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Hide and Eat” campaign, the company hid chocolate bars inside the storefronts of other local businesses, posted clues on Facebook () and Twitter () each day and incited local residents to rush the different stores to discover the bars.  

Neighborhood companies can offer their local fans something that no one else can have. It’s all about creating something really special, narrowing down the channels through which people can find out about it, and mixing things up a little by partnering up with other nearby businesses.

Vosges also uses the platform to promote its retailers. The company keeps tabs on any tweets from people looking for its products and directs them to the nearest place to find its bacon chocolate bars, for example, even giving them a heads up about local sales and deals.

Those who use social location-based apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places represent just 17% of the mobile population

48% cited privacy concerns as their primary reason for not doing so. And 50% were merely unable to do so because they did not have a smartphone.

Ninety percent of respondents actively using checkin applications indicated they use Facebook Places

1. 33% of companies have a mobile marketing strategy.

2. 62% of marketers plan to have a mobile marketing strategy within the next 12 months.

3. 82% of companies plan to increase mobile marketing investment over the next 12 months.

Within three months, his blog made it to the first page of Google when the phrase "Malibu real estate" was searched. Daily page views started to rise until he was averaging 300 a day. On days when a news aggregator picked up one of his posts, page views soared to as many as 8,000. But clicks aren't commission checks. The first phone call from someone reading the blog arrived within a year, and business soon followed. His most expensive listing or sale came last year from a Malibu resident. "She enjoyed reading my blog and wanted me to list her house at $14 million," Gardner said. The 14,000-square-foot Italian villa sits on 20 ocean-view acres. A Seattle-based blog reader recently gave Gardner the listing on her $8.5 million Malibu house. Another, Mark DiPaola, found an ocean-view home site in Malibu last year through Gardner. "When I started looking for an agent I went to Google and typed in 'Malibu Realtor,'" said DiPaola, the chief executive of CheckPoints, a mobile app that rewards shoppers. "The first or second time I saw the blog it was clear he knew the market."