(1) Promote Your Business on Services On foursquare: Potential customers could be walking by your business and checking in on foursquare. They will see your business and if you’ve promoted a discount or special offer for foursquare users. Then they would be notified that there’s a discount close by and want to stop in.

(2) Follow & Comment on Local Blogs: Find out who is blogging about the local scene where your business is located. By commenting on local blogger’s posts you will start to build a relationship with them. They could even mention you if you have related news or let you suggest a guest post. This would be a great way to get additional local exposure.

Bloglines and Placeblogger are tools that can help you easily find local blogs.

(3) Attend Local Social Media Events On & Offline: Social media events like Tweetups are happening everywhere. Tweetups are a type of event or meetup of Twitter users who are interested in a similar topic. They are a great way to meet and network with people who have similar interests.

Twtvite makes it easy to fine local Tweetups or host your own. Meetup is a very popular tool for finding any type of local event. I have been to several of these Meetups and they are a lot of fun to go to.  You will meet a lot of people that are very passionate about the same thing as you.

(4) Filter Your Social Media Advertising: When you advertise on social media sites you are given the option to filter who you are showing your advertisement to. Typically you can filter on country, state, city and sometimes zip code.

When you set these filters on Facebook you are provided with how many people you can reach with your advertising. The number of people you can reach decrease with each new filter you add.

(5) Join or Start Local Groups Online: Several social media platforms have group capabilities that let you create groups on any topic. If you are a running shoe store in Miami you could start a Miami running group and ask members to add their favorite runs or running tips. This will help build your local credibility.

The key to starting a local group is to find something that is related to your business but isn’t actually your business in order to get the maximum response.

If your business isn’t local, but targets a specific group or age range, many of these ideas can be re-purposed for that as well. Let us know if you try one of these ideas and how it works out for your business.