Social media is merely a digital extension of local conversations. We talk about the weather, the 4th of July parade, the upcoming festival, local news, et cetera. SMBs need to always be thinking about how they can join/start these conversations in order to build fans, follow leads, offer discounts, improve their reputation and, most importantly, compete with national brands...

Marketers operate under many constraints dictated by good business and societal mores, not to mention various federal and state laws against criminal and civil misconduct. But the explosion of public data needs to be sorted out. It's up to society, government, business and individuals everywhere to take the discussion to better and new policies and, where necessary, laws...

Hyperlocal companies rely on the data that consumers knowingly share in order to build profiles and serve them with the most relevant information — but would consumers still assent to this sharing if they truly understood everything that is being done with their digital data?

In this final column on the subject of sustainability in independent news sites, two editor entrepreneurs, David Askins, of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Chronicle, and Denise Civiletti, of the RiverheadLocal on Long Island, talk about what they’re doing to keep their sites healthy long-term. A third entrepreneur, Ben Ilfeld, the CEO of AdGlue, talks about why innovation is so important to success...

Mobile isn't a mass marketing vehicle; it's my one-to-one, highly intimate connection with the Web. It's a personal device, and its connection to me is private (or not), powerful, and controllable entirely by me. It is, in fact, a portable, electronic version of me, and I will not permit interruptions in the name of commerce for long...

Last week, ReachLocal took its new commerce platform for home services, ClubLocal, off of its training wheels, expanding the program into the Bay Area. Pitched as an Uber for home services, the company aims to create a self-service platform to facilitate the booking of home repairs and plumbers — but its execution overlooks some of the dynamics that make some industries, like taxicabs, more fitting to the model than others...

The concept of network content distribution through local affiliates is being challenged by the Web. Local broadcasters are middlemen in the delivery of network content to the masses, and that was fine in a world absent horizontal connectivity. So it would be easy to assume downstream trouble for local broadcasters. But while there's quite likely much of that ahead, it won't totally kill the industry. There are two enormous roadblocks standing in the way.

Following up on my column from last week, here are more unvarnished thoughts from "indie" hyperlocal editors and publishers I’ve been talking to about sustainability (a word, by the way, that sets the teeth of some of these entrepreneurial journalists on edge)...

We know that there exist a great number of businesses in our local communities that service a variety of needs at their clients’ homes or business locations. Aside from specialized services like Angie’s List and Service Magic, there are few local search outlets that serve potential clients or service providers well in terms of their ability to connect a need with the appropriate provider...

Over the past few years I've done some axe-grinding about the lack of location targeting in mobile advertising — and the fact that desktop ad strategies have largely been ported over to the small screen, particularly among large brands and agencies. But in recent months we've started to see some of those habits break down, beginning with newer companies in mobile that don't have to "unlearn" anything to get there...