Thomas Jefferson’s home Monticello, a must-see in Charlottesville During my winter holiday in Charlottesville, every meal we enjoyed at a restaurant was at a well recommended Yelp venue. Similarly my colleague Chris Pilbeam remarked that every venue he visited on a recent trip was suggested by travelers on TripAdvisor. I guess the old adage should be revised: When in Rome do as the Yelpers do. After all, 100 million other people are using Yelp, too, and it ranks as a top 40 U.S. website according to Comscore. All jokes aside, local search marketing now extends well beyond traditional SEO mainstays Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If you have local business getting reviewed on Foursquare, Yelp!, TripAdvisor, Google+ Local, and perhaps Facebook’s …

Social media experts will tell you that social is word of mouth marketing (WOMM). Experienced grassroots marketers may be confused, thinking word of mouth occurs person-to-person in a wide variety of ways, with social offering another venue for that. Now grassroots marketers have the proof to push back on social media experts. A recent study from the Temkin Group shows post purchase word of mouth feedback will more likely occur via email, phone calls, in person, or directly to the company rather than social media. Geoff Livingston on Google+