Elymedia is starting to work on social-media strategies to create buzz for more local companies, brands, and venues. It’s quite gratifying to plug into the local community and make a difference — not just for the client, but to share great info within the community. Brand recognition is high, and loyalty strong. It’s a good thing.

Below are 7 quick tips that might help small businesses, local retailers, and restaurants and those crafty and creative food-carts:

• Use hashmarks (#Oakland) in Twitter Search by city or region name and connect with who comes up
• Twitter zip-code search — same idea
• Twitter advanced search for even more targeting for geography and radius from that zip code — an uber targeting of sorts
• Use Meetup by geography, if you have an event and the concept fits
• Flickr groups by region will uncover local contacts
• Facebook advertising can be selected by region
• StumbleUpon. Join a group by region and instantly connect with local sorts. If you enter your town when setting up your profile, your hometown shows up as a clickable link that displays all StumbleUpon users from your hometown. More connection opportunities!
• Use Placeblogger to identify bloggers by region to start that always-important dialogue with local passionistas.

Want more detail or help on how to build a plan, using some or all of the above?  We would love to help.