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Local-Social Search: A Powerful Marketing Channel For Small Businesses A Brief History of Social Networks Social networking as we know it today began in 1997 with a site called SixDegrees. SixDegrees was based on the "web of contacts" model of social networking very much like how most social networking sites of today operate. It allowed users to list friends, family members, and acquaintances regardless whether they are members of the site or not—those who got listed and who were not members of the site were sent invitations to join. SixDegrees allowed users to send messages and post bulletin board items to people within their first three degrees of connection. Additionally, it lets users see their connection to any other user on the site, that is if there was any.

At its peak, SixDegrees had around a million fully-registered members. It was bought by YouthStream Media Networks in January 2000—a time when, according to YouthStream, “the online advertising market was growing dramatically and the capital markets for online investment were robust." However, market conditions soon deteriorated and YouthStream eventually pulled the plug on SixDegrees in December of the same year. As the dust from the bursting of the dot com bubble was settling, a former Netscape software engineer by the name of Jonathan Abrams created Friendster—the year was 2002. On how and why he created Friendster, Abrams said:

“I found the idea of chatting with random, anonymous strangers really creepy. I'm also a big networker professionally, and I noticed that a friend had a lot of female friends he was hanging out with, and he wasn't sleeping with them, but he would hook up with their friends. I'm sure you know people like that. “What if there was a way to meet people online through your friends? This would be better for dating, but it would also be better for things that weren't dating. So I started thinking about a dating site that wasn't about dating. Buddy lists where you know everybody and online discussions where things are totally open have been basically how people interact. That's not how we interact in the real world. I wanted to build something in the middle.”

Friendster may not be the first social networking site, but it was the first to enjoy a great and diverse popularity. That was until MySpace came into the picture. Just barely six months old at the time (in 2004), MySpace overtook Friendster as the premier social networking website. Part of MySpace's success can be attributed to what it allowed users to do that Friendster didn't—it allowed its users to modify their layouts and do on its pages just about anything they could with HTML. But what really contributed to Friendster's downfall was that it was able to scale itself to meet the demands. As a result, the site would often freeze and its overall speed was making it more and more difficult and annoying to use. In addition to that, Friendster wasn't at all active in adding new features to the site. And so, MySpace reigned supreme. That was, until the flexibility and freedom it gave its users came back to haunt it—it didn't take long for the ads, the custom layouts,

and the interface to become too loud and low brow for a lot of people. The year was 2005 and MySpace had already been bought by News Corp. By 2008, Facebook was all over MySpace worldwide. Then, in May 2009, Facebook overtook MySpace as the largest social networking site in the U.S., a record which it holds up to this day. Just for clarification, though... SixDegrees, Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook are not the only social networking sites out there. Shortly after Friendster was launched, social networking sites were popping up all over the Web like mushrooms. Some of the more well known ones are Hi5, LinkedIn, Multiply, Orkut, and Ning, just to name a few. The popularity of this kind of sites led to the creation of other forms/types of social networking/media sites:

Micro-blogging sites – Twitter and Tumblr Media-sharing sites – Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube, and Rever Social bookmarking sites – Delicious, Digg, and Reddit Lifestreaming sites – FriendFeed, Ustream.tv, and Justin.tv

And the rest, as they say, is history. Social Media and Businesses It's not entirely clear when, why, or how companies started using online social networking in their business. But some articles seem to be pointing at “fear” to be the primary reason.

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Businesses came out with an article in May 2005 entitled “Blogs Will Change Your Business”. The article referred to blogs as "the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself". In case you're wondering, Twitter did not yet exist at the time, and Facebook was still humming relatively quietly in someone's dorm room. Below are excerpts from the article:

“they're going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)” “While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.” “Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they're losing control of it.”

Despite these frightening words, only few bothered to heed BW's advice. Fast-forward to 2008, the year when social media was beginning to really take off... According to the August 2008 comScore MediaMetrix, blogs were getting 77.7 million unique visitors and Facebook and MySpace were getting 116.1 million (combined traffic), and all those are just from the U.S.. The numbers that eMarketer came out with in May 2008 told a similar story. And so did Universal McCann's. In 2008, five of the top 10 sites were social sites and 10% of all internet traffic were on YouTube. Additionally, 120,000 new blogs were being launched and 1.5 million posts were being published on a DAILY basis. But still, only a handful of businesses (relatively speaking) were harnessing the benefits social media. In opening her keynote at the Social Media Marketing Summit 2008, Altimeter

Group founder Charlene Li did a Google search on 'Comcast'. Among the results returned by Google (in ninth position, as a matter of fact) was a YouTube video titled “A Comcast technician sleeping on my couch.” Li said:

"This is why social media is so important, this YouTube video recorded by 'Brian' resulted in the Comcast brand going down the toilet. You must understand that the power is now in the hands of consumers."

In November 2009, the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth conducted a study that looked at the usage of social media among Inc. 500 companies. The results of the study showed that interest in social media among Inc. 500 companies has grown since the first study was conducted in 2007. The study also found that the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. are incorporating social media in their marketing activities at a much higher rate than other companies. Okay, so that's what's happening with the big guys... how about the little guys? Well, certainly there are small business that have already integrated social media into their daily operations. But, there are still those that haven't, and there are A LOT of them. Heads up people, now is the time to start embracing social media... no, let's take it a notch higher... Now is the time to start harnessing local-social search. Local-Social Search People have been predicting the eventual marriage of social networking and local search for many years. As a matter of fact, as early as 2004, there have already been attempts in putting them together. In July 2004, Insider Pages launched a site that let users (particularly those in the Los Angeles area) submit and search reviews about local businesses in addition to enabling them to build a network of personal contacts. This was Insider Pages' answer to the problem that, as CEO Stu McFarlane had put it: “there's no place good to go for quality information. There's nothing that really tells you how good or how bad a business is.”

With the creation of the site, MacFarlane said they've "taken the concept of word of mouth and moved online." 2004 was also witness to the launching of Yelp, a social networking site that let users write and share reviews about local businesses in San Francisco. (Note: The service has since been adopted in 18 metro areas including Boston, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and Los Angeles.) In April 2005, popular social networking site LinkedIn added a new service called "LinkedIn Services". The new service allowed LinkedIn users to find business service providers either through their connections, or by browsing through the different service categories, or through keyword search. On the other hand, the site lets service providers participate by allowing them to create their LinkedIn profiles and solicit recommendations from their clients who are also on LinkedIn. LinkedIn ranked service providers based on the recommendations of people within a user's social network. Fast-forward to 2010, the voice of consumers continues to grow and it has become more popular than it had ever been. And social media takes all the credit for this. Online ratings and reviews, particularly those found in social networking sites, are now REALLY starting to have a serious impact on local businesses. And for that, local businesses must now learn how to use local search and social media (local-social search) to their advantage. Good thing for them, various online entities are coming out with tools that can help them keep up with the crowd. For example, Google has just recently launched "Place Pages" which aggregates reviews, photos, details, and maps. Google Maps has also recently been integrated with a user review feature. YellowBot, a local search service that lets users find and review places, is now offering search results based on networking and tagging.

Internet yellow pages are also adding social features/services to their sites. One example is Idearc who has added a Twitter feature to its SuperPages service.

So how can businesses benefit from these? Local-social search can help businesses in promoting their products/services to their audience better. And, it can also help them identify micro-target markets. And look at these numbers released by BIA Kelsey Group. These are from the latter part of 2009...

16% of consumers use Social Networking Sites as a Source for Local Shopping Info

47% think ratings or testimonials from users of a product or service is very

important, up from 40% two years ago

18% of those surveyed have submitted a written review

Types of businesses searched for in past 6 months from a mobile device: 43% search for restaurants, 37% for movies, 35% for retail stores, 32% for banks/atms, 27% for hotel/lodging

25% of those surveyed want to locate friends nearby on their mobile device

The game is changing and businesses must try to keep up with it and take advantage of it so that they can connect with their audience in more meaningful ways, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, or new platforms that have yet to be launched. Google Place Pages Google provides people a great way of exploring places. On September 24, 2009, Google made it even better by adding to it what it calls "Place Pages". A Place Page is basically a webpage about a place--any place in the world--containing all available relevant information about it. Whether it's a business, a point of interest, a transit station, a neighborhood, a landmark, or a city... if someone has created a Place Page for it, Google Maps users will be able to see it. To see a place's Place Page, you simply have to click on the "more info" link either in the search results or in the mini-bubble.

Below is a screenshot of a Place Page...

The “Place Summary” section displays a compilation of excerpts of reviews about the place that can be found all over the web.

The “Details” section aggregates relevant information aggregates from over 500 authoritative sources. To see more details, all you have to do is to click on the More details link.

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The "Related Maps" sections shows user-created maps that include the place in question.

The "User Content" section shows excerpts of what people are saying about the place in question. The materials displayed in this section are gathered from all over the web.

"Transit" helps you find the best way to get to the place via public transport.

On the city level, a Place Page shows the most popular places in a city. The one shown below is for New York, NY.

Place pages for transit stations can show a list of all the lines serving a particular station, as well as provide a timetable of upcoming departures. Like this one for

Zurich Hauptbahnhof.

As a business owner, you can add or update your business details through Google's Local Business Center. Click on Add new business and fill out the following form to create your account. The following few pages are screen captures of this process.

The last screen you'll see is:

After you go through the process of filling out all that information, Google will send you a postcard containing a pin number which you'll use to verify/validate your business's listing on Google business center.

User-Generated Reviews on Google Maps Aside from the User Content section we've talked about in Place Pages, Google Maps has its own review submission feature. This feature, which lets any logged-in user to add reviews for any business listing, has actually been around for quite some time now—it was originally announced on Google's Lat Long Blog back in June 2007. To write a review, click on the review link in a Place Page...

...then click on the Write a review link.

Look Who's Changed Its Local Search Results, Too! Yahoo!

Yahoo's Local Shortcut, which used to simply indicate things like how many reviews/ratings a business has, was improved on by Yahoo in July 2009 and made it to include/display the actual text of the reviews along with other things like photos and navigational directions. Let's try “Tartine Bakery” again... Clicking on the downward pointing arrow will display the reviews right underneath the listing.

And here's how it displays photos.

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