november 2007

ShowMeLocal.com Interview (continued)

Q. Tell me about your Facebook and your other applications. A. This week we have released the Business Space  application that allows business owners to integrate their blogs, coupons, specials and job posts with local Facebook Pages. Business owners will be able to control what type of information to put on the page and have an ability to post either from ShowMeLocal or from Facebook directly. For those businesses who don’t have an account with us,  we offer a simple integration tool to import their information directly to us.

In addition we have built a Facebook application to enable facebookers to search through the available businesses, coupons, deals and jobs. It gives not only more visibility for businesses but also an opportunity for us to spread a word about our services. We already see some number of referrals (small businesses) that came through Facebook application.

Q. What costs are involved? A.  We have invested into creating a comprehensive software product, which I can proudly say working very smooth and stable. 

Q. Do you provide any other services to local businesses?  A.  Not really

Q. Why should a small business use your services? A. SML is  a simpler and easier way to establish a strong online presence, get new customers, and stay in touch with your community.  ShowMeLcoal.com is built around Social Network ideology with all desired attributes: ratings, reviews, photos, videos, maps, comments, tell a friends feature, social bookmaking, feed subscriptions and networking with local businesses.

In addition our distribution platform promotes business content to the variety of local oriented sites relieving business owners from the task of spending enormous amount of time and effort to do it themselves. Small business  can get a premium product for free!

Q.  Tell me about your business network feature. A. The business network is a great way to reach an extended customer network.  In other words it is a cross promotional feature. If on Facebook or MySpace friends can connect their profiles together, the same feature is available for the small business on SML. By doing this information flows from one business profile to another, attracting customers that came to one of the businesses pages. It makes sense to organize local business networks.  An example of “local” oriented business networks can be found here: http://www.showmelocal.com/kings2. In addition business owners can communicate with the other network members in the profile administration.

Q. In conclusion, where do you see local search going in future? A. Considering that internet is becoming social and the customers are ready (the business owners are not),  I think it will take some time to get those local businesses online. When the critical mass is achieved, then local search will become really exciting, because it will produce meaningful results. Also I think that the future lies in the community oriented websites and there is where the local business wants to be exposed.  This is why we are developing Facebook applications and scheduled to release the Open Social application to promote our clients to the other social networks.

Thanks for your time Eugene and look forward to see SML grow!

ShowMeLocal.com is one of the better websites/directories where local business can create an online profile and promote themselves.  I came across the site when I did my post of local search in Facebook. They had a local search application, so I clicked over their website, did some review, and then contacted them about doing this interview.

ShowMeLocal has a lot of unique and neat promotion ideas for their local business profiles and in general is pretty easy to use. I created a profile for me, which you can review.  After speaking with the founder Eugene Belenky during the course of this interview, I  have decided to contribute to their blog on a weekly basis. The ShowMeLocal blog will cover updates to the ShowMeLocal directory/web site  but also cover general web site marketing topics.  But without further ado, the interview with Eugene Belenky at ShowMeLocal.com

Q. What is ShowMeLocal? A. ShowMeLocal.com is the website that gives local business owners the tools to promote and distribute their business content online and where local consumers go to learn about businesses in their area while finding great deals.

Q. How long have you been around? A. We have been around 10 month.

Q. Do you automatically fill in your database?  A. No. Our database is 100% user (smb) generated which guarantees that behind every local business there are real people with real businesses.

Q. You are located in New York City, but do you serve all 50 US states? A. Yes, we do service all 50 states.

Q. Tell us about your distribution system.  A. ShowMeLocal.com is not a directory, classifieds or search engine placement service but rather a backbone for small business owners, giving them not only a well designed and feature rich profiles but also a promotional-distributional platform to distribute their content on the sites where tens of thousand customers are looking for the local information/deals in their neighborhoods. 

All business profiles are search engine optimized and provide top placement on the major search engines. Beside this standard feature we supply content (business listings, reviews, coupons, specials and job postings) to the classified aggregators such as Oodle, Vast, Google Base, Edgeio. Further, syndicated content is promoted to their affiliates. In addition we supply coupons for the Google Maps. We also work with other services to syndicate content on behalf of our clients. All businesses have RSS feeds available for subscription. In addition we are giving widgets, buttons and professionally design ads for businesses to insert to the sites of their choice such as CraigsList, Ebay, MySpace, etc.

Q. Can you guarantee a business their listing will be seen? A. Well, we work really hard to help smbs to get their word out online. We have built an extensive collection of online tools that give almost limitless options to promote a business online. Depending on the level of participation – online exposure is varying, ranging from search engines to classifieds and local sites. What I am trying to say that more business owner put information on their sites, more visible business becomes bringing more customers to the virtual and live storefront.

Until next time….

In keeping with holiday spirit -I am offering a Cyber Monday special. If you are a small business or know of one and needing some local search or general marketing help, contact me (larry at localbizbits.com) and for a free web site evaluation. Use the code LBB-1107. This expires on Dec 31, 2007.

Happy Holidays!

Let the shopping begin! As I mentionedin my last post, I made my big purchase /holiday shopping last week and am still enjoying it!  This is a big time of the year for businesses and yours need to be ready. Now, I am not one who loves to brave the huge crowds and traffic the day after Thanksgiving but many do.

Many folks will be doing what I did and will continue to do–research on-line, possibly purchase on-line, and then finally drive over to the store and get what they need once the crowds die down. As I have said before, on-line research by the consumer is growing tremendously and your business needs to tap into this resource.

Everyone has heard of Black Friday but I bet many small businesses have not heard of Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is the Monday after Black Friday, which will be Nov 26 this year. Past years has shown that consumer on-line searches spike and on-line retail web sites’ traffic and associated sales can reach their highest point of the year on this Monday.

“..the term [Cyber Monday] does describe a very real seasonal trend caused by internet users who are purchasing gifts online or who are looking for offline shops where they’ll buy presents and holiday supplies. For many sites, Mondays have the highest internet usage every week, and this normal trend line becomes even more exaggerated and increased as shoppers flock to find product information, locate stores, or buy online.” says Chris Silver Smith in his lastest post Forget Black Friday! Are You Ready For Holiday Season’s Cyber Mondays?

Chris does a great job explaining this critical shopping time for businesses and has some great statistics to show. Chris also provides some great “online optimization tips for local store sites and etailers”

Another article to bring to your attention, is by Greg Sterling, Black Friday, Inventory Data And Local Shopping. In this article, Greg talks about businesses having their current inventory on-line.  

“Depending on the particular survey and product category in question, anywhere from 70 percent to 90+ percent of consumers now consult the Internet before buying in stores. However, the still-missing link in this process is the widespread availability of product inventory data to connect online shoppers with places to buy things in their markets.”

Businesses can definitely help themselves by providing real time or current inventories on-line. I definitely check item availability on-line when shopping.

“It’s too soon to say whether inventory data will become a “commodity.” However very soon consumers will be able to do online product research and then learn, fairly quickly, where they can buy the desired product offline. This is the future of online shopping and any shopping engine or online shopping portal that doesn’t incorporate this local data will be doing so at its own peril”

Both articles should be an encouragement to small business to get work on getting themselves and their product information on-line in order to tap into the growing trend of on-line shopping.

For the past week or so, I have been doing more local search than writing about local search! It was my wife’s birthday and I wanted to do something special. I got her (and the family) a new widescreen TV. It is awesome! we previously had a 27″ TV and it is a whole new world right now.  We are breaking it in by watching the extended version of the Lord of the Rings. (I cannot believe what I was missing.)

Ok, so how did I local search my purchase? (Small businesses listen up)

1. I first went online to big stores here in town: Circuit City, Best Buy, Hhgregg to see general selection, price etc. 2. Made a trip to Best Buy and looked at the general selection and asked questions. 3. Came home, went back online to review what was told to me and look at customer reviews of different models. 4. Did some local search for televisions locally. From what I found online, the big stores were basically my only option. [Point 1: If you sell TV in Augusta, you need to get online so folks can find you. I liek to support the smaller local shops if I know they exist.] 5. Continued to search online for information on TV and pricing. 6. Went back to Best Buy and asked more questions. (It is interesting, the different information you can get from different sales people. I am glad I did not listen to what the first guy told me.) 7. Again went home, back online to find more information and to finalize my decision. [Point 2: People are looking for info, reviews, pricing online, so make sure you provide that on your site or at least link to it as a service] 8. Did find a store other than the big ones that had the set I was looking for, but no website and was too far to drive. [Point 3: The studies are correct, people will stay close to home.. I was running out of time to get this gift!] 9. After I felt I had done enough, I ended up back at Best Buy to purchase my TV.

As I have said before, eveyone does local search these days  (looking for product information, customer reviews, store location, pricing, availablility, etc)  so you small businesses need to make sure you get listed online. I will be more than happy to help you with your local search marketing (right after I finish Lord of the Rings )

Continuing our conversation….

Q. How does UniversalBusinessListings.org (UBL)  differ from many of the other sites/services that offer business listings?

A.  Primarily this is an industry initiative, where the data is not owned by anybody other than the non-profit .Org and will never be sold. Our understanding is that other companies provide something like this as part of their more lucrative marketing & advertising programs. We have already had approaches from some companies like this who will happily let UBL do this aspect of the service while they focus on other areas; the advantage of being a single-purpose entity is that you can focuson doing that one thing more cost-efficiently than anyone else. Generally, we want to work with the established industry segments, not compete with them.

Q. To wrap up, what do you see as “wrong” or needing improvement within local search?

A. Name, address and phone numbers just don’t cut it anymore. If you want your business to be found, listings need to have the enhanced attributes and detailed information that will ensure your business is ranking and displayed accurately in the Directories and Search Engines. People search by keywords, features and brands now – this has made Search Engines more important, and now we are finding social networking increasingly being a word-of-mouth forum that leads to commerce. Local Search needs to react like they are now in the SocialID business.

More specifically, the free listing process is time-consuming, confusing, inefficient and open to abuse from listing spam. The modest fee we charge eliminates most of these concerns. Currently, publishers are commonly showing old data, duplicate data or incomplete data and the businesses have a hard time getting their submission to take hold. This is one reason why we ask them to confirm that the UBL listing is their Default listing – the way they want to be seen everywhere. Plus we let them change the data any time they want – we update it every day but there is still no guarantee when the sites will integrate it.

Finally, the CMRs and SEOs are currently under-served in this whole process for the same reasons mentioned above. We want to make their lives easier and ensure that their clients see the value in working through their reps to get this job done. At least with CMRs we allowthem block any competing submissions from specific companies – as long as they get to UBL first.

Thanks Chris for your time and good luck with the new service.

A new service for local business, UniversalBusinessListing.Org was started recently. I got a copy of their press release so I decided to do some investigating. I read over their website and it seemed pretty good but I wanted some more information. I  caught up with Chris Travers and was able to get him to answer some question for me (and you).

Q. What is UniversalBusinessListing.Org what all about?

A. We have a very simple mission: To provide businesses with an inexpensive ability to enter enhanced listing data about their company in one place and have that data be distributed uniformly to all majorInternet Business Listings Directories, including Online Yellow Pages, Search Engines, Local Portals and 411 Directory Assistance services.

The data is owned by the .Org with industry oversight over who qualifies as a Directory to get access. Access is free, and it will never be sold otherwise, nor will the .Org try to be a national database, nor a marketing company, nor an SEO or anything else. It is a single purpose entity streamlining the enhanced listing process for those many businesses who care. It’s a tool to help the SEOs and CMRs with an obvious problem. It also allows the business to get the information the way they want it and change as their business changes.

Q.  How many site do you submit to?

A. Yes, we are currently sending to over 25 entities – all the major outlets in the categories listed above or the data aggregators that feed them. When a user or their certified marketing representative creates a listing, their account page shows each publisher site being checked off as it is posted there, plus they later receive the listing’s URL when it is live. The list will change as we add moresites – especially as the publishers choose to proactively download the data versus us manually posting.

Q. If I read your website properly, how can you only charge $30/year?

A. We knew that this had to be low margin if we wanted high penetration. We know others have been charging $300 for this service as part of other marketing activities, but that can only attract a limited group. So we have a start-up mentality, using latest Web Service, Database technologies and outsourcing for manual postings. If partners send the customers to us, they also get 40% of the fee to cover their costs. This was never just about the money, but if we all are increasingly efficient about it there will be a reasonable margin. It is also $15 for annual renewals. Nobody is accusing us of being greedy – this began as I counted the hours it took me to post my own business to all these sites.

Q. How does your system work?

A. There are two main methods. Users come to UniversalBusinessListing.Org directly or via affiliate links. They fill out a listing form that is very detailed in terms of information, brands, keywords, categories, logos and all the other enhanced data. They pay the fee and get an account through which they ...

If you recall, on Oct 26, I post about being bothered by phone calls from SuperPages. Well I am happy to report that the system works.  SuperPages saw my post and a customer service rep called me, took my information, and started an investigation.

Well they called me back today to say that they found the source of the trouble, took my number off of the list, and apparently fired one of the callers.  Thank you SuperPages for taking this seriously and responding to a customer complaint. As I told them over the phone, I did not mind one phone call but multiple calls in the same day, when they said they would not call, was too much.

I can now blog worry free!

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  I got some time this weekend to catch up my social networking. The newest group I have joined is Gooruse. I need to put the following (localbiz.gooruze.com) in a blog post, so I can link my blog to my profile. 

As I am always looking to build my network, please feel free to connect with me in any of the follwoing settings.

Gooruze Facebook Local Search Central on Facebook Sphinn StumbleUpon LinkedIn MyBlogLog

These are the main ones I use.  Got some nice interviews this coming week, so stay tuned.