How patience in hyperlocal

What's the most important thing in building a local audience......?

Patience according to this report from Mark Briggs who attended last week's interactive local media conference in LA.

Patience is a virtue when building a local audience. Yelp COO Geoff Donaker said it takes 18-36 months for a new Yelp site to reach critical mass with reviews, even with staff “on the street” in every Yelp market. Yelp has nearly doubled its audience in the past year to about 11 million uniques per month.

Ht-Journalism.co.uk

Social media is a tool not a solution

More on the Twitter phenomena reaching into the corporate boardrooms.

In yesterday's Observer John Naughton writes of

CEOs who see all this social media activity going on and are disturbed by it. They read reports in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal about Facebook having 250 million users, Twitter growing exponentially or the YouTube search engine becoming the prime source of information for teenagers, and think "hey, we're missing out on this". So instructions go out to minions to create a corporate presence in this whirlpool of online activity.

Neville Hobson meanwhile asks whether social media change the rules of old-world business? Finally deciding that the question should actually be

Can changes in society, people’s expectations and behaviours change the rules of old-world business?

I am experiencing some of these problems in the current role that I am doing.People forget that social media is simply another way of communicating.It shouldn't be pigeon holed into a special department,it is part of the strategy of the organisation.

The important thing is the message and the targets.

Social media is a tool not a solution