Community 2.0 media, where the community itself participates in local conversation, is evolving through several specific, established online channels:

• Online newspapers provide venues for community commentary on local news

• Craigslist and Yelp provide ad hoc community bulletin boards

What’s surprising is that the above venues are the only “local” websites with significant community participation. (Try thinking of any others…)

The above means of community interaction relies on the local user to post directly onto the site. Thus, conversations are much harder to find and track in real time because the commentary remains buried inside the website, whether it’s the online newspaper or Craigslist.

The local conversation is most engaging when it is distributed

The community bulletin board should be opened up into the social media. For example, local Yelp (or Yahoo!) reviews connects with Facebook and Friendfeed:

Local conversations can also be hashtagged for distribution via Twitter and through local Twitter feed aggregation sites like Breaking SF News.com:

Conclusion: Local conversations are oriented to real time because every participant is a part of a real life community. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and other real time social media applications will be the most efficient way to broadcast running dialogues, even conferences, within the community. Community media systems, structured like the Breaking News Network or adhoc in local Facebook groups, will evolve to capture these conversations.

Moonfruit, an online website design company, advertised 10 MacBook giveaways in 10 days if you follow their Twitter feed @Moontweet and tweet using their hashtag #moonfruit. #moonfruit has been on top of the Twitter trends for four straight days, and Moonfruit can boast an average of over 10,000 new followers per day from this promotion:

Twitter Contests for Building a Local Following

The same contest frenzy can be applied to local businesses for the same reasons people put their business cards into a jar; they want a chance to win!

First step if you’re a local business: Follow local community Twitterers using local Twitter resources like Localtweeps.com, Chirpcity.com and Breaking News city sites, and Twitter directories that encourage local city tagging like Twellow.com or WeFollow.com. Once you follow them, you create a simple contest campaign so they will be attracted to following you back:

Restaurants

The free dinner for two weekly drawing works exactly like “put your business card in a jar”.

Retail

Use special coupon applications like TwtQpon.com to create Twitter coupons:

Use events like birthdays, graduation, Christmas or April 15 to tweet topical gift or service ideas. Consumers search for “graduation gifts” on Twitter too.

Users can even embed the real time search engine:

from last year’s 06/02/08 slideshow: Explaining Twitter, Friendfeed & Social Media 2.0. I just added Lifestreaming.

With the advent of Twitter and the real time web, can blogs can chronicle real time as effectively as micro-blogging tools? Last week Steve Rubel introduced his move from blogging to lifestreaming with a new lifestream site based on the Posterous platform.

For the uninitiated, the lifestream looks curiously like a blog:

Q) Cmon Steve, isn’t this “lifestream” just basically a blog?

Sort of. The site is certainly structured like a blog. However, the approach is different. It’s less formal. There will be more bits, fewer posts. What’s more, I will employ creative ways to share and engage - such as mindmaps, image galleries and short videos. In addition, this will serve as a key way I connect to you on various social networks.

The principal difference between a blog and a lifestream: to comment on a blog, a reader needs to be on the blog itself.  Commenting on a lifestream can be done from any social network where the lifestream content is distributed – Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, etc.

However, there is a real reason why individuals or companies need blogs or a central repository of content like a lifestream to give them online presence. Twitter and other micro-blogging services suffer from massive data overload (literally multimillions tweets per hour), and Twitter search can only query across a few weeks of Twitter data at most. Robert Scoble points out:

Here’s an easy search: find the original Tweet of the guy who took the picture of the plane that fell into the Hudson. I can do it on FriendFeed after a few tries, but on Twitter Search? Give me a break. Over on Google? One click, but you gotta click through a blog or a journalistic report to get there. Real time search is horrid at saving our knowledge and making it accessible. (italics mine)

Conclusion: it’s essential to have the central repository of content that micro-blogging tools can drive traffic towards.

We’ve published a simple, but explicit eBook introduction to Twitter for local businesses called “The Local Business Owner’s Guide to Twitter” for free download. The final chapters provide high level tactics for using Twitter as a local advertising media.

Let us know what you think about the eBook and retweet it! For a real estate perspective on Twitter, download the Twitter for Real Estate Twits book at MyTechOpinion.

Breaking Iran News aggregates the Twitter, Twitpic, Flickr and Picasa feeds to broadcast the most updated news from Iran based  on keywords IranRevolution, IranElection, Neda (the 16-year-old girl whose killing was caught on video and has become a martyr) and other hashtag phrases being used on Twitter.

We’re helping our clients develop these kinds of instant media sites based on the Breaking News template. The “instant value” of Breaking News is providing your audience compelling content immediately and building an immediate presence through the viral marketing systems we teach. The topics for developing a Breaking News site are endless see a list at http://azlist.about.com/

To find out more, go to our registration page for the Breaking News course and build a Breaking News site tomorrow.

1) How different local merchants should use Twitter

2) How to build a local Twitter consumer community around you

3) How to survey for business opportunities

4) How to make your Twitter campaign more efficient

1) Services

Walk in / appointment based services: Barbers, beauticians, spas, nail salons, auto maintenance / lube,

Tweet schedule openings for the day. Offer daily special and coupons.

Examples: @truemassage, @polishednails

Articles: Putting Twitter’s world to use

Medical / health services: Optometrists, dentists, chiropractors, doctors

Create a professional profile befitting your standing in the community. Discuss the tools and trends of your practice. Demystify.

Examples: @scottgreenhalgh (Cosmetic dentistry), @evansclinic

Professional services: Accountants, attorneys, financial planners

The problem with arcane professions like the law and accounting is the “boring” factor. Twitter should be used to connect with the community for branding purposes. Become a “business calendar”; accountants can broadcast changes in tax codes and alert important filing dates.

Examples: @cordellparvin, @kanoisandeep (Tax guru)

Articles: Attorney marketing on Twitter. Valuable or waste of time?

Transaction based services: Real estate, mortgages, travel agencies, recruiters

Transaction based service providers suffer from a spammy reputation because it’s easy to incessantly tweet out home listings, job posts or travel deals. The focus should be on providing information and data relevant and interesting to, say a prospective home buyer, by talking about communities or market conditions. Interacting like a “real” person is paramount to establishing a welcome identity as a hub, not a spammer, in the community.

Examples: @mortgagereports, @scottkato

Arts and entertainment services: Night clubs, events organizers, symphonies

Tweet schedule of events and shows, offer quizzes, advertise discounted tickets, create contests – give away two free tickets to a local follower

Examples: @yoshisjazz @sanfransymphony

(note: arts groups should design great backgrounds!)

Articles: Cultural groups tap social networking

Hospitality: Restaurants, hotels, taco trucks, street food vendors

Tweet the day’s lunch menu @ 11am, and dinner menu @ 1 pm, 4pm. Link to recipes. Offer coupon code.

Examples: @divinopiazza, @kogibbq, @nakedpizza

Articles: Naked Pizza erects Twitter billboard, List of street food vendors using Twitter

Retail

Advertise your deals of the day, weekend sales, etc. Your Twitter feed’s timeline chronicles what your store offers so consumers will use this as a consumer and comparison shopping resource. Consumers may use Twitter to ask questions in lieu of a phone call because it’s more efficient. Be sure to intersperse deals tweets with interesting links. @ABC_Carpet twitpics its rugs!

Examples: @brooksrunning, @ABC_Carpet, @wfm_oakland (most Whole Foods Market branches have their own Twitter feed)

Twitter marketing no-no: Abandoning a Twitter feed at @bestbuybayarea

Articles: List of US retailers on Twitter,  Retailer Twitter aggregation

2) How to Build a Local Follower Base:

• Follow the followers of other local Twitter feeds in your city.
• Contests: Offer two free tickets to concert or lunch in a weekly drawing to a local follower. The locals will follow you.
• Quizzes: Post picture of city landmark, or quiz about interesting local facts.
• Give to the community: Support other local Twitterers by retweeting their local interest stories and events.
• Provide links to interesting articles related to your business, market conditions or city. For example, link to reviews of cameras if you’re a camera shop.
• Position your Twitter account as your online point of contact by adding your feed info to business cards and storefront signs. Twitter names are much easier to remember than phone #s. Article: Twitter to replace 800 #s as point of corporate contact.
• Tweet using hashtags at a Breaking News site for your city, and request placement of your feed into the City site.
• Personalize: Of course, make sure you’re not tweeting about business all the time or it may come across as spammy. It’s best to create two accounts – a business account like @yoshisjazz that sticks to the subject, and a personal account to have conversations that reveal your personality.

3) Surveying for Business Opportunities

• Monitor Twitter search terms for your business. Many Twitterers ask for help to their follower base. If you’re a tax accountant in Chicago, monitor the search terms “Chicago tax accountant” by creating an RSS feed at Search.Twitter.com and tracking it in your RSS reader.

• Use the hashtag conventions #ihave and #yourcity occasionally (add them to a tweet once per week or so) to alert others who monitor this hashtag convention for services or goods you provide.
• Register your Twitter feed at Jobaba, the social marketplace for local services. More of these localized service sites will appear.

4) Twitter Efficiency Tools

• Use a Twitter scheduling application like Hootsuite or Tweetlater to schedule your tweets for the week. Especially useful for restaurants that know their menu offering for the week.
• For larger companies or stores, use a collaborative Twitter application like CoTweet so your Twitter account can be monitored and updated by multiple employees. Example: @ocreggie has five monitors.

1. Craigslist advertisers / posters are generally anonymous, and thus less credible.
2. Craigslist advertisers don’t have track records or eBay feedback ratings.
3. It can take a long time to produce a Craigslist ad, and you need to re-create the ad to get it up to the top of the list a few hours/days later.

Using Twitter to distribute classifieds can address these problems:

1. Twitterers, if they are not purposefully anonymous, have identities that generally tie into other social networks like Facebook or blogs/websites.
2. Twitterers have a track record on the basis of their existing tweet history. Querying the Twitter name and identity on search engines may also uncover reputation problems.
3. It can take as little as 30 seconds to produce a “Tweet” classified, including uploading a picture or video via Twitpic or Twitvid.

The Hurdle to Twitter Adoption:

Twitterers posting classifieds need a relevant local audience to sell to. We’re building the Breaking News Network of hyperlocal Twitter-based community sites to facilitate that local exposure. Later this year, each city in our Breaking New Network will be introducing a localized Tweetslist.com application that will provide local classifieds exposure just like Craigslist.

ilist.micro and #ihave and #iwant

ilist.micro is a Twitter classified service that developed a Twitter hashtag convention used for selling and requesting goods by Tweeting #ihave and #iwant. We’ve incorporated this hashtag convention for the Classifieds section of our San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London and Toronto Breaking News sites.

Related articles:

Building a National Breaking News Network just like a Craigslist