Late on Friday, John Battelle wrote a long post about Groupon and what’s driving its success. As always, when Battelle writes about local media, he hits it on the nail. The following is also very enlightening as he talks about small business owners:

First, small business owners (SBOs) care deeply about location. Are they in a good location? Will customers be able to find them? Is there parking? A good neighborhood? Strong foot traffic? Second, SBOs care deeply about relationships and word of mouth or what we will call social. Do people refer their friends and family to the business? Are people happy with the service? Will they say nice things? Third, SBOs care very much about timing what I call “real time” in my MOLRS breakdown. What are the best hours for foot traffic? What are the best times to run promotions? How can I bring in more business during slow times? How does seasonality effect my business? When should I have a sale? In short, SBOs are driven by local, social, and real time.

What it means: Battelle could have mentioned the temporal Web instead of real-time and he would have written about all my current favorite topics (I recently published a presentation about the potential of the temporal Web). I think these three elements bring about structural changes in the way we do local business. Make sure you have incorporated these in any local media strategic plan.

With our Needium customers, we’re finding the exact same thing. Small and medium-sized businesses definitely care about local (no-brainer), social (word-of-mouth, followers/fans, loyalty, conversations) and real-time (meeting customer’s needs when they have them, answering questions).