Rating Street Fight’s 2015 Predictions

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At the end of each year, Street Fight invites staffers, friends, and luminaries from the industry to share their predictions for what’s in store for the coming year. Today, we take a look back at some of the predictions for 2015 to see who was on target and who missed the mark.

Getting Real: What SMBs Can Realistically Expect from Social Media

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Small business owners don’t sign up with digital agencies for mediocre results. When SMBs pay for hyperlocal services like social media management, they expect to be wowed. For hyperlocal vendors working with SMB clients, failing to set clear expectations is a recipe for disaster.

Is Content King in Local Too?

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In the pantheon of buzzwords overtaking pitch decks and CMO-speak, “content marketing” is the new darling. The term has legitimate grounding to be fair, but like “long tail” and “web 2.0” in days past, its overuse precedes it. Content marketing also isn’t anything new — it’s been done for years, albeit under the ethically challenged “advertorial” rubric among other flavors. Now it’s new, improved, and hitched to en vogue terms like “native.”

Closely Launches Business Intelligence App for Local Merchants

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Closely, a Denver-based startup that has created an online marketing dashboard for small businesses, has launched a mobile business intelligence app that aggregates nearby competitors’ deal and social media activity in a live stream. The new product, Perch, which is currently in a closed beta, is intended to give local merchants a snapshot update of their competitors’ marketing activities…

Unpacking the Twisted Thinking of Small Business Self-Service Online

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Feeling “in control” is the most central need with merchant behavior. How can they feel in control of how they drive results with technology; how do they know if they are out-performing competition; and how do they know if customers are satisfied?

When Tools Become Channels: Rethinking Local Promotion Distribution

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Promotional commerce between small businesses and local consumers is undergoing a massive reconstruction. In the process, media channels are being forced to proactively adapt or wither into irrelevance. Media channels no longer enjoy the spoils of having critical mass in consumer reach and limited competition…

Local Quotables: Clay Graham, Perry Evans, Claire Hughes Johnson and more…

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The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry.

Perry Evans gets tongue in cheek on deals, while Rocky Agrawal soberly analyzes the Groupon-Yelp correlation and Pat Kitano shows the hyperlocal-Facebook correlation. More wise words and wise-cracks:

Twitter Local: @MarissaMayer, @LisaWilliams, @PerryEvans, @RobCurley and more…

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This week on Twitter, Rob Curley notes that “innovative” doesn’t always drive readership; Closely’s Perry Evans calls Zagat “an aggregation model and methodology,” and Grapphic’s Michael Fives rolls his eyes at TechCrunch, AOL and HuffPo: It’s “like watching a bunch of spoiled children misbehave.” Read more from the hyperlocal twitterverse.