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by isix
Social media tools are great for marketing on a mass scale but they can also be tailored for local marketing as well, below are some of the most popular social media tools around at present:
Blogs
Out of all the social media tools available this should be #1 on your list. Blogs have been around for some time now and are a great way to show off your particular knowledge to potential customers. They can be updated easily, which is good particularly if your type of business is constantly releasing new and/or updated products. Using a blog is a great way of providing good quality content which search engines love.
Two very good blogging tools are wordpress and blogger. Pretty much all blogging tools have a comment facility (like the one on this site) that can be used to either rate your products or ask a technical question, which by responding to, can help to demonstrate your knowledge. Just beware of comment spamming and install a good comment spam program like Akismet if you’re using a wordpress blog (not currently available for blogger).
Google+
The relative new kid on the block. Google+ has now implemented a page feature that allows businesses to create a brand page which can be used to promote products and services.
Google+ also has a smart little feature called the +1 button. This affectively is a vote button for when someone likes you page, getting clicks on this increases the relevance of your product which is good for SEO (search engine optimization) as its basically a form of backlink.
Google+ has been gaining popularity at an alarming rate and will almost definitely be giving Facebook a run for their money very soon. Get on board with this one as its gonna get big!
One of the world’s most popular websites, Facebook was originally created to allow users to connect with friends new and old. Over recent years Facebook has evolved with more preference features and the ‘”like” button added. You can now also create business pages to promote your company (for free!), which allows visitors to join your group and/or “like” your products. This gives you good potential for local marketing as your followers will more than likely be local customers. “Liking” a page has excellent advertising qualities as users can see what people think about your business. Your companiesimage can increase through status updates, “likes” and shares.
Twitter is a very popular form of social media tool which can be manipulated to very easily to let local customers know of any business changes, new products, upcoming sales etc.
With the re-tweet button, customers can help you spread your tweets.
Twitter also has a useful feature allows the user to search according to location which allows an individual to find users in a particular area.
Yelp
Yelp has been around since 2004 and now has over 60 million unique monthly visitors. Yelp encourages the customer to find the most local service or product provider they are looking in their area. In the past most people used Yelp to find local restaurants and see reviews, now the website has evolved and can be used to display a great number of services and products.
They have a facility on their website to allow customers to write a review of their experience of using a service or product provider. By getting some good reviews it can only be good for getting more sales? You can also use Yelp to let customers know when you have a sale on.
LinkedIn is not a site for advertising products, however by creating a profile and using their advanced search categories such as location, services, and other search options you can connect with other professionals, potential customers or join interested- based groups which can be a very effective social media tool.
If you can recommend a new Social Media tool, let us know.
About the Author
isix.me is my personal blogsite for all things SEO related. I am by no means an SEO expert or an entrepreneur earning tens of thousands a day in adsense clicks (although I would not complain if I did 
). I have been looking at SEO after launching a website site in 2009 as I obviously wanted to get more visitors to my site. I have found lots of information along the way some good and plenty bad. I thought I would start blogging the useful information in the hope to get more ideas and opinions from others more educated in the field.