july 2008

This post is from from my other blog here

Starting today, Zvents is powering MSN City Guides’ events and local business promotions, related business listings, and performers platform. So one local listing with Zvents gets on MSN as well as the nearly 300 other Zvents media partners.

Paul O’Brien; VP of Marketing for Zvents has provided me with some great info about this significant event.

Q. What are you/Zvents announcing?   What makes it unique? A. Zvents is announcing a partnership with Microsoft to power the events and promotions experience on MSN City Guides.  Zvents’ platform will bring new character and capabilities to MSN users looking for things to do nearby.  Overall, Zvents is enriching the user’s local search experience. 

Q. How is Zvents influencing MSN City Guides? A. MSN is adding an event search experience to MSN City Guides with Venues, Performers, and Events - powered by Zvents.

Q. How will Zvents’ partnership with MSN benefit Zvents network? A. MSN’s partnership with Zvents is a tremendous asset to the opportunity enabled by Zvents for local merchant’s: promotions (event) and business listings are syndicated throughout the Zvents network, including MSN City Guides.  Advertisers buying enhanced listings with Zvents benefit from distribution to hundreds of local media channels including MSN City Guides.

Thanks Paul-sounds pretty cool

This post is from from my other blog here

Been doing a lot of reading and thinking about local search, small business marketing, online marketing etc. but not much writing. Seem to always be running late and tired, and a little of writer’s block.  They say one way to overcome writer’s block is to simply write…so I decided to pull together a summary of my thoughts on why local search marketing is worth the effort.

1. It is an affordable way for your business to increase its visibility. Getting one’s business info into the various directories/verticals is relatively easy and not super expensive. This is a service I have done for many clients. Please contact me if you would like me to help you.

2. Online local marketing is growing very rapidly and producing results: a. Greg Sterling posted Local ROI Trumps National ROI where he quoted: “Local auto dealers in the aggregate thus spent somewhat less than auto OEMs and got a better return, about 3.5X better. One conclusion to draw here is that the local ad spend is more efficient..”

b. Jupiter Local Online Advertising Will Be Worth $8.9 Billion In 2012:  Recently Borrell Associates put out a new local forecast that offers very impressive local numbers. The company said that “local online advertising,” defined as search, “local banners” and video (classifieds are also in there) would reach $12.6 billion in 2008 with “local search” contributing roughly $5 billion to that total.

3.  The Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) are growing New Research Shows Overall Yellow Pages Usage Growing — 17.2 Billion Searches in 2007: Average number of monthly IYP searchers up 16 percent: 73 million IYP searchers per month in 2007, compared to 63.1 million IYP searchers per month in 2006.

4. The search engine industry is spending a lot of time on the subject via: a. Blogging. There are a huge number of blogs (other than mine ) out there talking about local search marketing. For some of the better ones, refer to my blogroll.

b. More meetings, either dedicated entirely to local search, such as  SMX Local & Mobile  (which just happened) and ILM08. For some great highlights to the meeting, see Andrew Shotland’s LocalSEOGuide. Finally, Matt McGee has and will again this year talk about local search at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed meeting.

5. New local related sites are popping up or existing sites are adding new local components: a. Recently YouTube recently add a new geographic search feature on its site.

b. BOTW started its own local business directory.

c. Dex’s online local search site, now features city-specific pages, each with a wealth of local information.

6. Recession proof marketing(?) I am not going to debate if we are in a recession or not but with gas prices increasing, more folks will be doing more on-line searching, research for products and services.

7. The Millennials or technology savvy folks are going to dominate the marketplace very, very soon. See this video from CBS 60 minutes. It is very enlightening about today’s young people…With more and more folks becoming more techno savvy-they will be on-line ...

This post is from from my other blog here

What is one of the most important things a small business could do on-line? Claim their business listing in such places as Google, Yahoo, Merchant Circle etc.

The small business listing is the backbone of local search.  This is the information that searchers first see about your business. It is very important to have this information up to date.  Unfortunately many small business do not take the time to look into what is listed about them.

Palore has some interesting data. They looked at heath & beauty businesses on the West Coast.

They found 45% of businesses who advertise online also claim their business listing, but that 18% of those who do not advertise online actually claimed their listings.  Hmmm…I would think it is a safe assumption to say that you would find similar percentages in other fields and locations.

There are a lot of unclaimed listing out there. Is yours one of them? What is in your business listing?

Please feel free to contact me, if you need any help in claiming your listing. 

This post is from from my other blog here

I hope everyone is well. I know I have been relatively quiet these last few weeks–just seems like there isn’t enough time. Well I think things have calmed down and I hope to get back on a regular schedule.

As my regular readers have noticed, I have redesigned the blog and just add a new poll feature. I like the new design, hopefully you do too.

Today I wanted to reach out to you guys and get your input. I started LocalBizBits to help small business understand local search marketing and related topics.  I want the site to be a useful resource, so my question is, what do you want to see?  Is there some area I should add or spend more time on?

Please free feel to use the poll below (you can pick up to 3) or leave me a comment or email me.  I appreciate your input and readership. Thanks

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

This post is from from my other blog here

I have not yet gotten in line for the new Apple iPhone but was speaking with Paul O’Brien the other day at Zvents and he tells me about a new Yellowpages.com mobile app that is powered by Zvents.  I have written about Zvents before and I think this sounds like a really cool app.

The app uses Zvents’ local search technology to feature things to do, events, and promotions listings.  The 2nd screenshot above shows how iPhone users can “Share Events” with their friends.  Recipients will receive e-mails with details, helpful links to maps, personal messages, and more info with the event detail page.

Paul says, “Our collaboration with Yellowpages.com reflects Zvents commitment to helping local businesses find customers through multiple channels and local brands while delivering truly comprehensive Local Search.  Here, Zvents time based promotions combine with Yellowpages.com business listings to enable iPhone users to find everything locally: Yellowpages.com doctors, nightclubs, and restaurants with Zvents concerts, store sales, and festivals.   Businesses wanting to reach these valuable mobile consumers need only add a promotion to Zvents.”

Thanks Paul.  There has not been a formal announcement yet on this app but you can download it and is being promoted by YellowPages.com.

This post is from from my other blog here

Well we can’t work all the time! Earlier this year, a group of SEMs and I got together to form a Fantasy Baseball league-SEM08. Since it is the All-Star break thought I would let everyone know how we were doing! If you are interested in participating next year, let me know.   Good luck guys in the second half.

  Team Manager 1 The Metros Larry Sullivan (LocalBizBits) (no I have not been cheating) 2 Boston Hard Heads Ben Saren (CitySquares) 3 New England Pilgrims Tim Dineen (Indeed.com) 4 Canseco’s Link Juice Gib Olander (Localeze) 5 McStud’s Steve Espinosa (Buzzspot) 6 Disastros Mike Belasco (seOverflow.com) 7 Tim Tim Coleman (Convert Offline) 8 RedSox2008 Nick Stamoulis (Brick Marketing)

This post is from from my other blog here

Received this press release from Paul O’Brien of Zvents:

Paul Levine Joins Zvents Board of Directors AdBrite Executive and Former Yahoo Local GM Brings Depth and Expertise to Zvents Team

San Mateo, CA – July 15, 2008 – Zvents , a local search and advertising network featuring event listings to promote local businesses , today announced that Paul Levine, Vice President of Marketing of AdBrite , has joined Zvents’ board of directors.

“We’re very pleased that Paul has joined our board,” said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and co-founder. “Paul’s considerable experience in local search and local advertising will help us enhance user satisfaction and merchant adoption across the Zvents Media Network . Paul’s years leading Yahoo!’s local efforts and his current position at AdBrite give him unique insights into search, advertising, and consumer behavior within a local context.”

Zvents is a local search and advertising network of hundreds of web and mobile partners featuring event listings to promote local business. Using unique technology that enables location- and time-based search for businesses and events, Zvents helps millions of people find local businesses and discover things to do. Thousands of local merchants use Zvents’ free and paid listings products to submit local events and activities, thus promoting their businesses and providing unique and hard-to-find local content to users throughout Zvents.

“Zvents has all the elements necessary to build a substantial business in local: an impressive technology platform, a top-tier distribution network, and an active merchant community generating unique local content,” said Paul Levine. “I’m excited to work with Zvents’ outstanding board and management team to help fuel the company’s future growth.”

Paul Levine is the Vice President of Marketing at AdBrite, The Internet’s Ad Marketplace, where he is responsible for the company’s marketing, public relations, and customer operations. Prior to joining AdBrite, Levine was Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo! Local, where he ran Yahoo!’s yellow pages, local search, maps, events, classified, and real estate properties. At Yahoo!, Paul oversaw the launch of Yahoo! Local, grew it to become the internet’s leading local content property with over 20 million monthly users, and led the company’s local advertising partnerships and strategy.

Thanks Paul…

This post is from from my other blog here

Got a few good articles for your review:

The “BCS” for Local Search Engine Optimization by David Mihm, “A Look at Why InfoUSA, SuperPages, Acxiom, Localeze, Yelp and InsiderPages Are So Important in Local Search”

Small Business Link Building: Part A - Analysing Opportunities over at SEOmoz.

Winning the Local Search Battle by Gregg Stewart Winning the Local Search Battle - Part 2 also by Gregg at SearchEngineWatch.  Some good stats and info.

 

This post is from from my other blog here

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am still around. I need to apologize for not writing more but I have been swamped. Working mulitple jobs just takes the energy out of you.  Maybe some day I will find that one great job…..if anyone is hiring, let me know. I am on LinkedIn.  Ok I am done, for now.

I am putting together some posts and will get back into the swing next week.  I hope everyone in the US has a great July 4th and takes some time to remember how fortunate we are to live in the United States of America. It is not perfect place but we are free.