On the face of it,

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, there is a lot happening at the intersection of Local and Social marketing – which is what this week’s Social Summit is covering. We haven’t had a chance to make it down there, but it is the most interesting dynamic happening in online marketing and communications at the moment.

Why Social?

For many Social Media seems an impenetrable waste of energy. Why should someone be interested in our tweets? Or our followers? What is it all about?

Well, the key reason is something that has long since been the holy grail of online: community.

Facebook has done the best job so far of identifying the need for community and still it struggles to retain interest over a period of time. Other communities existing based around interest – whether it’s car ownership, or nail varnishing.

However, the issue is that these communities are mainly virtual and therefore artificial. This is not to say that the participants are not real, but there’s not much of a real world dynamic to the relationships.

How Web / Mobile Can Get Real…

Therefore, the intersection of Local and Social marketing is where it’s going to grow… where it’s going to develop, and fast.

From the $100m funding Yelp! got; to Google’s live search… to FourSquare and their ‘check in’ functionality based around geo positioning and real-life experience.

2010 is the year for Local Social. Are you prepared?

The Case for Print

It seems that the concern is that Google has been long held that Google has been surreptitiously ’stealing’ content from their websites using Google News and the new entrant Google FastFlip. By hosting pages on their own websites containing this content they have been using other media’s work to fill their advertising boots as well as stop visitors to these sites.

However that ignores the fact that many users search through Google as the starting point to get to articles and then often do click through to read further or to browse the media. It also ignores the fact that many news sites have ALLOWED Google to index ‘protected’ pages precisely because they want searchers to come to their sites and then pay to subscribe.

They Have the Right to Know!

What seems to have transpired is a concerted effort to squeeze Google so that they relent and ensure that pages which are behind subscription systems aren’t pilfered by the general public and that IF the public want to read them, then they need to subscribe.

This all seems eminently sensible. Media owners really need answer the fundamental question of what their existing content is worth and they’ll never discover this if Google is taking a substantial proportion of the traffic.

Our Prediction, FWIW

Now, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking ‘why is a marketing agency talking about this?’ … well, it’s because it’s another sign of the paradigm shift we’re on at the moment. Yellow Pages decreasing, print prices dropping, Evening Standard being given out F.O.C. Media is a mess. Digital is superceding print and offline media with professional journalism on life support.

Our view is that this strategy will have the desired effect. It will force an answer.

And the voice will say ‘we don’t value your content enough to pay for it’.

Only the strong will survive.

Looking forward to going to the ‘Local Social Summit’ in November. Speakers from all round the globe coming to London to get busy and share some of the latest stuff.

Ergo will be there… keeping an appropriately firm finger on the pulse and making sure that we know exactly what we’re talking about when advising clients.

Maybe see you there? Local Social Summit Website