Mission Movers and the Hyper-Local SMS Index Project
I wrote recently on the partnership between 4INFO and Mission Movers, the Washington-based entity using the 4INFO service. For that post I spoke with Carol Chi of 4INFO. Brian Bigelow of Mission Movers was kind enough to stop by and leave some quick thoughts in the comments:

"I think you got a few of the details wrong on the project implementation and I'm building a web interface currently for the project, but the chamber is raising funds to pay for it so we haven't rolled it out yet. Feel free to contact me."

Contact him I did, and he proceeded to outline the big picture on his work with the Ranier Valley Chamber of Commerce.

Before I go into his work, I want to emphasize this movement towards the hyper-local evidenced both in the Mission Movers community-built SMS index and in the Washington Post's ReadExpress. Both projects are built on keen insight into and intimate knowledge of hyper-local communities.

While speaking with Chris Ma, VP of Washington Post, I was impressed with his description of DC's metro system as a well-planned neural network with metro stops strategically placed to best enhance economic growth. His insight into metro-riders-as-community spawned the Express tabloid (now read by 250,000 daily), and the ReadExpress site's map-based community news navigation format.

Brian Bigelow, in his email, describes HIS hyper-local community this way: "we were crafting a marketing plan that would use communication mediums that everyone had access to within our community which is one of the most diverse in the country. In my block there are 24 households and only 3 of the 48 adults living in them are American born. We realized many may not have internet or email, but almost everyone has a cellphone."

This kind of experimental hyper-local, bottom-up media creation, as exhibited in the projects of both Bigelow and Ma, should be of high interest to all online media and marketing companies, for if they see strong adoption rates and high usage we're looking at a strong model for future efforts, and it may make sense for brand marketers and/or media companies to enable/sponsor more grass-roots hyper-local media creation and syndication.

On Contacting Luminaries
Bigelow began his email in a manner that I highly recommend to all of those interested in engaging me: "I started reading your site and I think you have some great commentary."

This statement was pretty-much (ok, entirely) impossible for me to argue with and left me feeling pleasant and open to the rest of his email. He further notes that, "after re-reading your article about us I actually realized it's pretty accurate, just missing a few details."

PR: take notes. If you tell me you read my work and have found applications for it in your business I will probably end up writing about your clients ;)

The Ranier Valley Community SMS Index Details
Web interface for community members, community groups and businesses coming soon. This will enable search-phrase results updating through a login.

In addition, updates will be possible through SMS from "phrase owner" phones.

Businesses and community members/groups will be responsible for getting information out about that query to their Ranier Valley constituents.

High-demand phrases will have a drill-down, "where people query for more specific information from a general response."

Bigelow asserts that "by spreading it out it makes the system locally scalable and sustainable." Brian perhaps you could respond in comments to specifically what you're talking about spreading out in that statement.

How the SMS Index Fits In the Broader Ranier Valley Marketing Plan
Bigelow tells me that, "our broader marketing plan includes neighborhood email newsletters, a central web portal, printed brochures in multiple languages and a printed directory for all of the businesses in the neighborhood. So we will be publishing the keywords via all of those mediums."

"Also organizations that have relationships will publish the keywords to their constituency."

In the future we can expect to see greater index participation from local teens: "Another thing we are hoping to do is find funding to do focus groups with local teens to get their vision for ways they might use the system or control specific phrases."

And another notable upcoming SMS piece is a "bus notification system so that a person can query and find out how many minutes till their bus arrives at their stop."

Bigelow notes the business opportunity for local marketers in "highly targeted ads associated with [bus time data] because you know what bus stop someone is going to be at."

Why Mission Movers Chose 4INFO
"I considered building out a system using an SMS gateway, but 4INFO already has all the infrastructure and they are probably the best executing SMS company in the US. Also leasing a short code is expensive. We believe 4INFO is positioning themselves to be a gateway for this sort of system which will help drive adoption of their system."

Developing Media for the Hyper-Local
By enabling community members to add to and control their own SMS index Mission Movers has graced our online space with a first-of-breed media model (to my knowledge...). Mission Movers is a for-proft marketing company hired by the Ranier Valley chamber of commerce. My hat's off to them for extending the community built media concept into an SMS index.

If you're interested in starting your own hyper-local initiative then use as a base for your efforts an equivalent to the depth of insight Bigelow and Ma have into their communities. And be sure to let me know how if you'd like to chat about making hyper-local work for you: 919-433-3139.

Follow up questions for Brian Bigelow:
Will you offer translation services for local merchants who want to reach prospects in multiple languages?
Would you clarify your statement (contextualized above): "by spreading it out it makes the system locally scalable and sustainable."
Any updates of note for SEL since last we emailed?
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |