The Power of Local Social Media

August 21, 2007 · Comments

My House Something of a mashup, this post is partially inspired by a talk with Laura Fitton a few months back, mashed with just having finished William Gibson’s Spook Country. Mix this further with the completion of attending another successful PodCamp Pittsburgh, where I was again made aware of just how powerful local affiliation can be. What follows is a shotgun of ideas.

Rolling in GPS/Wifi/Bluetooth-Style

Months ago, a billboard in Hollywood bluetoothed my phone. It wanted me to buy Pepsi. When I’m in a new town (and this happens a lot to me), I want to know where to eat, what’s new and interesting, some of the local flavor, where I might not want to go. My phone knows where I am. My phone company knows, too.

I don’t want spam. I want what I ask for, plus a few polite nudges. So, if I am the marketplace, and I’ve shown up at your city, I might want to know where to eat, if the hotel I booked through Priceline is in hookerville or if it’s in the city’s most hopping hotspot. Some of that will come from those organizations. Some will come from local social media.

Who Needs The Net?

If you’re a dentist in my town, should you be building a Ning site? Do you need to Twitter? If you’re a local car dealership, how will you use these new mediums without seeming like a giant ad? Or SHOULD you be a giant ad? Does the local yellow pages work? (Answer: not for me when I roll in. I search the web, even if I’m standing beside a phone booth, or I ask people through Twitter.)

I know a friend who builds presence and helps small businesses (dentists and lawyers, for instance) build some kind of web representation. I think that has to be an underserved niche. And to do it WELL, or MEANINGFULLY? That must be even more ripe to be served. Please spare me the $15,000 bill for a cookie cutter website with a landing page, about page, and contact page. Think up something that drives awareness, builds revenue, and converts to the bottom line.

What Could Be Offered?

I showed a Pittsburgh restauranteur Yelp as a potential spot to list his restaurant. He mentioned the Zagat guide. Makes sense, because he’s in the physical world, and I’m an Internet guy. The questions of what to offer who might come down to which platforms can reach the masses, which are push or pull, what seems intrusive or not. See how many ways there are to slice this?

If I show up at an airport terminal, I wish there were a social media PACKAGE to collect for my phone or my iPod. It would have local podcasts about the area, the restaurants, the night spots, parks, and/or options on whatever other things might matter to me. I like photos? Here are the local Flickr groups, and a videoblog post of local areas to watch. I want to run? Here’s some annotated Google maps PLUS a 15% off coupon (digital) for the local running store.

The meat of what YOU might have to offer comes in this area. What would local products look like? What would go in the kit?

A User’s View of What Might NOT Work

Would I join the Facebook group of a city I’m going to visit for a few days? I don’t think so. Someone might do that. I don’t see the value, and I know I’d drop the group pretty quickly thereafter. Would each city need an official Twitter stream? I doubt I’d sign up. How easy could I find your podcasts and videoblogs? Not too easy? Doubt I’d go searching too hard. And remember, I’ve already ruled out the local Yellow pages. Though sometimes in hotels, when I’m desperate or the wifi doesn’t work, I’ll drop down into that baud rate.

Local Could Be Huge

As a producer of media, and as someone working in the social networking space, I could see great value in finding relationships of value between local businesses needing to promote their products and services and visitors to local areas. I can also see the nonprofit crowd deriving great value in making their media available in portable, digital formats, such that I can take my own self-guided tour, learn my own way around the city.

I want geotagging to start mattering to more than the geekset. I want common-wired folks to be able to annotate their surroundings, so that I can tell people which of the town’s four Chinese restaurants *I* order from. I want to submit my podcast tour of your city viewed through my visiting eyes, and have it considered part of the body of work about your town, or my flickr set, or my whatever.

Break This Open

Are you producing local social media? Are you empowering small businesses and individuals to use the Internet in their otherwise unwired world? Do you have thoughts or opinions on all this? Let’s dig into this conversation a bit more.

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  • jptrenn
    For a restaurant standpoint (or from my standpoint), both Yelp and Zagat woudl make sense. But directly from their standpoint, they'd probably go with the one theat they've heard of. And they'd probably choose one - if at all - because they're not sure of the concept.

    From a moblie company's standpoint, they'd probably choose one. And Zagat's would likely be the one that would go first. But it is a good idea.
  • compassioninpolitics
    Why not both Zagat and Yelp. Although, I don't know how much a Zagat listing costs. I think there are some age and geographic limitations of Yelp. For instance, the Yelp community in Nashville, despite having a rather robust BarCamp at about 500 only has a yelp community of about 15. I wonder what yelp is like outside of SF, NY, Boston, DC, Austin and LA....
  • jptrenn
    But see this is why I think much of what is being said will never come to fruition. Groovr. Yet another new service that not that many people have heard of.

    I work part time in a restaurant. The other day I asked smom of my co-workers if they had ever heard of Twitter. Asked about 7 of them. None of them had ever heard of it. I asked a few more later. Only one had, and it was only because she saw something on the news about a 19 year old that had a huge cell phone bill that was about 35 pages long.

    It is going to be a while for all of what is being predicted to happen. Mobile companies will gobble up the Groovrs of the world to make it so.
  • I think this the big missing piece of the social networking puzzle. There are a few tools out there like Groovr that allow you to put a location on yourself but its one of those that no one knows about or uses enough to really get value out of it. If people stated implementing location tools into their social tools I think it would be a huge deal. I know I would love it.
  • jptrenn
    Out of curiousity...'old people don't need Twitter"...what age do you consider to be old? Curious.

    Now..."Getting media onto the devices that matches the locality is the trick." Excellent point...and solving that will take years, but that's OK, because it will be a matter of adaption. So it is contstantly evovling and growing. Which is the ideal way for it to happen.

    Those local companies. That's a tougher nut to crack. A lot of them are 'too close' to what they do...mindset: build it and they will come. Or they're too busy themselves to take the time to do something that's non-traditional.

    Suggestions:

    1) I've sorta worked in this space. And I'll call it Business WOM. A lot of businesses will talk to one another at those Chamber meetings or in an industry related meeting. OK, they may not share trade secrets with a competitor, but they may they still do it. Because many won't be direct ocmpetitors. Or the restaurant owner may tell his neighbors, the surf shop owner and the funky dress shop owner about this new thing he's doing and then when those last two may each go to another restaurant, they may spread the word.

    2) Larger local content providers. They could develop a program that could cause local business to hop on board. Like the Boston Globe or the Boston Phoenix.

    3) Yellow Pages/Google/Yahoo Local. Make inroads into local businesses with an add on service. Soon, it will become a must and not an add on.

    4) Make it cost effective. Try to build up as many businesses to keep the price down.

    5) Tackle one industry at a time, by location. Go after all the the restaurants/clubs in a 'hip' area. That generates interest, then expand.
  • Jonathan- I'm a big fan of crowdsourcing media, provided the product is likely to benefit from it. Let's not forget the GMC Tahoe incident. But things like Yelp are good for reviews. But what else do we do? How do we make it pertinent?

    Great points all. Does it matter? Old people don't need Twitter. Until they do. Podcasts might be foreign, but ipods and cell phones aren't. Getting media onto the devices that matches the locality is the trick.

    How do we get local businesses to go from ads in the yellow pages to audio and blogs?

    One thought: give those businesses the tools.
  • jptrenn
    Stupid me. I wasn't on the schedule...instead I work tonight.

    But I did ask about five 20 somethings if they had ever heard of Twitter. None had. : (

    @Chris...who would provide the content? The local restaurant the may or may not have a website? Citizen reviewers that want to get involved? Both?

    I see this doing better in college town if people get involved.

    For the record, here's where I work:

    www.cafedeluxe.com

    They need a new site IMHO. But seriously, they're a good model. Four great locations. Cool areas. Upscale but not too pricey. And great bars for singles.

    It's a matter of creating a solid value proposition for the participants because the reality is that a lot of business suffer - or go under - because they don't market themselves correctly.

    I notice a boatload of customers having their cellphones or blackberries by their side when the eat. Or they'll be texting when the eat. Or they'll be ignoring me as I try to get their drink order or tell them the specials. Bastards. ;)

    The point is that this technology is gradually becoming more and more integrated into these people's lives...and it will be a matter of gettng them to think more like you do.

    It's probably happening and they don't realize it.
  • It might be in the mobile arena. My early thoughts were less rich media and more texting and barcode to wap-data thoughts. Meaning: if I scan this with my cameraphone, software will translate it to a website or a wap page with some details.

    Annotating physical space. Locative logic. Technology of the presence, not the future. : )
  • jptrenn
    If there is not some central source developing this, then I don't see it happening. Veroncia's point about the tatoo parlors not having websites. Most local small businesses either don't have one or they have brochureware at best. Chris's conversation with the restaurant owner thinking Zagat while Chris thought Yelp. Business owners often think traditional. Local businesses are not net-minded. Most anyway. Local small businessees are also often loathe to advertise. Which can be extended to market themselves overall. They don't understand it.

    Here in Northern Virginia we just had Backfence bite the dust. Local citizens didn't get involved. Most had no clue it existed. Getting citizen involvement is tough.

    I could see if a mobile company partnered with some content providers (like Yelp and/or Zagat) for a framework and some basic info and then allowed citizens to become part of it. Then that could expand to Twitter, etc.

    Perhaps something like this could work in a 'hip' neighborhood in a city like SF or maybe Boston, but that's on a much smaller scale.

    Disclosure: I work part time in a restaurant. After I submit this comment, I'm headed out to work. When I told them about Yelp, they weren't familiar with it. This is a place that's well liked and had four locations. In Tysons Corner, VA, one of the most tech oriented spots in the country.
  • Yes, part of what I'm getting at in this post is that there's a built-in marketplace here for new media types (bloggers and podcasters and videobloggers) to create content of value to their local community in their own voice and their own way. I'm not recommending that a chamber of commerce own this duty. I'm saying that technology exists to create the social fabric to port this info to you in some form or another.

    Interestingly, Robert Scoble just wrote about the idea of a Facebook Hotel, where the Hotel sniffs your Facebook profile to fill the room's iPod with your iLike info from your profile page, and things like that. It's another way to look at it all.

    And the OTHER part besides media-enabling your town, was the question of how local businesses play. Veronica mentions that in her piece, including wanting to see a tattoo artist's work and info online. Imagine video tours and interviews of the various local tattoo parlors, so you can determine up front if you'll be weirded out or pleased before you go there?
  • Daniel Glifberg
    Very good post.
    I directly triggered my tech geek mind to look for what type of enablers and possibilities do we already have out there in the existing environments. I.e. think about the welcome messages often given to people when roaming into another contries cellular network. Can such things be applied to smaller geographical regions. I.e. a New Yorker flying to Atlanta getting a "Welcome to Atlanta" text message with an URL pointer to this local info.
    The same New Yorker would when landing in Stockholm Sweden for instance get a text message saying welcome to Sweden and operator X, plus some jibberish.
    Here it should be easy enough to provide URL:s as well.
    The trick might be to get to the correct resolution of the information.
    I.e. when in Atlanta one are not interested in info about all of the State of Georgia, but probably at least about a info from a few of the close by counties. Hmm, again interesting, will probably occupy my mind for some time.
  • jptrenn
    Oops. That site I referenced is www.dcblogs.com.
  • jptrenn
    This intrigues me for a variety of reasons.

    I live in the DC area, the 8th largerst metro area in the country if I remember correctly. There's a lot of young people here. They're educated. They're into technology. They're social.

    And I'm thinking of starting a business that uses what's called blogger relations to reach out to local bloggers and have them review restaurants, clubs, theatres, specialty stores. In other words, a client such as a restaurant would provide twenty $25 gift cards and I'd send them to the bloggers. Bit more complicated than that, but no strings attached.

    Point is that there's a community of bloggers here that exist on sites like dcbloggers.com and groups on Facebook.

    Now if this is somehow successful, I'd have potentailly dozens of businesses and hundreds of bloggers. I'm wondering what the next steps are to get to that goal that you mentioned...creating a community like atmosphere in which those bloggers and businesses or whomever would come together to formulate that social media package. Not so much an online Zagats (which is still an option) but a rapid response thing like you see on Twitter.

    Is that what you're getting at Chris? Any thoughts anyone?
  • Very cool ideas Chris. Of course, being a long time producer of a local podcast, it fits right in. Local blogs and podcasts in many cities tend to center around local news and events.

    It would be an interesting challenge to put together and maintain a great kit. Places like http://Outside.in do some of this, which is nice.

    Now you have me thinking of a new media kit for Kansas City once Podcamp Midwest rolls around. *grin*
  • I, too, like the idea of a local social media package. I would use one when traveling and support one at home.

    I'm increasingly interested in finding ways that our mobile devices might connect us more deeply to the physical landscape and to each other in the present moment. Can we use these tools to help us slow down and notice things? Geotagging for the non-geek might be a place to start... or maybe it requires a different kind of mental/emotional shift. I'll keep thinking about it.
  • Veronica
    this would absolutely be huge. i know that i would work with something like this constantly. i don't have t.v., i don't get a newspaper, i don't listen to the radio, hell i don't even drive. everything interesting happening around the city i have no clue about until it's already over, or if I'm lucky a few days before it happens. and even trying to look on the interwebs, it's still very hard to find. whether you're local or not. hell I've spent the past 2 yrs trying to research a excellent tattoo artist in the area and i can hardly find anything. most of them don't even don't even have a website. if locals realized how much more revenue they could produce some huge changes to local economy. the burgh especially. lol
  • I'm still fascinated by the fact that podcamps have a city name after them, and then all these people from other cities import themselves in.

    Seems to defeat the purpose. Seems to strengthen the echo chamber.

    No wonder things like Podcamp NOLA get criticized for the cliched tourism thing. "Oh hey, let's MARDI!"

    We can so do better than that. But hey, we wouldn't be who we are if we weren't pushy, I guess.

    Kinda depressing.
  • So. So. Good.

    People don't realize the power of:

    A) Hyperlocalism, and
    B) Working TOGETHER to cross-promote wisely.

    Cheers.
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