News and Analysis

Prime Day Showcases the Power of an E-Commerce Empire—And What It Means for Local

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Prime Day underscores Amazon’s power in the retail market because it compels the over 100 million consumers who pay for that service to make the most of their investment by purchasing directly from Amazon. Local businesses are hardly in a position to compete.

Why Google’s Mobile Speed Update Smells Like Trouble for Small Businesses

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The murky guidelines surrounding just whom and how many people and sites the mobile speed update may affect—and how exactly businesses in the line of fire are to amend unsatisfactory practices—spells potential trouble for small businesses.

Groupon Reportedly Puts Itself on the Market

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Groupon, the early pioneer in local deals that was once valued at as much as $16 billion, is on an avid hunt for a buyer, Recode reported this weekend. Executives and banking representatives at Groupon have reportedly been pursuing potential targets.

Commentary

Is Guest Blogging Dead? Focus on These Link Building Strategies Instead

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While guest blogging used to be a respected link building practice – and still might be okay in some instances – it is now often considered a violation of Google’s quality guidelines. And in the future, Google could penalize websites that accept guest posts if Google believes the business is attempting to gain links without truly earning them. Instead of placing all of your eggs in the guest blogging basket, it is best to focus on authentic link building. Here’s how…

Let’s Simplify and Strengthen Business Listing Verification

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Verification is a great idea in theory and, once you navigate the tangled process, it even works well for most business owners in practice. However, there is very little consistency across publishers as to how the process should work or what the result should be, and there is plenty of evidence that the supposed lockdown of business data via owner verification doesn’t always operate as it should…

5 Sales Practices Every Company Should Know

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The following sales best practices, inspired by Aaron Ross’ Predictable Revenue, can help companies close more sales in less time. Ross’s framework helped Salesforce.com, one of the most successful startups in history, increase recurring revenues by $100 million…

Latest Posts

Street Fight Daily: Big Cuts at LivingSocial, Yahoo’s SMB Head Departs

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…LivingSocial Lays Off 400, Eyes Changes to Amazon Relationship (Recode)… Yahoo’s Small Business Head Amit Kumar Departs Company (Recode)… Sorry Apple Pay, Small Biz Just Not That Into You (CNBC)…

Is Location More Than a Feature in Mobile Advertising?

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The rise of smartphones has created a wealth of location data that marketers on both the buy- and sell-side are desperate to capitalize on. But is location really more than just another targeting mechanism for mobile advertising? That was the question posed to a Street Fight Summit panel Tuesday…

30A.com Is More Than a Website — It’s a ‘Brand’ for the Laid Back

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Mike Ragsdale’s 30A.com, serving the Gulf Coast beach communities of Santa Rosa in Northwest Florida, is much more than a website. It’s an “international brand” that includes a digital radio station and a retail operation that sells everything from to T-shirts to beach chairs to beer…

Street Fight Daily: Google Redesigns Maps, Walmart Searches Inside

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Google Maps gets better integration with Uber and OpenTable (Mashable)… Walmart Brings Product Search To The In-Store Experience (Search Engine Land)… Amazon Tries Out Taxi Deliveries In California Cities (CNBC)…

In Building Local Marketplaces, a Choice of Chicken or Egg

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The success of Uber and Airbnb have spawned a deluge of startups that have replicated the on-demand marketplace model across a range of verticals. But developing marketplaces locally requires a deft approach to scale that balances a network’s need for liquidity with a startup’s desire for growth…

Investors Bet on Rethinking Old Categories — Not Creating New Ones

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During a panel at Street Fight Summit in New York Tuesday, Tige Savage, managing partner at Revolution Ventures, and Dave Ambrose, managing director at Steadfast Venture Capital joined Guardian’s east coast tech editor Dominic Rushe to discuss the growing opportunities — and future challenges — in rethinking traditionally local businesses…

Is Your MVP a Minimum Viable Channel?

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“Just because you have product/market fit, don’t raise money until you have validated your channel,” said Closely CEO Perry Evans. “We might have been able to be a successful business — but we shouldn’t have been a business that took venture capital. We couldn’t produce the return the VCs needed.”

Five Hyperlocal Startups to Watch

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At the Street Fight Summit on Tuesday afternoon, startup investor and mentor Laurel Touby quizzed five founders about their plans for world domination and developing a viable business model to support it. Here’s what we learned…

Street Fight Daily: Groupon’s Wine Label, Porch Keeps Growing

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…Groupon Uncorks Its Own Wine Label (Chicago Business Journal)… Can Porch.com Become LinkedIn For Your House?  (Fortune)… For Location-Tracking Startup, a Data-Privacy Odyssey (Wall Street Journal)…

The Rise of Marketing Automation in Local’s Next Act

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Marketing automation isn’t just for the biggest companies in the world anymore. Thanks to companies like Booker, Signpost, Shopkeep, and others, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) have access to the data and the tools to reach their customers in smart, efficient ways while minimizing the hassle on the backend…