Yelp’s IPO surprised many people with how large the company was valued at. Twitter is still making gains with its monetization efforts and Apple’s App Store just reached 25 billion downloads. All of these companies are related and the smart social media agency will begin to ride this interconnectedness. The thing that makes Twitter and Yelp so attractive is that they are integrated with iOS. The factory social sign in on an iPhone and iPad is Twitter. When Siri needs local recommendations it goes to Yelp. This is a three way cooperative effort to supplant Google.
This development is not to say that the social media agency should abandon Google. There are, after all, more Android devices than iOS. The digital agency should, however, acknowledge that the segment of mobile users most likely to make purchases is more likely interacting with an Apple device and consequently some third-party apps that are not Google. Not only do Yelp and Twitter have a near lock on Apple users, but they are also widely popular for users of Android devices as well.
Yelp and Twitter do offer some advertising. As of now it is minimal, but there are plans for expanding these services to more advertisers and making them more responsive. What the social media agency needs to do though is be present on the services. It is free and the traffic that can be brought in with some creative approaches makes them worth it, even if there is not a surge of growth in their user bases coming.