december 2007

Search Engine Journal has posted their nominations for the Search Blogs Awards of 2007 and the voting has began!

LocalBizBits has been nominated in the Best Local Search Blog category.  

If you can, please head to the polls and cast your vote. I, of course, would appreciated any support you could.  :)

Just wanted to take a second and wish everyone a great and joyous holiday season. Here is hoping your 2008 is even better that 2007.

 After a few days off, I will be back here, posting away!

Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good night!

Today I take a few minutes from my normal posting to mention BloggerUnite. Today, December 17th 2007 is about Acts of Kindness.

What is this about? “The Acts of Kindness theme aims at putting a human face on the bloggers responsible for so much good in the world. The goal is to expose their kindness and generosity as well as serve as an example to non-bloggers that volunteering for a charity, donating to a cause, or simply doing something kind for another person has a ripple effect around the world…”

At this time of the year, I think it is a good time for everyone to spend a few minutes to take stock of things and remember those less fortunate. Normally, I do not speak of my volunteer/charity efforts but BloggerUnite is trying to be positive force so I decided to participate.

This past weekend, my Cub Scout Pack (boys in 1st - 5th grade) volunteered at the local food bank to help do whatever was needed. We worked for a 2+ hours and help box over 2200 cans of food and packed over 600 bags of groceries for needy children. I am real proud of these boys and their fathers for the time they took out from their Saturday to help others.

In the end, it is all about lending a hand…

I was not able to go to ILM conference this year but from what I have heard it was good. Just wanted to bring to your attention a couple of nice posts on the conference for those who could not make it.

Closing The Book on ILM:07  by Peter Krasilovsky at The Local Onliner

Six Takeaways from Kelsey ILM 07 by Sebastien Provencher at The Praized Blog

Best Practices for Using PPC for Local Targeting: Kelsey ILM 07 (and others) by Andrew Shotland at Local SEO Guide.

Kelsey ILM Coverage: Tidbits from the Analyst Overview (and others) at Local Point

In addtion to ILM, there was the SES Chicago

SES Chicago 2007 Wrap Up by Thomas McMahon at the TopRanks Online Marketing Blog

and PubCon in Las Vegas:

Pubcon Las Vegas 2007 events list by Tim Dineen at Exposureonline.com

Pubcon 2007 Round-Up by Dana Larson  at the TopRanks Online Marketing Blog

Now for the exciting conclusion of my interview with Paul O’Brien of Zvents. 

Q. The Zvents website also mentions that one can add Zvents to their website - can you explain this? A. Certainly. One could consider using the Media Platform though that is really the right solution for major publishers.  Smaller websites and blogs can add everything from the Zvents Map (http://www.fieldguide.tv), an experience we’ve just discussed in regard to the facebook app, to a calendar customized to promote related content (http://www.museumofglass.org/programs-and-events/calendar/)

Q. Do you have any success stories you can share or example of how a small business website used Zvents to promote themselves? A. Small business examples aren’t as prominent in my mind as there are so many.  Zvents gets thousands of user submitted events every day, most of those commercial in nature for everything from real estate to apple picking. How about a variety?

–The Mall at Partridge Creek in Detroit is showing up on the first page of Google results through our partner The Detroit News  and we’re delivering thousands of pvs promoting things to do at the mall.

–Large retailers such as NikeTown take advantage of promotion of their weekly run club; in LA our partner Daily Breeze prominently promotes the store and events.

–A small business that comes to mind has to be Patina Boutique who experienced a tremendous amount of traffic through our network, in particular with our partner Squeeze OC in Orange County.  Their small business remains prominently promoted through search engines after a trunk show they held on October 18th. 

Business can easily not only benefit from our network but the unique content the “event” adds to the web xperience.  Search Engines, like Google and Yahoo, favor the promotions Zvents supports as their alternative is a search results page with one redundant business listing after another.  Of course, having those business listings in search is important for customers that want to find your business but Zvents increases your reach to customers who are interested in what you have to offer, those who may not know who you are to search for you.

Q. When using local events to promote themselves, should a small business only add own events or add unrelated local events as a service to visitors? A. Our search engines uses its algorithm to cross promote events.  Not similar events but other events that user would likely enjoy.  For example, from a page about a cooking class, we don’t simply promote other cooking classes but take into account the type of business hosting the class, aggregate behavior of other users, popularity of nearby events, and context to promote wine tastings, dining events, or live jazz.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that yes, small business should absolutely take a moment to add other events; small business owners go into business with passion for their line of work so the events they use to draw folks in-store are likely a reflection of things they like to do.  Adding other events they like will only increase the likelihood that someone seeing that event ...

Local SEO with Event Promotion by Paul O’Brien is a very interesting articles talking about how local busines can use local events to promote and advertise their own business.  This is not a new concept but Zvents, now gives the local small business a way to do it on-line.

“Zvents is the local search engine for discovering things to do by connecting people with their favorite interests and events (concerts, fairs, conferences, shopping, sports, etc.). You can search for events, venues, movies, restaurants, or performers. The platform enables businesses to freely add, share, and promote event information which Zvents structures, normalizes, and optimizes, in turn getting events heavily promoted on Google and Yahoo.”

After reading the article, I contacted Paul with a few followup questions. I recommend you read the article over at Top Rank Online Marketing Blog before proceeding.

Q. Tell us about your new Zvents Facebook application. A.  As the only search engine for things to do, Zvents, we look to social networks as an extension of our network.  We want to encourage our audience to use the social platform they prefer while dscovering events, activities, and places to go through Zvents.  Our app is an extension of that idea; unfortunately, limited by Facebook.  The Zvents ap quite literally puts events on the map; users installing the app get a map centralized to their location added to their profile which automatically udates with local things to do.  Search within the app and find everything from community fairs to retailer sales, local concerts to performing arts.

Facebook unfortunately prevents access to their event calendaring feature ‘Facebook Events’ so we can’t enable our users to really use Facebook; ideally, users could push things discovered on Zvents directly into Facebook Events so they can invite friends and share the details.  While restricted, we’re still having more fun that should be allowed with the Zvents app. Zoom out to see the entire U.S.,  do a search for someone like Maroon 5 and Zvents plots their entire concert tour.  Zoom in to your neighborhood and perhaps discover a town fair, community dance class, or book signing at the town book store.

Q. On the Zvents website it speaks about Zvents Media Platform as “the local events solution for local media and publishers”-can elaborate on this? A.  The Zvents Media Platform is a unique local search experience for websites; it is the only platform of its kind allowing any website to add a local search experience promoting events, restaurants, movies, and venues (places to go).  As a cobranded experience, Zvents hosts the entire platform on behalf of partners requiring only that they point their sub-domains, add a brand, and personalize the css to go live.  The solution is so turn-key it can go live almost overnight. Triangle.com  in the south east part of the United States is a beautiful integration as is LA.com.

Aggregating events, as you can imagine, is exceptionally difficult and only Zvents’ search technology crawls the open web to literally index events as Google would a web page.  That gives Zvents unique listings ...

I have always been a big supporter/advocate for adding some general, related content on the small business web site. Why?…To provide keyword rich content, create another avenue into the web site and finally, to simply provide a resource to the visitor.  I definitely will work with someone who seems to want to help me and provide some information, without necessarily trying to sell me something.

With the advent of local search, adding locally related material to ones web site is a smart move. There are a number of ways for the small business web site to do this.

1. Add your own local search engine-  Build Your Own Local Search Engine check out this article by Chris “Silver” Smith at Natural Search Blog 2. Create a directory on your site - Turn Your Small Biz Website Into An Online Yellow Pages & Get Qualified Traffic  check out this article by Andrew Shotland at Local SEO Guide 3. Create a local blog - Local blogging? check out this article by Kirby Winfield at Local Point 4. Use Zvents to promote local activities 5. Add local rss news feeds to your web site

Do not try to cover everything. Cannot tell you how much would be too much…but I would not do everything I have listed, unless you are a local directory web site. The goal here is to provide some local, relevent information for your customers to give them a reason to return to the web site.

Finally, in an article by Stoney DeGeyter Content is Dead. Community is King Now he concludes by saying:

“I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those that build content around their products but build a community around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers can come and gain information, learn more about the products and discuss or share information with others and then make purchases as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long live the (new) king.”

Though he is not specifically speaking about local content, his point about creating a web site that will engage the shopper/visitor is what you are after.