Kelsey Local Media Blog
The "getting social" challenges for local businesses are simple to understand, yet hard to address: taxed time, strained resources, lack of platform awareness, tactical needs, fuzzy measurement tools and more. Postling doesn't propose to solve all of them, but it…
Google just launched Google Weddings. While it's possible this is just a 20 percent timer side-project, it's also possible this is a component of a Social/Local strategy. I am sure my fellow BIA/Kelsey-ites will be weighing in on this, but some…
BuzzLabs, a Seattle-based rep management service initially funded by CityGrid Media, has rolled out a new self-serve tier for SMBs. CEO Phillip Lee told us that the year-old, six-person company has been mainly working with large restaurant chains. But it…
Q&A sites like Answers.com, Yahoo Answers and ChaCha have been around for a while. They generate huge amounts of traffic because they create millions of pages that target common (and not-so-common) search queries like "how tall is justin beiber?" And…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group has formed a deal with Marchex to power click-to-call links throughout the Web. That last part is important -- this isn't click-to-call on YPG properties, but active wherever its advertisers' numbers show up online. This results…
There are gobs of research supporting social media's evolution into a mainstream marketing vehicle for businesses of all sizes. BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor Wave 14, for example, found that 48 percent of SMBs already operate a Facebook page. However, there's…
Last week I attended Opus Research's Conversational Commerce Conference (a.k.a. "C3). The focus of the discussion was mostly on social media and its impact on marketing and customer care, at both the local and national brand levels. While there is…
AOL will buy The Huffington Post for $300 million in cash and $15 million in stock, and put Arianna Huffington in charge of the AOL Local sites (MapQuest, Patch, MovieFone) as well as its growing collection of opinionated tech and…
From the Friday humor department, here's some good circa-1994 morning show banter about the Interweb. Though mainstream tech awareness has come a long way since then, the dialogue actually isn't that far off from my mom asking me more recently what…
After many months of only running into the folks at Urban Mapping at conferences, I recently visited their new S.F. offices to get a proper update. There's lots happening there. Some of you may know the company as providing the…
"Write once, read everywhere” concepts are popular ones with so many platforms to serve. Agendize is probably the king of these for listings and appointments, serving more than 66 unique platforms. Localeze and Universal Business Listings are other key players…
What do you do to keep your customer after your deal of the day runs? That’s a big question for tens of thousands of SMBs -- many of which have used deal a day as a loss leader and have…
In December, we discussed the implications of Groupon's pact with public Wi-Fi network provider JiWire as a potentially significant next step for social commerce -- hyperlocal group buying that leverages geotargeting to serve nearby deals to connected customers. The partnership has…
Mobile ad network Greystripe today announced a deal with Media Networks Inc. to better sell locally targeted mobile advertising. It's mostly a channel deal that utilizes MNI's sales force to sell local ads on Greystripe's mobile network. This lets Greystripe better…
Leads for home and trade and real estate come in many flavors. Some come from intuitive URLs. Reply.com, a marketplace for local and category specific leads, reinforced the latter today, acquiring FastRoofingBids.com, FastRoofingLeads.com and LeadToRealty.com. Reply.com CEO Payam Zamani, in…
Facebook created quite a stir (again) with the recent projection that its global revenues could surpass $4 billion in 2011 ... the majority coming from small businesses that are self serving. Now Twitter is abuzz, as eMarketer predicts that top-line income will triple…
2010 was quite a year for Foursquare. It grew users 3,400 percent and now has about 6 million total. 2010 check-ins also totaled 381 million. Today the company is out with a new infographic that plots out some of this…
It's been an active week for The Washington Post Co. First, it added to its portfolio of vertical sites with the launch of Service Alley. Now, it is hatching a subsidiary brand -- SocialCode -- to act as a full-service Facebook…
Local consumers are looking beyond pure search when they are looking for family fun. That’s the unmet need that Boston-based Goby.com is trying to meet in its 350-category, events and family fun search site. The site is now reaching 500,000…
Just days after consolidating Adify and Cox Cross Media into the integrated advertising network Cox Digital Solutions, the company is making waves again. This time, it's acquiring in order to expand scale by scooping up IB Local Network from Internet…
