I was checking out various local search players' Facebook pages and I thought it would be helpful to compare some of these pages with some non-local brands' FB pages: How can you not like Britney? I like the graphic but…
As Social Local Media -- BIA/Kelsey's newest advisory service -- marches toward its Feb. 23 launch and Feb. 24 free webinar, we're using social media channels to present data to our audience and learn more about your challenges, successes and…
Local sales leaders are now jumping into the deal-a-day phenomenon. Yesterday, Citysearch said it would push deals hard to its thousands of advertisers. Today, ReachLocal announced that it was buying DealOn Media. Specific terms weren't disclosed, but ReachLocal is valuing…
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Graham Clarke, CEO of Dealicio, an offshoot of 53 Technology. Dealicio is a white-label platform enabling local media companies to launch, manage and advertise daily deals. Dealicio recognized the power of…
We've been starting to see the signs of recovery for the past few months. Companies that have been cutting costs and back office expenses are now realizing they need to get the sales end of their businesses moving again. Throughout…
Citysearch is getting into the deals space, offering a mix of curated daily deals, coupons and other offers from providers such as Groupon, The Dealmap, Restaurant.com as well as from its own base of thousands of advertisers. CityGrid advertisers may…
Jer’s Gourmet Chocolates of Solana Beach has the world’s best pretzel chocolate balls, and Jer, a former IBM EVP, can be found all over North County San Diego hawking his handmade creations and talking chocolate. I’ve seen him at Costco…
The French directory publisher PagesJaunes has joined the growing list of global Yellow Pages companies that are building or buying their way into the deal-a-day space. PagesJaunes has acquired the French group buying site top-deals.fr, and has rebranded the product…
The economy is showing signs of strength outside of the weak employment gains. Consumers are spending and advertisers are taking notice. To attract these new purchases, advertisers are spending more in many different local media. And given that the outlook…
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…
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…
According to the Australian media news site mUmBRELLA, Sensis has soft-launched a daily deals product called Yellow Pages Offers that is currently live in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. There has been no formal launch, but the site has reportedly been…
The program for ILM East, March 21-23 in Boston, is now mostly set, with a lot of action-packed sessions and speakers that represent the state of the art -- and also the fast, fast, fast evolution of local from even…
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…
"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…
