5 Leading Indicators of the Future of Local Search

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The local search market is changing. On the buy-side, enterprise advertisers are starting to assert their control, demonstrating that they can leverage large footprints to compete in local with clean distributed data, and accurate claimed citations. Consumers, meanwhile, increasingly want to use their mobile devices for more activities than navigational search, expecting to be able to buy and not only find goods and services nearby. The advancements of local search are evolving so rapidly that a race to control consumer behavior may be brewing between the Davids and Goliaths…

How Enterprise Brands Can Localize Social to Boost Relevance and Exposure

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By now, enterprise multi-location brands hopefully understand the importance of a local digital marketing strategy to ensure their many locations can easily be found online and help generate local leads. But following the lead of savvy marketers, it’s time they go further and create unique localized strategies specifically for social media. Here are a few of the most successful strategies…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Expands Wi-Fi Check-Ins, Angie’s List Cuts Prices

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyWhy Facebook Is Giving Out Free Wi-Fi For Check-Ins (CNet)… Cheaper Advice: Angie’s List Cuts Prices (Wall Street Journal)… In Test Project, N.S.A. Tracked Cellphone Locations (New York Times)…

Street Fight Daily: Google Introduces Offline Metric, McDonald’s Tests Loyalty Program

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyGoogle Introduces Cross-Device and Offline Conversion Tracking (Screenwerk)… McDonald’s Stores Trying Loyalty Program (Bloomberg)… Facebook Says Its Mobile App Ads Work, So It’s Making More of Them (GigaOm)…

Street Fight Daily: Regulators Crackdown on Fake Reviews, Facebook ‘Closes The Loop’

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyGive Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You (New York Times)… Facebook Connects Impressions To Offline Sales For Telcos (MarketinLand)… Mobile Payments Are One-Third of Braintree’s Business (PandoDaily)…

6 Tools for Targeting Brand Influencer Look-Alikes

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The type of word-of-mouth marketing that once took place inside coffee shops and around water coolers has moved online, as “brand influencers” — social media users with a significant reach — play an increasingly important role for companies of all sizes. Here are six tools that companies can use to identify and target “look-alike” consumers…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook’s Bet On Gift Cards, Foursquare’s Data Appeal

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyFacebook Ditches Physical Gifts To Double-Down On Digital Codes And Its Own Brick-&-Mortar Gift Card (TechCrunch)…. Why Yahoo and Apple Want Foursquare’s Data (Fast Company)…

Without Seamless, Fewer Customers and Higher Margins (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Partners With OpenTable, Groupon Acquires Plumfare

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyFacebook To Offer OpenTable Restaurant Bookings Via Mobile (Reuters)… Plumfare Acquired By Groupon (VentureBeat)… How Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley Lost The Narrative To Yelp’s Keith Rabois (Fast Company)…

Why Brands Need a Local Voice on Facebook

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Street Fight recently caught up with Brand Networks’ chief executive, Jamie Tedford, to discuss the evolving local opportunity for brands on Facebook, the value in maintaining both a “brand” and “local” voice on Facebook, and the need to create a more responsive (and decentralized) approach to social media…

Street Fight Daily: Google Revamps Zagat, Groupon Loses Mobile Chief

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologylogo_zagat_twtGoogle Unveils Revamped Zagat Website, Apps (TheNextWeb)… Groupon Loses Mobile Head David Katz (TechCrunch)… New Facebook for Business Hub Launches With Tips, Tools, Case Studies (SearchEngineWatch)…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Hits 18M SMBs, eBay Tests Local Marketplace

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySecond Quarter Reveals Facebook’s Big Push for Local(Wall Street Journal)… eBay Is Testing A New Local Service Provider Marketplace In The UK (MarketingLand)… Angie’s List 2nd-Quarter Loss Narrows (Bloomberg Businessweek)…

Case Study: Bakery Uses Mobile POS for Real-Time Business Analytics

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When Tara Koenig first began researching mobile point-of-sale systems for her Virginia cupcake bakery back in 2011, her interest wasn’t driven by the lack of upfront costs or tablet integrations. It was driven by necessity. The location Koenig had chosen for her new bakery was a 500-square-foot garage with no telephone lines (a feature that’s typically necessary when installing a hardware-based POS system)…

Study: Facebook Sees Growth as Local Search Source

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A new study by Yext finds that consumers have started to come to Facebook to find local information. The study found that a little over 12% of respondents used Facebook to find local information, nearly twice the number for specialized-sites and a few points shy of the Yellow Pages/Local directories…

Street Fight Daily: Gowalla Founder Leaving Facebook

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologyGowalla Co-Founder Josh Williams to Depart Facebook (AllThingsD)… The False Hope of Hyperlocal (Digiday)… Does In-Store Location Tracking Cross The “Creepy Line”? (MarketingLand)…

Openings & New Hires at Square, Facebook, LocalVox and More

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves this edition include a new product engineer at Square, an exiting publisher at DNAinfo, plus openings at Oracle, LinkedIn, WorldNow and more…

Street Fight Daily: Clinkle Raises $25M, Square Poaches AdSense ‘Godfather’

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technologySilicon Valley Luminaries Bet on Clinkle, a Payments Start-Up (TechCrunch)… Square Poaches Facebook’s Lead Ad Engineer Gokul Rajaram (AdAge)… Cramer: Macy’s Hyper-Local Strategy to Drive Sales (CNBC)…

Twitter Looks to Monetize Location, But Is It Cart-Before-Horse?

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A few days after Twitter acquired local discovery app, Spindle, last week, news surfaced that the microblogging service was developing a long-awaited geo-targeting product for brands. The developments mark the latest episode in an ongoing saga, in which the two largest social networks — Twitter and Facebook — have briefly flirted with local before pulling back to recalibrate. A hyperlocal ad product is welcome news to advertisers, but Twitter needs to sure it does not neglect the users’ side of the equation…

How Facebook’s Rumored News Product Could Hurt Local Sites

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News websites dodged a bullet when Facebook didn’t announce a rumored RSS or news-in-your-news-feed product yesterday. If Facebook actually got serious about these plans, news websites could expect an even larger portion of their site’s traffic to be directed through the social network — and their brands could be endangered…

Openings & New Hires at Square, Patch, LocalVox, Facebook and More

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Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. Moves this edition include the closing of LivingSocial’s office in Seattle, a and exiting CTO at AOL’s Patch, and job openings at Yelp, Appstack, Google, and more.

VIDEO: Why Brands Are Warming to Hyperlocal

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For large brands, the upside of local is often shrouded in operational headaches, and overshadowed by the complexities of coordinating a decentralized, and often chaotic, campaign. Thanks to the rapid adoption of mobile devices and new innovations among vendors however, brands’ attitude to local are starting to change…