A New Report from the Multi-Location Social Media and Reputation Management Expert Uncovers How Localization is Redefining Meaningful Social Media Engagement

SOCi, the leader in social media and reputation management for multi-location brands, launched “SOCi Q4 2018 STATE OF THE MARKET: The Rise of Localized Social Marketing,” which details how the evolution of social platforms has spawned a new form of marketing thanks to the intimate connection social media now fosters between brands and consumers. In the report, SOCi defines Localized Social Marketing as any effort focusing on leveraging locally-driven communication channels to help businesses reach the specific local communities they serve by truly interacting with fans, followers, and customers on a local level.

Leveraging proprietary insights derived from nearly 300 multi-location businesses like Ace Hardware, Sport Clips, Liberty Tax and Steadfast Management, SOCi’s report uncovers and outlines the impact reviews, social conversations, and local business pages now have on a business’s bottom line and offers practical advice to marketers looking to strengthen their own local efforts.

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“Given more than 70% of brand engagement on social is happening on local pages, Localized Social Marketing has become a critical strategy for multi-location marketers and managing online reputation—across all places customers leave feedback—is now an essential part of the overall marketing mix,” said Monica Ho, SOCi’s Chief Marketing Officer. “The future is incredibly exciting for this industry, but any brand who isn’t yet meeting consumers’ expectations of how they want to be interacted with will likely face challenges as we head into 2019.”

To compile the report, SOCi ran a detailed analysis of usage across its platform from Q4 2017 through Q3 2018 and identified the top 10 industries taking advantage of Localized Social Marketing:

• Real Estate
• Agency
• Retail
• Food & Beverage
• Medical
• Health
• Fitness & Personal Care
• Hospitality
• Construction
• Business Services
• Finance

Brands on the SOCi platform are highly engaged across top social and review sites like Facebook, Google My Business, and Yelp. While Facebook drives their total engagement activity (by more than 26x that of other networks combined), Google My Business actually accounts for the highest percentage of received reviews. To put the size and scale of their Localized Social Marketing efforts into better perspective, these organizations cumulatively manage more than 65,000 individual, local social and review site profiles monthly, and are individually responsible for posting almost three and a half million social posts every year.

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Added Ho: “Part of a smart and diversified Localized Social Marketing strategy is content optimization, and it’s important to remember not all social engagements are created equal. A comment or review commands a higher value than more passive, one-click activities like retweets and social platforms are starting to prioritize businesses driving a higher volume of this type of interaction. There’s a significant imperative for companies to enact a smarter approach to fostering and maintaining engagement.”

Another significant factor when it comes to overall Localized Social Marketing strategy is the response window. Nearly eight in 10 consumers expect a timely response to an online review or comment, and SOCi’s proprietary research shows that 89% of consumers are willing to change a negative review based on how the business responds. That to say, consumers aren’t turned off by less-than-perfect reviews. While studies show that 52 percent of consumers prefer companies they do business with to have at least four stars, of all the users that engaged with SOCi client content on Facebook, less than one percent posted negative feedback.