As Local Media Shed Staff, Personal Franchise Sites Could Fill the Void
The independent voice of the individual can make “the news” more personal, more compelling, and more exciting. The nuances of the trade can be taught, but people planted within the community with knowledge and perspective offer something that traditional media companies can’t or won’t. And linking local bloggers together is a viable concept…
How to Sell Hyperlocal Into Chambers of Commerce
After lots of research with local chambers, I’ve noticed that the chambers provide minimal resources to local businesses on how to navigate hyperlocal and which tools are the most valuable. In my opinion, that really should be a key responsibility of the Chambers. They should be vetting and approving the technology that will help their members to grow their businesses…
How a Big Agency Merger Could Benefit Local Ad Sellers
While I certainly believe that big data is our future, nuance at the local level is a part of accuracy when it comes to the providing of filters. This is an advantage that we have in local media, and we should not be shy about making that known to small and medium-sized businesses in the communities we serve.
How the GeoWeb Will Change Consumer and Business Behavior
Digital location-based technologies are now a transformative force for consumers and businesses, particularly when coupled with the rapid adoption of mobile and the growth of big data. I’m a big believer in the future for “GeoDisruption” — the potential for consumers and businesses to interact in fundamentally new ways to take advantage of increasingly precise location-based technologies…
Is Foursquare’s SMB Monetization Here for Real?
The company may discover that SMBs paradoxically prefer the simplicity of flat pricing over relatively complex (albeit more efficient) performance-based ads. The latter requires some degree of ongoing maintenance which challenges non-tech-savvy or time-starved (read: majority) SMBs. This is one reason for famously high churn for SMB self-serve advertising…
What Local Media Can Learn From the Royal Birth
Who is “royalty” in your community? It’s something news organizations big and small should know, because these are the people who make things happen — or not happen — in and around you. They are of the 1% that we speak of in the widening “us versus them” debate in our culture today. Their comings and goings can be real news, but their social activities and personal lives can also be news…
With Digital Video, Newspaper Companies Could Disrupt Local TV
Here’s what I think will happen. The local newspapers that are smart are already getting serious about creating video content. Some of them are beginning to figure out how to get that content to consumers via set-top boxes, and they will be the first to experiment with partnering with companies like Aereo instead of fighting them in court…
How Local Search Looks to the Rest of Us
It seems like many recent conversations, webinars, articles, and studies have pointed to the same conclusion: local search as an industry is insufficiently aware of how its products are actually used by consumers and small businesses. Many of the solutions put forward by consumer-facing local publishers and by business-facing services overestimate our appetite for new products and the amount of time and energy we want to spend using online tools…
Customization Failure: Why Hyperlocal Hasn’t Scaled (Yet)
Most customization that attempts to deliver hyperlocal, or even just local results, falls short. The problem is that they (and we) don’t have much more or better local content and advertising to output than we did in the days before social media and smartphones. A tool is built to operate on a national scale, but the landscape of finding the local information is messy and chaotic, lacking structured data, or consistent geographic coverage…
Do ‘Walk-Through’ Ads Have the Zip That’s Missing in Hyperlocal Publishing?
The new “AdSweeps” are being offered by U.K. ad exchange Addiply transform 2D photographs into the 3D-like experiences shown in the above examples. The aim is not to objectify users as statistical constructs of demographic or psychographic data points, but to appeal to the universal sense of curiosity…
LBMA Podcast: The Mobile Payment Journey of the Future
In this week’s episode, Asif’s take on location based marketing in China; Twitter finally develops geo-targeted ads; Facebook helps get you (almost) free wifi; Google plans to launch thing-sharing service Mine, and Pandora quadruples its audience. Plus our resource of the week: The mobile payment journey of the future. And special guest Keller Rinaudo, co-founder of Romotive.
Why Hyperlocal Is Naturally Suited for Investigative Reporting
A new study by local media research/consulting firm AR&D and Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) reveals that investigative reporting is a big draw for consumers when it comes to media choice. Sixty-two precent said it was reason enough to follow a particular news organization, and it ranked only behind weather (54% preference) in terms of interest — and that interest is growing. Investigative reporting is plain old reporting. Period. And it begins with getting off the lazy and easy commodity news bandwagon and growing a reportorial spine…
When It Comes to Mobile Local Search and SMBs: Mind the Gap
Mobile is inherently local and thus conducive to location-based, high-intent user engagement, all of which appeals to many SMBs. B ut mobile also exacerbates their paradox of choice. That’s why there is a big opportunity for third parties to help SMBs get there. That can be marketing or SEO consultants, but the real opportunity is for the local media organizations with deep roots and existing relationships with SMBs…
Non-Profit Indies, One-Time Successors to Local Media, Face Funding Woes
You think traditional broadcast media like TV and radio are struggling with depleted revenue models as audiences move to online screens? Consider those who were already depleted: Community broadcasters on cable access TV and local radio. These folks face even greater challenges with sparse audiences, a limited to non-existent revenue model, and funding from foundations drying up faster than fresh rain in the Mojave Desert.
Nextdoor: Where Privacy Is a Double-Edged Sword
Nextdoor has some issues to sort out in whether and how much neighbors want to be walled in from adjacent, or even non-adjacent, communities. In researching this story, I signed up for the service and discovered firsthand its power of engagement — but found its walls dampened the enthusiasm it had engendered in me, and I wondered if the latter will impact the potential of the former to make good on the company’s $100 million valuation…
Everybody Is a Media Company, So Now What?
The explosive growth of personal media has disrupted everything it touches. The same inexpensive tools that consumers are now using are also available to any-sized businesses, which has the potential of entirely leveling the playing field in consumer goods and services by driving down the cost of marketing. The neighborhood doughnut shop can just as easily make and distribute media as the Kroger Bakery up the street or, by God, even Walmart. We may chuckle today but just wait…
Gannett’s Acquisition of Belo’s TV Stations Puts Focus on Hyperlocal Push
Gannett brags that its acquisition of Belo’s TV stations creates a broadcast “super group.” But perhaps the biggest implication about the merger is not its “super”-ness, but what it will mean in the hyperlocal digital space where both companies, especially Gannett, are trying to build a post-broadcast future…
Authenticity: The Force Behind the Local Snowball Effect
One of the new values that the Web demands is authenticity. For news, it means a commitment to truthfulness by bringing readers or viewers as close as possible to the source of information. In business, it also means being truthful in our behavior, attributions and even our intentions. It’s an underappreciated and underutilized value, and it strikes at the very heart of marketing — especially at the hyperlocal level…
SMBs Have Some Major Advantages Over Brands in Social Marketing
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…
How Will Jeff Bezos Redefine the Newspaper?
Amazon has always been a virtual marketplace, where the location of the buyer has very little to do with a transaction. Bringing the Bezos vision to bear on a community-oriented portal could mean any number of things, but it certainly means the potential for services that bear some resemblance to traditional journalism but are remediated into a form that takes advantage of digital commerce and social media, while maintaining a sense of local community…