I recommend you add him to your reading list.

The post The Social CRM Iceberg appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

I did some live blogging at ILM East when Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz spoke about the ticket-selling service riding social media to about $500 million in sales this year.

We also gave details on ILM East panels from hyperlocal to Hotpot to mobile group-buying from Monster Offers.

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

What We Know That You Should Know Too
Lisa Barone gets with Gregg Stewart, Dilip Venkatachari, Ryan Fritzky and Andrew Lovasz to discuss local and social. She packs the post full of stats and useful tidbits. The group shares numbers and insights such as nearly half of people searching on social networks select a local business based on consumer ratings and reviews.

Social Media Is Not a Fad
Former Yellow Pages exec Rich Hargrave points us to a dramatic video to get you all hyped up about social media.

Twitter Tests Geo-targeting
Geotargeting has been a critical piece missing from Twitter’s Promoted Tweets ad feature, but as expected it appears the social site has finally begun testing the service with a few advertisers. Earlier this year the company said it would start offering geotargeted ads by midyear.

Facebook Gives Answers
Facebook relaunched Questions that lets members pose questions and suggest several answers to friends, as well as friends of friends. Friends check a box to pick their favorite answer, and answers with the most votes move to the top of the list. Multiple choice options end up working like a poll more than a Q&A service.

Former Apple Exec Launches Color
The serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen, who sold his last company to Apple in 2009, is launching a cellphone-based social local network, Color, to challenge Facebook. Yinka Adegoke tell us the service available as an iPhone and an Android app lets people share photos and videos. The free service will generate revenues through location-based services and advertising.

Boosting Business on Foursquare
Small-business owners are finding ways to tap social networks. Diana Ransom serves up a guide for small businesses wanting to build mobile marketing campaigns on Foursquare. She also throws in some examples of companies that had success, and ways to keep the conversation going once it gets started.

Groupon Moves Into Mobile
“I’m hungry” or “I’m bored” are the two buttons users will see when they open a Groupon mobile app, according to Priti Ambani. Groupon plans to launch a mobile tool in April it hopes will change the way people eat, shop and play. I bet it will have location-based services built into the application as an opt-in feature.

Local Social Media Strategies
Anne Hill reveals five effective social media tactics not widely adopted. She believes it will “outshine” strategies from competitors focusing on campaigns in Facebook or LinkedIn. Marketers can find the secret to accomplishing this task in Google Places, Quora and Meetup.

Homeland Security Taps Social Media
Here’s a new twist on the use of local, social communities. The Department of Homeland Security has launched a virtual social media working group to connect with first responders. The First Responder Communities of Practice launched the Virtual Social Media Working Group (VSMWG) to provide recommendations on the safe use of the medium during and after emergencies.

How to Butcher a Group Buying Promotion
I discovered some customer review blowback when a group buying promotion turned into a negative experience for The Butchers on Yonge Street.

Update On Charlie Sheen’s Summer Intern
And because the demand for #Tigerblood never stops … Agencies want to create social media divisions. Or at least hire a social media expert. Charlie Sheen is no different. Mike Castro, 23, social media director for KFNS is one of 250 finalists applying for Sheen’s summer social media intern. There were 75,000 applicants for the eight-week paid gig in L.A. Deb Peterson tells us why Castro’s latest interview round just got serious.

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One thing I have noticed about deal hunters — they are cranky and vocal. And one thing I have noticed about the daily deals space — it has created a huge opportunity for services to help SMBs navigate these programs successfully.

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Kevin Hartz, the CEO and founder of Eventbrite, is speaking on how the ticket-selling service is riding social media to about $500,000,000 in ticket sales this year.

Hartz starts with a slide that shows how as algorithmic search matures, social discovery is growing rapidly. Eventbrite shows a similar trajectory. When it publishes an event it starts as an SEO play with the event ranking well in local search queries. But once people start buying tickets the social sharing mechanisms embedded in Eventbrite create a powerful accelerator.

Once these social tools were introduced Facebook became the #1 traffic driver with Twitter (#3) and LinkedIn (#5) also contributing.

Some metrics according to Hartz:

There is 10x social sharing post-purchase vs. pre-purchase. People seem to have a sense of excitement once they make a ticket purchase that they want to talk about.

For music and concerts Eventbrite generates $12 in sales per share.

A Facebook share drives more sales than a Twitter post across all segments. Local proximity of friends is the prevailing thesis here.

Eventbrite has close to 30 employees doing customer service and 50 employees on product and engineering. Eventbrite has a freemium model where it hosts events/tickets sales for customers. It only gets paid for each ticket sold.

More interesting data at the Eventbrite blog.

The post Eventbrite — Selling $12 in Tickets per Social Media Share #ILMEast appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Social dominated much of the news this week. I looked at how Google slowly continues to reveal its social search strategy, while Jed summarized Google’s Marissa Mayer’s keynote at South By Southwest (SXSE), the focus on Hotpot.

Jed wrapped up our continuous coverage of SXSW from the check-ins to the daily deals and how Twitter continues to save broadcast TV. (What a week.) Wait, there’s more. Mike told us about the mobile and social scene at ILM East, and Peter dealt us the details on Yellowbook’s Pat Marshall.

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

Nobody Ever Gets Fired for Hiring Gilbert Gottfried
What happens when word come across on Twitter or Facebook as “tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive”? Aflac and Chrysler Group struggled to answer that question this week, according to Stuart Elliott. He tells us one expert calls it the “amplified effect” of social media and provides insight on what to do if it happens to you.

How to Inspire Your Audience to Share
Pam Moore has a nice piece on 10 Tips to Inspire Your Audience to Take Action in Social Media.

Social Media Invigorates Consumer Advocacy
Jeremy Heimans of Purpose.com talks about how to use social media tools to shift the balance of marketing power away from consumer consumption toward consumer advocacy and activism.

Facebook Dishes Local Deals
Facebook expanded its local deals service launched in November into five test markets — Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco — according to Ian Paul. The deals will come from Facebook, as well as local deal sites like Gilt City, PopSugar City, Tippr and Zoni.

How SMBs Can Grow Their Twitter Followers
Sam Murray provides some nice actionable advice on how to local businesses can use Twitter.

Ever Wonder Why Nobody Likes You?
Matt McGee recommends you take a good look in the mirror and examine Why Fans Stop Liking You & Following You on Facebook & Twitter.

Gowalla: Direct Sales or Awareness
Christopher Heine caught up with Gowalla Business Development Director Andy Ellwood at South By Southwest to get an update on services. In the video, Ellwood talks about whether geosocial for brands should be used as a direct sales or brand awareness tool.

Groupon Shops IPO, Value $25 Billion?
Bloomberg’s Douglas MacMilan reports Groupon has held talks about an initial public offering with banks, shopping around for as much as $25 billion. Is the tech-related advertising industry headed for a big fat bubble?

Local News Goes Mobile
Forty-seven percent of U.S. adults get at least some local news and information on their phone or tablet, according to research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Those who access information on their phone say they have a bigger impact on their community, writes Amy Gahran. She gives the breakdown of the type of news and information accessed via mobile phones.

“Observe everything I do and do the opposite”

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