Not sure it's the right audience, but this tweet by the Red Cross is now the top tweet for #TigerBlood. I give them a Type A for creative use of current events to increase awareness. Can your business ride @CharlieSheen…
One of the slides we presented at last week’s Social Local webinar was from my Local Reviews Ecosystem post. We sped through it and given the brouhaha that has been bubbling up between Google and reviews sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor over the past year, I thought it might be of interest to repost it.
As I mentioned in the earlier post, in my survey of 20 SMB SEM consultants about their top social media client priorities for 2011, review generation and review management was by far the highest on the to-do list.
As you can see from the infographic, the ecosystem is complex, just like the entire local search ecosystem is complex — David Mihm’s chart on how local search services are connected deserves to be included in a Where’s Waldo book. But within that complexity lie amazing green fields of opportunity for innovation. Some thoughts on how you might approach the sector:
As promised, over the next few days, we will address your questions from last week's Social Local Media launch webinar. Among the topics we'll tackle: how traditional media can effectively participate, the growing role of social in search, the validity…
On last week's Social Local Media launch webinar, we emphasized that to be socially engaging, local businesses and media companies alike must be both socially present and active. In other words, just stepping out on a platform and claiming a…
This week we officially launched the new Social Local Media Continuous Advisory Service (SLM CAS for you acronym junkies). Thanks to the hundreds of you who joined our kick-off webinar yesterday. One of the topics we covered in the webinar…
Thanks to the 600+ who registered for yesterday's webinar on the launch of BIA/Kelsey's Social Local Media advisory service. And even bigger props for the nearly 50 questions and comments that poured in. Our pledge to you: We will address them…
We're discussing it on the Social Local Webinar today and Will Scott sent me this presentation on the subject Likes to Leads - Actionable Social Media Analytics View more presentations from Search Influence
BIA/Kelsey's newest advisory service - Social Local Media - launched yesterday, and on today's webinar, Neal Polachek, Andrew Shotland and I will connect with you to learn about your challenges, successes and needs in this vast and evolving ecosystem. Among the questions…
My SearchEngineLand post on 9 Ways To Start a New Local Business Using Facebook, Twitter, Groupon & Google lays out how a new local business could effectively launch with a minimal marketing budget. From the post: A group-buying promotion can…
As I mentioned in my coverage of the C3 conference, social media and customer service seem to be made for each other. But the speed of interaction seems to be both a blessing and a curse. Case in point, during the conference I tweeted the following about how Best Buy and GiffGaff were considered to be models of how brands interact with customers via Twitter:
Within seconds a rep from Best Buy tweeted this response:
I think this whole social local thing is starting to catch on. This week we announced our upcoming webinar on Social Local Media and we’ve already got hundreds of sign-ups. The big news in my opinion was Google’s upgrade to its social search product, which may be a small step on the search giant’s way to competing with Facebook. And speaking of Facebook, we also surfaced some interesting examples of Facebook Pages from players like LivingSocial to the extremely sociable Ms. Britney Spears. Jed broke down adoption of social mediaa by industry and Peter the K. got all gooey about a local chocolatier’s Groupon promotion for Valentine’s Day.
Here’s what else we uncovered this week in socialsphere:
How Travel Sites Integrate Social Tools
Social media fans could find interesting tools in travel sites that integrate social network features, but Roger Yu doesn’t believe these sites are ready to replace guidebooks and planning tools. Reviewing the sites, he rambles off annoyances and benefits that could act as supplements to traditional books that help travelers find local restaurants or hotels.
Google announced today that it has upgraded Google Social Search to now include social data from Twitter, Flickr and Quora. In the past you may not have even noticed social results as they typically showed up at the bottom of the SERP. Now they are going to be blended throughout the SERPs as you can see below:
About a year and half ago, I posited on SearchEngineLand that it was inevitable that Local Social Search would be the default search paradigm for local queries. We’re still not there yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I recall having a discussion at the time with a search engineer at Google who claimed this would be an impractical technical challenge for the search giant (never thought I’d hear that from a Googler). But with the continuing improvement of Google Social Search along with the pressure GOOG is feeling to compete with Facebook on the social front, I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot more local-social stuff coming out of the Plex. For those of you pondering the implications, here’s an excerpt from my old post that I think is still relevant:
…there is a large opportunity for businesses to increase awareness in their community by simply networking with other businesses via social media like Twitter. But now with the advent of Google social search, the simple act of following or being followed has a ripple effect that could yield dramatic benefits.
Here’s a pseudo-real-world example:
Leading up to next Wednesday's launch of Social Local Media, and next Thursday's webinar, we've been sharing our data and insights and encouraging your feedback to help guide our coverage. Starting today, we're opening ourselves up to you even more…
I was checking out various local search players' Facebook pages and I thought it would be helpful to compare some of these pages with some non-local brands' FB pages: How can you not like Britney? I like the graphic but…
As Social Local Media -- BIA/Kelsey's newest advisory service -- marches toward its Feb. 23 launch and Feb. 24 free webinar, we're using social media channels to present data to our audience and learn more about your challenges, successes and…
The debut of BIA/Kelsey's newest advisory service - Social Local Media - is fast upon us, with the launch set for Wednesday, Feb. 23, and an introductory webinar to follow the next day (2/24). Over the next eight business days,…
Jer’s Gourmet Chocolates of Solana Beach has the world’s best pretzel chocolate balls, and Jer, a former IBM EVP, can be found all over North County San Diego hawking his handmade creations and talking chocolate. I’ve seen him at Costco…
Our first official week of Social Local blogging is just about under our belt. So let's wrap it up with some of the more interesting posts we came across: First on the blog I started out the week with my…
The "getting social" challenges for local businesses are simple to understand, yet hard to address: taxed time, strained resources, lack of platform awareness, tactical needs, fuzzy measurement tools and more. Postling doesn't propose to solve all of them, but it…
Google just launched Google Weddings. While it's possible this is just a 20 percent timer side-project, it's also possible this is a component of a Social/Local strategy. I am sure my fellow BIA/Kelsey-ites will be weighing in on this, but some…
