I’ve participated in, spoken at, and attended several social media and public relations conferences and roundtables in the past year and the same question comes up to each speaker at every session: What’s the future of social media?

The answer lately has always been MOBILE. I think we can all agree on this.

I continue to add, though, that the second question should be: what else? And the answer is LOCAL.

 
What do I mean by local? Well, you are always local. And if I’m near you, I’m local too, right? To quote Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

The mobile users of social media are growing daily. They are not sitting at home or in the office thinking about your brand anymore. Those users are at your locations and want to connect, shout, check in, and tell stories about your brand. Even more, they want to tell stories about your brand specifically at the 123 Main Street location in Anytown USA.

PR Pro’s have a short window of opportunity to take advantage of mobile meeting local. Without proper promotion of what’s happening at your (or your client’s) local outlets, stores, offices, franchisees, or dealers, you are missing the intersection of Social, Mobile, and Local.

 
So, you’ve already set up Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, and a blog for your brand. Now you must do three things:

1. Set up individual fan pages, Twitter accounts, and blogs for each location.

2. Engage customers (or potential customers) at the local level via any platforms on which they are conversing.

3. Share their content with the rest of your community! A bit of content from a customer regarding the 123 Main Street location of your brand is much more powerful than anything else you can create!
 

The true power of local PR is delivering results and achieving business goals not by just Tweeting about the brand on a global or national level, but also by keeping friends, fans, and customers informed about events happening at each outlet, store, location, or community.