Industry News: The Latest Localized Search and Social Platform Updates

As a multi-location marketer, it’s critical to stay on top of the latest industry trends. With so much information coming at you at all times, it can be difficult to decipher what you should be paying attention to. That’s where SOCi comes in! SOCi is here to bring you the latest industry news and help you determine how to implement the tactics into your localized marketing strategy!

Yelp introduces two new ad products

Earlier this month, Yelp introduced two new ad products that are beneficial for multi-location businesses. Yelp Store Visits is the first new product update from the review platform. This update provides an attribution tool to help determine the cost per visit attributable to Yelp advertising. This new feature allows multi-location marketers to get a better understanding of the return on ad spend for Yelp advertising. Yelp Showcase Ads allow businesses to advertise in-season promotions and limited-time offers for their business locations. Yelp described these ads as video-centric, meaning that while they do have video capabilities, you don’t have to use them. Showcase Ads provides multi-location businesses with more control over how they promote their business and tell their story. By utilizing Showcase Ads and measuring the results with Store Visits, multi-location businesses can target new or seasonal product offerings to a local audience and determine the impact of their localized marketing strategy on driving consumers into stores. Our State of the Market report found that Yelp is the third most used platform for multi-location marketers, and the number of users steadily increased throughout 2019. If your multi-location business isn’t already on Yelp, it’s time to change that. Yelp offers the ability for multi-location marketers to have local pages for each of your locations. If you are already utilizing Yelp, these two new features can help increase the effectiveness of your localized marketing strategy on the review platform.

Facebook releases a new page history management tool

To kick off 2020, Facebook released a new page management history tool - a great feature for multi-location marketers. It allows page administrators on Facebook Business Pages to track which actions were taken previously on the page including Page roll allocations, contact information, Business manager relationships, and more. In short, this tool allows page administrators to monitor which actions other page administrators have taken on the Facebook Business Page and when the actions occurred. For multi-location businesses, this provides an opportunity to keep a historical record of who is managing all of your business’s local Facebook Business Pages. It can get confusing with both local business owners and corporate accessing the local social pages, so this new tool on Facebook is helpful to track those changes. If your multi-location business is looking for other ways to keep track of what is happening on your business’s local social and search platforms, SOCi can help! SOCi’s Content tool simplifies social media collaboration between corporate and local teams. Location pages are an important hub for social content and conversations around specific stores and locations. Through SOCi, businesses can take control of their local page presence across the top social and review sites - increasing overall brand visibility.

Through this tool, corporate can keep track of what type of content is being scheduled on various location pages, and can also track if comments or reviews are being responded to. While the history management tool is a great upgrade on Facebook, SOCi can provide this feature to your multi-location business across many other search and social platforms.

LinkedIn adds three new features to pages

LinkedIn also added three new updates to its platform in January 2020. These updates are important for multi-location marketers to be aware of and can help strengthen your localized marketing strategy. The first update allows marketers to post from their business page or their profile page all in one location. This new feature allows marketers to toggle between profiles when posting and interacting with content on LinkedIn. This allows marketers to post from the same spot they would post their own content, increasing the likelihood that they will remember to share or schedule content for their multi-location business when they are on LinkedIn. SOCi’s previously mentioned Content tool also allows multi-location marketers to schedule content for all of their local LinkedIn business pages on a single platform, creating a streamlined process. The second feature that LinkedIn released is an invite to follow feature. This allows admins of LinkedIn Business Pages to invite first-degree connections to follow their organization's page, growing its audience. A first-degree connection is someone you are directly connected with on LinkedIn. As a multi-location marketer, brand awareness is key. If your multi-location business has multiple admins with large networks on LinkedIn, this new feature provides a great opportunity to expand your follower base. It’s important to note that LinkedIn users do have the option to opt-out of receiving follow invites, and admins are limited to sending out 50 invites per day. Finally, LinkedIn Live is still in its testing phase but is something for marketers to keep an eye on. LinkedIn Live allows both individuals and organizations to broadcast video content to their network in real-time. If your multi-location business is interested, you can apply to test it for your business page using these instructions. LinkedIn found that brands who were already using LinkedIn Live see seven times more reactions and 24 more comments on LinkedIn Live videos when compared to the standard videos. With engagement numbers increasing, incorporating live video has been a top trend across other platforms as well. Check out our blog on Stories to learn more.

Make Your Localized Marketing Strategy Stand Out

Now that you’ve gotten all the latest industry news, what do you do with it? As a first step, you should determine which new trends can provide the biggest benefits for your multi-location business. Then, those trends should be added to your current localized marketing strategy. Staying on top of the latest localized marketing trends can help your business stay on at the top of its game in this ever-changing digital world! If you’re looking for a platform to help streamline your localized marketing strategy, SOCi can help! SOCi can help you manage your social content, reviews, and ads across 100s or 1,000s of locations in a single platform. Request a demo today for more information!