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…
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…
"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…
Gannett announced during its earnings call yesterday that it is now producing 264 hyperlocal neighborhood sites in 10 markets. This includes the recent addition of 30 hyperlocal neighborhoods in Sacramento. The hyperlocal neighborhoods, produced in conjunction with DataSphere, have put…
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…
While I have spent much of the past few years practicing the art of local SEO for enterprises, when I saw "The Social Network" had garnered eight Oscar nominations, I started to think there might be something to this whole social…
Today I am excited to announce that BIA/Kelsey has greatly enhanced its focus on social media to include dedicated coverage on our Local Media Watch blog and a new Continuous Advisory Service called Social Local Media. BIA/Kelsey Analyst Jed Williams…
It's a well-cited stat that almost 200 million Facebook users access the network monthly on mobile devices. That's out of a total user base that is approaching 600 million (1/10 of the planet). At the Inside Mobile Apps conference 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…
One of the bigger questions is how the local portals will fully leverage the emerging social deals platform, with deal a day, coupons, flash sales, et al. Local.com, which reaches 22 million unique visitors via its destination site and network,…
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…
Alt weeklies have certainly taken a hit from city guides (and especially from classified sites such has Craigslist). There has been a great deal of consolidation in the space. Yet the biggest consolidator, Phoenix-based Village Voice Media, with 14 local…
On average, people only move every six years or so. So there isn’t likely to be as strong a list of reviews of real estate agents as there is for pizza. But that hasn’t stopped Zillow from adding reviews of…
Many national retailers have operated Facebook pages for years, and now local businesses are on-boarding at an alarming rate (BIA/Kelsey’s LCM 14 survey revealed that 48 percent of SMBs already have a dedicated page). These stats augur social shifts 2011:…
Groupon's smashing success has spawned hundreds of clones and, given its relatively simple technology and the absence of entry barriers, buoyed those imitators that they too may strike it rich in social commerce. Wildfire Promotion Builder comes at it from a different angle.…
Facebook sees strong potential in local advertising and will develop an aggressive local strategy, according to Facebook Local Leader Emily White, a Day 3 keynoter at ILM:10. White, who left Google four months ago, said businesses are always being told…
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, in his opening keynote at ILM:10, noted a general frustration with Google's apparent de-emphasis of Yelp's content, but said he sees major opportunity in mobile app access as a workaround of Google. Stoppelman showed an example…
