Hyper Local Journalism is making headlines in the news, quite literally. Traditionally, journalists raced against time to be the first person reporting from a specific location, such as Disaster A. Whomever got there first got the story, the pictures, and the big bucks for breaking it to the news-hungry public.

Because video cameras weren’t an everyday item being carried about by consumers, and the ability to transfer that data was restricted to how fast your local mail carrier was. These things were not conducive to your every day person breaking the news.

With the full scale consumer embrace of cell phones with video capabilities and high speed data transfers directly from the mobile phone, the face of the news began to change.

Bigger news outlets found themselves one-upped on big stories that were reported first, on such sites as YouTube, by everyday Joes like you and I. It was then, and only then, that the news outlets so kindly began to ‘feature’ citizen eye witness reports on their sites. Unpaid, of course. The payment was the glory of having your cell video streaming on CNN’s website.

So how does this affect Social Media Advertising? By allowing consumers to gain a measure of control over what is shown as news , the products that they use and the events that they deem newsworthy are reaching a greater market.

Your new product could take months and years to take off with traditional advertising, but being featured in a Hyper Local Journalism streamed video on the news can skyrocket your sales in days.

If you have a products that is newsworthy and up-to-the-minute-relevant, consider submitting a video of it by Hyper Local Journalism.

Michael Brito on Britopian.com began his own coversation on the merits of Social Media conversations verses tradtional search impressions. Obviously each person is biased by their personality in regards to what they value more.
Michael wrote:

So to address the original question of “What’s more important: a million impressions or 5 relationships? and considering that I am referring to all web users in general, I would say it depends who you ask. Paul would say impressions and then narrow it down to a click-through rate – conversion rate – revenue per keyword – cost per acquisition – blah blah blah. Yes, he is THAT ANALYICAL. For me it was about engagement, relationships, conversational sentiment and tone; and I could care less about the clicks and impressions.

Now, Michael’s aquaintance was ‘That Analytical Guy’ focused on the hard numbers, and let’s face it, most companies drill down to the importance of a number. If it’s not quantifiable, than it can’t be put in a spreadsheet. If it’s not in a spreadsheet, then the top execs aren’t looking at it. If the top execs aren’t looking at it, it’s not important. The aquaintance was obviously biased based on what his job, and his personality deemed important. He was a numbers guy.
Michael, on the other hand, is a bigger-picture-guy. He wants to build the relationships, which are the backbone in social media marketing, in order to build his business. That the two of them work together is probably a sign of a healthy buisness strategy.
It’s Michael’s next point that intriqued me:

I would also say that the users who were browsing HP Shopping were “ready to buy” and could care less about engagement and conversations at that precise moment; which is probably a common scenario for most e-commerce related businesses, where users do want to be sold something.

It’s true that once customers are on your site, they’re ready to buy, especially if they’ve clicked directly to you and are searching your products, and Michael explicitly recognizes that.

To do social media justice, however, you have to remember that a good company reputation thorugh social media is imperative. For the social influencers, a bad experience with a company can spread like internet wildfire, and the hundred and thousands of social contacts will read about that bad experience, and believe me, they’ll stay away from the company. The same is true of a good experience read by thousands of contacts…the company in question will be left with a good impression (HA!) in thousands of potential customer’s phychees.

It’s not news that more and more people turn to the internet to fulfill their consumer shopping needs. The trends began years ago and the convenience of it has grown so much that where analysts used to talk about Black Friday, they now talk about Black Monday.
So it was only a matter of time before shopping sites melded with social networking sites and became social shopping sites. The concept is based on the two simple principles for consumer shopping.

1. Consumers usually ‘ask around’ to get their friends and families opinions on a product before the buy it
2. After a purchase, most consumers like to voice their (loud) opinion on what they liked, and didn’t like, about their purchase and give recommendations about the product.

The new Social Shopping site Kazowie.com is essentially a social networking site for people who shop. Is it useful? Well let’s see….

1. Consumers enjoy it because they can apply the principles referenced above. They get to ask for opinions on what they want, and they get to voice their thoughts on what they got. They get recommendations and price comparisons
2. Businesses will love it because people will talk about their products, and every business knows that favorable reviews on the internet are advertising gold. (This is also where a business can drastically affect their Online Reputation too.)

According to their site, Kazowie will:

• Create a one-stop gift registry for weddings, events, or showers. Instead of choosing registries from a select few department stores, a user can compile products from any shop. The purchaser can navigate to an online store through the registry, or find the store locally. Kazowie can manage quantities and fulfilled items.
• Create discussions and recommend products.
• Support local shops without online presence by adding products with the name and address to buy it offline.
• Be an expert by creating a buyer’s guide for products.
• Create groups and invite friends to share products of interest with group members.
• Browse through and rate online shops; see what other products each has to offer.
• Create an opinion poll to get the best recommendations from friends, family and other users on the site.
• Subscribe to an RSS feed to be in touch with friends’ activities.
• Login or create an account with existing accounts from Yahoo, Google, OpenID, AOL/AIM.

As with any Social site, Kazowie will only be powerful if people use it but the bottom line is that, as a business with a product to sell, it might be worth your time to make sure you have a presence there.

There is a lot of talk about Social Networking for Business going on, so we thought it would be only fitting to write our next book review about it.

The introduction states that:

This book is written for anyone who wants to tap the power of social networking for professional reasons. Marketers, publicists, small business owners, independent professionals, job seekers, fundraisers, and activists all can find ways to profit from strategic social networking. It’s a viable business tool that opens up new ways to connect with others who can help you achieve your business goals. The goal of this book is to provide you with a solid foundation on the basics of social networking, give you some insight into future trends, and encourage you to think strategically about the best ways you can leverage the power of social networking to enhance your business, your cause, and your life.

The Truth about Profitting from Social Networking by Patrice-Anne Rutledge discusses the obvious target sites with gusto. In a chapter entitled “The Truth about the Most Popular Social Networking Sites” she goes into the myths and facts about the usability of MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube.

The really interesting parts of this book are the ones that discuss the proper use of social networking as a tool. There are wrong ways to use a social networking platform get yourself ignored or, worse yet, banned. The author discusses these and gives advice and examples in etiquette and usage to those people who are either unfamiliar with social networking, or whom have tried it and failed miserably.

At around $12-$15, depending on which market you purchase this from, the book is economical. If you’re new to the social networking market and don’t have any idea how you’ll break into it, this book will be a helpful overview and help you avoid some social networking faux pas.

Unlike Facebook or Myspace, Linkedin is a social media network designed for business professionals to increase their network and social contacts…which in the business world means to better their business contacts. It is also a place for people searching for jobs can list their skills and business looking to hire can list their criteria. Linkedin gives business people the ability to make the contacts that they need to survive in the social media business network.

Adam Nash at the LinkedIn blog wrote a blog about LinkedIn after his key speeches at the 2008 Social Patterns conference.

•

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network: the new medium for how business gets done. Our members find new ways to interact with each other and improve their business every day.
• LinkedIn a Purpose-Driven Network. LinkedIn was built and designed specifically with the business professional in mind. That kind of focus and relevance makes us as valuable as possible to the professional who comes to LinkedIn for the specific purpose of getting business done.

He also wrote a piece on the use of LinkedIn in the entertainment industry that is worth looking at.

Link directly to your media properties
As LinkedIn represents your professional brand online, use the three outgoing hyperlinks to send people right to your movie, music, or filmography online. Got your projects on iTunes? Netflix? Amazon? IMDb? YouTube? Link to these and enable people to review your creative efforts first-hand.
–
Keep checking the LinkedIn Blog to find out how other industries are using the site to open the right doors and develop opportunities for their companies and careers. I’ll be here doing the dirty work for LinkedIn, leaving no stone unturned to get the story. Special thanks to Marcio and Telemetrik for use of their song “Nova”!

Facebook is now confirming that their developer platform will go open source. This can have significant effect on the Social Media Marketing crowd by changing not only the volume of people using it, but also the demographic statistics that can be harvested. For advertisers, this change can mean a significantly better conversion rates and prices.

We’re working on an open-source initiative that is meant to help application developers better understand Facebook Platform and more easily build applications, whether it’s by running their own test servers, building tools, or optimizing their applications. As Facebook Platform continues to mature, open-sourcing the infrastructure behind it is a natural step so developers can build richer social applications and share what they’ve learned with the ecosystem. Additional details will be released soon.

Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim discusses some of the changes:

What does this change? After all, Google’s Open Social initiative has already created (or was supposed to create) an “industry standard” of APIs for social networking, and Facebook declined to sign on.
However, the implications of going “open source” change the impact of Facebook’s platform. While OpenSocial’s APIs are designed to be widely usable (ie generic), Facebook’s markup language, query langauge and JS library enhance the offering here.
OpenSocial is has some open source code, but their FAQ doesn’t indicate that they are currently, fully open source:

On the ball marketers are starting to figure out how to make Social Media Marketing pay off on a Local front. Social media marketing has many wonderful applications that be used for local businesses to join the party and cash in. While savvy marketers know how to strategize and pull off a great site for their clients, many businesses are having a go at Social Media Marketing without any professional help.

Social Media Marketing is the use of social media to market one’s business online or through digital media. Social media marketing has grown into a big slice of the Internet marketing pie, with websites like Flickr, YouTube, StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog, Digg, Facebook, and MySpace dominating the social networks.

One of the best ways for a small local business to join the Social Media Market is by creating a blog. Every business, no matter how locally defined it’s operations, should have a blog. The problems arise when businesses unfamiliar with the social media market forget that a blog should never be a little island unto itself. That would sort of defeat the entire concept of a Social Media network.

Do your research on local networks, defined by geography, market type, or whatever your particular business niche is, and build your site or blog to draw those people in.

With Social Media Marketing, you will need to be an expert on dealing with the integration of social networking, social media, online reputation management, and local SEO to bring it all together in one beautiful, cash rich advertising campaign.

Business owners new to the social media scene often confuse social media with traditional media such as newspapers, television, and radio; or worse yet, they think that social media optimization is simply creating a Myspace page.

Matt Goddard at R2i blogs wrote a nice piece about the difference between social networking and social media. It’s definitely worth taking a look at.

1. Social networks and social media are distinct but connected
2. Social networks are patterns of advice seeking and advice giving used to reduce the risk of decisions.
3. Social media is a popular platform for delivering the social message.
4. You need to establish whether the social networking exists in your target market and whether social media is viable channel of influence.

Further thinking about the guidelines that Matt is discussing, there are some questions that you need to ask when considering a social media marketing strategy:
1. Should your business host a blog?
2. Social Networking: Are there social networking sites or groups that target your industry? If there are, what kind of strategies can you employ to enter them?
3. Podcasts: Are there any podcasts in your target industry already? What can you offer as an alternative podcast?
4. User Generated Content : Are there videos or other forms of user generated content already being made public in your industry? How can you make a different, more noticeable impact?
One of the key points of the article is that businesses don’t want to approach social media optimization just because they’ve heard the term and it sounds nifty. They should make a concerted effort to look into the social networks of their target audience and see if there is a social market to go after with SMO practices.

Here’s another reason to use Facebook. But there is more to online advertising than merely filling out a Facebook profile. One of the things that makes Facebook such a great place to network and advertise your local business is its local networks that you can join. Through those you can meet other local people to do business with.

But services like Yell adding applications for Facebook make it even better. Here’s what I like about this app:

Yell advertisers will get more in-depth exposure in the app than non-advertisers, but all the activity happens within Facebook.

But I like Greg Sterling’s recommendations as well:

The application only works for Yell coverage areas. In my opinion, the company would do well to either duplicate this for its Yellowbook subsidiary or combine the applications so that it offers US-UK coverage.

A mobile component (send to mobile) would be welcome as well.

Even without these applications, if you do business in a Yell coverage area then you’ll have a leg up on your competition by advertising with the service through its Facebook application. Not that Citysearch and Superpages also have Facebook networking tools that allow you to reach out to new customers and they’re available in the U.S. If you really want to make the most of apps like these, advertise within them and do your own outside-app networking and advertising as a “doubling up” effort.

YouTube is getting to be a big deal - I mean a bigger deal. It’s a great tool for marketing as you know. But did you know you can use it for local marketing?

It’s true. There are several ways you can make YouTube pay for local marketing. The first thing to do is sign up for an account and set up a channel for your videos. Then be sure to upload videos for your business every once in a while. Once a week is ideal, but if you can’t swing once a week then try once or twice a month.

You want your videos to be relevant to your local marketing, though, so be sure to tag them with local place names. And if you have a Facebook account, run your videos through your Facebook profile because Facebook is organized by local groups and if you attract enough local people in your area to be your friends then you have a natural built in audience for your YouTube videos.

Also browse the videos of others and leave comments. Try to find videos of people in your local area and network with them. Add them as friends and share your videos with them after you’ve uploaded them. Video is such a good marketing tool that if people like them they will share them with their friends. Be sure to put your website URL in the videos so people will visit your website.

A couple of days ago we shared two social networking tools that small business owners can use to develop a social network at the local level. The tools are not public yet. They are still awaiting release. But the latest development could change a few things for you if you decide to use these tools.

Facebook has decided not to let Google tap into its user base to include Facebook profiles into its Google FriendConnect tool. The reason cited is because Google won’t promise the same level of privacy that Facebook demands and promises to its users. I think this is a good move for Facebook. It shows that the social networking site is serious about protecting the privacy of its users and it also shows that Google is not. This will likely be a serious consideration for local businesses that want to build a social network into their local platforms.

I can think of no more sound advice than this. Every local small business person should have a social networking profile. Why? Because if you don’t, it could cost you.

This is a scary scenario, but what if …

A local competitor, or some cheesy high school prankster who hates your kid, decides to go and use your name to set up a profile at a social networking site like LinkedIn and fills it with links full of hate speech, porn, and other undesirable, potentially destructive information. I’m not talking about a prank phone call here. That’s annoying enough. But this type of “identify theft” could potentially be more harmful than someone stealing your credit card information, which can jack up your financial situation. But someone posing as you and using their profile on a social site (with your name) to make you look bad could be a reputation damaging nightmare than can stick around for life. And you can write to the credit card company to restore your good name.

That’s why it is important, even if you are a local business person who does business locally, to set up social networking profiles in your own name and manage them over time. You don’t have to manage them daily, but stop in from time to time, even if you don’t use them, and just make sure they are still active, links back to your site work, and there is no funny business going on. It’s called reputation management and it’s fast becoming a very important part of our lives.

If you have been wondering how you can build a true social website for your local community without shelling out thousands of dollars in technology and software to make it happen, there are two new tools on the way to beta right now that can help you do that. And both are recognizable names.

Facebook is in the process of rolling out Facebook Connect. And Google is opening up the beta version of Google FriendConnect.

Both of these applications look very promising. Which one you choose depends a lot on your preferences and there may be reasons why you’d want to use either one. Facebook, of course, needs no introduction. The friend connect application for Facebook will be limited to allowing your site visitors to connect using only Facebook. If Facebook is popular in your community then you might find that to be useful. Google FriendConnect, on the other hand, is more versatile. You’ll be able to add networking features on your local website that allow your visitors to connect with their friends through Facebook, hi5, Orkut, Plaxo, and a few other social websites.

That may make Google a bit more attractive to many users, but if you’re looking for online privacy, Google FriendConnect will likely be a less attractive application than Facebook Connect. With Facebook Connect you’ll still be able to tap into the same privacy features that Facebook has built into its community. But Google FriendConnect, being that it will be compatible with several networking sites, can’t promise that level of privacy. And some people are a little jittery about how much information they want Google knowing about them, so that’s one concern.

Both Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect will allow you to turn your local website into a community portal. That could mean more traffic for you and a way to ensure that you can charge more for advertising dollars.

Can local businesses benefit from social media marketing? If you own a local business that does not do business over long distances or that has no way to deliver products and services through digital media or mail delivery, will you benefit from social media marketing? The answer, surprisingly, is it depends.

First, let’s define social media marketing: The use of social media to market one’s business online or through digital media. Social media marketing has grown into a big slice of the Internet marketing pie. Websites like Flickr, YouTube, StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog, Digg, Facebook, and MySpace are very popular right now and savvy marketers are starting to figure out how to make them pay. But can local businesses play?

I believe they can, but local businesses should go about it in a different way. You have to pay attention to who is where and what they have to offer as well as what you have to offer them. But you can use social media to leverage your online - and off line - business. Facebook, for instance, is organized by local networks. You don’t have to be a member of a local network in your area, of course, but you should be if you run a local business. You can actually use Facebook to network with other people in your geographical area.

If you are a Facebook user, you can build apps just like other members and use them to draw others to yourself. Think local. What kind of app would members of your local community be interested in?

Also, advertising opportunities on Facebook, StumbleUpon, and other social media can be lucrative if you use them properly. Again, think locally.

But are you limited to Facebook as a local business? Absolutely not. Every business no matter how local should have a blog. Then you should submit your blog to all of the popular blog directories. One of the most popular blog directories is BlogCatalog, which has become much more than a directory and actually has social media resources that can prove useful to your local business. For instance, on BlogCatalog - as well as Facebook, StumbleUpon, and most other social media sites - you can start a group and invite other users to join that group for networking. Why not start a group for your local area?

While social media marketing has many great applications for online-only businesses and businesses that are capable of doing business over long distances, local businesses can join the party and meet new contacts, network, and develop relationships with potential customers just like any other.