Facebook Popular Source of Local Information [Research]

It's clear that for businesses to integrate authentically on social, they need to focus on local – and, as a result, social is becoming a resource for local information. So for the forthcoming issue of the Yext Quarterly, we wanted to look at how local is changing, and the ways businesses (and consumers) are using social.

We worked again with industry experts, Greg Sterling and Andrew Shotland, to conduct a survey to find out exactly where consumers are looking for (and finding) local information – and the results surprised us.

The survey conducted with more than 1,000 people found that Facebook is more than twice as popular for local information as specialized sites, like TripAdvisor or MenuPages.

To us this means:

• Facebook is a (growing) powerhouse for local information

  • We conducted the survey in March 2013, only weeks after the initial launch of Graph Search, so with the full roll-out, Facebook is only going to become a more popular local resource

• Consumers consider updated business information to be reliable

  • Facebook has become synonymous with 'updates,' so users understand that the information on business Pages is recent and correct

  • For example, TripAdvisor is good for reviews, or MenuPages may have an up-to-date menu, but they are not where consumers go for business information

For businesses, this demonstrates the opportunity of Facebook – not for brand Pages and engagement, but for conversion at the individual store level. And it's as simple as creating a Page.

The full article and survey results appear in the newest issue of the Yext Quarterly: Social & Local. For more, check back to download the complete report tomorrow, July 18th.