5 Strategies for Tracking Hyperlocal Marketing Success
What merchants really need is a clear-cut way to compare the effectiveness of their hyperlocal marketing initiatives, so they focus their energies on the platforms that work. To answer that question, we consulted with experts from inside the industry. Here are five strategies that merchants can use to track the success of their digital marketing initiatives…
LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’
“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…
5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs
As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….
Guns, Money, and a Data-Driven Hyperlocal Wire Service
A data-driven wire service would — through a cooperative model or other collaborative form of consumption — help pool the costs of complicated technology development and integration across numerous parties while yielding scalable, customizable results. Put the wired in wire service and let the database masters rule the new media universe…
Can Businesses Use Hyperlocal to Leverage Customers’ Politics?
There has been significant coverage about the differences in Democrats and Republicans, but to date there hasn’t been any analysis on real world activities associated with political affiliation. From grocery stores to restaurants, from retailers to gas stations, voting Democrat or Republican plays a part in which establishments we step foot in and which ones we don’t…
2012 Election Points to Hyperlocal Future in Politics
Election coverage at the local level is going to grow in importance., Here’s why: The shift from air attack to the tech-enabled ground game means that, in all likelihood, the era of declining voter turnouts are over, in my opinion. With growing turnouts come a more broadly-engaged electorate not just on political matters but on local politics that constitute the true bread-and-butter issues for many towns and small cities…
6 Ways to Encourage User Contributions on Hyperlocal Sites
Encouraging readers to comment on stories, share news tips, and contribute content involves more than adding a commenting widget or slapping a “Tips” button on the header of a site. Here are six tips from successful publishers and editors about how independent publications can solicit feedback from their readers online…
JReporter Promises Local News Orgs Cheap Content, Revenues
JReporter, an application that works with the Android and iOS interfaces, allows a licensing media company to solicit content, whether it is text, video, audio or stills, from local citizens via geo-targeted messages. The user can then submit content to the news organization through the app, which integrates with the media company’s CMS…
CorFire, Edo Announce Mobile Offers Partnership
CorFire and edo have announced a mobile partnership in which edo’s offers platform will be linked with CorFire’s mobile wallet solution and marketing services. The result, which is currently in beta testing and expected to be made widely available later this year, will allow merchants and financial institutions to build off preference analytics and past spending behavior…
Social Network Swidjit Develops Local Currency/Barter System
CEO Alex Colket hopes the hyperlocal social network will centralize many of the key functions of Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, Meetup and Yelp, into one. Swidjit allows users to post “have its” or “want its” to facilitate an online bartering system. The website launched on May 1, and items exchanged thus far include baby strollers, mattresses and even rides to Syracuse, N.Y.
Cont3nt Connects Local Publishers With Freelance Multimedia Journalists
The explosion of mobile content creation and sharing has enabled citizen journalists all over the world to upload and broadcast news immediately, wherever it’s happening. But folks on the ground at a news event rarely get paid for their reporting. Cont3nt, a new wire-service of sorts, is hoping to supply publications with relevant place-based images and videos by connecting them directly with freelance journalists…
EveryBlock Updates App to Facilitate Mobile Sharing of Local News
Brian Addison, the company’s president, said the revamped app allows for “the sharing of news with neighbors as it unfolds.” He says that apps like Everyblock’s “help publishers stay top of mind with their audience. We’ve reached a point where having your logo occupy a prominent place on a user’s second screen is the linchpin for loyalty.”
Talk About Local’s Hartley: U.K. Hyperlocals Looking for Scale
The U.K. has been a rich testing ground for hyperlocal content plays over the past few years. But British projects have taken a slightly different flavor than we’re used to here in the U.S., says Sarah Hartley, a veteran journalist who has been involved in some notable stabs at conquering the local space..
Steve Outing: No One’s Got a ‘Magic Bullet’ for Hyperlocal Revenue
The founder and program director at the Digital News Test Kitchen at CU-Boulder studies the places where journalism and technology collide. Here he talks with Street Fight about where the concept of hyperlocal has been, where it’s going, and how technology is increasingly impacting how journalists do their job…
Digital Pioneer David Cohn: Hyperlocals Need Passion AND Revenue
David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, a nonprofit pioneer in community-funded reporting, has been hired by the UC/Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to help develop a sustainable business model for hyperlocals. He will run three Ford Foundation-funded, student-staffed hyperlocals in the Bay Area, with the aim of making them self-supporting. As he began his new assignment, […]
Apple May Have the Hardware, But Google’s Winning Hyperlocal
The hyperlocal interface will overwhelmingly revolve around a mobile experience with advertising and commerce tied to location and in-the-moment activities or sentiments. By ceding that real estate to Google with a sub-par user interface and experience, Apple is handicapping its future efforts to earn a significant chunk of that market…