Listened to the Google Places webinar today and it sounds like any location based business ought to sign up as Google Places has some very nice features and probably will drive a significant amount of web traffic (and even foot traffic) to your brick and mortar business.

I took a few screen shots but this video above does a better job of explaining Google Places than any of the screen shots I took.

Verification seems easy enough though I know some people still have problems with it – if you can’t do it by phone there is the option of having a postcard mailed to you.  Also if your a big business with a zillion outlets – like Pizza Hut, you can upload a .csv file with all the information for all of your the physical locations of your business chain (need over 10 locations to use this method).

The analytics aren’t that sophisticated, but are very useful, most of what you can see is explained in the video.

Today I also spoke with Social Radar – and was actually going to talk with the founder, but I ended up speaking to a few others, instead.   Certainly, there are a few features of Social Radar I did not cover in my reviews of the product, including the report generator – which allows you to post customized reports online you can generate using Social Radar.

I was impressed by a few other features Social Radar rolled out recently – including Alerts  – Alerts that work somewhat differently than in Radian6 – more like the stuff Google Analytics does with Advanced Intelligence based on standard deviations.

Also I wrote  a guest post  in Served Fresh Media on Using Social Media to Calculate Event ROI.

A few more things to note - Nathan Gilliatt is tracking Acquisitions in Social media Monitoring Platforms at Social Media Analysis Blog.  Recent purchases of Scout Labs and Biz360 are on the list – I also wrote about those changes last week in Scout Labs sold to Lithium Technologies for $25 Million Dollars.

Finally – I am now a member of the CIPR measurement & evaluation group based in London. According to Philip Sheldrake:

We’re a team of two halves. There’s the Londoners and the Americans. And given the latter’s slight difficulty in rolling up at Russell Square for a meeting, I propose we regard the Queen of Measurement, Katie Delahaye Paine, and the Web Analytics Guru, Marshall Sponder, as “special advisers”. They are special. And they have been very lovely by volunteering to advise us.

I’m honored.  Here’s more:

Philip Sheldrake says: “the social media measurement market is developing fast and there is a plethora of tools claiming to help public relations practitioners measure influence.  Some of these tools have potential, whilst others just offer specious and misguided information. Working with some of the best analytics and measurement experts out there, our goal is to help practitioners navigate through this rapidly developing area. I’m particularly delighted that Katie Delahaye Paine and Marshall Sponder have agreed to be a special advisors making our group an international affair.”

The Measurement & Evaluation group consists:

• Marcus Gault, Precise
• Luke Brynley-Jones, Our Social Times
• Adam Paulisick, The Nielsen Company (BuzzMetrics)
• Giles Palmer, Brandwatch
• Marshall Manson, Edelman
• Paul Armstrong, Kindred
• Philip Sheldrake, Influence Crowd

and special advisors

• Katie Delahaye Paine, KD Paine & Partners
• Marshall Sponder, the ‘Web Analytics Guru’

A formal announcement will be made shortly and will come from London.   I’ll also try to get over to London more often, especially if a proposal I’m working on for a London based governmental agency gets approved soon (my fingers are crossed, I hope yours are, too).